Aaron Boehmer on finding books and more in community libraries in times like these: "These local libraries gesture toward a different kind of recordkeeping that is grounded in community stewardship rather than state authority." Read more: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/freeing-the-library/

“When participants used ChatGPT to draft essays, brain scans revealed a 47% drop in neural connectivity across regions associated with memory, language, & critical reasoning. Their brains worked less, but they felt just as engaged—a kind of metacognitive mirage.”🧪

The Sick Times is out here doing top grade research and reporting on topics other publications won’t touch. As someone with long COVID, their work is INCREDIBLY important to me. Please boost or donate, if you can.

Due to outdated privacy laws, the Trump administration can easily turn powerful surveillance tools against anyone and everyone, with scant safeguards. Now, ICE says that it plans to make this risk a reality for the swath of Americans who oppose the president’s agenda. bit.ly/3Kq348R

Surprised by the amount of GenAI citation slop I see in the published scholarship of librarians and LIS researchers, I thought surely our field would be adamant about good citation practices

TPUSA brands itself as “guiding citizens through development of knowledge, skills, values, and motivation so they can meaningfully engage in their communities to restore traditional American values like patriotism” but what it really does is it finds the biggest crybabies and snitches in your area

Unfortunately, in US journalism it is considered neutral to spread a lie, but it is considered "biased" to call out a lie. So, there is a structural asymmetry that rewards colorful lies with virality.

one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.

"...we’re living through online the equivalent of the revelations about environmental poisoning that grew out of Rachel Carson and SILENT SPRING" which led to the EPA, but today "government and the social media platforms are actually unwinding the very few safeguards they’ve ever put into place."

Premium: This is The Hater's Guide To NVIDIA: A 14k word guide to how NVIDIA makes its money, how millions of Blackwell GPUs have been sold with nowhere for them to be installed, and how NVIDIA's future relies on companies raising hundreds of billions in debt. www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-g...

Officials at the University of Houston used Dataminr to surveil students, while University of Connecticut administrators voiced concerns over protests against a military contractor and major donor.

Tl;dr Republicans want to cut the list of "professional degrees" so that many fewer are eligible for the highest level of student loans. Fields cut include nursing, PT, public health. They forced this through a committee but it will have to go through regulatory process. Fight is just beginning.

optimization and personalization zealotry is, imo, the most consequential and dangerous ideology of the 21st century. more than the so-called post-liberals.

New meme format just dropped:

a very good and important response from @slotkin.senate.gov and company in response to Trump's threats. You absolutely cannot allow a would-be authoritarian to know that the surest way to make his opponents back down is to threaten them with violence. www.slotkin.senate.gov/2025/11/20/j...

My Bloody Valentine played a surprise first show in seven years tonight

do you resent playing AI detective online??? does it make you so, so annoyed to spend time looking for generative AI red flags? me too!!! my latest piece for the guardian is for those of us who are fed! up!

I once listed on my annual activities report the time I spent on things like strategizing with a fellow junior prof about how to avoid her harasser at a conference while still getting to network, etc just to make a point

WE WON. I am *begging* you to take note of who did this. *Not* UCLA admin—they’re still scuttling around behind closed doors, attempting to appease—but FACULTY AND STAFF, led by AAUP.

WE WON!!! The US District Court for the Northern District of California has issued a preliminary injunction in AAUP et al v. Trump et al (the wall to wall union lawsuit challenging the administration’s unlawful use of Title VI to reshape the University of California system. Read the order here:

"If anything, the response by university leaders may have brought to the fore what some of us suspected all along: Academic freedom is being eroded internally by university administrators & externally by politicians." — Laura Isabel Serna, President of University of Southern California AAUP

MAGA’s ongoing war on academic freedom, reflected in headlines from the last 24 hours.

