This year's Edinburgh International Book Festival kicks off shortly and for the first time ever Orkney Library & Archive is delighted to be holding several FREE events where you can come along to the library and watch LIVE STREAMS of the events as they happen! 🎉

Fascinating for WSJ to have this headline which implicitly suggests business leaders may have had too much influence in the past.

The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 13h ago

New York City’s business elites are long accustomed to direct access to City Hall, where even Democratic mayors felt the need to court the city’s wealthiest and most influential corporate leaders. That access is getting shredded by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

I've read all of Malka's books since reading her short story in New Suns! Will check out the others, feeling a transatlantic gap here...

Malka Older's Mossa and Pleiti novellas set on Jupiter have been some of my most comforting reads in that vein lately. Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor is one of my favorites (along with her other books set in that world). Ilona Andrews' books are excellent competence porn, and she's ...

This was a tough one to write, but I'm so proud of it. My short story "The Cinema of Babel" has just been published in Uncanny!!

Neil Ottenstein@nottenst.bsky.social · 20h ago

Listened to/read "The Cinema of Babel" by @sentencebender.bsky.social from @uncannymagazine.bsky.social #71. Just a story with wild ideas and dealing with grief, which was poignant on a day I learned a friend of mine passed last week. www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-...

Captain Shirahama is the mascot for a glass-bottom boat tour in the coastal town of Shirahama.

On this day 14 years ago, Curiosity rover landed on Mars 🔴

"The survey identified perceived downward pressure and a stunning 30 point decline when asked to compare their freedom to express themselves without fear of government interference or punishment ten years ago to their expectations for ten years from now."

John Sands@iohn.bsky.social · 2h ago

A new survey from @knightfoundation.org and @ssrsresearch.bsky.social reveals a disquieting decline in how free Americans feel to use the freedoms protected by the #FirstAmendment without government interference or punishment. 🧵

The edited collection that I contributed a chapter on penguin eggs to is part of Berghan Books' summer sale! www.berghahnbooks.com/title/McCahe...

Antarctic Materialities | Berghahn Books

Independent Publishing since 1994

berghahnbooks.com

Mama black bear and her cub visiting the water bowl early this morning. ❤️🐻❤️ #mammals Water = Life ❤️

Tell Kmart not to stock or sell PERVERT GLASSES petitions.getup.org.au/petitions/de... @getup.org.au

Demand Kmart take the Anko surveillance glasses off the shelf

Camera glasses are moving quickly into the mainstream. Meta has sold more than 7 million pairs and hired Kylie Jenner to sell more. At $89, against several hundred dollars for the Meta version, the te...

petitions.getup.org.au

Check out the newest episode of the Apocalyptic Optimist! I talk with the director of @momscleanairforce.org about how caregivers across the country are turning protective love and "angry optimism" into political power. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxn_... @piqueaction.bsky.social @au-cece.bsky.social

How Moms Are Shutting Down Big Polluters

YouTube video by Pique Action

youtube.com

If this is a standpipe surge tower, where are the reciprocating beam chamber pistons?????

Another version of this: My Special Interest is historical sewer systems, and during the most explosive scene in Guillermo Del Toro's new Frankenstein, when everything's blowing up, James hears me go, "is that a 45-degree sluice with a basket-handle profile??? Give me a BREAK"

Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist@nameshiv.bsky.social · 4mo ago

if you ever want to see something really really funny, watch any hacking scene in a Hollywood movie while sitting next to an IT security person

One of my favourite posts. bsky.app/profile/matt...

Matt Baume 🏳️‍🌈@mattbaume.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Another version of this: My Special Interest is historical sewer systems, and during the most explosive scene in Guillermo Del Toro's new Frankenstein, when everything's blowing up, James hears me go, "is that a 45-degree sluice with a basket-handle profile??? Give me a BREAK"

You can/should read Emily Wilson's latest take on the Odyssey, but I'm logging on to convey my hairdresser's reaction. She was AGHAST that Nolan, with his million $ budget, gave Matt Damon ONLY 6 hair extensions. As a result, his hair did not blow around properly, & that ruined the film for her.

sometimes there is absolutely nothing more fun than understanding works of art through people's varied professional perspectives

Deidre Lynch@drbibliomane.bsky.social · 18h ago

You can/should read Emily Wilson's latest take on the Odyssey, but I'm logging on to convey my hairdresser's reaction. She was AGHAST that Nolan, with his million $ budget, gave Matt Damon ONLY 6 hair extensions. As a result, his hair did not blow around properly, & that ruined the film for her.

diabetes was a death sentence 40 years ago, now its a thing you manage with a pill or a pump and get on with living a solid 7+ decade life

Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 13h ago

Food, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.

I am logged on for 2 hours to say I am appalled by what I read in the HWA newsletter. There are AI witch hunts ongoing where writers are being accused of using that garbage tech with no evidence. Telling ppl who use AI proudly to get out is not gatekeeping. Call out the writers and companies.

Universities “are increasingly acting like other employers, finding “complicated and sometimes pretextual reasons” to fire employees, even those with tenure. “What we’re seeing at the New School is emblematic of the rising pressures on higher education as a labor market and as an industry”

He Had Tenure. The New School Laid Him Off Anyway.

The professor, a longtime critic of the university, was among 19 educators who lost their positions as the institution navigated financial woes.

nytimes.com

Medical advances. All of them. I was told in 2006 when I went into a t1 diabetic coma that if I'd showed up to ER in state I was in 20 years before, I'd be dead. We got a COVID vaccine in a YEAR. Spouse has a friend w/a major brain aneurysm who SURVIVED. And no one smokes inside anymore!!!!!!!!!

Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 13h ago

Food, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.

🇧🇷Uirapuru-laranja 🌎Pipra fasciicauda Conservação: Pouco Preocupante O uirapuru-laranja é uma ave passeriforme da família Pipridae. 📷 Edinei Oliveira

TIL that Pakistan is an acronym.

BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 15h ago

Punjab. Afghan. Kashmir. Sind. Balochis-tan. The I was added for pronounciation and because the whole thing also means 'land of the pure' in several languages. it's pretty clever!

@latimes.com: Federal judge holds government in civil contempt for not imaging immigration agents’ personal phones By Brittny Mejia @brittnymejia.bsky.social

Federal judge holds government in civil contempt for not imaging immigration agents' personal phones

In a newly unsealed order, a California federal judge held the government in civil contempt for violating a court order requiring them to forensically image any cell phone used by agents present more ...

latimes.com

sometimes i think about the way the botally and other art bot people thought so fucking hard about how to make polite robots and get so sad

Erin Biba@erinbiba.bsky.social · 16h ago

Two AI accounts wanting to connect and stay in touch with each other in the mentions of a post I wrote about AI is fucking hellscape material.

"Generative AI is catnip to the men who miss female sycophants." Really astute article here: katemanne.substack.com/p/a-culture-...

A Culture Hooked on Generative AI is a Culture that Misses Female Sycophants

And we have missed a central reason why AI is a feminist issue

katemanne.substack.com

every theater kid I know is wincing in sympathy

Pixie Casey@pixiecasey.bsky.social · yesterday

in insane local news, the 26 year old director of a rocky horror production was arrested for sending threatening messages to himself in order to get the play shut down bc he didn’t want to deal with cast drama www.mynbc5.com/article/rock...

safe and beautiful task force seems to be doing mass arrests outside Union station tonight

do you tumblr? I get great joy out of the beautiful (and completely unique) handwork of all the book binders who share their fanbinding (handmade copies of fanfic-as-books) there, sometimes out-of-copyright books and journals too. it's rather hard to AI bookbind...