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Desmond

@dsmdwng.bsky.social
317 followers 264 following 147 posts

ur favourite librarian’s favourite librarian

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Reposted by Desmond
Dave Gray-Donald @dgrdon.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Wow, there's a giant NDA (non-disclosure agreement) up as a Nuit Blanche art installation calling out the silencing of curators and artists who've spoken critically of Israel. It's in the alley off Spadina south of Richmond leading to Cinecycle. By No Arms in the Arts.
Photo of a 10-foot high non-disclosure agreement in an alley in Toronto with fog and people in the foreground. The contract says "NDA" and "I will not talk about getting fired for criticizing Israel"
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Mary Grace Scary Face @emgeekay.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Far too many people think the Carney Liberals are doing a great job. Where’s their action on the climate crisis, on our deteriorating healthcare system, on affordable public housing? And why do they keep spending taxpayer dollars fighting Indigenous peoples in court? www.cbc.ca/news/indigen...
cbc.ca
Carney government files 3rd court challenge in First Nations child welfare complaint | CBC News
The Carney government has filed its third court challenge in a year as a longstanding fight with First Nations organizations over the future of their communities' child and family services continues. ...
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The Breakdown AB @thebreakdownab.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
“watch what denialism does — it takes “why did so many children die” and swaps it for “prove to us their bones have been disturbed to our satisfaction.” That’s not skepticism. That’s moving the goalposts until grief itself needs a permit.” #abpoli indigenousinsider.substack.com/p/rebel-medi...
indigenousinsider.substack.com
Rebel Media Is Selling T-Shirts Off Our Dead Children
What happens when a racist media outlet decides truth and reconciliation is a marketing opportunity.
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Desmond @dsmdwng.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
I agree. I am just suddenly bombarded with people eating "famous Toronto food peameal bacon sandwich" in many surprising facets of my life.
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Desmond @dsmdwng.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Has anyone in Toronto noticed an uptick of visitor interest in peameal bacon sandwiches? Do you think it’s because of AI funnelling them toward it?
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Chris Person @papapishu.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Riley did a very good blog about this as a Library Science nerd that’s worth reading aftermath.site/google-searc...
And in this presumption, Google tries to narrow and direct my search behavior in a way that infuriates me as a library science nerd. No database is neutral, but they generally tend to stay out of your way. When you go to your local library catalogue, your desires (and your skill at using a particular repository) are what move you through, not the library catalogue nudging you toward what it thinks you should be searching for.
Google, uninvited, attempts to steer me down the path it boldly presumes I mean to go, in the process inherently attempting to limit the information I encounter by pushing me toward itself instead of actual results.
Google has always done this with its opaque and changing priorities, but that priority has changed from making websites conform to its whims to trying to force me to conform to its obsession with Al.
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Chris Person @papapishu.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Sorry chatbot lovers but the waning of Boolean operators in most search functions on websites has made my life actively worse. You can't find anything, you can only have things suggested to you.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
I was thinking, fondly, of boolean search yesterday. not only is it a superior way to query Internet archives, it’s also an example of academia and k-12 being as nimble and tech forward as AI boosters claim they want us to be. We pivoted very efficiently on Google search. And now it’s dead.
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
A year ago, I wrote about the court case that decided AI companies were off the hook for copyright vios for any books they legally bought, scanned and set on fire. Not defending Anthropic, but let’s be real: copyright law is to blame for this weirdness. www.techpolicy.press/in-copyright...
techpolicy.press
In Copyright ‘Wins’ for Anthropic and Meta, Judges Leave Ample Room for Future Defeats
Given the case-by-case nature of fair use findings, a legal consensus in the short term is unlikely, writes Tech Policy Press fellow Eryk Salvaggio.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Despite the whining about “ historical accuracy,” the racist backlash to the casting in Nolan’s Odyssey is about the right wanting to justify racial hierarchy by projecting it into a past where it did not actually exist. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
When some on the right speak of reverence for “civilization,” what they’re doing is trying to anachronistically justify the hierarchy of race they would like to see enacted today by rooting it in antiquity. You cannot cast Black people in The Odyssey, because The Odyssey is a pillar of “Western civilization,” which they consider to be white. This faction of the far right imagines antiquity as a kind of idyllic Jim Crow universe of utterly separate civilizations, one in which the integration they despise could not possibly exist.But Greece is not as far from Africa as the North American continent is, and the modern construct of race, a pseudoscientific product of the Atlantic slave trade, would not be invented until thousands of years after Homer. Black people are depicted in Greek art. Egypt, Libya, and “Aethiopia” are frequently referenced in ancient writings. As the Black classics scholar Frank Snowden Jr. wrote in the 1970s, at least one of the characters in The Odyssey, Eurybates, is specifically described as “black-skinned and woolly-haired.” As the Stanford classics professor Sarah Derbew notes in her book Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity, Black people are referenced in plays by Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. They also appear in the writings of Hesiod and Herodotus. One of the lost epic poems is The Aethiopis, in which Memnon, the Aethiopian king and an ally to Troy, plays a major role.
