Book 8 of 2026 is Moby Dick. I've never read it before, and I'm only about a quarter of the way through, but I *love* it so far. Upset with myself for not reading it sooner.

Reading with the cats in 2026, books 6 and 7: The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy and The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo

One of the volunteer artists for the @wischumane.bsky.social annual Poorly Drawn Pets fundraiser drew this amazing portrait of Sal and Archie, which I obviously will be printing and framing.

feel gross self-promoting when ICE is murdering people so I keep reposting & then immediately un-reposting, but it's awards season & I'm proud of this story. anyway fuck AI, the baby food of fascism.

It appears that this legend owns a little bookstore — and you can order books from him instead of Bezos. Link in next post.

In good news today, a few hours ago my downstairs neighbor adopted this shy girl, who has been passed over at the shelter for the last two months because she has been so scared there. She is so sweet, and she's warming up much faster than we thought she would.

Playing Horizon Zero Dawn, a favorite of mine that I haven't played in a while, and just now noticing Elisabet Sobek founded an AI company to sell "green robots" and it won both a Nobel Peace Prize and the "2056 Rachel Carson Award for Environmental Progress." Brilliant.

I've learned recently that if you get a cat to sleep on top of your legs and refuse to move, you can turn down your heat and save a bit of money. We've spent the whole weekend like this, reading books 4 and 5 for 2026: Mirage City by Lev AC Rosen and To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis.

I find Gmail’s new “write this for me” feature deeply sinister. They’re trying to convince you that you are dumb and helpless. Don’t let them steal your ability to formulate thoughts and communicate. You were capable of writing an email in 2022 and you’re capable now.

Sal, a small cat who has to be as warm as possible at all times, has started sleeping underneath the blankets I leave on the couch.

Reading with the cats again. Our first book of 2026 is "The Salvage" by Anbara Salam. Queers, ghosts, and a fantastic cover.

Three years today with these guys. They were so scared in the shelter that they refused to meet me, but they turned out to be the nicest, most gentle cats I've ever known. (Still very scared of lots of things, but hey, the world is a pretty scary place.)

It's not even Thanksgiving yet and Archie is over here trying to start shit with his brother

In addition to money donations to food banks & food aid for people, please also consider donating money or food & litter to pet food pantries. Many people who rely on SNAP to feed themselves will now need to redirect $ to buy groceries that they would have spent on pet food before.

Sunday afternoon storytime with the whole family

🧵It has been clear for years that a key difference between past instances of book banning and the present censorship cataclysm is that the banning happening now targets not only books, but librarianship as a profession and libraries as an institution. 1/4

Reading with the cats again (a very good stress-relieving activity, if you need one). Yesterday, A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo, and today, All of Us Murderers by KJ Charles. Good spooky vibes for the weekend.

can't believe Archie did not win the Nobel Peace Prize for this

Archie, a librarian's son, spent some time trying to figure out the bookshelves this morning

Saw someone say, “Stop hoarding books, we don’t need paper books anyway” and I can’t express how misguided this is. Online libraries disappear, digital books can be altered, and with Big Tech seeking to destroy history and literacy, print media has never been more essential.

This would be why I am such a strident critic of digitization as a substitute for actual archival preservation. My sixteenth century documents are far sturdier and likely to survive another 500 years than the detritus on the internet. And digitization is not democratization.

Saturday afternoon, amidst the doom scrolling: a good book, a cat, and my favorite John Prine t-shirt (my only John Prine t-shirt, but still my favorite)

Also great! "That's why I think we should fund libraries more. It's not just because they're a great resource, it's because I don't wanna know what librarians will do if we don't give them a place to go."

Good morning from already flooded Milwaukee

A friend of mine wrote a book about the history of film censorship in Milwaukee and it's being turned into a documentary! The filmmaker needs at least 250 people to follow the project at the link below to ensure it will be available streaming. Donating is great too if you can do so!

One of my favorite digital collections! I created this back when I got to do this kind of thing, and almost a decade later, the local NPR station interviewed my former colleague about it.

I tested it in Primo Research Assistant, not surprising, I got similar results since Summon Research Assistant is sister product and both work the same by using LLM to generate Boolean search strategy. Gaza war shows no results. Tusla Race riots get a scary error message but does generate answer(1)

Terrific thread, with wonderful specific detail, about why historiography matters.

the kind of guy who has not been inside a library since the 90s

Second day with this incredibly needy foster kitty. Here he is screaming at me as I try to leave the room. I love him.

A lesson in de-escalation from Archie: when your opponent is ready to attack and pops up to strike, just start making out with him.

What is common knowledge in your field but shocks outsiders? Digital resources, particularly eBooks and audiobooks, are going to bankrupt libraries if something isn't done to halt the extortionary pricing models of publishers.

We're honored to be recognized by our local freekly, The Shepherd-Express, as their "heroes" of the month. shepherdexpress.com/news/hero-of... #freekly #freeweeklypaper #localpress #milwaukee

Archie and I have been reading together again

Programmers who rely on chatgpt are explicitly saying they are *not thinking about the code* They're not making mental models of it, understanding how the parts work, where the problems might be. All this also applies to literally all creative activity, from art to writing.

My cat, an idiot, was scared of the sound of rain in the living room, so he ran into another room and hid next to a window.

“Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate…Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”

He's training to become an architect.

Milwaukee, 2025 end of an era…

As a person who repairs books, I counsel people on this all the time: the default for physical objects, if left alone, is to continue existing. The default for digital files, if left alone, is to disappear. Digital history requires care FOREVER; one missed reformatting and good luck recovering it

Archie is looking regal this morning

#ICYMI folks w/deep experience re:crisis web archiving (@sucho-org.bsky.social)+building tools for it (@webrecorder.net) made a free zine teaching how anyone can archive the things you love on the web before they go away: zinebakery.com/homemade-zin... & why you shouldn't expect others will do so

the boat is all of us

A friend of mine has been sending me photos lately comparing my cat Sal to the Milwaukee Brewers player Sal Frelick (aka Sal Furlick)

It's a good thing this ding dong doesn't have to hunt for his food.

We got this delightful package in the mail at my library today. Timeless!

This weekend's read is The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by @sgj.bsky.social. I've been looking forward to this one, and Archie hasn't gotten in the way even once (although he did bite it, which means he likes it).