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LibraryThingTim

@librarythingtim.bsky.social

1.4K followers 850 following 490 posts

LibraryThing founder. Father, hacker, bibliophile, ex-classicist, Mainer, Catholic. I tweet books, libraries, technology, culture. LibraryThing: @librarything.com

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · Jan 21

FWIW, I'm pretty damn proud of this work. Every percent improvement in the quality score was a struggle. There are some genuinely new ideas underneath here, but also a lot of experimenting, testing, tuning, and running things over and over!

LibraryThing @librarything.com · Jan 21

Talpa Search is BETTER! We've released a big upgrade to @LibraryThing's groundbreaking new library search, with significant advances on "What's that book?" benchmark searches. 🧵

Graph of Talpa Search quality improvements by weighted score on the "What's That Book?" benchmark. All books went from 75.8% to 91%. Older books went from 85.1% to 94.4%, recent (2023–2024) books from 66.5% to 87.5%.

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 23h

ChatGPT, which is basically the only chat bot normies use, dropped 70% when school got out. Education—mostly straight-up cheating, but it's a spectrum—is the main use of this technology for most people. And you don't think kids are using AI so much?

LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 23h

3 Even if there were no studies, are you talking to professors? Students using AI to do assignments is a HUGE problem right now. I'm sure there's a spectrum of use, but it's absolutely ubiquitous—and hugely destructive of educational goals.

LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 23h

2 Pew's second poll showed 53% of 18-29 (so including a lot of non-students!) are using "once a day or more." For this to be a problem, you really only need to use it a few times a semester. Broken down by education, it's straight up—the more education you have, the more you are using AI.

LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 23h

1 I'm baffled. There are quite a few polls and studies. Pew did two polls about this recently, finding 57% of ADULTS are using AI. That's all adults, many of whom have no particular use for it. Students are the biggest users—as can be seen in OpenAI's traffic stats every fall and spring.

LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 1d

Wait, do you imagine the number is less than 95% today?

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 2d

A modest proposal:

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 2d

IT COULD HAVE HAPPENED!

LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 2d

Since you can't play with it, lest you write a program to solve it, here's some more examples.

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 2d

Could scrapers write a program to solve it? Of course. But it would take a little time, and we're not worth it. Also, we have a whole slate of back-up strategies we can pull to make it much harder.

In the last ten minutes we've stopped 3 dozen IPs from hitting us over 2,000 times.

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 2d

I'm not taking ANY criticism about use of AI here. AI scrapers have been absolutely POUNDING the site for days!

Some rarities—Anna Comnena (Byzantine historian), Joyce with a Tasmanian tiger pup [sob!], Dickinson with a banana slug, and Enheduana (Sumerian poet and first named author in history)

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 2d

In case you need some help.

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 2d

LibraryThing's @librarycat.org is battling AI scrapers, so we build a unique cat- and literary-themed captcha.

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 12d

But, yeah, if you got into tech for the paycheck, are afraid of risk, and don't find it fun, sorry. I wouldn't want to hire you either. Go to Law School.

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 12d

Programming goes up and down, but it remains a high-paying job for halfway smart people, like being a doctor or a lawyer, but with far less training and a better quality of life. Best of all you can strike out on your own and start or join some startup. And it's FUN!
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/p...

Big Tech Told Kids to Code. The Jobs Didn’t Follow.

www.nytimes.com

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 12d

I gather classical Arabic had quantitative meter too, and Persian picked it up from Arabic, and neither have it today. Again, a pattern. Why?

LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 12d

Is this just another thing that happens to IE over time, like case loss and stronger word order? If so, why, and how did it start otherwise and also go on for 2-3k+ years?

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 12d

Linguistics question: Why do Latin, Greek and Sanskrit have meter based on vowel length, not stressed and unstressed syllables, but no modern (or even Medieval) language kept that?

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Reposted by LibraryThingTim

michael röbbins @alienvsrobbins.bsky.social · 15d

repeating the phrase "full books" as I slam my head against my desk until I pass out

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 14d

The publisher himself earns $20k—and every year his family foundation bails it out. The literary and intellectual world of Harper's is almost gone now, and pretending it's a normal business that pays normal salaries will only make it die sooner. The job here is not a great injustice.

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 14d

Super-unpopular opinion: High-prestige publishing has always relied on the underpaid labor of trust-fund babies, trading low wages they don't need for a little cultural clout. Harper's is an extreme case. It's not Random House, but a non-profit. (cont'd)

Adam Morgan @thefrontlist.org · 15d

Harper's is hiring an assistant editor at $40,000/year and you have to live in NYC...

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 15d

2/6 I'd like to think it's us—that LibraryThing is an oasis of healthy social interaction in a desert of loneliness, exploitation and the amplification of our worst selves. I do believe that, but I think there's something else going on.

LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 17d

I drink Barry's. Erin go bragh!

LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 17d

The great thing about LibraryThing being around so long? If we ever need to age-verify we can just say "Look they've had the account since 2005. How old do you think they are?"

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LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 21d

One of the first pages on LibraryThing.

LibraryThingTim @librarythingtim.bsky.social · 21d

Update: Oh dear, it looks rather broken. Seems close-to abandoned. I wrote them to see if I can help. The tea/book crossover is STRONG!

(My favorites are Lapsang Souchong for special occasions and Barry's for everyday use.)

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