Join us tomorrow at 2pm for Benton Institute’s webinar on Community Broadband Networks as Sites for Learning! Our Executive Director @alexwermercolan.bsky.social will share how PCW makes it possible for community members to contribute to their local digital infrastructure. tinyurl.com/m3bcmxnw

U Minnesota Press's Spring 26 catalog, listing our new Critical Infrastructure Studies & Digital Humanities (in Debates in DH series), eds. Alan Liu, Urszula Pawlicka-Deger, @jamessmithies.bsky.social): z.umn.edu/spring26. Table of contents: www.upress.umn.edu/978151791608... @uminnpress.bsky.social

As costs rise, free internet via Philly Community Wireless can save households $180-1,000/year. A $100 device brings PCW Wi‑Fi to hundreds as resident-hosted routers expand the network block by block! Every dollar funds equipment and staff involvement in our organization. Donate via our Linktree! 🎁🤝

We've opened our annual call for English lessons @proghist.bsky.social! Please consider submitting lessons on digital methods for research and teaching by February 15th. We're also looking for translators of our journal's Spanish, French, and Portuguese lessons to make them available in English

Our latest book - "Text and Data Mining Literacy for Librarians," edited by Whitney Kramer, Iliana Burgos, and Evan Muzzall - demonstrates how academic libraries are supporting TDM literacy through services, workflows, and professional development. https://bit.ly/428QlNC

LCDSS’s Alex Wermer-Colan and Texas A&M University’s Sarah Potvin’s "Legal and Ethical Considerations for Curating Copyrighted Literary Collections as Data" will appear in the IMLS’s forthcoming Text and Data Mining Literacy for Librarians! Learn more about their work at dataspeculations.org

We've opened our annual call for English lessons @proghist.bsky.social! Please consider submitting lessons on digital methods for research and teaching by February 15th. We're also looking for translators of our journal's Spanish, French, and Portuguese lessons to make them available in English

ICYMI for Banned Books week SaraGrace Stefan and I shared @us.theconversation.com our analysis of cover images for every book banned in public schools and libraries in the 2021-2022 school year. Thanks to @mellon.org for their support, and to co-PI @lbmcgrath.bsky.social, and all our student workers

CORRECTION: the proper link here is theconversation.com/many-book-ba...

ICYMI for Banned Books week SaraGrace Stefan and I shared @us.theconversation.com our analysis of cover images for every book banned in public schools and libraries in the 2021-2022 school year. Thanks to @mellon.org for their support, and to co-PI @lbmcgrath.bsky.social, and all our student workers

Book banners really are judging books by their covers 📚 More than 80% of banned titles show people on the cover — and most of those feature women or people of color. Research by @alexwermercolan.bsky.social: buff.ly/rHm0sFG... #bannedbooks #polisky #books

Book banners really are judging books by their covers 📚 More than 80% of banned titles show people on the cover — and most of those feature women or people of color. Research by @alexwermercolan.bsky.social: theconversation.com/many-book-ba... #bannedbooks #polisky #books

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/... Library director fired over LGBTQ+ books gets $700,000 from county

i am feeling, i am seeing, i am hearing, i am getting the vibes, that students this sem are better than they've been in years because learning offers a rare haven from authoritarianism, a place to convene, commune, think together, refuel for the fight

I’d like to amplify others’ pleas to *please* acknowledge and build upon the work of librarians and other organizers — @heykellyjensen.bsky.social, @tasslyn.bsky.social, @everylibrary.bsky.social, et al — who’ve been tracking *all of this* and developing expertise for YEARS.

Many book bans could be judging titles mainly by their covers @us.theconversation.com @alexwermercolan.bsky.social SaraGrace Stefan theconversation.com/many-book-ba...

LINK ROT: 38% webpages that existed in 2013 were no longer available 10 years later. Even among pages that existed in 2021, 22% no longer accessible just two years later. This is often because individual page was deleted or removed on otherwise functional website. Many implications for knowledge 🧪

It is really demoralizing to try to operate normally in higher ed right now - even without the national context, the local context of do more with less is exhausting and upsetting.

Recent install in Kensington with volunteers and staff, expanding PCW’s network on the east side of Kensington Ave! Check out our live map at map.phillycommunitywireless.org to see where we’re currently located.

NEW YORK (AP) — Anthropic agrees to pay authors $3,000 per book in landmark settlement over pirated chatbot training material.

I’m so glad to see this Edward Yang series at Film at Lincoln Center. I’ve never regarded myself as a cinephile, but I somehow happened upon a bunch of Yang screenings while I was in grad school. Yi Yi, especially — which I think I saw at Quad, alone — shaped my interest in urban studies.

