I had a dream last night that I was telling a colleague about this post.
Chris Bourg on The Neoliberal Library: Resistance is not futile
Category: Uncategorized
February giving 2016: Girl Scouts of the USA
For 2016, I pledged to give to something I like every month. This month, I am making a donation to the Girl Scouts of the USA.
More that just a delivery system between cookies and my mouth, the Girl Scouts have made significant additions to their mission and advocacy efforts over the few years, including building support systems for girls who want to progress in STEM and entrepreneurship fields and providing a welcoming community for the LGBT and trans community. On top of all that, their Oscar appearance was the highlight of the event.
February 30-day challenge: #selfielove
For this month’s 30-day challenge I wanted to see what it would feel like to take at least 3 selfies a week. It was a pleasant experience and while I admit I got a small self-esteem boost from planning out my selfie each day, I’d much rather take photos of my kids. Here are some of the results!
I would be perfectly fine with getting rid of email
“Email, as a technology, is not intrinsically bad. But the unstructured workflow it engenders is disastrous. We need to fix it.”
Source: Harvard Business Review
That didn’t take long
Aletheia: Where is M’s birthday party?
Me: It’s in Beverly Hills.
Aletheia: Is it far away?
Me: Not too far.
Aletheia: There will be traffic?
[Oh dear, Los Angeles has her now.]
The violence of the mob
I am less concerned about the perils of government surveillance than I am with the cruelty we as netizens inflict upon each other. The recent case of Suey Park is a good example. Criticism and dissent are to be expected, but doxxing and death threats are unnecessarily extreme and juvenile.
Somewhat related is Jon Ronson’s Ted talk on out-of-control Twitter shaming. No one should ever have to utter the words “tweet” and “ruined life” in the same breath.
I taught Aletheia that salamanders like wet, dark places. So now she keeps looking for bugs, etc. so she can put them “in the dark place.”
We just taught Aletheia her first syllogism: Prince Hans is bad. Duke is like Prince Hans. Duke is bad. Aletheia also just learned the name “rat face.”
This isn’t a library problem for libraries to solve
The Open Access Network is an ambitious project that plans to create a sustainable business model of OA publishing in the humanities and social sciences through collaboration. Be still my heart. (h/t Barbara Fister)
More on the death of the internet
Again, the internet today isn’t what I hoped it would be 10 year ago. From the always on point Jessamyn West:
“Maybe it really wasn’t us, it was them. Most days it’s hard to remember what we saw in Google. Why did we think we’d make good partners?”
I used to believe that the web contained the response to a promise of access-for-all, but not longer. As Andy Baio noted over a year ago:
“As it turns out, organizing the world’s information isn’t always profitable. Projects that preserve the past for the public good aren’t really a big profit center. Old Google knew that, but didn’t seem to care.”
If you need me, I’ll be wandering the stacks of the Internet Archive.