Couldn’t stop laughing at husband’s all-time Spotify top song (God Bless the USA, thanks to a kid practicing for a pre-k concert). Karma got me back—mine is “Rocking on Top of the World” from the Polar Express. Being a parent who cares too much about data is rough some times.

The irony of this article being accompanied by Elsevier's "reading assistant."

Technical infrastructure does not just persist. It needs maintenance and, crucially, people to perform that maintenance. Servers need to be updated, SSL certificates need to be renewed, domains need to be paid for.

This week I ordered the wrong rare book for a class, and loaded a reel of microfilm upside down and had to reroll the entire thing by hand (while helping a student). We weren't meant to try to go on living our lives with this much impending doom.

I've been working on reading/rereading Jane Austen's works this year, and how has no one ever mentioned to me how utterly hilarious Northanger Abbey is?

Apparently this is becoming a necessary weekly PSA. If you don’t want to read, write, and think, that’s fine. But then you have no business being a scholar. Especially if you’re TT/tenured, and especially in the humanities, if you can’t be bothered to do these things, you need to get out now.

A more interesting question to me: what is the weirdest field trip your school ever took you on? In middle school, we toured the recently decommissioned Connecticut Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Like walked through the whole structure maybe a year after they turned it off? Lots of Alex Mack jokes.

Eli Whitney Museum, Mark Twain House, and Nature's Classroom.

At this point, I'm fairly confident our photography prof continues to request Baltz's "San Quentin Point" portfolio for his classes because of how much I dislike it. It's photos of trash! www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks...

Sometimes I get ideas that make me wish I taught semester-long classes. Reskeeting for the morning crowd.

Next time somebody tries to get me to justify the existence of the humanities, I’ll just point out how for the past two Super Bowls we’ve all jumped online and engaged in collective semiotics and hermeneutics of the half-time show as text.

“Football Night in America: Social History via Halftime Shows” — a syllabus.

It is 34 degrees with a wintry mix today in Dilley.

The cognitive dissonance of constantly reading that I need to spend some time mastering generative AI while not knowing a single person in my industry who uses it to do good work 🤙

I loaned Joe Montana a screwdriver to assemble his daughter’s futon when moving her into her freshman dorm.

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR, or Marvel, Disney Animated or Pixar.

Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’

There is absolutely nothing "intern" about this job description. And yet, they will have no shortage of applicants.

My PCP’s AI scribe charted that I have lymphoma (I don’t). Getting it fixed was such a huge hassle that I have considered just changing physicians.

Having been forced to eat Texas bagels for almost ten years now, in no universe should they be considered a draw.

"I DON'T NEED YOU TO FUCKING REWRITE WHAT I'VE JUST WRITTEN!"

I'm curious if others who usually travel for Thanksgiving are second guessing doing so at this point.

i wish LSUfreak was around to make a brian kelly GIF

Whatever you were expecting, the reality of this timeline is 1000x worse.

It is okay—dare I say, even wonderful!—to write in your books and dog-ear pages. Your annotations add historical value by showing how someone responded to the book.

Over the years, locals have been subjected to glowing promises about plenty of other big projects that fell flat.

The cognitive dissonance of being a college football fan* and working in higher education led me to same feeling of grossness. (* now former)

“Can your football coach be so hot you overlook obvious problems with the actual team” finally we will learn the answer

To be clear, solving this mystery does not mean that I will get around to cataloging these books anytime soon.

Today I solved the provenance mystery surrounding a cart of medium-rare books (primarily Hugh Thomson/Macmillan novels) that has been in my office for 7+ years.

I'm processing the collection of a 1990s kids tv producer, and let me tell the fan mail sent to his show is WILD. Creepy adults, crazed pre-teens, the whole gamut.

Academic publishing is messed up in so many ways, not the least of which is that Fobazi wrote one of the most influential articles in our field with no financial benefit. Signal boosting for anyone else who has found her work as influential as I have.

They are all on Second Life.

Our district only busses if you live more than 2 miles away, meaning my middle schooler would be expected to walk 1.7 miles that is somehow uphill both ways in 100 degree Texas heat.

"We forget what we don’t want to remember. While I understand that impulse, there are dangers embedded in our forgetfulness. This is especially true for anyone living in Flash Flood Alley."

“What perfect albums came out when you were 16?” 2001:

Texas can't adequately warn people about deadly floods, but it can immediately let me know that a cop got hurt 250 miles away from me.

NARA posted a clarification this morning on X:

I heard from someone who works there that management needs better messaging skills - I mean, that: the research rooms are still open to researchers, no change in that policy buses and cars will no longer be able to drive up right to the building, that is the change in policy

"i asked grok" "i asked chagpt" yeah well I asked a rare books librarian and they found things I didn’t even know I was looking for, while answering questions about provenance

Spot the (broad-winged? not sure on the exact species) hawk hanging around campus.

I've seen folks talk about how "in four years" they'll be able to get back to their planned projects and I really don't think that's going to work out. People & projects losing funding now will not be able to hit pause and come back once funding is restored. Hard-won progress & capacity will be lost

In my dream last night, I was arguing with a CSC priest about which religious order each Muppet would join. I now bring the question to bsky.

In a video recorded early last week, 14th Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden honored the work performed by the Library's staff, the heart of the institution. As the caretakers of our nation’s collective history, the staff will continue to serve Congress, the American public & users across the world.

Some sad confirmation from @bcgl.bsky.social while I was at UW last week—the National Digital Newspaper Program—which builds Chronicling America—has been shut down Historical newspapers are probably the archival material most used by the general public—for genealogy, local history—it’s such a loss

Pope Leo XIV speaks out against AI: ‘A challenge of human dignity, justice and labour’

fun fact three fighter jets is roughly equivalent to the NEA’s 2024 budget

The plan is to break the parks, claim they must be privatized, take them from the American people and give them to their friends.

Apparently WorldCat is now requiring you to log in in order to see a full list of libraries with holdings of a title. Why? Just why???