@owlyph@social.coop Mastodon account post archive: 2022 - 2023

Hello, here's a new #introduction. I'm an academic #librarian / #bibliothécaire in Montréal, QC for Journalism & Communication Studies. Interested in possibilities that emerging technologies or forms of scholarship open for #academic pursuits. Involved in #OpenScholarship & #IntellectualFreedom. I write (unpublished novels, mostly) & conceived an abstract strategy board game. I began using Mastodon on 14 June 2017. The cooperative model seems great for a sustainable and healthy social community.

@mpjgregoire@mamot.fr Ah! I know. I didn't want to delete and repost after it had already sat around for a few minutes. I also got soaked in the rain this morning, so you know, everything's going well. 🙂

@mfamelis I've been thinking the same... kind of wondering if it's worth starting to push for that. ActivityPub is a standard, like e-mail, so this seems like it should happen.

@stevefoerster I'll have to check it out! Thanks for the link. (if you're curious, here's what I'd done https://adomoc.org. I have something new in the works too).

@ryanschultz Good eye, it is a Midjourney image. I spent way too much time playing with that.

@Mulderc @mfamelis It is indeed hard to get free of that Microsoft stack.

@ryanschultz Yeah, it was great for the first couple hundred hours but then I noticed many colour palette similarities, many people with their backs to me, etc. It's super impressive but the patterns began to bother me a little. I've tried DALL-E 2 a bit more but haven't experimented much with Stable Diffusion yet. I think I need a cooling off period to come back with fresh ideas. 🙂

Mastodon instances are the current BBSes.

@konrad this is one of the key reasons I just moved to social.coop. As a new person to the instance, I'm not fully clear yet how it plays out. Seems the idea is for group decision-making processes that are transparent on their loomio.com group. It's a broader community (not academic-specific) but I suspect this format of operating an instance might be more resilient and (hopefully) result in governance better aligned with the overall community. They describe it here https://social.coop/terms

Montréal va augmenter ses voies cyclables par 200 km! On a déjà presque 900 km. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1929469/plan-pistes-cyclables-montreal-vision-velo-200-km

@tkinias @konrad That's an appealing idea too.

@tkinias @konrad Haha, there would have had to be some good background for that.

@dbs that's an interesting case that I wouldn't have thought of... good to keep in mind when working on information architecture and usability.

A colleague & I have spent the last year advocating #ORCiD at our university. We've offered workshops, sessions to our fellow-librarians (so that they could show other people), we're meeting with research officers to spread the word, & next week providing a few drop-in working sessions where we'll help people with whatever questions they have to set up their profiles. Aside from things like internal news, emails, etc. Has anyone done other types of outreach to get people on board with ORCiD.org?

@JamesGleick I'm not sure what the culture of your instance is like. Some don't seem to care and others I've seen, prefer that "off-topic" posts go out as "unlisted." Everyone can still see them but they don't show up in the local instance's timeline.

@moon_baron I agree with that framing of it. I think people generally like it and have not seen a lot of resistance. When I have, it's almost always been in the form of "yet another profile to fill in" & I guess there's a bit of truth to that at the moment but really, the more it's integrated with other systems, the more it decreases that sort of profile maintenance work. I think more than anything else, most people just aren't very aware of it.

@yaxu their official page on benefits makes a few points that might be useful https://info.orcid.org/researchers/ but aside from that, I wonder have you ever done some work with a publisher's system and then had to enter that bibliographic info somewhere else? Often you can get your ORCiD profile automatically capture that information for other systems. Just need to give it the right permissions. Or maybe there's someone else out there with your name, and you want your stuff associated with you.

@tutam @moon_baron I like that "DOI for researchers" description. 1 example for a researcher is this search/import tool. It can suck in things other than just publications (like funding or peer review work done). Once that's in your account, you can push that info elsewhere. ORCiD is more of a tool than a profile. For someone at an institution that has a research info management system, often ORCID can integrate with that & support departments or others becoming aware of work published, etc.

