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Reposted by Sarah Barrett

jason grinblat @jfg.land · 1h

Anna Tsing really cooked here

(from The Mushroom at the End of the World)

Excerpt from Anna Tsing's "The Mushroom at the End of the World"

"What we have is mushrooms, that is, fruiting bodies of underground fungi. The fungi require the traffic of the commons to flourish; no mushrooms emerge without forest disturbance. The privately owned mushroom is an offshoot from a communally living underground body, a body forged through the possibilities of latent commons, human and not human. That it is possible to cordon off the mushroom as an asset without taking its underground commons into account is both the ordinary way with privatization and a quite extraordinary outrage, when you stop to think about it. The contrast between private mushrooms and fungi-forming forest traffic might be an emblem for commoditization more generally: the continual, never-finished cutting off of entanglement."

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Reposted by Sarah Barrett

Jane Ruffino @janeruffino.bsky.social · 4h

I’m not saying maritime security doesn’t matter, but a lot of the most important investments are mundane things, like investing in education so there are enough skilled repair techs, securing working conditions for seafarers, smooth permitting processes, a fair regulatory environment, etc

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Kat King @katalogofchaos.bsky.social · 4h

hot take: "philosophical stuff and therapy" are more serious than your work deliverables

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · Aug 5

You're so close

r/ChatGPTPro
u/vurto • 28d
If ChatGPT is not consistently dependable, how are we suppose to use it for actual work?
Discussion
It's behavior and results can randomly change due to some OpenAl tweaking that's opaque.
On some days it can't even keep track of a fresh chat, it can't do calculations, it can't sort through a chat to extract relevant information, and when it's suppose to refer to source material in a PDF, it doesn't.
All because OpenAl trained it for fluency and basically to simulate whatever it can for user satisfaction.
I can use it for general chats, philosophical stuff, therapy, but nothing serious. I'm pro Al, but I approach it with skepticism knowing it's undependable (as I do with anything I read).
And prompts can be interpreted/executed differently across users' own interaction with their Als so it's not truly scalable.
How does the business world / leaders expect staff to adopt Al if it's not consistently dependable? It doesn't even calculate like a calculator. If the internet start claiming 2+2=5, that's what it'll answer with.
I'd use it for hobbies and pet projects but I can't imagine using it for anything "mission critical".

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 18h

I know her! I took collection development from Helene.

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Ryan Packer @typewriteralley.bsky.social · 20h

I love Capitol Hill.

A garbage can has art plastered on it, a prehistoric scene with featuring a wooly mammoth. It reads: "Meanwhile 12,600 years ago...in the Pleistocene epoch!"

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 19h

That’s not universal. @yvonnezlam.bsky.social was posting about the context in which you are professionalized shaping you, and that‘s very much at play in library school. There’s no asking “who cares?” without the implicit answer that “we do,“ in that education.

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 19h

Why do we need to have this course in an LIS program, when we already have it in an information management program? One reason is that LIS students keep enrolling in that one and dropping it right away, it‘s not working pedagogically. But also, I think you can start from a presupposition of care.

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 19h

A big part of the question for this syllabus (which is still just an idea and not officially happening yet) is, what can a Library and Information Science background bring to IA? How can you approach it if you have that theoretical, ethical, historical etc. framework behind you?

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dorian @doriantaylor.com · 23h

this (and what follows it) is a profound insight

𝕍∃, Cyber closed shell syndrome relief fund coordinator @vortexegg.com · 23h

Computer software is also a symbol-generation industry and not an information profession

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Erica C. Barnett @ericacbarnett.bsky.social · 1d

Reversing Decision, SPD Removes Controversial Captain Tietjen from East Precinct

Police Chief Shon Barnes blamed PubliCola's story, "internal leaks," and "a lack of comprehensive input" from others for the controversy.

publicola.com/2025/10/09/r...

Reversing Decision, SPD Removes Controversial Captain Tietjen from East Precinct - PubliCola

By Erica C. Barnett Two days after PubliCola exclusively reported that Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes had promoted controversial police…

publicola.com

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 1d

I’m thinking about a new IA syllabus, and this article is extremely helpful in organizing my thoughts. There are all kinds of things that could be hung off it: Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ maintenance manifesto, Deb Chachra’s How Infrastructure Works, Tim Ingold’s “Temporality of the Landscape”

bianca wylie @biancawylie.com · 1d

"What is needed now is not more big ideas or breakthrough products. It is repair. Design as repair means paying attention to what is already in motion." - @ronbronson.com

blog.ronbronson.com/design-as-re...

