So I'm asking for help now. Do you have a story or initiative about Queers and Libraries that you'd like in the book? Let me know! FYI, they don't have to be positive if that doesn't reflect your experience. forms.office.com/e/SRh70ukEeN 1/2

When I pitched the 'big gay book of libraries' I said I was going to write a positive and uplifting books. But it's hard, folks. I just find myself writing about discrimination and censorship, again and again. 1/2

I’m 12 hours into this 14.5 hour flight and so far I’ve read the first 10 chapters of Moby-Dick and the entirety of The Sparrow and I haven’t slept or cried once and I’m using my free hour of WiFi to tell you that I’m actually wrecked by both of them

🐋 facts

So as I’m starting rereading Moby-Dick, I just finished rereading Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow (incredible and devastating) and I’m curious to see how much of the issues of faith from that are going to be my lens for MD this time around 🐋

Do you too want to spend a month reading Moby-Dick? Details below! (Srsly, this book blew me away the first time I read it; it is weird and beautiful and dreadful)

The last time I read Moby-Dick (also the first time I read the whole thing!) it took me 6 months of slow going but part of that overlapped with a trip to New Zealand. This time I’m reading while headed to Japan and am already behind schedule lol but am excited to reread it for #monthofdick 🐋

Important Month of Dick 2026 content 🐋

So what music are we listening to today to bring good energy into 2026? So far for me it’s Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Life on Earth and The Past Is Still Alive and Maggie Rogers’s Surrender. Looking for more recs, any period/genre welcome

Happy New Year! We love sharing these pro-book posters from the Works Projects Administration Poster Collection in the Library's Prints and Photographs Division. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest.

Here, have some peacock energy for 2026 🦚

This is true and I was the only one on set excited about it (and playing the song on my phone to blank stares)

which of our current tech objects will be the calculighter of the future?

A story about why book history and bibliography (the study of books and other textual artifacts as physical objects) are amazing and important fields and why I’m glad I call them one of my intellectual homes. The ending is somber, so fair warning. 1/n

THE MONTH OF DICK 2026 IS COMING IN JANUARY Get ready! 1. Follow the feed: bsky.app/profile/jaco... and ask me to add you 2. Download the planned reading sequence (source doc here bit.ly/4p4oYwA) 3. Get yourself an edition (book, free e-book, whatever) 4. Notify your bosom friends 5. Whale tattoo?

"The win had changed her life, but not in the ways she had hoped." A devastating, deeply moving story by my dear friend @caseyparks.bsky.social about how poverty, politics, and cruelty shaped a trans teenage runner's world.

First draft done! I might actually get this out while it’s still 2025!

if you're resolution for next year is to 'read like a writer' I made a (completely free!!) set of journal templates to do just that. Chag christmas sameach and happy nittel nacht (belated)

Also an actual ancient pomegranate?! www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

And speaking of pomegranates

A lovely poem about pomegranates and love and the future in the present, “The Pomegranate and the Big Crowd” by Alberto Ríos

D.C. home rule was signed into law on December 24, 1973. From @maustermuhle.bsky.social, here's what it means, how it works — and what could be done to strengthen local control:

I should obviously spend the next 10 days making a little zine about pomegranates instead of writing a book proposal so please send me all your favorite facts/myths/images

Keep making and sharing those zines, letterpress prints, and textile messages. DH folks know how to get the word out, whether it's archiving or sweaters. #DHmakes

just incredible samizdat times to be living in here in the US

The 60 Minutes reporting on CECOT, with video recorded straight from broadcast (not multi-part phone recording off tv), now on Internet Archive.

I have to say, I also really resent that the continual surge in "AI" bullshit, bots, and scrapers has meant that legitimate research is slowed down by the continual need to verify that I'm fucking human.

Basically the goalposts of accuracy, accessibility, and readability are always shifting. We are conditioned to believe that technology always makes things better, but this is often at the expense of both cultural workers and the communities whose history is being preserved and told.

Ten years ago today, I was working on a dissertation chapter about how we redefine what we think is "real" based on how different technologies copy and distort historical records. You can read an article based on that work here (scroll down for an OA link): halperta.com/scholarship/...

I posted this👇 to a claim that genAI is better than Ctl+F to search historical docs. @tristanpalmgren.bsky.social replied with a genAI summary of my document and @bookllyfr.bsky.social asked if it was accurate. It turns out that it did exactly what genAI does: made stuff up & got stuff wrong.🧵

in other news, I am making a brisket that I will be serving tomorrow with latkes and the smell is making me bonkers

Heading into the weekend knowing that 42 people have contributed $3024 to our fundraiser is a real joy! Can you help us get our families at least $150 for their celebration? We have a tracker so you'll be able to see we've got your donation and that we've sent it on! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

One of the benefits of publishing with PBSA is that we do all the copyediting in-house with real, live humans (and I can vouch for this because I am that real, live human editing the copy)

Straive is the name of the company that provides publishers with these AI tools, so you might want to watch out for that name when you’re considering where to publish.

Truly delighted about this! Jack was the assistant for my fall RBS course and he has such wide-ranging interests and enthusiasm for book history. This profile didn't even mention his thesis on prison poetry. Just wonderful to see new scholars entering the field!

Just very disappointed in my alma mater. Zero anassa katas for President Cadge!

Here are some actions you can take to defend gender-affirming care in your hospital system.

The thing about this supposed renaming of the Kennedy center, is it a provides an excellent opportunity for urban sculptors, graffiti artists, and members of the public – regardless of whether they have artistic ability or not – to all participate in un-renaming it.

This is at least the 4th time that Timothy Loehmann, who murdered 12-year-old Tamir Rice, has been hired as a police officer since the murder. Each time, police departments choose to hire him, and community rises up to get him fired.

Fun extra fact for this case: the books were not only pooped on by birds, but chewed on by rats. The rats particularly liked the cords used to close the parchment binding, because they left most of the bindings alone but ate the cords 🐀📖 #BookHistory

People who aspire to be academics: I wish to live a life of the mind Actual academics:

the final proofs are in, the cover artwork signed off & we now have an official publication date - so it feels time to finally start celebrating publicly the forthcoming, incredibly long-overdue Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, v. 1: from the earliest times to 1707 published by EUP in 2026

Friends!!! You know how obsessed I have become with Common Sense. Tom Paine published that pamphlet 250 years ago this January. I published an essay about it TODAY, in the New York Times. Common Sense remains relevant as ever. I hope you enjoy it. Gift article ⬇️⬇️⬇️

🫥

As we mourn Rob Reiner, don’t skip this: he was, pretty much, personally responsible for overturning California’s Prop 8 banning same sex marriage. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...

there is a deeply wholesome conversation happening on the neighborhood listserv about birds and bird feeders and where to buy seed and how much we all love the pileated woodpecker

The British Library have a searchable interim Archives & Manuscripts Catalogues up & running: searcharchives.bl.uk (posting for all the folks who, like me, had somehow managed to miss this important development)

The Consistent Money-Moving Project is the thing that keeps me going when the world feels darkest. You can learn more about our work at consistentmoneymoving.org. And if you'd like to give, you can venmo or cashapp to the folks named on the image, or drop me a DM!

My best coping trait when faced with horrors is to find something positive to do. Today that's giving to CMMP's annual holiday fundraiser. CMMP provides weekly cash to 31 families in DC to help with basic needs. But the holidays are also a need and so we're raising money for that!

Compare the statement about the antisemitic terror attack in Australia by the Israeli Prime Minister with the one by Zohran Mamdani, and ask yourself who more truly cares about condemning antisemitism, as opposed to using it to promote unrelated politics.