@yaxu Hehe, actually ORCiD is not-for-profit and I feel like, if anything, perhaps it helps counter Elsevier. In that Elsevier owns Scopus and some other systems that tend to be the big go-to sources of researcher publication information. I'd like to see some of that power over information pulled away from them and controlled by researchers. I'm not familiar w/ researchfish. I wonder if it might support some other technique for getting info? ORCiD lets you import BibTex or other ways.

@yaxu Ah! 😢

@mpjgregoire@mamot.fr C'est un véritable cliff-hanger

@mpjgregoire@mamot.fr Oui, tu as raison. Mais, si les députés de QS & PQ ne peuvent plus participer, est-ce que les gens qui ont voté QS & PQ auront-ils été privés de leur vote? Je pense que tous les partis (sauf peut-être les Libéraux?) partagent une position contre prêter serment au roi. Probablement une situation difficile, pour la CAQ avec la majorité des députés.

@kklevine This piqued my curiosity. I'd like to know more about what you have in mind for accounting for class and power. Also, I might not be understanding, but are the librarians you're thinking of not part of a union?

@kklevine Interesting, now I'm reflecting on my context, where librarians at the majority of universities in Canada are members of their faculty union. At my institution, a librarian that goes into administration, is excluded from the union for the duration of that role. There are a couple "managing librarians" in the union but they manage non-librarian staff, who themselves are members of a different union so I guess that works?

@hugh @foureyedsoul @kklevine Wow, that seems like a pretty direct conflict of interest.

@kklevine @hugh @foureyedsoul very good point. Also, I suppose that professional orgs aren't really operating on specific-institutional bases.

@hugh @foureyedsoul @kklevine Err, sorry, scratch that last comment. I was confusing ALIA as the union... but I see it's the professional org. So I guess maybe not a conflict of interest but just not an adequate substitute for a union's purpose.

The COP27 - 27th UN Climate Change Conference begins in a few days and IFLA has published a pledge to include #libraries in the "action for climate empowerment." They identify four priorities for what libraries can do and invite both individuals and organisations to sign the pledge. https://www.ifla.org/news/a-pledge-for-climate-empowerment-count-libraries-in/ -- I like that this comes so soon after the recent #OpenAccessWeek theme of climate justice. #ClimateCrisis

@researchfairy That brings up something I probably haven't thought about from that perspective. Now that I am thinking of it, do you see a difference between what you described and when someone posts a friday follow style of message? Or the mechanism that provides a listing of results from the introduction hashtag?

Current Ontario government just tried to stop 55,000 education workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees from striking. They're striking anyway. The government's legislation used the notwithstanding clause in a preventative way to get around the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/bill-28-ontario-education-strike-1.6639027 there's a site showing where to picket in solidarity https://cupe.on.ca/dontbeabully/ -- @OrganizingLIS

The best thing I've learned today is that bumblees enjoy playing ball. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/bumblebee-balls-play-study-1.6639406

This is fascinating, I just saw, err listened to "Infinite Conversation" which is a neverending conversation between a deepfake Werner Herzog and a deepfake Slavoj Žižek. It's constantly being newly generated (apparently the two humans were not involved). Doesn't always fit together but the concept raises a bunch of interesting/questionable questions. https://infiniteconversation.com/

@colinvda@mastodon.social that is a nice bit

@JosephAndriano similar in Montreal. I don't ever remember it being this warm, usually by now we'd have had a snow or two, yet I went out in a short sleeved shirt today.

@fiacre hi there, this is an interesting article but sorry it seems like you attributed it to me in error. I believe the person that wrote it is @librarianshipwreck

@Julie when I switched to social.coop it worked pretty well. I'm pretty sure a few followers didn't transfer but I think it's because they were on instances that no longer exist. It is unfortunate that old posts don't transfer.