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Tech Won’t Save Us @techwontsave.us · 23/07/2026
Libraries are still essential in the digital age. Some librarians are even helping patrons ditch AI and get off Big Tech. This week Hannah Cyrus and @flexlibris.bsky.social join @parismarx.com to discuss how libraries address people’s concerns about tech. Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/338_...
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The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv) @theserfstv.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
This is what Kamloops looks like right now while the liberals are building more pipelines and data centers
orange clouds of fire smoke darken the sky in Kamloops BC
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Rick Harp @rickharp.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
“Most people understand [we must reduce] global emissions of greenhouse gases fast or we are in deep trouble in the long term (20-30 years). However... heating is happening much faster than predicted. The average global temperature [expected by] around 2035 is actually here now.”
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CARL / ABRC @carl-abrc.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
The 2026 Librarians' Research Institute has wrapped up! Thank you to our 16 participants and our incredible peer mentors for four inspiring days of learning, collaboration, and research at the University of New Brunswick. We can't wait to see what comes next!
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Desmond @dsmdwng.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
This just in: companies need to be a viable business to survive. Who knew?
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Heather Anne Campbell @heathercampbell.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
can’t believe a narcissist is being so publicly humiliated by a reflecting pool
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Shawn Micallef @shawnmicallef.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
It’s impossible to get, say, a full time washroom attendant in Toronto to keep them nice. On example. Everything declines except the police supply of public money.
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Marc Fischer @marc-fischer.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Last month two library workers reached out to Public Collectors to ask about making a booklet version of Fobazi Ettarh's essay "Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves" for a Celebration of Life event. We did, and it is now available for all: halfletterpress.com/vocational-a...
This booklet is a standalone print publication of Fobazi Ettarh’s essay, in which she defined vocational awe as the ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries are inherently good and sacred, and therefore beyond critique. Fobazi first presented on vocational awe at the Identity, Agency, and Culture in Academic Libraries Conference in 2017. Later on, she fleshed out the idea into this essay, which first appeared in the journal In the Library with the Lead Pipe on January 10, 2018. It sparked immediate rippling conversations about dynamics of systemic underresourcing, undercompensation, job creep, and exploitation across the library profession. It was cited more than 500 times in her lifetime, and she presented dozens of invited presentations and keynotes on it. In 2020, she was named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker; true to her own values, she voluntarily revoked the award to protest Library Journal’s awarding of a Library of the Year that had been widely protested for hosting an event with a virulently anti-trans organization earlier in the year. In this time, public scholars and intellectuals in fields such as social work, teaching, nursing, and technology began to engage with vocational awe, including Cory Doctorow in Enshittification, Anne Helen Petersen in Culture Study, Simone Stolzoff in The Good Enough Job, and more. At the time of her passing in January 2026, Fobazi was a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, furthering her research on vocational awe across domains, with a specific focus on tech work. May her memory politicize us all.

— Anastasia Chiu 

The proposal to publish this text as a booklet came from library workers Mimosa Shah and Jorge López-McKnight. With the cooperation of Fobazi’s widow Elena Maris, Public Collectors has designed, printed and published this essay for that celebration, as well as more widespread readership.
