What a great example of how literature can literally save lives. The arts are so important.

Some Jazz in the library.

I remember a conversation with my Dad about his new SUV over 20 years ago, when he said if he's in an accident he wants to win. I was disturbed that he didn't say survive, but win.

Are you there, God? It's me, Ahab.

The truly maddening thing is that, unlike when I was a young man in science and the materials and engineering just weren’t there yet, the future is *right there.* The problem is *solved*. What’s holding us back is not just greed, but this bizarre nostalgia, an obsession with petro- masculinity.

"The secret isn’t hidden policy genius or decades of cultural conditioning—it’s infrastructure."

Is he going to stop with just the east wing? Or will we eventually have a brand new, shoddily-built, McMansion of a White House?

The old man equivalent of stirring your hot cocoa with a candy cane is drinking coffee with a Ricola cough drop in your mouth.

Just rage-cancelled Hulu / Disney+. We don't want to financially support media that bows down readily. You can't trust anything you're hearing from them if they kick people out as soon as the government expresses displeasure at what they're saying. They're clearly becoming just a mouthpiece.

Downtown Berkeley this morning. Oops.

Hey, editor and writer types, shouldn't the construction be "both ... and ..." instead of "both ... as well as ..." As in, "I am both a librarian and a husband," rather than "I am both a librarian as well as a husband"? I see the latter a lot in newspapers, and it bugs me. But should it?

Just cancelled one of my domains, and the Google business package that goes along with it (email, calendar, files, whatever). I had to say like six times in the process that yes I really want to do this. Yes, I've thought it through. No, a discount won't entice me to stay. I realize it's on my head.

"There’s a pollution blanket around the planet, but it’s the result of a pollution blanket around our souls."

I don't fully trust anyone who doesn't adore libraries, especially haunted libraries. In terms of desired afterlife real estate, few places compare to library or bookshop. I am going to try hard to haunt my favourite one when the time comes. – #CJosiffe #Libraries #Ghosts

Excited to have our Berkeley Public Library Tool Lending Library mentioned in this New York Times article! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/r...

Curious why papers aren't reporting that the cease fire never happened rather than reporting that Trump says the cease fire is in place, even though there's bombing going on. Also disappointed the Guardian reports Rutte says Trump is bound for big success when the only source for that is Trump.

A lovely day to work on the roof.

Mom died in fall of 2005. Today I have outlived her. Damn. This is her at my wedding just 3 months before she died.

At North Berkeley BART yesterday with several thousand others. Nearly every car that went by was honking & had smiling people in it.

Shit, man. My sister-in-law teaches here.

I didn't have a key to give to some contractors to get into our network room yesterday, so they taped the latch in so the door wouldn't catch. I said, "Just like Watergate!" and they both said, "What's Watergate?"

"[W]hen you memorise a poem, that’s the whole poem. You learn ‘The Fall of Rome’, and you’ve stolen it as cleanly as if you’d walked out the Louvre with the Mona Lisa."

They're coming for all of us, eventually. So many people I know work in libraries, public education, higher education, and are all being attacked at the federal level. I think the goal is a bunch of uneducated cogs working in factories, breathing air that'll lower life expectancy back to 35 or so.

Clear, concise, accurate. Must read. ⬇️ "No matter how deeply avant-garde art has engaged in shock and putative nihilism, no artist, to my knowledge, has ever made art with the sole aim of harming the already vulnerable...Those are the goals of AI art, and that is why it resonates with the right."

The White Worm of Pretoria actually believes that *empathy* is destroying civilization, that we need to get rid of empathy if humanity is to survive. What kind of world results from no empathy we must imagine for ourselves, but eventually I’m sure it must involve gas chambers or their equivalent.

Time to stop using Google Maps, and find a new mail host for my personal domain. Fuck you, Google.

Bela Ruino, a new band with an interesting, mysterious sound, based in the SF Bay Area. They don't seem to have much of an online presence right now, but I'm enjoying their stuff.

It is worth remembering how much mediaeval folklore stems from the male obsession with genitalia. - Dr. Katherine Wardhall, the Constantine Lecture, Woden College, University of Weychester 1981 #Folklore

My current read is "The Bog Wife," by @kaychronister.bsky.social Enjoying it so far! I have questions, which I assume will get answered by the end. But maybe not! I think I found it when I was simply passing by a shelf in my library, and the title (as you might imagine) jumped out at me.

My cubicle is the coldest room in the library this week.

Explain your username I read Moby Dick in tutorial way back in college, and I was amused by the sub sub librarian (and loved all the quotes said sub sub librarian added to the book). Plus, I am in fact a librarian. And not highly placed in the library.

A family tradition in my grandparents' house when I was growing up:

What the hell's up with cars that have no spare? Flat tire this morning could have been dealt with in 5 minutes, but instead I had to find an open tire shop that could get me in right away & wait for them to fix it.

35 years ago today I arrived in San Francisco from Vermont, 2 - 3 weeks after making a snap decision. I had never lived in a city bigger than about 15,000 before, nor been west of the Mississippi. Possibly the best decision of my life, as it opened up my world and my mind. I'm still in the Bay Area.

I'm getting sick of drivers in Oakland & Berkeley running the stop sign at speed while I'm actually in the crosswalk.

I would argue that criminalizing homelessness or allowing a hellscape of people sleeping outdoors are not the only two options available, in spite of what Grants Pass is arguing.

Not to be that guy, but: is "phenomena" really accepted as a singular now? I'm seeing it in publications that I otherwise respect.

The problem with finishing a book is that I never know what to start next.

Was sorry to run across this obit today. I've enjoyed Hill's novels and was hoping more might be forthcoming.

I finally got around to reading this article about the merging of Spanish & English in Miami. When I studied Latin we would speak English in Latin word order so we could get the feel of the language, and it was great fun. Opinion | Two Languages Walk Into a Bar - The New York Times (nytimes.com)