I’ve been thinking about something like an instance #CommunityPledge becoming commonplace. Mastodon instances tend to post rules, user expectations, a tiny bit of info about administrative practices. This helps cultivate the Mastodon region of the fediverse. I don’t mean the following as criticism but I worry that many instances haven't reckoned with/communicated administrative commitments to their communities. Not to be a killjoy but a lot could go awry. https://chroknowlogy.ca/digital-ecosystem/2022/could-mastodon-instances-make-a-pledge-to-their-communities/

What can users expect from participating in a community? For some people, social media communication is very important. Upon signing up, we know what is expected from us but not the other way around. Contingencies for shut down? Instance blocking notifications? Moderator participation vs. single admin? Outside influencers? What do we make of such possibilities? Many instances don't address such things, should they?

@graue Great point, items in that covenant address some of the mostly technical concerns. It'd be nice to see it expanded to include more of the other things that could be problematic. It would also be useful if instances offered statements about how they support those items in the covenant. I don't think I've seen much of that (aside from some some ways that social.coop works).

@bmann How would you import it though? From what I saw of the options, posts were not among the things that could be imported. E.g. bookmarks from another Mastodon instance can be imported I just don't see an option for posts/toots/tweets.

@bmann Ah, well that's interesting. It would be appealing to be able to do a more complete move from one instance to another. I can also see how it opens some potential problems for understanding the context of old discussions... still I can imagine there are ways to solve that.

Preparing for an intro zettelkasten and note-taking tools workshop tomorrow. The first time I did it, i had scheduled an hour and the students said it was too short. So that's nice but now I'm curious to see how my new 2 hour format works out. I'm covering Logseq, Zotero's v6 note features, and Zettlr. Might be too ambitious but we'll see.

@moon_baron I love it so much.

@jonobie nice! Obsidian is a great tool too. may need to swap notes with you at some point.

@bitcapulet Yeah, if I remember well, I think I had about 20 the first time, they requested a follow-up and about half showed-up. So this time again about 20 but for the full two hours. It's early in the morning though, so we'll see how many wake up in time. 🙂

@noemu hi, I'm not recording it because the way I have it set up in the classroom involves a lot of hands-on stuff and it would be sort of hard for me to present in a good way on a video. But, maybe I'll think about that for the future. I have seen a few Logseq videos that I thought were pretty good from this YouTube channel though https://www.youtube.com/c/OneStutteringMind

Super interesting new investigative #journalism initiative being led by Kristy Snell (formerly CBC). It's initially focusing on making journalism schools in Canada more inclusive and collaborative with Indigenous students. Brings together media outlets, students, faculty, etc.

This is happening within Concordia University's new Institute of Inclusive, Investigative and Innovative Journalism (I3J) https://www.concordia.ca/artsci/journalism/research/investigative-journalism.html

@Plurivox I guess this is a bit older but The Boredoms' Super æ (or especially Vision Creation Newsun but that's moving somewhat away from the noise realm) has long been a favourite. I love layers getting built up into more immersive/complex things than they start as--makes for a trance-y feeling.

@TomRatz frequently articles behind a payroll are also available as #OpenAccess but it can take a bit of work to find them (e.g. post prints, institutional repositories). One trick that can often make this easier is to install the open access button in your web browser. https://openaccessbutton.org/

I prefer not to describe people on a political spectrum with left/right polarities (definitely not myself) because I think it limits understanding.

I'm going to use that spectrum since I lack a more apt way of speaking at the moment. I keep noticing people express stuff in which the content is considered "left" but the thought/motivation producing it is from the "right" and the person seems unaware of that. Not sure I've noticed it much the other direction.

Does this phenomenon have a name?

@moon_baron Hm, that's an interesting one to bring in... maybe related but I think I'm looking for something less about one specific belief/system. Something that speaks to a tension between the content of the political beliefs and, I guess, an equivalent characterization of the way a person comes to hold them.

I'm probably being too ambiguous to make sense here. 🙂

@stpaultim It's possible I just haven't been as observant as I could be but interesting that you've noticed examples going both ways. I suppose also that political climates depend a lot on where one is located.

