CHICAGO!
Haymarket Presents: Free Gifts
Join @alybatt.bsky.social and @gabrielwinant.bsky.social for a conversation on Capitalism & Nature. Co-sponsored by @pilsencommbooks.bsky.social.
Wed, May 6 at 5:30 PM
Live at Haymarket House, streaming online
RSVP:
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... What's up with AI and energy? In this article we explore the growing hunger of AI for energy and the growing intertwining of the energy industry and the AI infrastructure investment through power purchase agreements, especially for nuclear power
In recognition of National Library Week, Publishers Weekly spoke to Sarah Lamdan, the executive director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
"I want to work with organizations and library workers to carry the torch of intellectual freedom."
@amlibraryassoc.bsky.social
“You cannot build your way to a public if the political economy is designed to prevent one.”
let’s gooo
From the techné pessimists of Ancient Greece to the computer to the loom-breaking Luddites to the firebombers of the Information Age, here's a look at the long—and fruitful—legacy of refusing the machine.
By @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social, for BITM:
steak with breadcrumbed crab on top of asparagus, on a blue plate on a wood table
partner made steak oscar
men would quite literally rather adopt a baby than go to therapy
We're proud to announce the launch of the Prisoncast! podcast feed! 🎧
Prisoncast! is an audio and journalism project organized by WBEZ and Illinois Public Radio stations to serve people inside Illinois prisons and their loved ones outside.
Learn more: www.wbez.org/pressroom/20...
happy national library week!
outlawing book challenges is a start—how about a mandatory living wage and health insurance for all library workers (esp. public)? permanent pathways for promotion? protections against the imposition of AI?
let’s make sure we pass that eBook pricing legislation, too www.ila.org/advocacy/rea...
This image features a vibrant yellow promotional graphic for a book titled "Platform Extractivism: Data Work and the People Powering Artificial Intelligence" by Julián Posada. The top of the graphic displays the text "PRE-ORDER NOW! COMING OCTOBER 20, 2026" in bold blue capital letters. Centered in the middle is a 3D rendering of the book cover, which includes three vertical photo strips showing people working in office settings and server racks. Below the book image is a quote in large, bold black and red font: "A GROUNDED AND UNCOMPROMISING ACCOUNT OF THE INFRASTRUCTURES AND WORKERS THAT SUSTAIN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE." — Mark Graham, co-author of Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labor Powering A.I. The bottom of the graphic features the logo and name for the University of California Press.
#PlatformExtractivism is available for 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 (out Oct 20)!
Thrilled to share what @geoplace.bsky.social has to say about the book: "A grounded and uncompromising account of the infrastructures and workers that sustain AI."
𝐋𝐢𝐧𝐤: www.ucpress.edu/books/platfo...
#BookRecommendation #Books
pls send!
back of sweatshirt, cream colored base with green text that reads AI IS NOT INTELLIGENT IT’S IDEOLOGY
white hand holding green cap that reads LUDDITE
back from Library Freedom Institute with timeless merch!
Pretty frustrating that the New York Times is crediting AP with uncovering the existence of Aadam’s archive when I reported on it 15 months prior. chicagoreader.com/music/gossip...
the levels to this omg
An extensive 1991 interview with Toni Morrison about the New York Public Library and the power of public libraries.
And Morrison's 2018 statement "Tell City Leaders to Invest in Libraries."
wayback.archive-it.org/18689/202203...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxr5...
File under Things We Know That Bear Repeating: Library ebook licensing models suck.
www.cranstononline.com/opinion/gues...
The data work industry, which monetizes the collection of information used to train AI systems, is often shrouded in secrecy. But a new report maps out how at least 30 data platforms are quietly connected to Big Tech companies, Tech Policy Press fellow Tatiana Dias writes.
It is good to remember that, amidst the bad news, work - like the careful work of teaching in library special collections - continues. Here is @mazarine.bsky.social up top in an article on Yale's Whitney Humanities Center: news.yale.edu/2026/04/13/c...
People who site the Industrial Revolution as the thing that’s being replicated right now don’t seem to register that it’s processes started around 1712 with Newcomen’s atmospheric engine and don’t look like telegraphs and trains until the 1850s
Diagram showing the links between data centres, the heart of tech industry power, and oil-dependent supply chain flows. It depicts a circle with the image of a data center and circles around this for energy, plastic, transport computer chip and plastic manufacturing
In this graphic, I visualise the likely impacts of oil shortages, caused by US/Israeli aggression, on the tech industry. The 'AI' bubble may pop for geopolitical and material, rather than purely financial reasons. The financial markets can pretend but supply chains cannot be fooled
Adding the Data Center Proposal Tracker, a "citizen-run collaborative mapping project [that] tracks and visualizes proposed data center projects and related development activity in the [US], aggregating public records, company announcements, and local news into a single searchable database."
Alongside this lawsuit, the NAACP has great resources for environmentally just community action in response to the encroachment of data centers: naacp.org/campaigns/st...
“OpenAI is backing an Illinois bill that could exempt companies from liability in the event that frontier models…cause “critical harms,” like creating a weapon of mass destruction, killing more than 100 people, or causing at least $1 billion in property damage.”
The bill in question:
I wrote about the debate around data center build-outs, whether AI is making life better right now and/or protecting US national security interests newrepublic.com/article/2089...
Washington state is penalizing a Seattle-based vehicle battery manufacturer for exposing workers to lead levels more than four times the safety limit. washingtonstatestandard.com/briefs/seatt...
I know it's complicated but part of me will never forgive the generations of academics above me who chose personal gain over shared governance
people curate collections, they make sure you can access the contents of the catalog, that the computers are turned on and securely available for browsing every day, shelves are stocked and accessible, air conditioning, lights and heat are turned on, water runs for the public bathroom
