THEY VOTED TO RESTORE THE IMLS FUNDING. This isn't the end. It's nowhere near the end. But the House and Senate subcommittees voted to restore the IMLS in their budget markups. Full House budget markup is tomorrow.
Libraries, software, math, Latin, nonprofit governance, weightlifting, knitting, singing, my cats, Somerville (MA), planes planes planes. Hi! đź‘‹ Skybrarians feed: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:a55ia2ojiv2cnshifmrc7wr6/feed/skybrarians
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THEY VOTED TO RESTORE THE IMLS FUNDING. This isn't the end. It's nowhere near the end. But the House and Senate subcommittees voted to restore the IMLS in their budget markups. Full House budget markup is tomorrow.
Ada Lovelace’s writing is actually a window into a whole other world - yeah, STEM genius stuff, but also written in passionate, romantic, and, yes, poetic style. Her father’s daughter with a Vulcan coat of paint.
And that his daughter’s mom was so insistent she be Not Byron that she engaged the very best math tutors to make her a rational queen and she ended up inventing programming even though computers hadn’t been invented yet
but like...you get that that's hugely problematic, right. like incredibly biased in favor of people who are already in the same social network as the hiring manager and/or who read unwritten rules, which in turn means biased AGAINST diversity & neurodivergence
because your options here are: 1) have a computer do the first sort (the computer is definitely going to be kinda bad at this, and miss real talent phrased "wrong"); 2) have a human do it, except you need twice as many humans as you used to ($$$) /fin
Bullet point 3 MAY be the same as 2 but also the LLM arms race has made it genuinely hard to find the talent. Our last pre-chatgpt dev hire in my team got 400 applicants and the first post got twice that many, with the margin being ALL AI SLOP. this is terribly hard to sort through 1/
I did notice a lot of 3+ kid families when I was teaching prep school, so maybe "being rich enough to own a fancy-suburb house + Nantucket summer home + still send your kids to prep school" works? not sure how you achieve that en masse as a matter of public policy though
For context, let me drop some history about the North Carolina Central University School of Law Because the history makes it easy to understand why this is happening
My toxic trait is referring to a single onigiri as an onigirus
what derpy majesty
/2 SALLY: Bluesky. It can be a happy place. An exciting place. A popular place. [CLOSE UP ON SALLY’S FACE] But every day, for some pundits, it is not a safe place. [A TEAR FORMS IN SALLY’S EYE] [VOICE IN BACKGROUND] Jesse Singal. Bari Weiss. Richard Hanania.
Dick Grayson debuted as Robin in April 1940, became Nightwing July 1984, so June 2028 will mark the dickquinox, the exact point he was Robin and Nightwing for the same amount of time.
I don't get how people don't realize that a technology that replaces junior and entry level positions in a field destroys that field. There's no skipping steps. You have to be a junior before you can be a senior, and if you don't have senior people, you don't have a field.
Saw someone with powder blue drawstring pants and a matching crop top, thought for a moment it was scrubs, was DEEPLY baffled as to why crop top scrubs would be a thing
People are melting down at a Tribune article about CHSD 230 considering adding Arabic to its language learning electives. I wasted time in the comments, which I normally avoid doing since it's useless and awful, but it led to possibly the funniest thing anybody's ever said to me about France.
I live in such a city and back in the day this one LiveJournal group was IT
The back of the Universal Hub Action News Laptop.
I also love the rest of them
Omg that anthropomorphic marshmallow of an LNG storage tower, I love it
my sister googled "fun things to do in Boston this weekend" and it told her to go sit on Storrow Drive and watch a bunch of college kids peel their rented Penske moving trucks open like tin cans
why can't the democrat messaging on trans people be "no, we are not going to force children to undergo genital inspections in order to play sports"
This is honestly fascinating - dissecting vibes into the incredibly concrete - and people should be using it as a discussion starter in writing classes
Much like "crab", industrial music is constantly re-evolving from first principles basically anywhere where there's a bunch of metal and plastic laying about
I miss this about planes not having WiFi
See, we got exactly that for our kid when she was old enough to go to the park by herself, and then like 6 years later when our friends’ kids were that age, that part of the market had been replaced with kiddie snartwatches
At the same time I have zero problem with “put your phone in this basket in my desk when you enter the classroom, pick it up when you leave” (possibly the basket is a desk drawer that gets zero signal)
So like. I hate it but I really wanted mine to have a smartphone when I got her first one, because that was when we let her ride the MBTA solo, and we also wanted her to have schedules and maps :/ (Luckily my kid is like ONE MILLION times less distractible and social-media-inclined than, uh, me)
Speaking of bras, people who wear any non-standard clothing — petites, longs, especially plus size — know that this all went online ten years ago. The tax for not being 5”7, 122 lbs, short of torso, long of leg, flat of stomach is about to hit us hard.
Judge Sooknanan: As I said at the start of this hearing, I got a call at 2:36 am [last night] because the government chose the wee hours of the morning on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend to execute a plan to move these children. That's why we're here.