Just by chance, I stumbled into a series of blank emails that I sent myself early 2019. These include PDF attachments sequentially labeled: "boris-vian-pataphysique..."

They have some pages that I seem to have scanned from one or more books. I have no recollection of what I was doing or why I did not write myself an explanation (and other relevant info).

There is something good about this.

@stpaultim Like you mention, I wanted to avoid getting into any one particular issue. I think sincerity is even another dimension to it.

@nemobis Yes! Exactly 🙂 . Still, usually I would have told myself something about what I was doing.

@emilyherring absolutely... and at different periods in childhood came near to panic about it.

@Sbectol I have nothing against paying for an online conference and I have paid for a few. I would hate to see in-person conferences disappear though.

@platypus a bit longer than a podcast :-) and I'm not sure if there's a movie of it but I really liked the book "The Recognitions" by William Gaddis.

@lrhodes I keep trying to do that (mostly for academic topics, excluding university ones that are specifically for their personnel).

My list is probably incomplete and a bit messy because I just quickly add to it when I see them come up. But here: https://www.knowfore.ca/digital-ecosystem/2022/mastodon-social-media-instances-of-interest/

@kristabh Hello, I thought you might be interested in this open science list https://germanrepro.github.io/Mastodon-OpenScience/

Interesting article on land use planning saying "relatively crowded walkable downtown parts of a city produce huge amounts of tax revenue, whereas suburban low-density areas result in a net tax cost." It addresses the environmental improvements of an area that doesn't require cars to get around. Better for a more sustainable environment. Urban sprawl? Not so much. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/evs-cities-climate-column-don-pittis-1.6654675?cmp=rss

The UN's Dag Hammarskjöld library is holding a virtual event on #OpenAccess for Climate Justice. I'm glad this conversation is continuing well beyond the initiatives from OA Week in October.

The event is next week (30 November) and it's free. If you're advocating #OpenScholarship #OpenScience and trying to make sure that everyone has access to critical knowledge, here is the link to register https://research.un.org/conferences/webinar3

@climatejustice @libraries

Everyone seems to have aged more rapidly than usual over the last few years. I keep wondering if it's just that I didn't see people regularly during pandemic isolation times so notice normal aging more or if this period of time really has led us to age more rapidly. I lean toward the latter because I'm including myself, who I bump into regularly.

@thunderbird This could also be useful in a case where there's a Mastodon account that you're occasionally interested in but don't really want to follow on a regular basis.

Obviously Mastodon is a great community platform. I love the use of ActivityPub to connect people all over; yet I think more Mastodon instances should isolate themselves and not federate at all.

I've seen arguments from some instances on planning to maintain their communities via exclusivity. No problem but eventually if it's exclusive enough, it's at odds w/ precepts & user expectations of federating. In some cases it would make more sense to just use the software as a local community only.

@josh good point, that local-only posting seems like a really useful feature. Also, there are posts/conversations that happen in the other direction (coming into the instance) that people sometimes seem to increasingly not want (and from my perspective tend to increasingly extend requirements outward to other instances), which is why I was thinking there are cases where it could make more sense to just not federate at all and operate the local-only community.

@squirrelmonkey wow, had I not lived that time, I might think that was authentic. 🙂

@squirrelmonkey how long until someone actually makes an instance with this interface?

@cpeterso this is somehow necessary https://mstdn.social/@squirrelmonkey/109385197597988096

@ekansa this is great, I've been thinking along similar lines (re: your CC example). It'd be nice to see something like a community licence, which would go beyond what the existing server covenant does (and codes of conduct) to also address unique issues in the fediverse context. There's a lot about community interactions and expectations that has not been addressed.

I'm about to teach a workshop of "advanced" Zotero tricks. Normally, I do 2-hour long workshops for students to learn the basics of using Zotero but it has so many features that I cannot cover a lot of the nifty ways to use it outside of the key things. I'm going to ask the students to vote on what they want to cover most because this one will be 1 hour. Curious to see what types of things are going to be more valuable to them.

