Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

We've spent our lives, until very recently, reading predominantly human words, human sentences, human text, poetry. What is it doing to us now, emotionally, to have to wade through so much written material which simply isn't written by a person? If you're a big reader, love words, I think it hurts.

Dr Dave Hitchcock@davehitchcock.bsky.social · 2d ago

"If it seems true, we keep reading", and that truth doesn't have to be literal, contained in the sentence itself, but I think it does have to be authorial. This explains to me in no small part why I struggle so hard to even read artificially generated text. To even get through a single sentence.

Book 1 is $59.99 went out 4 times. Cost per circ $14.99 Book 2 is $59.99 went out 4 times. Cost per circ $14.99 I'm not buying book 3. If the cost per circ was $5 or $3, I wouldn't mind. But that is WAY too high, especially for a thing that expires after 2 yrs.

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

Happy Friday everyone, as promised, here is my personal theory on this. I think Redwall takes place in our world, after an apocalyptic event of the nuclear variety caused rapid but varied growth of all animals, including humans, leading to our extinction and their mental development. Okay? 🧵

Nora@lighthousenora.bsky.social · 2w ago

i would love your historical architecture take on the relative size of redwall abbey to its natural surroundings and inhabitants. like are we talking a tiny abbey in a tiny forest or what

organized crime

The thing about books, as that repost earlier today mentioned, is that the words on a pdf can be changed. But to edit an already printed book, you have to cross the lines out, and if you do that to a book, people will ask, "why did you do that?" No one gets to ask a question they don't know to ask.

Southern grandma's are just looking for someone to look deeply into their eyes and say, "hominy hominy hominy."

Mujib@mujib.bsky.social · last wk.

Lexicologists are just looking for someone to look deeply into their eyes and say, “homonym homonym homonym.”

The fundamental, delicious paradox of studying history is that: 1. These people are radically different from me, and I may never properly understand them. 2. These people are exactly like me.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · last wk.

one tendency that comes out about period films is the insistence that XYZ moral thought would not have occurred to anyone in the ancient world. to be sure there are moral innovations and changes but the existence of thorough dissatisfaction with the present moral order is not a modern phenomenon

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

Ideologically, generative AI is a 19th century technology: the flawed dream that once you have assembled a supposedly total archive of culture via technical media, you can use it to statistically derive new meaning from patterns of the past

I am pleased to report that Kevin Kruse is back on his bullshit.

Kevin M. Kruse@kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 3w ago

I try not to overdo this bit but ... my man is begging for it. Let's go.

As an academic, I have decided to pre-empt AI taking my job, so I am going to take ITS job! I am going to start hallucinating, lying to my students, and drinking 700,000 litres of water

Every cable news discussion of Mamdani treats him like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and then cuts to an image of a man who looks like he was designed in a lab to lead all four grandmas at a wedding in the Cupid Shuffle

Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · last yr.

The gap between the bloodsoaked Jihadi vampire Zohran Mamdani I am reading about from even somewhat mainstream press/politicians and the regular-ass Zohran Mamdani I met like two months ago and chopped it up about 2018-era Onion headlines could not be cleared by Evel Kneivel.

As the one responsible for all tech in a state library/archive that's about the size & with the same remit as some national libraries, let me amplify: libraries need more funding. Tell your politicians & administrators. We are getting crushed by the fact that "digital" is more expensive than books.

James Elder@jameselder.bsky.social · 4w ago

Good news, but the fact that this is only happening now, nearly three years after the cyber attack shows 1) what a huge job BL staff have had rebuilding services, 2) that the BL is underfunded, and 3) the impact this has had on academic research, especially in the humanities.

watched this on repeat losing my shit for two nights now

when someone with a foot fetish cheats on their partner you could say they got off on the wrong foot

STUDENT TEACHER: okay class, who knows what an oxymoron is KID: you’re an oxymoron STUDENT TEACHER: well yes technically that is correct

happy 9th anniversary to the day we watched Zendaya fall madly in love with Tom Holland in real-time

M and I were talking about this last night. The first lesson of doing a library reference interview is that the question is often incorrect to begin with and needs to be massaged. If you get an answer-shaped response from AI to the wrong question, you never stood a chance to begin with!

Dani Finn 🐙 🏳️‍⚧️ 📚@danifinnwrites.bsky.social · 3mo ago

People use AI because they want quick, simple answers. Guess what, losers—truth is messy! Anything that tries to simplify it is a lie.

A hallucinated cite means you did not engage in research. It is possible to make an error when entering or checking a cite, but its not possible to make an error when you check a hallucinated cite and find it doesn't exist. That means you didn't do it. Which means you used AI inappropriately. 1/

Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof@evanbernick.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I'm not going to provide details, so don't ask. Nevertheless: No, it is not OK to have one hallucinated cite. No, you can't delete that and expect me to take the rest of your work seriously. No, absolutely not. It should never ever happen.

Spending a lot of time ripping out crab grass by hand so my clover can take root out back, and it has me meditating a lot on what it means to take out fascists. We always used to say it was whack-a-mole, it wasn't. Successful antifascism in a democracy is a practice of weeding

“So it was, on that misty morning, that Brenda set off for the capital. She knew not what she would find there, only that the time had come to move on - away from small-minded rural attitudes and people who called her ‘Oreo’ and ‘the wide panda’ - to seek a more fulfilling life.”

Women only care about one thing. A beautifully cooked ham they dont have to share. They can eat the whole thing and they dont have to share with anyone. 6lbs of ham just for themself. They can take it in the bath or on the couch and its just theirs, not to share. No one can ask for a single swallow

Say hi. This is an example of how human labor will be remembered when all books are digitized and we all work with digital copies only. And maybe, hand on heart, this hand was intentionally raised to greet us from the past. #skystorians #bookhistory #digitalhumanities

Yes it could be argued that keeping up with world events is important but alternatively can I interest you in hugging an ancient mossy boulder that looks like a face and quietly listening while it tells you stories from centuries cloaked in mist.

As someone who has participated in more than one autopsy I have to announce, sadly, that there is no groove in the heart.

we all thought Twitter’s collapse would be swift and sudden like the fall of the Roman Empire but instead it’s been a steady, irreversible decay like the fall of the Roman Empire