Fallon Samuels Aidoo

Meet the New Host of Reading Rainbow: Mychal the Librarian After 20 years, Reading Rainbow is back! The new host is Mychal the Librarian, who has been spreading library joy online for years.

This is such exciting news! So many of us followed Mychal over yonder. Throughout his challenges and triumphs, he always inspired kindness and self-love.

Couldn’t be more thrilled about this! A natural heir. 💙🥰👏🏾

Source: BOOK RIOT

bookriot.com/new-host-of-...

Not surprised but still ugh the hypocrisy and erasure 🙄

Vincent Scully’s 1950 modernist house in Woodbridge, CT listed in the National Register last week 👍👍👍

He designed it himself. portal.ct.gov/-/media/decd...

Don’t forget AI driven underwriting and valuations!

The slippery slope meets quicksand

How Highlighting Slavery’s Legacy Helped This Tiny Louisiana Nonprofit Boost Its Revenues 10-Fold The Descendants Project used a compelling message, social media, and a personal touch to convey its unique approach to the environment and history.

Amazing efforts!
How Highlighting Slavery’s Legacy Helped This Tiny Louisiana Nonprofit Boost Its Revenues 10-Fold share.google/h9VZmVnSBMMU...

AI Killed My Job: Translators Few industries have been hit by AI as hard as translation. Rates are plummeting. Work is drying up. Translators are considering abandoning the field, or bankruptcy. These are their stories.

Reading so much here about skilled, deeply experienced translators being reduced to much-lower-paying machine translation post-editing (MTPE) — fixing a first-round AI translation.

Reminds me of the tremendous labor + frustration of *undoing* a bad copyedit (whether performed by human or machine)

If you have any rare photographs from Fort Negley or the surrounding areas of Nashville from the 1900s, we want to see them! Please get in touch.

When the World Broke Open: Katrina and Its Afterlives | MoMA Film series. Aug 27–Sep 21, 2025. When the World Broke Open takes a cinematic look at New Orleans—a city of pleasure, politics, and pulsating prose that lives in the heart of anyone who’s seen its bea...

tomorrow the series i co-curated on hurricane katrina “when the world broke open: katrina and its afterlives” opens at MoMA (aug 27-sept 21).

as a survivor, my entire life has been shaped the storm. curation gives us the power to reclaim, reexamine, and reanimate. i hope to see you at the cinema.

Indeed…My students and colleagues know I’m no fan of Tulane’s delegation of AI policy to faculty. Univ, school or dept level rules for all to follow need not be too specific or onerous to be effective baselines. Because they won’t decide what principles and people to protect, us faculty have to 🙄

I’ve found students want to save the earth and their jobs but they also want “key takeaways” of lectures and meetings courtesy of AI-driven note taking apps.

Power Shift In New Orleans, residents frustrated by an unaccountable energy utility are building a network of community resilience hubs to take back their power.

"After Hurricane Katrina, Entergy New Orleans survived bankruptcy with the help of a bailout. As the years went on, though, Entergy demonstrated repeatedly why an investor-owned utility isn't a good model for climate resilience."

Important read from @boyceupholt.bsky.social, 20 years after Katrina:

Disasters have cumulative impacts that are often greater than the sum of the individual events. In the Gulf States, EVERY county has had at least 3 federally declared disasters since Hurricane Katrina, and some have had upwards of 20.

And finally the best evidence that AI is truly a revolutionary general purpose technology isn’t its midness but it’s politics. It is very good at undercutting, demoralizing and casualizing labor across a variety of fields, known & as-yet known.

I wouldn’t dismiss that. “Mid” is a political tactic.

trauma bonds between untenured faculty working thru multiple pandemics—COVID, and now capitulation to “anti-woke” politics—are serving as super glue in the crumbling academy right now. There’s only so much those bonds can bear though. When they break, i.e. we leave academia, good luck and God Bless

🙋‍♀️ the ticks were insane this summer. I did not leave unscathed.

Bookshelf: Summer 2025 | Book Reviews in Places Journal A seasonal offering of brief reviews of recent books on architecture, landscapes, cities, and related subjects.

Each season, we publish a roundup of brief reviews of recent books on architecture, landscapes, cities + other subjects of interest to Places and our contributing critics.

Here's what's on our Bookshelf this summer 📚

I’m looking to hire a writing coach/editor experienced in supporting academics of the humanities with chronic illness. We face somewhat unique and sometimes debilitating “writing blocks” unfamiliar to many coaches, editors, and mentors. Please share your referrals or reach out about your services.

"more than half of the properties where the owners’ names were made public are owned by Black families, even though Black people comprise less than 20% of Altadena’s population."

Great long-form article, not only on the Eaton fire, but Katrina, and the long history of injustice in housing in the US

It’s already impossible to get specialist appointments within 3-4 months of needing one. It’s going to become impossible for anyone with conditions needing specialized care to live here. And they know these docs depend on Medicare and Medicaid payments, not just PPOs.

This.

The chaos at the GSD right now is unimaginable

Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades (Gift Article) The lag in funding extends far beyond D.E.I. initiatives, affecting almost every area of science: chemistry, computing, engineering, materials and more.

NSF Physics was cut by 85%, basically wiping out most of its capacity for supporting research.

NSF Astronomy was cut by 53%

Undergrad education was cut by 71% and research on learning by 79%

Graduate education was cut by 100% to ZERO.

#GiftLink ⚛️🔭

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Yall! 😂

So much trauma and harm for the right take on human rights to be reached. 😞

So ashamed of my alma mater.

Barnard suspends WKCR and Spectator reporters who covered Butler Library protest Barnard and Columbia issued interim suspensions Thursday afternoon to four student journalists who covered a Wednesday pro-Palestinian protest in Butler Library, citing “information received” from Pub...

Several Columbia Univ student journalists are suspended after covering protests (while wearing press ID) in the main library.

Their access to campus is blocked, and they can't take final exams.

Also: Columbia's acting president is a former ABC journalist

www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/05...

Pope Leo XIV's grandparents were 7th Ward Creoles The newly elected pontiff, born in Chicago, has ancestral ties to the city’s historic Seventh Ward, according to genealogists at The Historic New Orleans Collection.

I didn’t give a wit about new pope coverage, but the first American pope being a man with Black ancestry born in Chicago by way of New Orleans by way of Haiti. Names his self after the pope who condemned slavery? In the Trump era? Oh, baebae, I am HERE for it.

www.wwltv.com/article/news...

America’s heritage is in a state of crisis. Along w/ DOGE-ing NPS, IMLS & the NEH, Trump is withholding already appropriated 2025 historic preservation funds & for 2026 wants to outright eliminate all fed funding for tribal, state, local & rural preservation & saving treasures of American history. 😡

This is so fantastic and well deserved! Congrats!!!