@alienghic I may turn my notes into a sort of tip sheet or something later. If so, I'll post a link.

@mmin if there's a lot, it certainly can take a bit to get all that metadata in there.

@emacsomancer I should put together some revision notes next week and share what I came up with. Maybe exchanging ideas will be useful.

@ryanschultz Hi, I saw your message about Zotero. I do a lot of work teaching students / answering questions about it so if you're interested, here is a folder of some documents that I use. Some of it is a bit specific to my university's context but you're welcome to see if any of the ideas or instructions are useful for your purposes. https://e1.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=kZYWXYZoF55v27AJfVeU2Hx94Bs1LmH0ynX

@ryanschultz I was thinking I should make things available to anyone but I felt like I should probably clean things up a bit to be more generic for more broad use.

@joekd1 I am a big fan of using Logseq (https://logseq.com) for brief, atomic notes. It's super quick, fairly easy to resurface ideas and connect with others, including bibliographic info (from Zotero). It's also free and open source software #FOSS. For longer things that I want to develop a bit more, I move those to Zettlr (https://zettlr.com). Both are great in different ways.

@baarda I'm donating to my local communist library. 🙂 https://centreinternationalisterfa.org/

@agentalchemy you should probably listen to and maybe adopt this nap anthem. https://hcommons.social/@SamBrennan/109411685313746354

@profcarroll Qwant https://qwant.com (privacy and has some nice features)

@researchfairy Hard to pick, here's a few:
Barton Fink (I remember thinking people weren't enthused enough at the time but maybe that's changed since),
Take this Waltz,
Gadjo Dilo (Crazy Stranger),
Johnny Suede,
The Illusionist,
Jules et Jim,
Flirting (dir. Duigan),
Another Earth,
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

I was exploring the Obsolete Sounds project on the Cities and Memory site. I find myself at that site every now and then just enjoying the idea and its outcomes so much. https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds/ --> this project captues sound recordings of some old tech usage and then people remix it.

@AstralPegasus98@fosstodon.org Discord is awful. Its interface is somewhat suitable for in-the-moment conversation. It is however a detriment to clearly organizing information and the search functionality is nearly useless.

@researchfairy flashed by my timeline so back into my thoughts. I'm curious what angle I'm missing to these arguments. It'd be clear to me if the community was private (people & content not visible to the public). However usernames & most content are made in public. Since this is a social network type of system, I thought that meant people were supposed to discover & connect with each other. Maybe the lists are inconsiderate. But I don't get the doxxing or what the harm aspects might be?

@researchfairy Hm... very complicated issue. More than I think is possible to fairly engage with in this limited type of format. Thanks for offering those examples.

@klonick VERY public.

@klonick Also, why the 2 double-sided toilet paper dispensers? It would have been more efficient to put a single double-sided dispenser in the middle and a seat cover thing on each end.

@drb @PeterWyrm @researchfairy And it needs to be a clear sunshiny day--then you really know it's going 15 - 20 below 0.

@shawncalhoun this is excellent. When it seemed clear to me that digital would supplant physical media for music, I kept thinking about losing the experience of going to a store to find music--one of the important reasons for me to do that, was when travelling I'd like to find music from local musicians. The work described in this article seems really great because it shows a good new way to find local music! I hope this initiative grows.

I see lots of interesting experiments people are doing with ChatGPT. In one case there's the essay writing, which has improved significantly. Something I feel like it struggles with is citing specific ideas. I asked for references and it gave me books in general but didn't tie specific parts to specific ideas within the output. I guess it's probably a matter of time before that changes though.

Can ChatGPT make up a good pseudonym for me? Depends on the language used (and even then it depends on what you consider "good").

Same question. En français.