It's the half anniversary of the publication of Binding Media and it is still half off (only $37.50!!) until Sept 8 during the end-of-summer sale at @stanfordpress.bsky.social

"Because [High Plains Public Radio] covers such a wide area, its engineering costs are high: excluding labor, engineering = ~46% of the budget, inldg 🔌 the nwtrk of 18 transmitters, insurance, + maintenance... The contributors ntwrk... will consist of a mix of part-time + volunteer positions"

Help us expand internet access in Norris Square, Fairhill, and Kensington 💜🛜 No experience needed! Come join our team of everyday folks building community internet. Sign-up to volunteer with PCW through our “Volunteer Sign-up Form” in our linktree, and invite a friend!

What a cursed sentence (gift link) “The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.”

oh shit, a state prosecutor may actually do the thing

This is why public transit across Pennsylvania will start collapsing tomorrow. Unclear what can be done—Dems already passed bills with all of GOP's demands—other than for Dems to retaliate against rural funding and services until the GOP stops attacking urban areas. humantransit.org/2025/08/the-...

The University of Michigan is now claiming that students have an ‘ethical responsibility’ to use AI.

It's so good to see this year's cohort of CUNY Lost & Found Archival Research Fellows--always an inspiring program--with these luminous & necessary projects, including on Sam Delany's correspondence with Kevin Killian, Black Arts liner notes, & much more. centerforthehumanities.org/2025-lost-fo...

“One reason that small-town library rsrch works so well is bc of its natural parameters. Rather than an ocean of information to click through, you get a small stack of 📚. A small stack of 📚 is manageable. It’s focusing. In our era of seemingly limitless data, I for one thrive on these boundaries.”

The Carpentries (@carpentries.carpentries.org‬), a nonprofit that has trained over 100,000 researchers in coding and data skills, turned down a $1.5 million NSF grant after being asked to strip diversity-related content from its programming. www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Wanna see a crazy chart? Of course you do. Spending on constructing datacenters and manufacturing facilities for computers & electronic products in the US now exceeds the entire retail and wholesale industry and almost as much as the rest of the office and manufacturing sectors combined.

Increasingly understanding "energy dominance" to mean energy authoritarianism. Rooftop and community solar helps democratize energy production, putting money in consumer pockets instead of centralized utilities. Illegally cutting these grants disempowers lower-income communities, in every sense.

This @today.yougov.com poll is why I'm going to become the Joker. The US murder rate in 2024 was likely down nearly 30 percent relative to 2020 and down nearly 50 percent relative to 1990.

Hoo boy! I can’t believe it’s happening. We’ve been working on this for years. Thanks to @post45data.bsky.social you can now search our IB database, with a very cool interface! Please share with anyone who might be interested Special thanks to @ninasabak.bsky.social for aiding with the data source

🎉Hello, DH community! The official DH2026 account is now live! 🇰🇷 Daejeon, South Korea | July 27-31, 2026 🎯Theme: Engagement | Hosted by @kadhsocial.bsky.social Can't wait to see you after @dh2025lisbon.bsky.social Following @dh2024.bsky.social let's build our community! #DH2026 @adho-org.bsky.social

I decided to make a long blog post combining general sociological things I am aware of with personal observations of cultural and lifestyle differences between the UK and USA. sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/07/comp...

Here's a write-up of my keynote from #DH2025, since academic publishing is slow and this was written for right now. roopikarisam.com/talks-cat/dh...

Thanks to @billy-penn.bsky.social for writing a feature story on our work here at PCW! We appreciate the opportunity to discuss the importance of having internet connectivity available for all in local parks, community centers, gardens, and public spaces. Read more here: tinyurl.com/Billy-Penn-A...

Since May: Federal district courts have ruled against Trump admin 94% of the time. Supreme Court has sided with the Trump admin 94% of the time. A judiciary at war with itself.

Another way that Zohran shows the way forward is he has spent zero time lingering on smears. Part of what killed Corbyn, for example, is that he has to publicly address every fake scandal and it drove long media cycles. The left needs to move past apologizing and constantly justifying itself.

Stopped by the (closed) Free Library on the Parkway to check in on the striking library workers there. They’re mad! “The mayor gave herself a 9% raise! Why don’t we deserve the same?”

The largest workers union in Philadelphia is on strike for the first time since 1986! 🔥 Why? WATCH:

We met up with ITDRC to learn more about their mission, how ITDRC builds their networks, and see their cellular & satellite tech. ITDRC is a volunteer-driven org that responds to areas impacted by disasters, building emergency comms networks to facilitate rescue & relief. Thanks to all who came out!

"In the 2024-25 school year, the district has just three full-time certified school librarians, perhaps the worst ratio in the nation. It used to have a certified librarian in each of its 200-plus schools."

No one is “replacing” teachers with AI. People are redistributing money to tech companies for AI and replacing permanent salaried workers with contingent, poorly paid ones whose labor is to patch together the system that is being broken by AI.

This is an incredible dataset, and it's a lot of fun to play around with it on the Post45 site!

BREAKING: The US Supreme Court lifts limits on deporting migrants to countries not their own