COVID spreads fast in shared indoor air — any season, any time. Let’s build healthy habits that protect us year-round: masks, ventilation, and testing when sick. #PublicHealth #CleanAir #COVID #COVID19 #InfectionPrevention

It's not amnesia. It's reality avoidance and, in many cases, willful ignorance

SCHUMER: Look… I know everyone’s worried about this statue facing our gates. But I see this as a chess match between us and the Greeks—and I know chess. Our best play is to move the horse straight forward.

NEW: Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, and tell local cops whether to contact ICE about the person, while also removing apps designed to warn communities about ICE officials. “Google wanted to ‘not be evil’ back in the day. Well, they're evil now."

They’ve laid off so many people that the government is now getting its economic data from DoorDash.

Joyce Carol Oates is an American hero

Found the tweet that Joyce Carol Oates bodied Elon Musk with and it's so beautiful in its eloquent, simple take down. So much so he's crashing out trying to prove he reads books now. Put this in the Louvre.

Read and also see added comment, “one of the horrifying things I discovered while writing this piece was this site called factually.co, which ranks high in search engines and uses Large Language Models to create fake “fact checking” articles.”

Higher Eduation Labor United is holding a training tonight (11/5) for library workers! higheredlaborunited.org/2025/09/17/n...

"'They’re spending more money than I would even tax them,' [Mamdani] said in an interview with MSNBC last week." This is the message. Make it clear that these billionaires aren't just worried about losing money. They're worried about losing the ability to exchange their money for power.

💯💯💯

New Jersey, it is the honor of my life to earn your trust to become this great state’s 57th Governor. I promise to listen, lead with courage, and never forget who I serve.

I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win

i can’t believe a good thing happened we should do this more often

Zohran was polling at six percent in January. Nothing is impossible

To prep for the higher ed policy class on censorship next week, I'm rereading Schrecker's No Ivory Tower. Buddy this intro has it all! SCOTUS jumping on the bandwagon, disregard of first amendment rights, why congressional hearings played such a key role, how private companies aided the government.

The thing about Johnson not swearing in Grijalva is that’s it a test for 2026. If you think they will accept an outcome they don’t like, they will just Grijalva it. So what’s the plan when the GOP says “we ain’t leaving, fuck you, make us.” Because that IS what they are going to say.

By a 51–42 vote, the Va. House passes a proposed constitutional amendment letting lawmakers redraw congressional maps mid-decade if another state changes its own. Democrats say it protects Virginia voters; Republicans call it a partisan power grab. #VALeg virginiamercury.com/2025/10/29/v...

Mamdani referred to a friend as 'bro' but a Free Press investigation has determined that this man is not his sibling.

Of course this is the direction it’s going. Explain again how GenAI is useful and benefits society?

A core feature of our unprecedented Article I constitutional crisis is that the Speaker of the House is permitted to performatively lie in public with impunity from the podium every day & the assembled media in front of him offer approximately no pushback at all on the lies.

This is consistent with contemporary actions as long as you remember these claims are at best delusional. It *makes sense* to end actual cancer research projects if you think, or want people to think, that a magical being is going to just solve it instead.

This year, 16 states enacted 29 restrictive voting laws — a rise that coincides with unprecedented efforts by the federal government to undermine our elections. Check out the latest State Voting Laws Roundup to learn more: bit.ly/475imbF

"the university plans to teach students to critically evaluate A.I. and had hired an outside firm to assess the A.I. initiative." I believe this is what the defense industry calls a self-licking ice cream cone.

Private tech companies feeding at the trough of taxpayer-supported public institutions www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/t...

you think it's "gay" to be associated with anything left of center ... *opens manilla envelope* ... and yet, on jan 21, 2025 ... *slides 8x10 photo across table* ... you wore the tutti frutti

Tonight, in the final debate of his decades in power or desperately pursuing it, you will hear from Andrew Cuomo the same arrogance, the same entitlement, the same excuses for a broken status quo he's long maintained. New Yorkers are ready for change.

Health plan enrollment period is set to be horrifying for everyone this year arstechnica.com/health/2025/...