@TedUnderwood interesting (and useful) that it had a syntax for that. I didn't try Galactica... guess I'm too late. from what I read it sounds like even there, citations were tricky too. I keep thinking about citations on these systems because it says something about what amount of trust I might be willing to give their output but also because I keep wanting to know things about the paths they take to get to their results. Maybe we need AI therapists to help them self-analyze.

@vortex_egg Yeah, really interesting questions it raises in that perspective. I've been thinking about this a lot recently. I'm pretty excited about some the things that are becoming possible and I also think it's looking more and more like as much as these systems might open new possibilities, they also make our work in information literacy and various research processes increasingly important and involved.

I swore to myself that I would not make my dog a Mastodon account. I re-affirmed that oath to myself as I deleted her account from Twitter. When my spouse asked, I informed her that I had no plans to do such a thing. And yet I did do this thing and it's really a poor way of using time but I'm supposed to be working on my tenure dossier. @janeeyredale @agentalchemy

@LAbdelaaty oh wow! I hadn't thought of that, perfect.

I love this article. "Rancher gives new life to afterbirth by creating art from cow placentas".

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/emilie-mattson-cow-placenta-art-1.6668343

@mpjgregoire@mamot.fr this is fascinating, really feels like hacking politics.

@bigMouthCommie Ugh. One option, though it would only be part of the story, could be #IntellectualFreedom, which this appears to be threatening through a misrepresentation of "protecting minors"

@LibraryBen Yes, similarly a few years ago a customs agent laughed at me when I answered that the reason I was traveling was to go to a library conference.

@agentalchemy this is amazing. I hope this could be used for t1d... seems like a similar issue https://halifaxsocial.ca/@inkstainedmags/109495016286912365

@mikewise I understand completely. I err, collect typewriters and really like owls. So I prompted a machine learning tool (Midjourney in this case) to make an image of owls evolving out of typewriters. That's what it came up with.

@jburnford So ridiculous the roadblocks to this. I'd read that a Quebec clinic was approved in May but it's way past time to open things up especially in cases like this article; no humane reason a person should be waiting that long, in that condition.

@agentalchemy this thread is pretty good https://masto.ai/@vagina_museum/109511738214256028

Speaking as a #typewriter collector, I'm not sure that I would necessarily want this "Ghostwriter" but I appreciate the effort that its creator put into it. His motivation for wedding ChatGPT to a more physical form of interaction is worthwhile. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/meet-ghostwriter-a-haunted-ai-powered-typewriter-that-talks-to-you/

@asile Yeah, agreed. I think the aesthetics of an older machine would get me.

@thefordon @lawlibrarians Not easy especially with a mask on. I try to look around periodically and smile toward people that look lost/puzzled.

Bonne nouvelle #ORCID, le Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) a annoncé son adhésion à ORCID-CA. https://frq.gouv.qc.ca/adhesion-des-fonds-de-recherche-du-quebec-frq-au-consortium-orcid-ca/ #ScholarlyCommunication

Stunning ice formations
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/port-stanley-ice-formations-1.6698982

@ryanhoulihan @BustedFlush I think it has more to do with the people that are alive and were close to the deceased. The point is not to hurt them more in their time of grieving.

@protonmail good choice

This morning I hosted a discussion regarding #ChatGPT and generative AI with my university's Centre for Teaching and Learning (they support faculty in all kinds of great ways). I showed some examples, we talked about what people are doing, and I listened to what's on everyone's mind. There was less concern re: cheating than I expected & more concern about misleading/false information. Questions about good use & anxieties about what it could do to interpersonal interaction. (1/2)

I'm hosting another #ChatGPT / AI topic discussion in a couple weeks with my librarian colleagues. There's so much to think about in terms of potential impacts on professional librarianship and how we consult with people. Lots to consider from information literacy aspect that ties into the teaching and learning side too.

We haven't developed concrete approaches to these things yet, so these basic initial discussions I hope will be fruitful to some new practices. (2/2)

@delibrarian Nice idea to bring copyright into the discussion!

I used Elicit also and it worked well as an example of some constructive uses.

