Is this dangerous? Yes! Is it noisy? Also yes! What happens if the motor breaks seeing as it was built in the 1960s and no one knows how to fix it? We don't know!
Margarita Nafpaktitis
@nafpaktitism.bsky.social
Librarian by day. Even more maladroit in person! Sundry book and textile arts, cross-cultural gastronomica, and ever taller piles of things on every available surface. Always hoping for funny, but ending up at earnest. she/вона/она/ona/αυτή ❌👑 ❌🤖 ✅🗳️ ✅📖📝
From: Panache the Squirrel (1978), dir. Tadanari Okamoto, Echo
“Thick accumulations of Ukrainian consonants conspire against my tongue and my memory: airless crushes of them, like the compressed folds of a concertina.” Lovely piece on learning Ukrainian in wartime by Charlotte Higgins www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...
‘The war leaked into every lesson’: learning Ukrainian in a country under siege
The long read: Soon after my first visit to Ukraine four years ago, I began language lessons. It taught me more than I ever expected
theguardian.com
August is Women in Translation Month! Introducing Dina Kalinovskaya (1934-2008), translated into English for the first time by Harriet Murav & me for our new book with @stanfordpress.bsky.social. She was from and wrote about Odesa; I especially loved working on this paragraph about the Odesa harbor.
We've launched a new online Spotlight Exhibit featuring a nearly complete run of ACLU News, published by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California from the 1930s to the present! Check it out: library.stanford.edu/news/stanfor...
Stanford Stewards Newly Acquired ACLU NorCal Archives | University Libraries
Digitized ACLU newsletters deliver a distinct, behind-the-scenes look at decades of civil rights advocacy in California.
library.stanford.edu
Fellow academics: I know a Haitian PhD student who due to TPS termination needs another institutional affiliation not in the USA. Do you or someone you know have an avenue for them? If so, DM me.
It's Textile Tuesday, and you know what that means: a piece by artist Faig Ahmed called "The Dragons of Karabakh" that's woven to look like an antique Central Asian carpet is melting off the wall into a puddle. More about the artist here: faigahmed.com
I want to end every single thing I write from now on with the line "GTFO with your metadata."
'You'll choke too' - an aerial embroidery landscape inspired by all the wildfires happening right now... I'm upset every time I smell smoke outside and somehow we have people starting them maliciously too! But we all breathe the same air so they'll choke too (1/2 - see thread for close-ups)
“We live in a country with an unpredictable past.” This was a saying among the intelligentsia in the [USSR] when I was growing up. We never knew which part of our history would be obliterated next. ... Now Americans, too, live in a country with an unpredictable past. @mashagessen.bsky.social
Opinion | Trump's Smithsonian Attacks Are Attacks on America’s Future (Gift Article)
This is how we decide who we are and who we want to be.
nytimes.com
"Artificial intelligence is not just a market product or a scientific achievement. It is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy." connect the dots! Dr. McMillan Cottom has homework! go to the library, host a reading group, organize your neighbors www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/o...
Opinion | A Reading List for Our Age of A.I. (Gift Article)
A.I. is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy.
nytimes.com
I just switched (exporting data from g_r_ and importing into @pagebound.bsky.social was really easy) & I feel SO much better! If you've already done it yourself, let me know who you are so I can follow you! If you haven't, do it now, and then let me know so I can follow you! 📚📚 📚
Pagebound@pagebound.bsky.social · 2y agoSince we're all divesting from our billionaire overlords... what a great time to switch from Goodreads to indie-owned (+ much cuter, cooler, social) Pagebound? Hi #booksky 👋 we're Pagebound, a new social reading site (think: if Goodreads and Reddit had a baby). Come read with us !
“I’m Still Standing” coming from the Hoover Tower carillon is kind of chef’s kiss. I couldn’t find any info on earthquake damage, but that concrete ball at the very top has been struck and damaged by lightning twice.
I helped write the caption for Allen Ginsberg’s tennis shoes! (With invaluable assistance from members of the venerable seelangs listserv.) library.stanford.edu/news/allen-g...
airbnb I’m staying at unintentionally created the toughest punk album cover of 2027
“There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”
jessamyn@librarian.bsky.social · last wk."There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible"
I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful
In case anyone needs it for their syllabi, my statement in gen-Ai from the minicomic I made as a syllabus for class last semester. All online and printable here spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...
“We have made a machine where we throw leaves in the air, and they come down in a plausible sentence. That is, from a computer science perspective, super interesting. From a literary perspective, it doesn't mean a goddamn thing.” – @doctorow.pluralistic.net lnk.to/onthemedia/b...
On the Media
The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger examine threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week’s big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.
lnk.to
It would perhaps be warranted that we take a sociological, or even occupational ethnographical approach to the question: Why has reading been chosen as the first thing commercial AI developers will try to automate out of existence?
For writers worried that they won't be able to "prove" their work isn't Spicy Autocomplete--worry not. You thought about every choice and will be able to talk about those choices easily and clearly. Folks who used the slop machine didn't make choices and won't have anything to say about why
This thread is incredible! Someone please illustrate it? 🦝
Katharine Hayhoe@katharinehayhoe.com · last wk.Overnight, a masked bandit broke into our kitchen. Armed with opposable thumbs, he proceeded to sample everything on offer. I’d just visited the farmers market, so the menu was extensive. I can now share a highly specific peer-reviewed list of what this particular raider did & did not enjoy. 🧵
Look at this chonky boi who came back to me in the courier bin from main campus today. This absolute unit comes in at 6 pounds and over 4,100 cubic centimeters. 📚
