just saw a guy unironically wearing both a top hat and a bowtie. and lo, the people did know that fringe season was upon them.

I curated some readings for class on "data tensions" and the list felt worth sharing. Come on a tour of datasets, books, the web, and AI with me... We'll start with this piece on the Google Books project: the hopes, dreams, disasters, and aftermath of building a public library on the internet. 1/n

Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria

“Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them.”

theatlantic.com

This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b

I have a classics degree so I'm authorised to confirm that the best thing about the Odyssey for Complex Bros™ is Tom Holland's leather kilt

‘Future generations will curse us for its loss’: can nothing save Glasgow School of Art, Mackintosh’s masterpiece?

‘Future generations will curse us for its loss’: can nothing save Glasgow School of Art, Mackintosh’s masterpiece?

Stratospheric costs could prevent the fire-damaged landmark from returning to its former glory. Now, unless a wealthy patron is found, the building seems destined for ‘soulless’ facade retention or ‘curated decay’

theguardian.com

Someone just posted this and I was gonna boost it but my timeline refreshed and I lost the post: Newly discovered archive of half a million of the lost myspace mp3s now playable here http://lostmyspace.com

"gee why is my heartburn so bad" I wonder as I chase my marmite toast down with my 4th coffee of the morning

Um, apparently this was *very* soon, as it was published yesterday. Delighted to share my latest article: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Against cultural heritage wastelands

The twin scholarly booms of the 2010s, digital humanities and public humanities, introduced a relatively accessbile suite of platforms for managing digital and digitised content. Sudden interest in...

tandfonline.com

Heather Froehlich@heatherfro.bsky.social · last mo.

Proofs! coming soon to an Internet Histories near you

💾 We often think of online platforms as permanent homes for our photos & videos. They're not. On the Future Knowledge #podcast #VanishingCulture series, Luca Messarra explains why relying on them puts our cultural memory at risk. 🎧 Listen & subscribe: futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/van...

embracing beerware mindset is the only way to make computers cool again

deliver me from the weaponised incompetence of men

Everybody in the "climate space" (which means everyone on earth...) needs to understand these mind-blowing figures. Google's "total electricity consumption jumped from 31 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2024 to 43 TWh in 2025." In ONE year. The AI corporate arms race is eating the world.

Ketan Joshi@ketanjoshi.co · last mo.

NEW BLOG FOR YOU Google's energy consumption numbers in their new climate report are mind-blowing. 2 years ago they flipped from linear to exponential growth, and their climate impact is blowing out, too. A WILD testament to the obscene bloat and waste of GenAI: ketanjoshi.co/2026/07/01/g...

Nature-based solutions as greenwashing for the military-industrial complex: rocket waste 'will be left to sink to the seabed where, [Rocket Factory Augsburg] argues, they could become “artificial reefs” and benefit marine wildlife'

The Ferret@theferret.scot · last mo.

🔴NEW: Scotland’s first spaceport on Shetland plans to use the sea as a “dustbin” to dump tonnes of debris from rockets, The Ferret can reveal, prompting claims it could endanger tourism and fishing. Our latest: https://theferret.scot/spaceport-shetland-risk-tourism-fishing

Edinburgh Council has passed a motion across party lines calling on the UK Government to withdraw the EHRC Code of Practice and take legislative action to protect trans people's human rights. We would like to highlight this moving speech by Cllr and SNP group leader @lesleymacinnessnp.bsky.social.

BRITISH PUBLIC: please god we are begging you enact one law that restricts media corporations BRITISH GOVT: best i can do is banning immigrants from using the letter P

Rebranding a hallucination as a ‘critical confabulation’ that can fill archival gaps is a big no from me.

Labour are doing the media circuit today talking about how much money we need to spend to defend against Russia. Meanwhile Russian-based hacker groups have already devastated our cultural infrastructures and I don't see vast amounts of money flowing towards cultural institutions and universities.

"The NHS has chosen to centre a clear and overwhelming belief that a child growing into a trans adult is an unsatisfactory outcome — even at the cost of that child’s wellbeing; even at the cost of their life."

UnicornsRockUK@unicornsrockuk.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"International trans health bodies express “deep concern” for NHS ban on HRT for under-18s" XXX www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/...

Just in general?

A Canticle for Leibowitz, with a side plot line about the writing of the sequel please.

☀️ Starshine@starshine.bsky.social · 2mo ago

What’s your white whale tv/film adaptation that needs to happen

it's queens park eurasian coot season, bitchessssss

"What we can say with a great deal of certainty is that NHS England is currently relying on terrible evidence to make decisions about trans healthcare."

Hormone Therapy For Trans Teens

The remarkable deficiencies in new NHS policy looking at whether transgender teenagers should be able to access hormone therapy.

gidmk.substack.com

Helping clear out my neighbour's house and found this stunning photo of her from (I think) around 1950 - can anyone identify the location where this was taken? Lots of marble! I'm thinking it's likely to be #Glasgow or #Edinburgh

GenAI is antithetical to librarianship as a profession, ethics, & pedagogy; it is v. depressing to see library workers pushing to insert it into all our systems and services. So I love the new Luddite Lab Resource Hub, partic. the 'AI Implementation Bingo' activity (under Political Education) 👇

Alex Hanna@alexhanna.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Today @dairinstitute.bsky.social is releasing the Luddite Lab Resource Hub. The hub hosts case studies, resources, and political education for unions, labor organizations, and workers who want to fight “AI” and automation at work. labor.dair-institute.org

happy Boards of Canada day to all who celebrate

If you're looking for the original study: 'Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence', Cheng et. al., 2026 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... ArXiv version: arxiv.org/pdf/2505.13995

Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence

Despite rising concerns about sycophancy—excessive agreement or flattery from artificial intelligence (AI) systems—little is known about its prevalence or consequences. We show that sycophancy is wide...

science.org

The_Lady_Red@theladyred.bsky.social · 2mo ago

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking Al to write their breakup texts. So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world. What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.

This is not wrong, is it. What a world.

Dave Andress@davidandress.bsky.social · 3mo ago

There are powerful, well-connected, well-funded people in this country, today, who are deliberately, strategically, using the idea of a woman being made "uncomfortable" by the presence of a trans person to plot the removal of that woman's right to abortion, contraception, and divorce.

Trans people have been around your whole life. You’ve been sharing bathrooms with them your whole life. They’ve been in your communities your whole life. They’ve even been playing sport your whole life. And you didn’t care *at all* till a few years ago when every right wing org decided you should

The web never stands still 🌐 ... and neither do the challenges of preserving it. The #DPC is preparing for the return of its Web Archiving Special Interest Group (WA-SIG), bringing DPC Members together in a welcoming and transparent space where Members can exchange ideas, surface challenges […]