This #nationallibraryweek, we’ll be sharing how staff find their joy in our collection.

Here's Jill Austin, VP for Public Engagement. “The Dil Pickle Club collection, particularly the photo documenting the entrance on Tooker Alley, remains my favorite item and collection.” #findyourjoy

Not me having to go look outside my office door because I forgot what my office number is

Happy to do this for you any time! 💜

Students "deserve curricula that recognize the full scope of their humanity, outside of their roles as consumers and users of technology, and they deserve an education that allows them to explore the myriad ways their lives and choices are connected to others"

Opinion | You Can’t Game Your Way to a Real Education

“The apps + games that provide a simulacrum of educational progress also encourage students to absorb a certain worldview, an idea of what they should strive for. They end up with the impression that learning is a matter of box ticking, pattern recognition, completing discrete tasks + ‘leveling up’”

In its tech and in its eugenics, Silicon Valley has such a sad mechanical notion of what intelligence is, one bereft of moral beauty, emotional intelligence, intuition, etc. But in a more meaningful definition of intelligence the titans of industry would discover their own bereftness and dimness.

relatable

"I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”

Related, imagine investing in the *people* who work on the books. lithub.com/its-getting-...

US budgets less for improving lives, more for ending them. Discretionary spending by function, constant 2026 dollars. This chart shows war spending increasing steadily since 2017 and shows public investment spending peaking in 2020 before steadily falling ever since. Trump’s 2027 budget includes $1.5 trillion in war spending and only $432.3 billion in public investment. Amounts reflect discretionary funding plus supplemental discretionary funding via reconciliation. Budget function 050 in war category; others minus 700, 750 in public investment. Data: Office of Management and Budget, Congressional Research Service.

Budgets are moral documents

www.stephensemler.com/p/trumps-bud...

As usual, this whole thematic, visual 🧵— lovely.

not many people know this, but Barilla has a line of 3D printed pasta it sells mostly to the fine dining industry. I don't want the pasta. I want the pasta printer

Trnka's "Midsummer Night's Dream" film is literally one of the most gorgeous works of cinema I've ever seen, and his storybook illustrations and paintings are also *sublime*

Same!

Are you a fan of the band BTS? You may have seen a teaser video last month for the band's new album, "Arirang," which shares its name with a beloved Korean folk song. The video alluded to the first recording ever made of that song, a nearly 130-year-old wax cylinder preserved here at the Library. 🧵

Co-sign this whole thread with the addendum that forced usage of LMS, especially Canvas, will help goose lagging AI diffusion rates for the industry’s next capital raise.

John Cage - 4' 33'' Death Metal Cover by Dead Territory [ORIGINAL VIDEO] YouTube video by DeadTerritory

Hello.

I just found out that a death metal band has covered John Cage’s 4’33”, and now I need you lot to know that a death metal band has covered John Cage’s 4’33”.

youtu.be/voqCQSDAcn8

A Newspaper Is Raided and a Rights Group Outlawed Amid Kremlin Crackdown As Moscow throttles Russia’s few remaining independent voices, the authorities targeted two of the most prominent, one a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the other headed by a Nobel laureate.

"The proceedings on Thursday against Memorial, the country’s oldest and most respected civil society group, took place in a closed courtroom, because it was classified as 'top secret.' No lawyer was allowed to participate..."

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/w...

An embroidery hoop containing a sewn aerial view landscape. It depicts an apple orchard in bloom in the centre, allotments to the left and sheep in their field at the bottom. Train tracks go past the top of the orchard and allotment.

Sewn train tracks past an apple orchard (to the left).

An angled view of a sewn vegetable allotment surrounded by rough land, trees and with train tracks to the left.

An angled view of embroidered bushes and paths going through them leading to an orchard, allotment and fields.

'A simple (perfect) life' - my spring landscape is finally finished! An apple orchard in bloom, old railway, sheep with their lambs and an allotment being prepared for growing :) Zoom in to see all the other tiny details too... I think this might be my favourite aerial embroidery I've ever done!

we should have a third industry besides AI and gambling

Rose gold should not be a thing.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Hope things are ok for you soon. I think all the time about how incredible the art and caregiving of all kinds that this country could have (and that we are currently deprived of) if we had single-payer…

🧵succinctly describing how hellish trying to maintain health coverage is in the US.

A man sitting at a working desk, in 1540 setting, with a drinking cup, a few books, a writing desk with paper sheets, and lots of more details.

Working the morning shift as a scholar in 1540, a browser tab and a word document opened on two screens, other needed texts opened and handy, an overfull mail account nearby, and a hot beverage in reach to make for the best working condition. Bonus: wearing a thinking hat. #academicchatter

The most horrifying part of this is buried at the end. Like half the “citations” are just slapped on to give a false veneer of credibility.

AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance People often optimize for long-term goals in collaboration: A mentor or companion doesn't just answer questions, but also scaffolds learning, tracks progress, and prioritizes the other person's growth...

Apparently, collaborating with AI impairs unassisted performance because it optimises on short-term goals not long-term. The frame is the trick; you can't actually 'collaborate' with a synthetic token machine at all. Myth-making masquerading as critique ⚠️
arxiv.org/abs/2604.04721

I hear Phyllis Wheatley’s husband is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more…

"-le" is a forgotten suffix in English - it's integrated so far into words that we no longer register it. It indicates continuousness: to sparkLE is to repeatedly spark, to scribbLE is to continuously scribe, etc.

Which implies that to chortLE is to repeatedly do something called a chort.

My sister called me, and it helped so much…