In 2023, Governor JB Pritzker was joined by Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, advocates, and lawmakers at the Harold Washington Library to sign legislation outlawing book bans in Illinois.

Illinois made history as the first state to outlaw book bans once and for all.

Marginalizing people, ideas, or facts has no place in our state — and they have no place in a democracy.

This National Library Week, we continue our commitment to free thought and free speech.

A Newly Discovered Recording Lets You Hear Delta Blues Legend Robert Johnson in Stunning Clarity Great swathes of rock music since the nineteen-sixties would never have existed, we're sometimes told, were it not for the recordings of Robert Johnson. Certainly the likes of Keith Richards, Eric Cla...

Don't miss this great, newly discovered recording of Robert Johnson: www.openculture.com/2026/04/reco...

#Music #Blues #Guitar

4: Creating AI-Free Learning Spaces - Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning - Oakland University

Fed up with AI boosterism on our campus, my colleague Tim Donahue and I wrote this Teaching Tip for our Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. www.oakland.edu/cetl/teachin...

What about Mastodon?

Today is publication day for my new novel, First Daughter. I thank the friends and family who helped along the way. And a special nod to Ruth Cleveland, Grover Cleveland’s daughter—who, in the world of this story—is kidnapped in the summer of 1895.

Disappointed, though not surprised, I began to describe various life- saving components of USAID’s global health portfolio, highlighting how we prepare for and respond to emerging pandemic threats; support the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV; and immunize millions of children from the deadliest childhood diseases. I spoke for about five minutes, focusing primarily on our infectious diseases work and hoping to keep the attention of people who seemed to have no experience—or interest—in global health. When I finished, the room was silent, the political appointees looking at one another in what appeared to be disbelief. The silence was broken by Ken Jackson, who chuckled softly and shook his head. “Wow, there really is so much that USAID does that we never knew,” he said. “This is the story that needs to get out there.” Joel, also smiling, chimed in next, echoing Jackson’s amazement. “I had no idea you did all this,” he said. “As a Republican, when I think of what USAID does in global health, I assumed it was just, you know, abortions.”

This is NUTS

www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-usai...

Chicago Found a Shockingly Simple Way to Improve the Lives of 315,000 Kids By turning student IDs into instant library cards, Chicago just gave 315,000 kids access to books, tutoring, and digital resources.

Brilliant: Chicago gets thousands of more kids to the public library by making their school IDs double as library cards. Public schools everywhere need to do that. It will change kids' lives.

www.vice.com/en/article/c...

#Libraries #Schools #Education #Reading

“If this policy stands, politicians & the monied interests who support them will have effectively taken over the curriculum of our institutions in the TTU System, whose credibility will be indefinitely and irreversibly harmed.”

— Andrew Martin, Texas Tech AAUP Chapter President

Excellent: the phony claims that campuses suppress intellectual freedom are just a cover for right-wing efforts to shut down the intellectual freedom they pretend to support.

#Education #Universities

The inevitable result of attacks on the freedom to teach and learn.

#BrainDrain

We wish you the best, Dr. Peterson.

Okay CTA. This is a good sign.

I know it’s crazy, but as an alternative, White House staffers could simply choose not to commit any crimes.

The English dept was "told they could no longer teach texts written by gay authors."

"We have even been told to censor novels w gay characters."

For Texas, it's goodbye Shakespeare & some half of the history of literature.

www.npr.org/2026/04/08/n...

#Teaching #Reading #Censorship #Education

A closeup picture of the moon, dark as if black and white, and behind the moon, the blackness of space and—emerging from behind the moon and much smaller than the moon—the blue-and-white earth.

#Moon #Earth

UK job cuts hit English and modern languages staff hardest ‘Vicious cycle’ of course closures means system ‘gradually losing breadth and depth of expertise’

Number of academics working in UK university English departments fell by 8% last year, with number of modern languages staff down 7% www.timeshighereducation.com/news/uk-job-... via @patrickjack.bsky.social

Programme and Registration Link - The Dark House: Absalom, Absalom! at 90 (Faulkner Studies in the UK) - British Association for American Studies Join us for the next Faulkner Studies in the UK colloquium, celebrating 90 years of Absalom, Absalom!, on May 2nd–3rd, 2026, online via Zoom.

The programme & registration link are now available for the upcoming Faulkner Studies colloquium (2nd-3rd May, Zoom).

UK job cuts hit English and modern languages staff hardest ‘Vicious cycle’ of course closures means system ‘gradually losing breadth and depth of expertise’

'The number of English language and literature academics fell by 8 per cent to 4,680 – among the largest decrease of all disciplines.

