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mlascarides.bsky.social
Art tinkerer, library dweller, immigrant. Thinking a lot about how to prove libraries are worth keeping around. Ōtepoti.
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A story that seems unfathomable to my younger relations: When I was about 13 or 14, I was an aviation nerd. I used to ride my bicycle to the small airport in my town after school, and eventually befriended a few of the instructor pilots who would hang out on the flightline. /1

submitted 7 hours ago • 1 comment

Nominations are open for the New Zealand Poet Laureate Award 2025 – 2028. Closing date is 30 July. natlib.govt.nz/about-us/sch...

submitted 9 hours ago • 0 comments

Americans under 25 have no idea how anomalous and deranged it is for the news to report obsessively on the persona and psychology of the executive with respect to matters of policy and governance. This is not even remotely normal.

submitted 13 hours ago • 29 comments

I really am going to be very consistent here in that Bannon and the fascist movement have been talking about their goals being to eventually use musk as a villain to create the appearance that they are pro social and anti capital. If they go through with this we are going to be in deep trouble. 1/

submitted 14 hours ago • 8 comments

Mōrena Aotearoa #nzpol Can we all begin our day with a quick email to Finance & Expenditure Committee about website capacity for #RSB - and participatory democracy?! @taniawaikatolawyer.bsky.social has supplied the wording. Just copy from Alt Text below or download from linktr.ee/taniawaikatolawyer

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this NYT article about programming work at Amazon (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/business/amazon-ai-coders.html) because it perfectly illustrates how “productivity” trends in AI in the workplace benefit so few.

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

I think a lot about how Aaron Swartz committed suicide while facing a probably long jail sentence for download some of JSTOR, but no one at Meta is going to face any repercussions for using all of Libgen to train its AI.

submitted 4 days ago • 8 comments

I was at the library for six hours today the library kicks ass

submitted 3 days ago • 7 comments

say it again: 4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities ROI for NIH and NSF for local economies is conservatively 4x, often close to 10x demolishing higher education is economic sabotage

submitted 18 days ago • 70 comments

The Southerner arrives in Dunedin for the first time in 23 years.

submitted 20 days ago • 4 comments

"AI" uses em-dashes because the writers whose (appropriated) work it's trained on use them. I use them a lot, personally, and of course just about everything I've ever written was chucked into the training bin without my consent or assent. So, you know, whenever you see an "AI" em-dash, think of me.

submitted 21 days ago • 70 comments

In case you were wondering, Auckland is very much in the bad corner.

submitted 22 days ago • 3 comments

So apparently my local nats were conspiring to cut library funding without consultation. It got rumbled, the public turned up en masse, and they claimed it was all a "rumour" (yeah, so why did they ask about it then?) www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/3606...

submitted 22 days ago • 2 comments

Ursula Le Guin, from "On Rules of Writing, or, Riffing on Rechy"

submitted 22 days ago • 1 comment

💯

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

Wanna reduce crime? Open more libraries. "we find within the nearby proximity of the library; there is a substantial reduction in frequency of burglaries, vandalism, robberies, fraud, and assaults." link.springer.com/article/10.1...

submitted 25 days ago • 13 comments

Daily reminder that LLMs do not know any facts and cannot supply them to you.

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

No Fisheries Officer would come up with that banger #nzpol

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

Video by Dr Cassandra Mudgway @legallyfeminist.bsky.social on current debates around misogyny in the context of drastic changes to pay equity legislation. V. useful frame of ref. in study of commentary targeting journalist Andrea Vance, & also MP Willis. 1k+ views on Instagram. Worth posting here.

submitted 24 days ago • 9 comments

New Q&A from @sarahkendzior.bsky.social How to prevent becoming like 2025 US: Archive everything. Hold analog elections with a paper trail. Get dark money & big money out of politics. Insist on proof of action & accountability from politicians.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Oh so now they care

submitted 24 days ago • 4 comments

Exactly #nzpol

submitted 26 days ago • 7 comments

The many, many people who said in their own ways — from ordinary concerned liberals to wild post-structuralists — that television was an evil technology that, whatever its benefits, would also radically distort reality for commercial profit and derange society were completely and inarguably correct.

submitted 25 days ago • 45 comments

You know those "speak up for Women" transphobes are awfully silent all of a sudden. #nzpol

submitted 27 days ago • 4 comments