Sooknanan explains the circumstances of how/when she got the case. First got a call around 2 am last night, entered TRO and set hearing. Moved up hearing after receiving call from plaintiffs to notify her that children were in process of being removed. Then entered new TRO for putative class.
DEVELOPING: Advocates are seeking a court order to block the Trump administration’s effort to deport hundreds of unaccompanied minor children to Guatemala. Judge abruptly moved 3 pm hearing up to 12:30 after she was notified that some children “are in the process of being removed" today.
If I see ICE at my polling place I am going to keep right on being the warden of my precinct, following our election procedures TO THE LETTER. If voting didn't matter they wouldn't be trying to take it away from you.
honestly this DOES make me feel relaxed
Medical science: Ahaha we have invented tens of thousands of life improving and saving medications ahaha we are unstoppable Grapefruit:
third time I've seen that jump scare and I still jump
Headed to the local theater to watch the Jaws 50th on a proper screen. You know what this means? They really WILL get a bigger boat!
I can
as a former Latin teacher I think 15% is considerably understating it, but I understand this is field-dependent
Concerned that we are losing the necessary ratio. 15% of teachers/faculty should be irretrievably strange eccentrics. Every learning experience should have some element where in later life you can reflect with former classmates about how bizarre at least one (1) class per year was.
I’m nerdy enough to remember that Milton Friedman was a big UBI guy
One of the only safety program that absolutely cannot be replaced with cash is free school lunches. Direct-to-child aid should pass through parents’ hands only when absolutely necessary.
One of the first times I ever converted my father (silent gen!) on a policy position was when he complained about this exact thing, and I said the government would waste less money by cutting everyone over 65 a flat check. Means testing is a huge money sink!
Kind of obsessed with this @20k.bsky.social ep where host Dallas Taylor finds and interviews a bunch of people with the same first & last name (uncommon enough you don’t find others without looking, common enough you can): www.20k.org/episodes/5-o... Poetic and also totally outside my experience.
people everywhere are standing up and fighting back. sometimes in hilarious ways
With O'Neill (apparently) taking over CDC (if they ever get around to firing Monarez), I think it's worth looking back to Project 2025 and asking what they actually intend to *do* to CDC. So, I went to remind myself today. Here's what's in store:
Them: “Cities are all rotting hellscapes!” Cities:
đź‘‹
ok, the fact that you went deep enough to namecheck Byrd here really lends credibility to the reporting for me (I grew up in Morgantown, and now live in greater Boston, where we're Globe subscribers, because of stuff like this)
For months, the @bostonglobe.com DC Bureau has been traveling the country, documenting the impacts that Trump administration DOGE funding cuts are having on Americans in all facets of life. We found the cuts had ripple effects, not all of them obvious at first blush. Thread:
miriam are you looking this trojena gift horse in the mouth
you are 100% correct, and the problem with the safety data submitted in their FDA application was that it was lies
oh dang you could do the very lightest reskin of Lasers & Feelings and get here
can a one-page-RPG designer please whip up this setting & containing exactly these two character classes, thx
This inspires the Kefauver–Harris Amendment, which adds "...and efficacy" to the FDA's remit. Yet after all of that she is finally cool to her teenage daughters when she receives the federal government's highest civilian award from their heartthrob, President John F. Kennedy. /fin
She delays the application long enough that reports start coming in from around the world that maybe, possibly, thalidomide is not what everyone hoped it would be. That's why it was never approved in the US. Uncountable babies spared from severe birth defects and prenatal death. 8/
So she does the only thing she CAN do, which is let it sit on her desk until one day shy of the approval deadline and then send a request for additional data. Lather, rinse, repeat. Her boss gets pretty annoyed at her. But she's our independent-minded saint of bureaucracy and does not care. 7/
So there Dr. Dr. Kelsey is at her desk when she gets an application for US approval of this morning sickness drug that's been super popular internationally. And she notices that some of the names on the application are the same ones that showed up on super dodgy papers she saw as an editor. Hmmmm 6/
It is worth noting in this connection that the current #1 or 2 (who knows!) at CDC thinks that FDA drug approval should be after phase I clinical trials (the ones that verify only safety, not efficacy). (www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/30/1... ) Anyway, moving right along 5/
A thing you need to know about the FDA at this time is that it had almost no power. At the time, all applications were automatically approved within a short deadline assuming the paperwork was in order, and the FDA only had the authority to regulate safety, not efficacy. 4/
So there she is a few years later, Dr. Dr. Kelsey MD/PhD, University of Chicago faculty member. She and her husband both have pretty high-powered careers, the kind you move around for, so she ultimately ends up in DC. Spends a while as a medical journal editor. Ends up at FDA. 3/
But there she was, so she got her PhD. Married an American, settled in Chicago, had a couple kids, and was bored being at home with toddlers so, like you do, she went to medical school. wait, nobody goes to medical school because toddlers just aren't keeping them busy enough. except her 2/
Seems like a good time to retell the story of Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey. Born in rural Canada in 1914, she graduated from high school at 15, got a bachelor's and a master's in pharmacology, and applied to PhD programs. She got in, reputedly because her advisor didn't realize FrancEs is a woman... 🧵
My husband points out there is open-air drug dealing, in that there is a Cinnabon kiosk
Here’s the link to comment on the rule. Please do comment. They can make a difference in litigation. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
These are exactly the kinds of students we should be hoovering up and then convincing to stay and work/found their companies here. Even Trump has said so. But this is what happens when you outsource your immigration policy to Stephen Miller, who hates immigrants more than he loves America.