And the number employed in modern languages dropped 7 per cent to 4,890. This is 17 per cent below peak levels in 2015-16.' 1/3

Earth and Moon from DSCOVR NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured this unique view of the Moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth last month. This view shows the fully illuminated “dark side” of the moon that is never visible from Earth. Ian Regan processed this version of the image to account for the Moon's motion. NASA / NOAA / Ian Regan

I hadn't seen this before. This is pretty remarkable.

Earth and Moon in one NASA photo.

ht @astrokatie.com

Protect Chaco Canyon! Trump’s DOI has announced a proposal to open it to oil and gas drilling—potentially destroying sites that have been sacred to Pueblo and Diné indigenous communities for generations.

Say NO to revoking protections for this sacred place: eplanning.blm.gov/Project-Home...

POTUS Proposes Elimination of Federal Library Funding. The President again requested that Congress eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Innovative Approaches to Literacy (IAL) program. We've seen this before, and we're not going away. Fund Libraries, ALA 150, American Library Association.

"We are not surprised that the White House FY27 budget zeroes out funding for IMLS and IAL. The president’s intentions for IMLS were clear last year with the executive order to dismantle IMLS and cut off its funding [...] ALA members have a solid track record of defeating the president’s threats, but we do not underestimate the lengths to which he will go to undercut support for America’s libraries. ALA is working to make sure decisionmakers continue to hear from library advocates.” - ALA President Sam Helmick

NEW: The President once again called to eliminate federal library funding in his federal budget proposal. We have been here before. And when we make our voices heard, we can overcome this again.

Tell your Senators to reject the cuts & #FundLibraries in next year's federal budget: ala.org/showup

Someone sent me this.

Cartoon of a US Revolutionary soldier pointing a gun at a British soldier who responds by saying "Sure, you can kick us out now, but I promise you, in about 250 years your wealthy elite will be acting with more impunity than our own royal family."

Protesters, seen from behind, holding up a sign with a circular image of the world. On the world is a broken heart. The sign has a no kings logo and reads “dear World: We Hate Him too!”

Sign from today's No Kings protest in Urbana, Illinois.

#NoKings #Trump #Protest #USPolitics

Go make some good trouble today. 💚

Help us keep the march organized, safe, and spirited. Start when we announce from the stage. Stick to the route.

We expect participants to seek to de-escalate confrontation and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.

Photo of an ad on a bus stop that reads "'All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.' 14th Amendment. Constitution of the United States. ACLU. Learn more at aclu.org/barbara. Paid for by the American Civil Liberties Union, Inc."

👀 Spotted in DC: We're reminding our government what the Constitution says about birthright citizenship.

This should be an impeachable offense. I understand that we’re way past any of that, but that shouldn’t stop us from naming it.

I don't think people fully appreciate how apocalyptic things are for US science. I haven't had any new funding since 2024, but I'm still ok since typical grants are for three years. This means next year I will be completely out of funding and will have to fire everyone in the lab. It's not great.

photograph or a poster on cream colored paper. "Dear President Ambar, we are writing to you on a typewriter that is over 70 years old. This is a machine that we all know well. With it, we misspell words without the crutch of spell check or generative AI and we think intently about every phrase we pound out. As we force ourselves, for once, to slow down, we engage in a cognitive dialogue with ourselves. We do not seek perfection because we know that education is about the growing and challenging of our young minds' potential, not the chasing of institutional 'gold-star' approval. We do not believe that your so-called 'Year of AI Exploration; providing enterprise ChatGPT and Google Gemini subscriptions to every Oberlin student aligns with our college's founding principles. You claim that this year will be one of experimentation, not adoption. But even just one semester of accepted (encouraged even) chat bot use will jettison our student body down a lazy and irredeemable tunnel of intellectual destruction. We are a college grounded in learning and labor, which now risks straying from these rooted ideals. With ChatGPT at the helm, our emails, essays,and discussion posts will be generated for us, not by us. And let's not fool ourselves. This is precisely what these platforms will be used for by our busy, anxious student body. We see your vision for this year as.advancing the college's 'businessification'--an alarming trend also seen in the takeover of our beloved library cafe by a 'bookstore' with no books in stock and an app replacing customer service. In one instance, the college assumes we want efficiency at all costs through automated rather than hand pulled coffee. In the other lies the false belief that we simply desire to turn in an essay, regardless of how little we've written of it." there's more that doesn't fit in the 2000 character limit :(

OH MY HEART...the Oberlin Luddites Reject "The Year of AI Exploration"! 💚