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Ri / ᕒᐊᔦᓬᐄ (she/her) @rileyyesnomaybe.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
*screams in Indigenous*
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Shawn Micallef @shawnmicallef.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
It's the most radical change in my 26 Toronto years. I hop on & off at my pleasure, total freedom. Walk a while, take toddler/stroller to daycare, the hop on a bike. Off. On. Last evening had an event at Carlu. Ebiked to baby, took him home, change into suit, hoped on ebike, back downtown. 👏
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CARL / ABRC @carl-abrc.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Congratulations to the inaugural cohort of the FLOURISH Leadership Program on receiving their certificates at the President’s Reception! We look forward to seeing your continued impact across Canada’s research library community. @megalos1.bsky.social @mutwirib.bsky.social @biblioqc.bsky.social
Participants of the FLOURISH Leadership Program
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Meredith Broussard, PhD @merbroussard.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
“Du Bois insists that technologies absent political safeguards are not emancipatory but instead reinforced hierarchies of race, class, and empire.” Important new read from @alondra.bsky.social on AI
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jenny (phire) @phirephoenix.com · 27/05/2026
Wikimedia Foundation just fired a long time lead developer of MediaWiki as well as its entire community team for unionizing. If you’re a donor, email donate@wikimedia.org to protest this move. medium.com/@jakeorlowit...
medium.com
Big Tech’s Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for Wikipedia
TLDR: In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire…
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John Clarke @johncke.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Challenging the merchants of death and the agenda of #militarism and #austerity they usher in. #CANSEC
U of Toronto hosting weapons conference.
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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
In Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo apologizes for the Doctrine of Discovery, which sanctioned colonialism & slavery, to talk about AI. Here, I thought I went off the rails in Data Empire, where I insist the Doctrine of Discovery is critical to the history of data’s power www.vatican.va/content/leo-...
vatican.va
Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Leo XIV Magnifica Humanitas (15 May 2026)
ENCYCLICAL LETTER MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE LEO XIV ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE [ Multimedia ] ___________________________
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Cynthia Khoo @cyn-k.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Maybe fix all the above first & implement recs TF/GBV & MMIWG experts have called for over decades, THEN we can maybe consider starting to think about contemplating the idea of possibly discussing if LE really needs new "technical capabilities" to investigate crimes their own buddies are committing.
aptnnews.ca
Woman’s advocacy group requests review to halt RCMP’s ‘shocking’ misogynistic violence
A women’s advocacy group is calling for an external review to halt human rights abuses perpetrated by the RCMP against women.
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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
3) it cynically exploits social justice issues to claim that preventive measures against a product will necessarily be discriminatory 4) it claims that educators must adapt to the rules of commerce, which, if subject to regulation necessarily results in the discrimination cited in number (3)
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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
This is a fake problem. The research cited here makes four classic moves in tech boosterism: 1) it cites w/o evidence the inevitably wide uptake of a product 2) it prematurely frames a narrative of tech progression in terms of waves ("2nd-wave AI challenge") to make this future a fait accompli
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Erica Ifill @wickdchiq.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
“While Trump’s trade war is hitting the Canadian economy, Mark Carney is insisting on a devastating round of austerity to ensure it is workers who pay, not profits” www.counterfire.org/article/aust...
counterfire.org
Austerity is class war amidst the trade war
While Trump’s trade war is hitting the Canadian economy, Mark Carney is insisting on a devastating round of austerity to ensure it is workers who pay, not profits, reports John Clarke It becomes cl...
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Rebecca Colesworthy @rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
AI produces MORE editorial labor, not less. “[To weed out slop] the journal doubled its deputy editors from 6 to 11 & nearly doubled its sr editors from roughly 30 to 60. All of this is volunteer labor, unpaid academics donating time to maintain scientific quality.“ www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...
forbes.com
AI Slop Is Flooding Academic Journals. A Top Journal Measured It
A top management journal measured AI’s impact on submissions and reviews. Submissions rose 42%, writing quality declined and AI reviews proved uninformative to editors.
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Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Once academics were told to upload teaching materials to digital learning platforms, universities and tech firms alike were always going to monetize it. Now AI is being used to amplify the assetization of those digital archives of academic content. codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2026/04/29/a...
codeactsineducation.wordpress.com
AI and the amplification of academic content assetization
Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash A new AI-driven digital learning platform launched by Arizona State University has set off alarm bells among academics for its exploitation of scholarly work. AS…
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Chantal James @chantalalive.blacksky.app · 29/04/2026
A Day in the Life of a Palestinian Lawyer: “In Gaza, missiles don't just destroy stone; they attempt to erase legal history. Families lose homes along with title deeds under rubble. A client asks: How will I prove this land is mine? With official archives destroyed, I fight to reconstruct the truth.
