From the Washington Post: All library grants reinstated at Institute of Museum and Library Services. Read more about the great news: www.washingtonpost.com/style/2025/1... But the fight isn't over. We need to tell Congress to #FundLibraries: app.oneclickpolitics.com/campaign-pag... #ForOurLibraries

NEWS: The Institute of Museum & Library Services has restored ALL previously canceled federal grants to libraries, following a ruling by a federal judge in Rhode Island last month. This is a massive win for libraries & communities in every state & territory! Learn more: www.ala.org/news/2025/12...

Really interesting take on what the AI overlords might actually be after, if they don't genuinely believe their techno-feudalist Dune Terminator fever dreams www.chrbutler.com/what-ai-is-r...

Went down a rabbit trail yesterday wondering why a mashup of Silver Springs and Piano Man was all over social media and discovered fun facts like Stevie Nicks' having given her mother rights to the song to provide her income parade.com/news/lindsey...

Solange Knowles’ Saint Heron has launched a free digital archival library of literature by Black and brown authors, poets, and artists. Readers can borrow rare and out-of-print books for up to 45 days

"It doesn't work but buy it anyway or we'll tank the global economy" is at least honest, I guess www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

This had increasingly been my experience: students not knowing how to establish a thesis, locate and analyze relevant sources, and support that thesis through those sources. There's only so much librarians can remediate without a basic foundation ripslawlibrarian.wordpress.com/2025/10/23/g...

Is it just me or are there Winchester Mystery House vibes around certain public works projects?

LLMs are not search engines. LLMs are not search engines. Rinse, repeat.

I'm glad my alma mater finally found its spine

Peak millennial culture is putting the good china you inherited in the basement because you need room in the hutch you inherited for the good LEGO sets

Read this thread for a frankly breathtaking example of the utter garbage you get when Techbrahs try their hand at law. Although if you say "I have an issue that's important to me, huh, I guess I will try Vibe Lawyering," I am basically ok with whatever happens to you.

In my ongoing efforts to detoxify my commute listening, this morning's episode of #pchh was both a fun listen and question. My nominees: Iggy Pop's Lust for Life, The Who's Baba O'Riley, and There She Goes (both The La's original and the Sixpence None the Richer cover). www.npr.org/2025/10/09/n...

🫡

Some brief thoughts on the Anthropic settlement, and why I think most authors should claim their share of the settlement if they can, inadequate though I think it is: whatever.scalzi.com/2025/10/02/a...

This is the advice I consistently give people about trying AI: use something you know very well already, so you can actually determine the quality of the output for yourself, and get some idea of how the sausage is being made

Shame clearly isn't enough; there should be more sanctions

Stanford researchers found that AI-generated "workslop" is actually making people less productive, in part because workers have to correct errors or decode the useful information/intent buried in a flood of auto-generated garbage:

Yesterday I had the singularly GenX satisfaction of playing one 80s song on Apple Music, and then correctly guessing what else the algorithm would supply based on shared characteristics. I may have to make a mix tape for old times' sake next.

Shocked, I tell you.

article from today's daily journal

You know what else is being affected by the tariffs on parcels worth less than $800? International interlibrary loan. I'm hearing reports of libraries overseas that won't lend to the US anymore. (That's in addition to the libraries here that have shut down their ILL b/c of lost IMLS funding.)

The whole thread, and the cited Guardian article, is a must-read but this is the heart of everything.

Forty-five local preservation and historical organizations have convened to send a message to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum: Removing or editing Philly slavery exhibits is “ahistorical and un-American.” (1/3)

It is one of the tragedies of my academic life that social media was not around when I was a medievalist grad student so I could be the one to go viral with the manuscript memes

Here’s my write up on the most racist decision to come out of the Supreme Court in a while. The court approved of Trump’s racial profiling of Latinos with Brett Kavanaugh saying being harassed based on the color of your skin is “common sense.” My latest in @thenation

How many times, in how many contexts, from how many internal and external researchers, or from how many CEO's are people going to have to receive this message before they believe it: "Hallucinations" are an inherent part of the large language model architecture. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Do not use a spicy autocomplete tool to do a librarian's job.

Adam Raine, 16, died from suicide in April after months on ChatGPT discussing plans to end his life. His parents have filed the first known case against OpenAI for wrongful death. Overwhelming at times to work on this story, but here it is. My latest on AI chatbots: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/t...

Turn Off Google AI Overview Set "Web" as Default 👉🏼🔗: tenbluelinks.org

There is not yet wide evidence that "gen AI" actually enhances researchers' and developers' results. Some of the most headline-grabbing work that claimed it does is now actively disavowed by the institution under which auspices it was done. That is a MASSIVE ding on the reliability of that research.

Leges sine moribus vanae share.inquirer.com/KRn8IY

It is one of my GenXiest qualities to be suspicious of that tone and to immediately assume insincerity and ulterior motive.

Spare a thought for whoever at LC suddenly became the Internet Person of the Day.

Bring back the President's Physical Fitness Test?!? Clearly no one in the Trump Administration has listened to @michaelhobbes.bsky.social and @yrfatfriend.bsky.social absolutely DEMOLISH it in one of the first Maintenance Phase episodes.

Zuckerberg farted out some nonsense today, and since most media outlets refuse to report critically any time a tech CEO offers them some a pseudoserious press release, I've decided to do it for them. sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/7/30/how-to-read-an-ai-press-release

New on ACRLog... “We Couldn’t Generate an Answer for your Question” "Uncritically adopting AI tools in discovery systems will perpetuate, if not exacerbate, existing biases and suppression of minoritized people." bit.ly/4f18iCY

This certainly lines up with my experience in libraries and the push for AI in our space... 📚

"Spicy autocomplete" is my new favorite

"So many intelligent people don’t seem to remember how much text LLMs have absorbed, including thousands of sci-fi stories about conscious robots and such things." substack.com/home/post/p-...

a) No b) If people are trying to use it that way, it's because Google search has been, as Cory Doctorow described, "enshittified" to the point of creating desperation for something that does what Google used to www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

I used to be proud of my Penn Law degree. 🫠

Guess I’ll just be reposting this every term for the rest of my life

Glad to talk with Linda Kinstler for this @theguardian.com long read. The situation may not be quite as dire as the title suggests, but the challenges are very very real. It's time for creative thinking about what comes next. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/jun...

Call me crazy, but someone who has active contempt for the judiciary should probably not be elevated to it.

Tech companies only have five ideas: robot slave (actually just human slaves), hallucinatory counter-reality, untaxable money, The Everything App, and Clippy

There were always signs I would be happier as a librarian than an academic historian, but the real nail in the coffin was how much more frustrated I am by not knowing everything about everything than I am about not knowing everything about a specific thing.

An excellent defense of both historians and archivists in the age of LLM hype

"Cognitive debt" is a useful concept arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872