Alice Augusta Ball found the cure for leprosy at 23.

She died in a mysterious lab accident at 24.

Arthur Dean stole her research, stole it and renamed it from "The Ball Method" to "The Dean Method."

It took 90 years before her original research papers were found and she got the credit due to her.

"The World of the Dark Crystal" documentary (1983, 1 hour) is available for free on Youtube.
>> www.catsuka.com/breves/2025-...

Happy Publication Day to Susana M. Morris!

Her biography on Ms. Butler, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, officially releases today!

Congrats!

#octaviabutler #parableofthesower

Things are progressing! 3 bingos now.

They are going to burn up billions in taxpayer funded equipment because they don’t want Americans to have access to scientific proof

Cool cool cool.

Moving on to the rewriting history move from the authoritarian regime playbook.

Going for “longest period of time with no actual bingo” this year! Still need recos for PNW Nature, Humor, Found Family, and Disability 😬 #BookBingoNW2025

Acclaimed Colorado sci-fi author: Future stupider than I imagined Paonia writer Paolo Bacigalupi reflects on 10 years since the publication of his climate thriller “The Water Knife.”

For once, a very good headline, and of course @paolobacigalupi.bsky.social is not wrong here

www.cpr.org/2025/07/12/i...

Hot take. The government isn’t subsidizing university budgets. Universities are lending subsidized expertise to research and development that contributes to the public good. It’s called partnership.

I just did a wordless graphic novel… new to me and there’s some cool history behind the author of the one I read - Frans Masereel

On your mark, get set, read! Seattle Public Library's Book Bingo is back and bigger than ever The moment Seattle's bookworms have been training (reading) for is upon us: Book Bingo kicks off today. But there's a lot more competition in the field this year. That's because adult Book Bingo has e...

The full board for #BookBingoNW2025 is here, with King County Library System (KCLS) joining us and Seattle Arts & Lectures! Get your board at any of our locations or our websites.

If this is your first summer playing, @kuow.org has great tips from Book Bingo pros: www.kuow.org/stories/on-y...

Canada election live: Canadian PM Mark Carney calls snap election Carney has asked the governor general to dissolve Parliament, launching an election campaign amid a trade war with the US.

The election has just been called for April 28.

If you are a Canadian living outside the country, get your mail-in ballot here ASAP:

travel.gc.ca/travelling/l...

Call it anecdotal, but my Canadian friends who are cancelling their US travel are not doing it because of tariff worries at all; they’re doing it because the US government is currently actively threatening Canada’s sovereignty and economy and they’re all justifiably furious

Grossmont Union High School District board votes to cut all librarian positions The teachers union plans to protest the planned cuts at schools on Monday.

If you care about literacy rates AND YOU SHOULD BECAUSE IT REALLY MATTERS, then you cannot cut school librarians.

School libraries staffed by certified school librarians improve reading capacity. Every bit of research we have proves this. It's a settled question.

www.kpbs.org/news/educati...

Marco Rubio will be in Quebec City 🇨🇦 Wednesday-Friday (March 12-14). Given the 🇺🇸 egg shortage, please place however many dozen eggs you can afford in a very hot place until March 11th and then hand-deliver them to the USA Secretary of State. Let the Trade War and threat of annexation yolk be on him.

Texas may change how schools select library books. Critics say it could lead to more bans. Senate Bill 13 would create school library advisory councils largely made up of parents. It would give school boards, rather than librarians, the final say over new books.

“Everyone should be able to find something on the shelf that reflects their experience, their identity and their beliefs — and we’re seeing that attacked as a concept.”
— Deborah Caldwell-Stone, ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom
#UniteAgainstBookBans
www.texastribune.org/2025/03/05/t...

Maple Scan Scan any product and find out if it truly supports Canadian businesses. Maple Scan makes it easy.

Wow, there truly is an app for everything now! 🇨🇦

Ontario election: Don’t be fooled by proponents of for-profit health care. It leads to higher costs and decreased care For-profit care, even when publicly funded, leads to higher costs and worse patient outcomes, writes Dr. Danyaal Raza.

Don’t be fooled by proponents of for-profit health care. It leads to higher costs and decreased care.

For-profit clinics are incentivized to prioritize people who are wealthier and healthy, less expensive to treat, and provide larger profit-margins. #Opinion

Multi-level barrage of US book bans is ‘unprecedented’, says PEN America Censorship at local to federal level recalls past authoritarian regimes ‘but this has never all happened at once’

Turns out that trying to fight book bans with retail activism is as effective as trying to treat depression with retail therapy.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Lake County library leaders expect to see more challenged books A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, according to the American Library Association. Challenges lead to censorship.

Right-wing censors are now "quiet banning" books that they can't removed legally.

Librarians in Chicago have been finding books dealing with race, LGBTQ+ issues or Islam hidden under shelves, in trash cans or otherwise "disappeared."

www.chicagotribune.com/2025/02/22/l...

So inappropriate and not a legitimate line of discussion. Let’s talk about how to fight this threat instead.

If you are experiencing rage and despair about what is happening in America and the world right now because of the Trump-Vance-Musk regime, you are hardly alone. But a groundswell of opposition is growing. robertreich.substack.com/p/ten-reasons-for-optimi...

Sepsis and Maternal Mortality Rates Surged in Texas After Abortion Ban Texas is just one state. Maternal health experts are concerned similar, horrific outcomes are happening in all states where abortion is banned.

Texas is just one state. Maternal health experts are concerned similar, horrific outcomes are happening in all states where abortion is banned.
www.jezebel.com/sepsis-and-m...

Banned Books List 2025 - PEN America What books are banned in 2025? These are the 11 most banned books of the 2023-2024 school year. The banned books list for 2025 includes "Nineteen Minutes," by Jodi Picoult.

Read, share, and gift banned books. pen.org/banned-books...

Port: It's not just about kids, and it's not just libraries Legislation under consideration in Bismarck wouldn't just restrict access to books in schools and libraries. The language of the bill also applies to private book stores.

A new North Dakota bill would require stores to pull any book with any "material harmful to minors" from the shelves.

For those in the cheap seats, that effectively means ANY mention of sex, sexuality or gender.

A bookseller could be arrested for displaying 1984.

www.inforum.com/opinion/colu...

“Be careful. When a democracy is sick, fascism comes to its bedside, but it is not to inquire about its health.”

Albert Camus

The Blackfly Song by Wade Hemsworth on Apple Music Song · 1955 · Duration 2:59

This place needs more #cancon. Have a Canadian folk song about the Abitibi Dam music.apple.com/us/album/the...

Some folks have asked, given recent news, “how do I show my friends/family the impact of NSF?” We have some easy Fact Sheets for you! Here’s a brief thread about this website: new.nsf.gov/about/fact-s... which hosts a ton of useful one-pagers.