Obada in his outdoor office in Gaza
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UAINE @mahtowin1.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Indigenous land defenders are being killed and criminalised at alarming rates, AI systems scrape traditional knowledge without consent, while Indigenous women face escalating rates of violence, crises that Indigenous leaders confronted this week at the UN. www.teaonews.co.nz/2026/04/25/i...
teaonews.co.nz
Indigenous land defenders are being killed, AI is scraping their knowledge
UNPFII highlights crises: killings and Indigenous land defenders, AI-driven data exploitation, and severe violence against Indigenous women; calls for rights and data sovereignty.
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Apoorva Mandavilli @apoorvanyt.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
The acting head of the CDC has canceled the publication of a study that found that the Covid vaccine sharply cut the odds of hospitalizations and emergency visits last winter www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/u...
nytimes.com
C.D.C. Cancels Publication of Study Showing Benefits of Covid Vaccines
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Desmond @dsmdwng.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
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Will Beaman @greenbackbetter.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
There is no dustbin of history. For better and for worse, archives can always be reactivated in new combinations
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🎃 Decorative Gourd Mikell 🎃 @mikell.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
If you’re an engineer in the US with Iranian colleagues, they probably graduated from here. It’s MIT caliber. What the fuck are we doing.
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Adam Rogers @jetjocko.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Yeah that’s cool
(See the quoted post for more; it’s a septagonal patch with the astronaut names around the edges and pictures of mythic animals and a stylized bird image at center)
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Shawn Micallef @shawnmicallef.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
This is an epic Ford failure and he should lose the GTA over it., Over to you, Ontario voter.
thestar.com
They were promised two-way, all-day GO train service. Confidential Metrolinx documents show these lines may actually get slower
Internal Metrolinx report show the provincial transit agency is considering a delayed timeline for its promise of two-way, all-day, 15-minute service on the core GO network.
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 27/03/2026
GET HER, VARIETY 😍
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Desmond @dsmdwng.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
This is just a tactic to desensitize people in Toronto to police openly carrying weapons. There is already so much police brutality and violence without this in public spaces and public life. www.tps.ca/media-centre...
tps.ca
Toronto Police Service Enhances Public Safety Readiness with New Counter-Terrorism Security Unit and High Visibility Deployments
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Maria Haskins @mariahaskins.com · 19/03/2026
O M G 🦐 Shrimp bowl (close-up). Bowl. Peru: Ica, Nasca. 100 B.C.E.-800 C.E. MOA Collections 2990/180. Photo by Joshua Doherty. myvancity.ca/2026/02/27/m...
Two cartoonish shrimp with big smiles and claws raised. Shrimp bowl (close-up). Bowl. Peru: Ica, Nasca. 100 B.C.E.-800 C.E. MOA Collections 2990/180. Photo by Joshua Doherty.
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infoDOCKET @infodocket.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Now Available Online (Full Text): Special Issue of IFLA Journal (March 2026) Devoted to #Indigenous #Knowledge repository.ifla.org/items/cce7bc... #libraries @ifla.org
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Desmond @dsmdwng.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
God gives the loudest snores to his fastest sleepers 😞
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Desmond @dsmdwng.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
Think of this when you think of Carney and Canada
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Mary Grace Scary Face @emgeekay.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Borders are colonial constructs and the Jay Treaty gives free passage across that line dividing a once undivided land that has belonged to Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
cbc.ca
'The border doesn't exist to us': How one Mohawk community balances fears of ICE with its inherent rights | CBC News
For Mohawks in Akwesasne, crossing international borders is a way of life. But now, many are worried about what the possibility ICE agents might be coming to the region could mean for their inherent r...
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Sean Carleton @seancarleton.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
The residential school denialism movement is fracturing because (unsurprisingly) it has a Nazi problem - and you just love/hate to see it.
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Temu Tisha Campbell @thatgirlbamz.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Another example of AI & Racism harming the Black community.
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Desmond @dsmdwng.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Incalculable, immeasurable loss. You will be missed so dearly, Fobazi.
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Desmond @dsmdwng.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
I am devastated to hear this. My deepest condolences to Fobazi’s family and kin.
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