Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them)
@bookjockeyalex.bsky.social
13K followers 530 following 12K posts
librarian, archivist, historian, author, Ignyte award-winning & Hugo-nominated writer and critic, rat obsessive, hella queer words in reactormag.com, locusmag.com, npr, reader's digest, and elsewhere bookjockeyalex.com
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bookjockeyalex.bsky.social
Greetings new followers! I'm a high school librarian and book critic specializing in speculative fiction. I'm also a historian and archivist who has written two books on marginalized history in California. Also do some sensitivity/authenticity reading. Link in profile.
bookshop.org/shop/bookjoc...
Alexandria Brown Bookshop
A queer Black librarian, local historian, writer, and author. They write about speculative fiction and young adult literature for Tor.com and Locus Magazine, as well as on their blog, bookjockeyalex.c...
bookshop.org
Reposted by Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them)
mostlybree.kitrocha.com
it really has been amazing how much one person in a frog suit destroyed their fantasy visuals over the past week. this wouldn't work everywhere but Portland, you are doing amazing sweetie
Reposted by Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them)
bookjockeyalex.bsky.social
That was pretty much how I wrote my second thesis (up at 4a to write until 8, then job, then second job, then freelance job, then thesis until I fell asleep, every day for months) and my first 2 books. At 42, I definitely can't do that anymore.
bookjockeyalex.bsky.social
For my 2 masters degrees, same last minute panic writing, but at least I had the internet.
bookjockeyalex.bsky.social
In college I routinely cranked out 10-20pg papers the night before they were due (neurodivergent, major procrastinator) by drinking my body weight in coffee and holing up in the computer lab or locking myself in my dorm room with my laptop. No internet, just reserve books we stole from the library.
Reposted by Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them)
mostlybree.kitrocha.com
the quotes proving once again that bluesky dot com is where the neurodivergents with procrastination issues hang out
monkeyminion.com
I wrote a 15 page report on heraldic symbolism in medieval armor and weapon design for my art history class the night before it was due (8am class). Made up 90% of it (only found one book for reference) and got an A. GenAI could fucking never.
wrote 20 pages on Faulkner's The Bear four hours before final papers were due on trucker pills and coffee and cigarettes and got an A, fuck you.
You people couldn't hang with real slackers.
finn
wokeupchic • 4d
It's fuck Al till your homework due in 25 minutes
bookjockeyalex.bsky.social
What I'm reading:

53) Bandigoat: a Collection of Strange & Horrible Tales edited by Rakesh Khanna - kickstarter, speculative short stories from Indian authors
The book cover, featuring a creature with the body of a raccoon, the tail of a snake, and the head of a goat.
Reposted by Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them)
Reposted by Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them)
diplomatofnight.com
Netanyahu's mouthpiece, Amit Segal, casually admits on Twitter that his country has been holding 1,700 people from Gaza hostage, including children.
Among other things, according to the decision:

- 250 security prisoners will be released.  
- 1,700 residents of the Gaza Strip who were not involved in the events of October 7 and were arrested after the massacre will be released.  
- 22 minors under the age of 18, residents of the Gaza Strip who were not involved in the events of October 7 and were arrested after the massacre, will be released.  
- 360 bodies of terrorists will be returned.
Reposted by Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them)
donmoyn.bsky.social
Two points:
1) for all the talk of restoring merit, in many cases we are seeing highly qualified people replaced by less qualified White people.
2) Trump and allies have made it harder and harder to explain to students why this is happening.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/u...
Reposted by Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them)
tedmccormick.bsky.social
This also indicates the essential dishonesty of saying “it’s just a tool.” A hammer is a tool. Nobody writes about the “inevitability” of hammers. Nobody has ever studied the harmful effects of hammers on learning and concluded that teachers must all hit their students with hammers “responsibly.”
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tedmccormick.bsky.social
It is also remarkable how far what is essentially advertising copy has penetrated into ostensibly neutral, scholarly contextualizations even of critical studies — rote invocations of AI’s “power,” “potential,” and ubiquity, untethered to any specific sources or data, are just background noise now.
Reposted by Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them)
tedmccormick.bsky.social
Imagine studying a technology whose presence in the classroom is so detrimental to the development of writing and research skills (including even the will to know the sources behind claims!) that mitigating its effects becomes a central goal of course design, and concluding with tips on adopting it.
bookjockeyalex.bsky.social
Every critical article on AI edtech is like this. We don't need to justify using something that is actively harmful!
tedmccormick.bsky.social
A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.
Reposted by Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them)
loudpoet.com
Kindle integration with Overdrive was bad enough, letting them into distribution is a death wish. #cmonson

"Since many libraries already use Amazon to buy a range of goods and service, it has now developed the capabilities to allow libraries to buy books."

www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...
Libraries Look to Fill the Gap Left by Baker & Taylor
With the closure of country’s largest library wholesaler now underway, librarians are searching for new options as Ingram, Bookazine, and even Amazon make their play to court B&T customers left in the...
www.publishersweekly.com
Reposted by Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them)
cheryllynneaton.bsky.social
Trans rights are civil rights. If you aren't willing to die on the hill of trans rights, then you aren't willing to die on the hill of Black rights. Of Jewish rights. Of disabled rights. Of gay rights. Of anyone's rights. Human rights.
talleststone.bsky.social
I hate to say it but the majority of the country is not going to die on the hill of trans rights. We can’t protect ANY groups if we can’t win a national election, so purity tests only serve to make specific groups feel triumphant. That’s not “erasing” them; it’s long-horizon strategy.
bookjockeyalex.bsky.social
If Blumhouse doesn't give a shit about their creative output, if all they care about is feeding slop to the masses, then I don't care about Blumhouse. There are other production companies I can give my money and eyeballs to.
danmcdaid.bsky.social
Blum too. At least find a new way to say "it's here to stay" jfc
Reposted by Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them)
ouinne.bsky.social
The only correct take on a fundamentally anti-human technology.
Screenshot of David Simon interview 
SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.