National Library Workers Day sign
Library workers are a special kind of civil servant. Our mandate is to give you and everyone else free access to some of the best things you can have: learning, self-enrichment, community, contemplation, fun, and simple peace and quiet. the best way to appreciate us is to come use us. 🙂 📚
A mass shooting that took the lives of eight children should stop this country in its tracks. Instead, the Shreveport tragedy disappeared from the headlines in a day. We cannot allow this level of violence to fade into background noise. Ending America’s gun‑violence epidemic is a moral oblligation.
Kash Lego figure with big eyes
I can’t look at him and not see his Lego image now.
Forbes is gamifying news about the horrific mass shooting in Shreveport, LA this weekend, encouraging readers to bet on the likelihood of gun regulation with fake money via its "ForbesPredict" feature.
Eight children were murdered in the shooting.
futurism.com/future-socie...
Close-up photo of the bases of corn stalks. Adventitious roots emerge from nodes above the soil surface and grow downward. Roots from lower nodes have penetrated the soil, while those from upper nodes have not yet touched the soil.
This week is devoted to #roots we can see, like these from corn/maize (Zea mays;📷: 305 Seahill CCBYND2). Corn is famous for its prop roots that emerge from the stem above the soil line. When they penetrate the soil, they brace the main stalk. Structural engineering! #Poaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
Actually, the first name Davy proposed was was alumium (note the missing ‘in’), from the English word alum and the Latin suffix -ium. European chemists then argued it should be named from ‘alumina’ and Berzelius in particular argued for ‘aluminium’. Davy then published something with ‘aluminum’…
Every spring I do a KEY PRODUCT ENDORSEMENT for which I receive $0.00. If you garden and poison ivy is an issue, this gets 10/10 stars in our house: Tecnu Extreme Scrub. Just use after exposure or suspected exposure... you won't get a rash.
‘For the first time in my life, I am not covering a war. Like every other civilian in Lebanon, I am just living it.’
Charles Glass reports from Beirut, in the 1970s and now.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Cover of the business of racism: labor and environment in Brazil's racial Capitalism by Ian Carrillo
The Introduction of my book is currently free to read.
assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/f7ca9afb-82c...
Not a dime of taxpayer money or govt contracts should go to Palantir.
Mamdani: "What are we fighting for?. When you look back at the history books of our party, 100 years ago we had a very clear vision of what we were fighting for. It's sad that for too many Americans, when they want to look for ambition in the Democratic Party, then have to turn to a history book."
Since it's #NationalLibraryWeek, I am going to share a cool library thing every day.
Today, I am sharing "Reading Room" a project by Elizabeth Felicella, a photographer, who passed away way too early last year at 58 years old.
urbanomnibus.net/2014/11/read...
I’m looking for an automated way to read others’s scientific data without giving credit or acknowledgement, and also claim full credit for insights from it. And I want it to have a fitting name
OAI: say no more
CUT TO: "Due to rising costs, we are raising the monthly fee of your AI client license"
This was shit we were fighting twenty years ago. More than that, actually.
Trump wants data on California’s trans and abortion care. Can the state stop him?
apnews.com/article/c...
#transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA
I love when there is, every so often, news that is good
some things about becoming a parent are radicalizing in ways I expected - e.g being reminded viscerally how screwed we'd all be if childcare and other care work disappeared. but other things are radicalizing in ways I didn't - like experiencing constant spontaneous solidarity in ways big and small
Mayor Mamdani and President Obama read a picture book to a group of children.
Mayor Mamdani and President Obama chat and laugh with a group of children.
Mayor Mamdani and President Obama chat and laugh.
Children hug Mayor Mamdani.
Today, President Barack Obama and I read to a group of toddlers at Learning Through Play Pre-K Center in the South Bronx.
In between singing wheels on the bus, we discussed our administration’s vision for this City — one where New York’s Cutest have the strongest start possible.
Infuriating that Roberts said the Court should rush in bc states and businesses would "suffer irreparable harm" and the EPA rule was "highly unlikely" to be legal
Like I said at the @the14thcenter.bsky.social Symposium, no such concern existed for birthright citizenship!
youtu.be/lIYOIrtWrzY?...
Most striking to me about these memos is the radically different assessment of the harm imposed by the president not being able to pursue his initiatives. Over the last 15 mos., that harm has in numerous cases been treated as almost per se serious and irreparable. Here, it gets no analysis at all.
Screenshotted excerpt from linked article reading as follows: "In public, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has cultivated a reputation for care and caution. The papers reveal a different side of him. At a critical moment for the country and the court, the papers show, he acted as a bulldozer in pushing to stop Mr. Obama’s plan to address the global climate crisis. When colleagues warned the chief justice that he was proposing an unprecedented move, he was dismissive. “I recognize that the posture of this stay request is not typical,” he wrote. But he argued that the Obama plan, which aimed to regulate coal-fired plants, was “the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector,” and too big, costly and consequential for the court not to act immediately."
OOP
New York Times got receipts on John Roberts being like, 'I know this isn't how anything works, but a Democratic president is about to implement a policy!!'
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...
Me: [idly looking up info on popes]
Wikipedia: This list is incomplete; you can help expand it.
Me: wut?
Wikipedia: [lifts eyebrows suggestively]
thanks again joe manchin!
Hey so…healthcare in this country is absolutely collapsing at an unprecedented rate and most of you have absolutely no idea and frankly don’t give a shit and that’s exactly part of the problem and the reason it’s been picking up speed in its collapse since the beginning of COVID.
Wyden is the longest serving member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and it should generally raise the public’s concern when he rings alarm bells about government surveillance.
I think another reason many Americans Feel Bad About the Economy:
There is a constant barrage of information indicating to the casual observer that people who run scams and lie and refuse to play by the rules aren't just going unpunished, they're *making way more money than you are* as a result.
I want a "conference" where every academic cooks a dish for everyone and we all talk about our work casually while cooking. People can sous chef for each other. We eat and talk about our work in progress. You submit an abstract and a recipe.
Feels important to uplift Rep Pressley's leadership. She puts in a lot of work on issues that others often don't see as a priority. I've appreciated her anti-criminalization work over the years. She's a worker.