Design As Repair - Ron Bronson | Ron Bronson

Note: These are the prepared remarks I wrote for my talk at IxDA Oslo. In the end, I spoke more extemporaneously, but I thought at least I could

blog.ronbronson.com

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 1d

As an instructor, I'd rather see your fever dream, No Doze-fueled 4AM essays written at an IHOP rather than anything generated by an LLM.

Hope this helps

Dane 🔜 NYCC AA L-34 @monkeyminion.com · 1d

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

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 1d

honestly, I looked and i think this is just on them.

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Ryan Packer @typewriteralley.bsky.social · 2d

Uptown and North Downtown need a library. Eastlake needs a library. Georgetown needs a library. Madison Valley/Park needs a library. Alaska Junction needs a library. Ballard needs more than one library.

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 2d

Have you seen the “Baby You Knock Me Out” number from It’s Always Fair Weather? It’s not a great movie, but it’s my all time favorite of her performances
youtu.be/W9H5b6Dj4bE?...

Cyd Charisse performs Baby You Knock Me Out in IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER | Mad About Musicals | TCM

YouTube video by Turner Classic Movies

youtu.be

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Trond Hjorteland @trond.hjorteland.com · 3d

Suspect many will get a hands-on experience of what the ironies of automation is all about with all this LLM assisted coding.

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neongrey @neongrey.bsky.social · 4d

all discourse aside, there is one machine with consciousness. it's printers. they are alive and conscious and they hate you and they'd take your arm clean off if you let them. never trust a printer.

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 3d

Maybe even a good use case for a voice note

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 3d

“Made perfect sense to me. And when I brought it up to Stephen Sondheim, he said, ‘Elaine, I have to go to the bathroom.’”

Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 3d

"That is, in fact, not what happened to Ophelia."

A personal gripe I have is that the first song on the album (which seems like it's meant to be the lead single), "The Fate of Ophelia," does not seem to have any understanding of Hamlet. Swift admitted in a BBC radio interview with Greg James that she "didn't really need to reread [Hamlet]. I wanted to sprinkle some references in the bridge, so like the the bridge references kind of some paraphrasing of some lines from Hamlet, so I did like do a little brushup. But I just love the idea that like, You saved me from love driving me mad, right?
'Cause that's what happened to Ophelia. Spoiler alert."

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 4d

When I brought this up at Microsoft, just as a hypothetical, “What if we’re wrong?“ The response was, “you don’t actually think that, do you?” Not an answer.

And the thing is, that’s a pretty essential question to ask about things, even things you’re confident about or firmly believe in.

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 4d

There are two questions I ask people making a product bet:
1) How will you know if you were wrong?
2) What can you do if you're wrong?

The answers for a bad bet are "we won't" and "nothing."

And that's exactly what big tech is doing: rushing forward with eyes closed and fingers in their ears.

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 4d

"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 4d

pictured: gemini, claude, sora, grok, llama, magistral, terminus, and qwen

screenshot from arrested development of the Alliance of Magicians standing on steps holding a sign that says "We demand to be taken seriously"

they look pretty silly in a variety of costumes from wizard with a pointy hat to like 18th century posh guy in a cloak

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 4d

Is it a reference to the Trojan War being long? It went on for ten years, but the Iliad itself takes place over the last six weeks or so of that war, bringing it to a conclusion.

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 4d

Ok, this is not remotely the most important point in this good article, but I cannot get over Amazon calling an interminable task “the Iliad flow.“ Like. Did they confuse it with the Odyssey? Is the main thing they know about the Iliad that it’s a long poem?

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 5d

Big tech is laying off user researchers in droves, because it believes that coercing its customers is more profitable than silly things like "making good products people want to buy."

But now the FAFO pendulum is coming around, with Amazon's $2.5B dark pattern settlement and #a11y lawsuits galore.

UX so bad that it's illegal

Big tech is divesting from user-centered design, and getting into hot water with the law.

productpicnic.beehiiv.com

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👻madeline boOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 5d

There’s a secret underground room at the Bodleian Library where they were installing a new boiler system and the old one was too hard to remove so they just bricked up the entire room and then dug a new underground room somewhere else

Nicole Guenther Discenza @ndiscenza1.bsky.social · 5d

The same addition had a water heater closet built around the water heater—stop me if I've told you this one before. It was a holiday weekend when the heater went, and the plumber couldn't remove the busted one
He installed a new, smaller one and pushed the old one to one side.

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Sarah Barrett @documentalope.bsky.social · 4d

oh my GOD. Going straight into my folder of examples for talks

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