My neighbor started flying an upside down German flag. I’m having a hard time figuring out what the hell is going on in this town.

For my train weirdos and my food weirdos, here’s the corporate recipe book and serving standards of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford railroad . Please enjoy these elegantly-served aspics. hdl.handle.net/11134/3992510

I live in a very small, kinda crappy, rural town that is cost burdened by housing. Our town has a GREAT website about housing affordability and an awesome diagnosis of the problem. Their "affordable housing plan 2022-2027" does very little to meet the moment www.brooklynct.org/planning-zon...

no way dude. cmon. that cant be it

It is very sad to me how many Americans have untreated anxiety disorders. I do not need to do a 20 minute security sweep of my hotel room. I do not need to put AirTags in my kid’s shoes. No one is trying to traffic anyone at the grocery store.

My fun weekends used to end with bottle caps in my jacket pockets. Now it’s these.

“awful people don’t deserve to be killed, but they don’t deserve to be praised, either” is apparently a thought too complex for the pundit mind

At one point Vance is torn between caring for a family member and getting to a Big Law interview. He drives all night at 100 mph and then when he's pulled over he explains to the cop that he's a veteran. Far from the MOST objectionable passage, but the reckless, macho entitlement was always there

“We’ve lost our way. We’re fearful about championing the issues and the causes that really matter, the day-to-day expenses of living in [Connecticut].” - State Rep. Josh Elliott, who is challenging Gov. Lamont from the left. #nutmegsky

We know that we live in the age of bullshit and misinformation when even the covid-cautious scolds are vaccine deniers. It is not the case that breakthrough infection is inevitable. The covid vaccine DOES prevent catching and spreading covid. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

How am I expected to fall asleep?!?!?

The cause of poverty is not having enough money. There are, indeed, distorting effects when we don't address the root causes of shortages. But in the meantime, we can and should alleviate suffering!

At my archives, I have a reading group where we read articles and chapters from scholars who have used our holdings. I’m starting to think that none of you want your evidence to be reproducible.

Next, Higgs Kopin E ( @ehkopin.bsky.social ), Hutchison J, Truitt J. ( @linguistory.bsky.social ) Building Capacity for Born-Digital Archives Through Accessioning Workflows at the Friends Historical Library. The American Archivist. 2025;88(1):40–56 american-archivist.kglmeridian.com/view/journal...

I'll start with the note from the editors -- Davis RKJ, Eagle Yun A, Searcy R. Accessioning: The Always-Already Function of Archival Practice. The American Archivist. 2025;88(1):10–16. doi: 10.17723/2327-9702-88.1.10 american-archivist.kglmeridian.com/view/journal...

My reports are in, my reviews are done, and I've fiddled enough with Excel today. I'm going to spend the rest of my afternoon live-reviewing the new special issue of @saa-official.bsky.social 's American Archivist on accessioning, edited by @widelight.bsky.social , Audra Eagle Yun and Rachel Searcy

"Strategic Adjustments to Custodial Services" email this morning. I bet we can all guess what the strategy and what the adjustments are.

Announcement this morning that our library's "iDesk" is now "Library Services."

Huh. The majority of microplastics are from tires, clothing (polyester), and paint. It’s not coming from large, durable plastics. So… paper labels, lighter vehicles + transit, and eliminating polyester as much as possible would do most of the heavy land-based lifting (and jute fishing nets).

Historian of abolition here in 1854 William Lloyd Garrison burned a copy of the federal Fugitive Slave law and the fugitive slave clause of the U.S. Constitution to protest fugitive slave rendition in Framingham, Massachusetts. Boston was you may call it today a sanctuary city.

I think that if archivists followed the advice that we give in this chapter, the collecting landscape and institutional cultures of archives would be very different. Read it and tell us what you think!

Archival appraisal is a craft and it can be taught. My and @boxreceiver.bsky.social 's chapter on archival appraisal is available as a pre-print here: digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/libr_pubs/77/. It's very, very practical and it centers our values. We would love your feedback!

It's my pleasure to announce that the sixth title in SAA's Archival Fundamentals series, Selecting & Appraising Archives and Manuscripts, is on the way to production. The chapters on acquisitions & appraisal by @meau.bsky.social and me are now online: digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/libr_pubs/78/

My best car advice -- if you need something expensive done, find a mechanic in a working class town. They're price sensitive and they have a lot more experience with big repairs on harder-driven cars. Also, this guy's name is Butch.