Interested in using #games for education? There's an ongoing event this week looking into some of the difficult questions with educational games. It's at Concordia's 4th Space, which opens up academic research for interaction with the broad public. If you're in Montréal you can come check it out. If you're not, they've been live streaming via YouTube. https://www.concordia.ca/cuevents/offices/provost/fourth-space/programming/2023/01/23/bad-game-arcade.html?c=/next-gen/4th-space/calendar

@stephestellar this is a very familiar stance.

I had not heard of judicial duels before reading this article on 1400s Fechtbücher. Interesting how they tried to balance combat between men and women (though the balance of punishments seems a bit off-kilter). https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/fechtbucher

@pepperonibookmark one option is this https://www.leslibraires.ca which lets you order from independent book sellers online. Lots from QC but other provinces too. French and English.

This is a good initiative to resolve conflicts and support people in problematic situations, pre-empting police intervention. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/police-montreal-interventions-social-work-1.6723690?cmp=rss I hope this expands.

@vortex_egg Not sure if this is what you had in mind but CryptPad works pretty well https://cryptpad.fr/

@theruran Wave was such a promising development, it could have changed so much about how we communicate and collaborate online but it was poorly implemented and Google really squandered the opportunity to realize what it could have been.

I appreciated reading Patricia Elliott's opinion piece, which in speaking about Canada's newspapers says "...the systemic problem of media concentration remains unabated."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/opinion-patricia-elliott-newspapers-1.6727415?cmp=rss
#journalism

@brembs great motivation for this

Élise Gravel creates wonderful children's books. A recent one, discussing gender stereotypes (Pink, Blue and You ! / Le rose, le bleu et toi !) is facing some outcry in the US... parents complaining to libraries.

Manon Massé (Québec Solidaire) got a motion adopted by all parties in our National Assembly, speaking to this & against censorship.

I let colleagues at the CFLA Intellectual Freedom Committee know. Some quickly responded by buying it for their #libraries. 🙂

https://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/780256/l-assemblee-nationale-condamne-la-censure-d-un-livre-d-elise-gravel-aux-etats-unis

Oh also you can find her books easily from her website: http://elisegravel.com/livres/mes-livres/

No #censorship

@fluxed more here too https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/elijah-mccoy

I just got a request to discuss #AI in relation to book-reading apps. That's a combination I have not thought about yet. Will need to look into it... anyone know of interesting initiatives in that regard?

Great initiative on intellectual freedom in Canada. The CFLA-FCAB's Intellectual Freedom Committee has long maintained a database of challenges to library materials. The Toronto Metropolitan University's Centre for Free Expression maintains a similar database. Now the two are collaborating. PDF of the announcement here: http://cfla-fcab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2023.02.21-Media-Release-CFE-CFLA-en-fr-FINAL.pdf #IntellectualFreedom #FreedomToRead #Libraries

Excellente initiative sur la liberté intellectuelle au Canada. Le Comité sur la liberté intellectuel du CFLA-FCAB tient depuis longtemps une base de données sur les défis des bibliothéques. Le Centre pour la liberté d'expression (CLE) de Toronto Metropolitan University tient une base de données similaire. Les deux organismes collaborent désormais. PDF de l'annonce ici : http://cfla-fcab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2023.02.21-Media-Release-CFE-CFLA-en-fr-FINAL.pdf #LibertéIntellectuelle #Bibliothèque #SemaineLibertéExpression

Images and charts that show, which books in Canadian libraries have been subject to the most challenges from 2015-2022 (English & Français). https://cfla-fcab.ca/en/intellectual-freedom/canadas-most-challenged-books-2015-2022-livres-les-plus-contestes-au-canada-2015-2022/
#IntellectualFreedom #LibertéIntellectuelle #FreedomToRead #SemaineLibertéExpression #Libraries #Bibliothèques

I often read arguments that slant toward describing gas-powered cars as being not so bad compared to electric when factoring lifetime carbon emissions. It's frustrating as they usually leave out important points and end up being disingenuous. This article (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/02/24/analysis/gasoline-versus-electric-cars-life-cycle-emissions-compared-canada) shows a pretty comprehensive lifecycle comparison, including Canada's electricity generation factors. I appreciate its detailed endnotes that attempt to clarify where others obscure! #ClimateCrisis

@enobacon That seems like an innovative approach.

