Below are posts associated with the “link” type.
🔗 linkblog: State Education Department Seeks Bids for 55,000 Classroom Bibles - Oklahoma Watch'
This makes a bad story even worse. What a joke.
🔗 linkblog: Big Tech’s Promise Never To Block Access To Politically Embarrassing Content Apparently Only Applies To Democrats'
Worth reading (and bookmarking). I’ve been hesitant to make the “no, actually, Big Tech is biased against liberals” argument, but this seems a compelling datum for that conclusion…
🔗 linkblog: Trump condemned for suggesting ‘one really violent day’ to combat crime'
How is this guy a legitimate candidate?
🔗 linkblog: More academic publishers are doing AI deals'
I keep thinking about the similarity of exploitation of academic labor by publishers to the exploitation of everyone’s labor by AI companies, and stories like this just make it more clear.
🔗 linkblog: If WordPress is to survive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed'
I teach WordPress, and I guess I should be covering this this semester. I’ve been avoiding reading about recent drama at Automattic, but if this is a taste of it, wow, wow, wow.
🔗 linkblog: Rep. Clay Higgins Posts, Then Deletes, Racist Comments About Haitians'
Posting this as a bookmark. It’s mindboggling how overtly racist this is—and how much work the GOP will do to dismiss it as nothing. I want to be able to return back to this in the weeks and months to come, to remind myself and others just how bad things are. gift link
🔗 linkblog: I Love My Kids, But I Sometimes Regret Having Them - The Rev. Dev.'
It is hard to have honest conversations about the difficulty of parenting: Even in reading this post, I tensed up, because these are things you aren’t supposed to say. I’m glad someone was vulnerable enough to write this.
🔗 linkblog: Going the Distance at the Tram Driver Olympics'
I had never heard of the tram driver Olympics before, and I love it. [gift link]
🔗 linkblog: Haitian immigrants helped revive a struggling Ohio town. Then neo-Nazis turned up'
Taking cues from neo-Nazis is a great look for the GOP ticket.
🔗 linkblog: A day in Elon Musk’s mind: 145 tweets with election conspiracies and emojis'
24 hours on Elon’s Twitter feed is a great idea for a story, and I’m glad someone did it!
🔗 linkblog: How Memphis became a battleground over Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer'
Who benefits from AI? Who doesn’t?
🔗 linkblog: Big publishers think libraries are the enemy'
A good take by Molly White. I remember when I stopped thinking about ebooks in terms of screens (as opposed to paper) and started thinking about them in terms of DRM (as opposed to free use). DRM helps the already powerful at the expense of everything else, and I want to do more to push back against it.
🔗 linkblog: What Musk's Twitter takeover could tell us about a possible government appointment'
I’m currently reading Extremely Hardcore and can’t wait to read Character Limit. The Twitter purchase alone ought to dismiss any serious ideas that Musk could do this kind of work.
🔗 linkblog: Father of Ohio boy, 11, tells Trump and Vance to stop using son’s death for ‘political gain’'
Good for the dad, and shame on the politicians being this terrible.
🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk Threatens to Impregnate Taylor Swift'
Can something be shocking but not surprising? I’ve been thinking about this all day and still can’t believe it’s real.
🔗 linkblog: Fayette County schools leaving X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter'
Wish it were for more principled reasons, but I’ll take it.
🔗 linkblog: 750 | What’s Brewing | Wasatch Front | Part II'
I’m bookmarking this episode for later because it does a better job than I’ve ever heard of talking about how messy and complex and difficult it can be to have Mormon roots in Community of Christ—and it doesn’t even get into some of the “outside Utah” vs. “in Utah” dynamics that I personally think get overlooked.
🔗 linkblog: People are paying 'Strava mules' to do their runs for them, but why?
This is a take on digital labor and datafication that I can honestly say I never expected.
🔗 linkblog: College Grades Have Become a Charade. It's Time To Abolish Them. - Slashdot'
I really ought to read the original piece instead of just the Slashdot excerpt, but I tried that, and it just made me even more angry, and I don’t think it would change my response.
I’m not opposed to doing away with grades, but I’m not convinced by hand-wringing about grade inflation. Grades do need to be meaningful to be useful, but the idea that As need to be reserved for an elite few speaks less to meritocracy (referenced in the full piece) than to a need for an elite.
🔗 linkblog: Second Circuit Says Libraries Disincentivize Authors To Write Books By Lending Them For Free'
Deeply appreciate Masnick’s writeup. I don’t know the ins and outs of the law, and that’s given me some pause in being upset about the ruling. To see a lawyer find fault with so much gives me greater confidence in my own frustration.
The most dangerous part, though, doesn’t require a law degree to understand. The logic of the findings poses a threat to all libraries, not just this one.
🔗 linkblog: Is Your Google Scholar Profile Looking A Bit Empty? Need To Bulk Up Your Citations? Simple – Buy Some'
Interesting read wirh important implications for how we think about research quality.