Some of you are dangerously close to making me tap the sign.

A fun reminder that a loss of 60,000 jobs in and around academia is ~50% more than all coal mining jobs in the entire country.

Microplastics are here to stay; that's why we need to eat them responsibly in the classroom

Book is finally out in the world! Buy a copy for your comrades? And your haters? alastore.ala.org/oryrlib

"We have to sign on to this technology or else we'll be left behind" is something I keep hearing, but where are we being left??? Where is everyone else going?? Is it the place where all the 3D TVs and wifi-enabled toasters went? Is it literal dystopia? This argument is meaningless

@hungryghoast.bsky.social I had a dream that we were both migrant workers in Dubai and you were showing me the ropes. Huge relief to have you there in such a grim situation.

our common life depends upon each other's toil

It is a truly wonderful program! But I don’t think people realize that while the nonprofit pays for distribution and overhead and helps create efficiencies, communities and states pay for the actual books. There is simply no getting around the need for public funding.

To pick one application of the tech in particular.... Undergraduates have been turning in papers that they didn't write for as long as there have been undergraduates... Software that does their homework for them, badly, shouldn't change the face of education

"i asked grok" "i asked chatgpt" yeah well i asked carl sagan and he said the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge 🧪

Sometimes I think about Wikipedia, and what they're trying to do, and what they could be, and compare their budget with the funding for LLM slop machines, and it drives me a little insane. We tried to build a library of Alexandria that would not burn, then tried a library of babel for profit.

College profs are living in the wake of 20+ years of ineffective and, for some learners, outright harmful reading instruction. Ever heard a student read a word that doesn’t sound like the one on the page, but looks similar? Read up on 2000s-era reading wars www.apmreports.org/episode/2019...

Midafternoon Lectio brevis Proverbs 22:22-23 Injure not the poor because they are poor, nor crush the needy at the gate; For the Lord will defend their cause, and will plunder the lives of those who plunder them.

One advantage of being an Old Parent is that I have enough discernment to know when I need to and don't need to intervene with my toddler's behavior in public. I think parents do a lot of narrating / scolding / talking (and don't always take action) because they feel worried about what others think.

I have started, with a pretty good success rate, my one-woman campaign to get these child safety seats installed anywhere that will listen. It makes it possible for my toddler to hang out while I use the restroom without having to worry about him touching everything or unlocking the door.

So, to sum up: 1) be discerning in your scope 2) actively do the work to make collections diverse, instead of stealing valor and apple-polishing

Everybody likes "harmful language" warnings because they don't cost anything! No travel, no shipping and handling, no imaging costs, no collection costs. No failure! You can work with a person or group forever and get nothing to show for it. But text on a website is free

“There is no more crucial time than now to speak up on behalf of libraries + the IMLS than now. There are 17 members on the Labor, Health + Human Services, Education, + Related Agencies Subcommittee... Each and every one of them should be contacted over the next couple of weeks”

The Medicaid work requirement “will saddle taxpayers with billions of dollars of new costs and low-income Americans with hundreds of millions of hours of busywork,” @annielowrey.bsky.social argues. An estimated 50,000 people will die each year—many thanks to red tape:

How’s your vacation in Florida? Well, the women are mostly dressed like babydolls. Oh, and the beaches are all private and have security guards and one of the guards had an iron cross tattoo. Loser shit abounds.

"This corresponds to a male being 28.6%–185.5% more likely to be director." (Depending on the type of library). 📚 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I have a colleague who is twisting themselves in knots to accommodate university IT's desire for everything to be locked down to campus users only. But we're a public institution and open to the public and hold materials in the public trust. So stop accommodating! We need a different approach!

LLM’s are bullshit generators. They are popular because there are a lot of people who think that the purpose of writing is to generate bullshit.

Great breakdown of the decision by someone deep into copyright and fair use. We need better AI legislation but trying to make copyright do that work comes with lots of awful side effects. Glad to see this ruling isn't pushing that direction much.

I really love my job and pretty much everyone I work with, but I’ve been involved in something slightly outside of my organization that is so dumb and librarian-brained that I need to be catty about it with my Internet friends. I think I need an alt.