@haley_exe I've been using a Boox device (e-ink kind) for a few years now and it's worked very nicely https://www.boox.com/

Canadian #librarians please spread awareness of the aggressive tactics used by a group, Action4Canada, which is trying to censor (primarily but not only LGBTQ2S+) books & stifle #IntellectualFreedom. They sent misleading "notices of liability" to librarians, called the RCMP into public school libraries alleging pornography (which the RCMP reported was false https://bc-cb.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=2087&languageId=1&contentId=78590) & A4C asks people to report CFLA board members to the police (again... about pornography to children).

The CFLA-FCAB (Canadian Federation of Library Associations) provides information on how to deal with the misleading notices of personal liability in this PDF http://cfla-fcab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/CFLA-Notice-of-Liability-Memo-7-05-1.pdf. A press release about the Action4Canada Chilliwack RCMP incident will be issued in the near future.

And just for full disclosure, I happen to be a member of the CFLA's Intellectual Freedom committee... so am particularly interested in this issue.

I'm heading out to buy some groceries and my wife just texted me to get some mescaline salad mix. Pretty exciting that our fruiterie is stocking that now.

@g3om4c sorry to hear that--pretty harsh. I suppose being a bit closer to Mexico helps with cacti supply chain.

New P2P service (pigeon-to-prison).

I think this article should have an actual photo of one of their little backpacks.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/second-pigeon-caught-with-drug-backpack-inside-bc-prison-1.6779808?cmp=rss

@jalcine I love Bandcamp... this is very interesting and I hope it works out well.

Here is a new and fascinating virtual tour of the Svalbard seed vault in Norway. I really like how it gives a sense of its depth and context, which is so important. https://virtualtourcompany.co.uk/GlobalSeedVault/ found via this article https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/03/17/news/svalbard-mysterious-doomsday-seed-vault-virtual-peek-inside

My dog has, for quite a while, been able to stand on her hind legs and use her paw to pull down a door handle in order to open it (it had to be the kind that is a lever). Today, she figured out how to use both paws to turn a knob. On the one hand, I'm proud of her initiative to master this skill. On the other hand I have a looming awareness that this is a really bad development.

@jbfink Good advice, though if she does that, she'll probably deserve them.

@Lemmy I'm so glad to have seen this post. I set up a test site on my local computer and have just spent the last few hours playing with Orson. It's really promising! Among it's more direct research purposes, I can also imagine it being used in a classroom context on a multi-part group research project.

@Lemmy Sure, I'll definitely let you know if I manage to get something interesting going with it. I'm thinking about how I can build a case now to implement its usage. :-)

Actually though, one thing I wasn't clear about but maybe was missing something obvious is how to add users. I could see the default users. Maybe it's a different pathway to follow?

@Lemmy Ah, I see, thanks for the tip.

The Creative Commons published its State of the Commons 2022 report, which looks back at a lot of great work accomplished over the last year. Check it out: https://creativecommons.org/2023/04/11/state-of-the-commons-2022/ (lots of initiatives in culture, climate, science, education, and journalism)

#OpenAccess #OpenScholarship

Should there be a word for this experience? I feel a particular anxiety when I turn to my MFA app for a code and see that its expiration countdown timer is on the cusp of my ability to correctly enter and submit the code to the web form. The anxiety is wrapped in that moment of decision on whether to try it or wait for the next code. You can't *actually* take that moment to ponder code-entry speed/accuracy because then you'd be in the territory of definitely needing to wait for the next code.

But also, if you enter the code wrong you're going to have to wait for the page to reload and worse, it might then ask you to also enter a stupid CAPTCHA too.