Imagine thinking even for a second that Bear fucking Grylls could do a better job in a wildly complex geopolitical envrionment that a seasoned diplomat who already had a track record with the administration.

Has anyone studied how researchers and academics use library catalogues? I'm struggling to find any literature on researcher (not student) information needs and information seeking behavior. Any leads? My focus is rare books/archives/special collections, but I'm looking broadly right now.

Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs xkcd.com/3204/

Happy 13th anniversary to this pair of matching news headlines.

Yes

the Spectator accidentally recycled a subhed from a previous day’s article about Tehran

Oof.

There's no easy way to say this: isthmus

Full programme and registration for #MetaFutures: www.cilip.org.uk/members/grou...

The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions! This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/t...

subscriptions >>> shop.viz.co.uk/viz353bs

Yoo had won joob

I will vote for any political party which promises to end the scourge of structural engineers.

A reminder that punctuation is important.

Flowers in the garden

Fabulous 10/10 no notes

Scam alert: if you get a message saying free cinema tickets for “Melania” don’t open it. It’ll contain tickets for “Melania”.

Strictly and The Night Manager.

An absolute fucking disaster in the making.

Please pay attention to this very important information.

“Right, I’m off to the council meeting” “Have you remembered your pigeon head?” “Yes, I have remembered my pigeon head” www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/2580299...

Received an email telling me to look out for something dropping through the letterbox, which is good as normally I spend months stepping over post before noticing it on the doormat.

This government clearly don't really understand the complexity or the danger of the situation. They show no sign of beginning to understand, and every sign of asking the monorail salesman how public transport should work. It's going to be an uphill struggle, but don't leave this to politicians.

“That’s it Henry, I’m leaving. This film sucks.”

Tell me your pets name in a gif. It's one of them.

A1 junction closed. Google maps shoving All The Cars into farm tracks.

Digging up peat for garden compost harms bumblebees. It’s not good news for us either 🚨 It releases centuries of CO2 into the atmosphere and destroys irreplaceable habitats ⚠️ You can help. Urge the Government to end the sale of peat once and for all: https://ow.ly/8k5g50Y11Ub #EndPeatSales

Majority of CEOs report zero payoff from AI splurge www.theregister.com/2026/01/20/p... "PwC survey finds more than half of 4,500+ biz leaders see no revenue growth nor cost savings"

It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth the sixth, the seventh we’re in a lift

I hate that I have to ask this, but are there any (barf) positive uses of AI in libraries - from a customer services perspective?

Board of Peas

Amazingly, the PC Gamer headline is a proper reflection of what was said. What most annoys me is they believe they have a right to do a thing they acknowledge is damaging, which'll maybe be good eventually (which they acknowledge it isn't yet) and the only limit is "quick! before the bubble bursts!"

Types of coral plus a letter translated from Dutch that go before NFL teams that are anagrams of dusty bin.

subscriptions >>> shop.viz.co.uk/viz352bs

Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.

In the 2010s, the Icelandic tv station Channel 2 accidentally added subtitles from a gritty crime drama to an episode of Teletubbies. I have translated some of the highlights

lol no burn it all fucking down

Stressifily

Hellebores,Tavistock Square. A squirrel tried to photo bomb both photos but then ran out of shot of both.

Yay! These have been there for years, at least since 2020ish before we got the garden done and they took refuge in a pot for a bit. The rose bush is the only bit of original garden so at least 18yo.

I went with "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" and they came back with "Yippee ki-yay, mf." So fair enough.

But I don't want to change the world. I'm not looking for New England

Help! I can't stop thinking of someone taking a photo of the group rather than counting how many people want pizza.

What ruins Traitors for me is that they don't say banishèd.

"And we now have María on the line who would like to swap a Nobel Peace Prize for the presidency of Venezuela..."

You will not regret scrolling up for the rest of this thread about the sheer audacity of cats to walk into houses they don't live in and swan around like they own the place Honestly, excellent cat behaviour 💯

Me: Judge, 60% of my parking tickets are bogus! Judge: Repeat infractions? Me: Okay, 3/5 of my tickets are bogus!

Denmark's geopolitical superpower is how even the most powerful leaders turn into happy little kids when they get a cool Lego model