Activity

Molly White

Started reading:

East of Eden

by John Steinbeck.

Published 1952. 601 pages.

classics, historical

Started March 21, 2025.

Finished reading:

Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

Published 1866. 564 pages.

classics, crime, philosophy

Started March 16, 2025; completed March 21, 2025.

Read:

"Trump administration seeks to starve libraries and museums of funding by shuttering this little-known agency".

Devon Akmon in The Conversation. Published March 20, 2025.

The consequences of shutting down the Institute of Museum and Library Services would be particularly dire for smaller museums and rural museums.

Posted:

Two-frame meme where a man hits the foot of a strongman with a club while another man looks on. The strongman then hits the onlooker, not the man with the club. The man with the club is labeled “Meta”, and the onlooker is labeled “LibGen”

Posted:

Shadow libraries and AI training

For those just learning about LibGen because of the reporting on Meta and other companies training LLMs on pirated books, I’d highly recommend the book Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education (open access).

I just read it while working on the Wikipedia article about shadow libraries, and it’s a fascinating history.

I fear the already fraught conversations about shadow libraries will take a turn for the worse now that they’re overlapping with the incredibly fraught conversations about AI training.

Published an issue of Citation Needed:

Issue 79 – Mundus sine Caesaribus

“Mundus sine Caesaribus” in dark grey, all-caps, gothic font on a black background

The crypto industry frees itself from the last remnants of SEC oversight, and Solana tries to appeal to its target demographic by bashing trans people

Posted:

Frankly I think the majority of the crypto backlash to the anti-trans Solana ad was because they made it too obvious that they've realized anti-woke MAGA reactionaries are the latest marks

Posted:

Solana just published a trans-bashing ad, where a man sees a therapist because he's been "having thoughts again ... about innovation ... crypto, AI" and she urges him to "channel his energy into something more productive like coming up with a new gender ... Why don't we focus on pronouns? ... Numbers are non-binary."

It finishes: "America is back. It's time to accelerate."

In June 2020, Solana tweeted: "We believe in equality, justice for all regardless of race or gender, and that #BlackLivesMatter. We stand in solidarity with everyone fighting for justice."

Posted:

Exciting: The Ghost team has just released the beta version of its ActivityPub support for people using their hosted service

Posted:

filling out my pre-screening form for my annual physical and wondering when they’ll add “oh, you know, the expected amount these days” as an option for when they ask if i’m feeling down, depressed or hopeless

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