Frame: this public service costs too much, it isn't making money Negation: it's actually very efficient and it could make more money Kirby: they are attacking the very idea of public services

i made a helpful reference

the post office is a public service. it doesn’t need to make money. public transit doesn’t need to make money. the library doesn’t need to make money. some things exist for the public good and we desperately need lawmakers to stop thinking about them in terms of capitalism. these are not businesses.

This has to be a hard absolutely the fuck not line in the sand A vote for any budget including this provision is a vote that'll ensure that Dems lose next year in the midterms You aren't going to beat this administration back by sacrificing trans people

I'm gonna shill my sister's book again. You should read it. It's set in faerie-occupied Canada. It's good. a.co/d/h85kctL

I really hate hostile architecture, you know that? It's like "let's give unfriendliness a physical form."

I like this framing. I think we could talk about evolving mail delivery and investing in package service and not be talking about "losing money". We don't say the healthcare system lost money, or the police lost money, or the water treatment plant lost money. They are services.

I know I complain about the city transit all the time, but I'm actually much angrier about how impossible it is to get around the province without a car since Greyhound left, and how it seems to be on exactly NO ONE'S radar that this is a problem.

The most uncivil thing in the world is to tell the emperor he has no clothes. If you’ve ever been in this position you know first-hand how angry this makes people. The fault is not in having told the truth, which everybody already knows, it is in having chosen to break the compact of pretending

For example, that our transit master plan is set to roll out over 25 years rather than 5, 8, or 10 years is a choice. It's a good plan, but Winnipeg is already decades behind in building the transit system a city our size needs, and taking 25 years to catch up to *what we need now* is a problem.

#Winnipeg city council needs to stop treating transit as if it is charity. Transit is one of the major responsibilities of any city.

9. If these anti-LGBTQ+ provisions make it through, they would lock some of the harshest restrictions on trans people into federal law and hand Trump a stronger platform to target trans rights nationwide. Only if Dems stand firm for their trans and queer constituents will this outcome be stopped.

Health Canada put out a safety alert about acetaminophen. recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-rec... #Canada #health

I want library leaders who can conceive of resistance, who can imagine different futures, not who say "welp, this is the world, guess we have no choice" at every single turn of politics or technology.

Spectacular octopus from the floor of the women’s changing room at the Central Baths in ancient Herculaneum. This magnificent #Roman monochrome mosaic makes quite an impact! 📷 by me #MosaicMonday #Archaeology

Being more chill about typos in my emails because now at least the reader will know I'm not using AI to respond to them

I feel like part of the problem is that in the modern era, especially in the United States, people think that in order to count, they have to post about their activism or what they're doing. But here's the thing: you don't. 99% of what I do is stuff I never mention on social media.

Public comms on vaccine availability in #Manitoba is definitely lacking this year, but appointments in various pharmacy online platforms are starting to pop up. Some out there for shoppers, too.

This is what I mean when I say they can't fix it. it's not broken, it's structurally indifferent to truth It's built on "likely" Sometimes likely = true Often it isn't

What’s a pirate’s favorite computer programming language? You’d think it’s R, but no, their first love will always be the C. Happy talk like a pirate day!

I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.

here's an important thing about deterministic tools: when they fail, they fail predictably you can learn how to use them *for your own purposes* because they behave in consistent ways even if they aren't 100% optimal AI tools add a layer of ambiguity so you're 100% never sure what the output means

It’s going to break your heart how many people you know, love, and respect will turn out to be cowards. Prepare yourself as best you can. You are not alone, but you are your own center. Be a strong center.

Same with commercial proprietary software when we could have been investing in people and building our own infrastructures.

It bugs me how many library journals don't have infrastructure for exporting citations set up, actually. ...Like. You'd think they would, right?

“These companies all advertise these tools as knowing your intent,” Taylor told 404 Media. “Understanding what you meant when you put those terms in. They don’t know. They don’t understand. None of those things are true. There is no technical way these tools can do that.”

Man I dunno if genAI is gonnacontinue to be sycophantic, could we at least put them into like some kind evil vizier mode? "Yes sire, that's brilliant. Only a cunning mind such as yours could have come up with something so very clever. Soon you'll show them all."

SPILL TEA, O MUSE, 'BOUT ACHILLES FLIPPING HIS SHIT

Working on a modern translation of The Iliad. What do you guys think of “And yeah. Achilles went fuckin ripshit. Just fuckin…balls out horny for doing that gremlin shit, you know?”

kinda wanna put this ~1925 ALA poster on the inside of my library science zine

In 2022 Texas A&M reorganized their libraries (over faculty protests) and pulled all librarians out of faculty status.

“Anti-trans harassment and violence is all the rage. Trans people are afraid to leave the country, let alone leave their houses. The right-wing ecosystem has gladly spent years creating these conditions, while Democrats have by turns avoided saying anything about them at all” 😞 👉🏻 archive.ph/ewBhT

The case for letting people set their accounts to private on bsky has always been a big one, but especially lately with the witchhunts going on. We need to be able to lock down and moderate who is following us. We need to be able to stop people from following us and soft block or remove followers.

The biggest issue with writing academic articles for me is that I always want to include an angry little drawing of myself explaining the point of the paper in one sentence. This is not the style though.

Two adorable Egyptian figurines: a roaring hippo and a baby hippo, dating ca 1,800 BC. Hippos were associated with life and rebirth. On display at Neues Museum Berlin. 📷 me 🏺 AncientEgyptBluesky

14 September 1825: geologist Roderick Murchison visits Lyme Regis in search of Mary Anning, calling first at the fossil shop where her mother directs him to the beach. He finds Mary there, hunting for fossils in the rain with her dog, hammer and basket, 'a fine intelligent young woman', he notes.

“Steinbach Pride's board received tips through "word of mouth" that individuals had made verbal threats against the Pride event in "retaliation" for the shooting death of Charlie Kirk…according to board president Chris Plett.”

"But sure enough, in the halls of power, on the platforms of influence, naming hate is considered dangerous uncivil and hateful and out-of-bounds, but actual hateful incitement is not."

They've been predicting the death of the library for a while, huh?

I want you all to just watch how quickly mainstream media moves on from this story now.

internet culture desks aren't just for cute meme trend stories. ever since gamergate, understanding how and why info moves online is critical to seeing how we got *here*

"The internet is forever," say people not involved in digital preservation or really any online access work. Brought to you by me having to clean up a number of journal links due to a platform being retired and it turns out a bunch of the things hosted there are just gone!!!

Want to take a quack at #DataRescue? Check out our website or join our bi-weekly office hours to learn more about getting involved. Next office hours are on September 17. Grab your favorite beverage of choice (maybe an eggspresso or something from Starducks?) and hope to see you there!

1. You may have heard of book bans before, but the new one in Alabama takes the cake. The Alabama Public Library Service has a new proposal that would ban—get this—only "positive depictions" of trans people. The hearing is next month. Public comment is open. Subscribe to support our journalism.

I'm sad to learn of the passing of Mark Norell. I never met him, but many of his books have homes on my shelves. In particular, as a child I remember absolutely poring over "Discovering Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History."

A student told her professor “President Trump’s laws state that there are two genders,” and that the lesson was “illegal” for contradicting that. It’s not. Executive orders are not laws. Compliance with authoritarianism will not protect universities. Either we stand up for our missions or we fall.