As an occasional South Station Enjoyer the only time I’ve ever been concerned is St. Patrick’s Day and somehow I don’t think drunk white boys are really their remit
it's like....the middle of the night there! Tomorrow! Wow.
Today, over 1M learners in 1,400+ prisons and jails worldwide have access to #JSTOR. This milestone is made possible by the JSTOR Access in Prison initiative. Explore its 18-year history and future vision in our 30th anniversary blog: https://bit.ly/3JBh1QI
CDC employees walked out in show of support for their pushed out leaders, chanting "USA not RFK." Livestream here: www.instagram.com/firedbutfigh...
I am lightly horrified by how many people have now looked up their books and found out their publishers (who often were required contractually!!!!) just... didn't register the copyrights on books. Not all of them! Just sporadically! This is not just one publisher, I've seen all the big ones now.
i think it is because for a lot of, say, Harvard students, the worst possible imaginable outcome is that someone might be mean to you, so norms of civil debate suffice to protect against your threat model this is not everybody's threat model
After 22 years, Typepad is shutting down with one month's notice. Go back up your old blogs, old-school blogger friends. everything.typepad.com/blog/2025/08...
It's important to note here that we're not just talking about faculty & university staff. 100s of U.S. colleges are in towns or small cities where they form the major industry & lifeblood of the community. Loss of students -> loss of rent $, restaurant $, bars, bookstores, gaming stores...
Anyway Florida's interlibrary loan delivery service ends October 1. That's in a month. Call your representatives in Congress if you don't want this to happen.
NEW: After numerous tragedies, OpenAI says it's scanning users' conversations, escalating to human readers, and contacting law enforcement where necessary futurism.com/openai-scann...
John Clark had more time in libraries than most degreed librarians, and he knew the statistics as well as any of them, but he still didn't like how goddamn many meetings were on his calendar, seriously, what the fuck, people
But who am I to stifle your joy
I was assuming there was some kinda crazy Ivan situation, like Marie Kondo always rolls socks counterclockwise in the bottom of the hour or something
I was going to ruin a book with Tom Clancy's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but then I realized that if your sock drawer does not give you joy so you torpedo it, that's actually awesome
Ruin a book by adding Tom Clancy's to the title Tom Clancy's The Feminine Mystique
do you need someone who is EXTREMELY good at making plans, because my gap-year 18yo is jobhunting
You know, I actually do not think I can relate to that
....WHAT
Hey, I have had some questions about who is allowed to file. Here is the class certification:
lol
ooh, I haven't thought about that in a while but it WAS fun and I AM feeling distractible...
I have also had this conversation and anyway she’s appreciating being divorced
omg trawling through course data records I just found a "Princ of MacRoeconomics" aye, ye lads and lassies, some daft grammar checker thought this was of of the clans & fixed it!
grateful for this empirical investigation of the indictability of ham sandwiches
Oooooh, maybe i should read it
Honestly I’d rather have them picking up trash than essentially anything else they could be doing (other than, you know. Not being there at all). Picking up trash is at least useful to everyone.
Hate to be callous, but- welcome to being Native. You live your entire life with the fact that 99% of everyone in the US, including yourself probably, is blood-related to people who burned your nation to the ground to get land and gold, and you just have to *live* with that.
(thinks about costs of specialty care our family has received) ….this is extremely true
watching that happen at the same time as but with much more "success" than attacks on other university presidents (e.g. MIT's female but white one) was ... telling
we definitely have _charities_ of that nature, but I have not seen insurance products! Interesting.
Right?? I've seen people criticizing AOC for talking a big game but almost always voting with Dems but at the same time y'all...how do you think she KEEPS power in Congress without knowing how to play...? Love the talk but also don't really want the Bernie "I never actually get anything done" sitch
idk man. If I had billionaire money I would have a whole advisory team telling me how to be making a meteorically glorious pain in the ass of myself at this moment, but that is, I suppose, precisely why I do not have billionaire money. /fin(again)
Which is VERY WEIRD to me to watch - people with just enormous power triangulating how best to toady up. But of course the people the system has benefited the most are also the ones with the most invested in maintaining it (a lesson that working at an Ivy *really drove home*). 7/
But of course most people who have amassed billionare money did so in part by knowing very keenly on which side their bread was buttered, so they do not temperamentally lean that way. 6/
As is always the case I have more thoughts after the "fin"! Yeah so I think part of what's great about Pritzker in this moment is, coming from Old Billionaire Money as he does, he is aware that he has a Certain Capacity to đź–• the hierarchy and still maintain power 5/