Maureen Babb 🍁

A red-figure cup with two handles, featuring a central depiction of a stylized owl flanked by olive leaves. The owl is painted in a reddish-brown hue against the black background.

#SaturdayMorningMood: a #Greek skyphos (a two handled drinking cup), decorated with an adorable #owl.

Dating second half of the 5th century BC.

On display at Museum August Kestner, Hannover.

📷 me

🏺

Someone on here compared AI produced material as "digital asbestos " which in a few decades' time we will have to work out how to eradicate from the fabric of research.

From my own academic research, even pre LLMs there was a huge danger of zombie factoids that begin in a respectable publication by mistake and then get reprinted for decades because no one is backtracing to the original source. Once bad info gets into the system it can take years to clear it out.

Tom Lehrer, master satirist of Cold War era, dies at 97 In song, he brilliantly skewered clichés about romance, patriotism and small-town life.

The Washington Post has a wonderful obit of Tom Lehrer. I laughed out loud many times. Here's a gift link, and here's this piece (or its traffic) will convince whoever is running that place to replenish and respect the obit section. 1/2 🎁https://wapo.st/3J6GVeA

I know I'm preaching to the crowd here but not everything can or should be run like a company.

What if they changed it to "oh the UmanitIES" and then diverted funding to the humanities?

Is what you're doing tied to your research and teaching functions? No? Then what purpose is it serving, particularly in a resources constrained environment?

I fear we're going to end up in a place where the hollow corporate shells of universities will remain, but they're effectively hollowed out.

One of the strangest things that's happened with Cdn universities is the belief that the institutions have a corporate identity above and beyond their research and teaching functions.

I'm certain someone is going to be injured if not killed at intersection, and I wish the the safety discussion were more about transit or about people with mobility issues having to navigate poorly ploughed sidewalks to get to their bus stops in -35° and not like. A poor person might talk to you.

A satellite image of Jessie at Osborne

The single *safety* related concern I have with the new transit system is crossing at Jessie when leaving Osborne station because literally none of the drivers there are looking for pedestrians despite there now being MANY of them all rushing to make a connection. I've almost been hit twice already.

My entire career as a librarian has had the drumbeat of “innovate or die” in the background. But innovation has largely been whatever the tech hype cycle has been pushing, rather than anything library workers have developed for ourselves.

A photograph of a weather ammonite fossil embedded in the ground. An Estwing rock hammer lies next to it for scale.

Fossil Friday! Here’s an extremely weathered ammonite I spotted a few years back. It’s embedded within the Duck Creek Formation (Cretaceous) of North TX. Genus would be difficult to confirm, but could be Mortoniceras. Rock hammer for scale.

#fossilfriday #ammonite #fossilhunting #cretaceous

We really need to find a way to stop paying exorbitant amounts for garbage.

This article helped me articulate something I've been thinking about in regards to AI hype but didn't quite have words for. "Feeling rules" show up so much in all areas of ed tech/libraries and GenAI has turned the dial up to 11

The federal government is asking for input. It's short. You don't need to have the right answers. You just need to live here. This is a quiet way to weigh in. Open until August 28. Share it with people who don't usually fill these things out. #cdnpoli

Remains of a Sixth-Century B.C. Greek Ship Found in Sicily with Mast and Rope Fragment Perfectly Preserved On the southeastern coast of Sicily near the town of Santa Maria del Focallo in the territory of Ispica (Ragusa), a team of archaeologists has discovered the remains of a Greek ship dating from the 6t...

Remains of a Sixth-Century B.C. Greek Ship Found in Sicily with Mast and Rope Fragment Perfectly Preserved
www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2025/07/r...

"what if emotional responses like “AI anxiety” are in large part deeply intelligent...? What if the cognitive dissonance that many of us experience when reading articles about AI anxiety or the necessity of AI adoption is worth our attention and curiosity?"

😡

Investigating the “Feeling Rules” of Generative AI and Imagining Alternative Futures by Andrea Baer

"rather than rushing to adopt and promote new technologies whose ethical implications raise major questions, we might slow down and claim more time & space for considering .... implications of GenAI"

These are very different things, and it's important to know which one is meant by a given speaker.

When I talk about "AI literacy," what I mean is an understanding of the technology; what it is and is not.

What a lot of people seem to mean when they say "AI literacy," is simply how to use a specific tool or set of tools.

I don't have any irony-poisoned snark for this, dude, it just really fucking sucks that "Being queer is valid grounds for asylum from the USA" is a relief to hear now

Just noticed that the "relaxing tea" in that last repost is chamomile, which I am allergic to.
Which.
....Yeah.

Relaxing Tea Better Fucking Work

Relaxing Tea Better Fucking Work
theonion.com/relaxin...

This baby pterosaur is no bigger than my thumb

Last year I was frustrated with the frame that if you "don't like" AI in higher ed you must just "not understand it"
this frame very conveniently drew attention away from how many of its proponents do not understand how it works.

YOU DON’T SAY.

The Ugly Stereotype Beneath the Supreme Court Ruling on LGBTQIA+ Books The nine picture books cited in Mahmoud v. Taylor are not pornography. Nor are they obscene. What is obscene is a Supreme Court decision that denies the basic humanity and equality of LGBTQIA+ people.

If you don't understand how this will be used to target LGBTQ+ books, read this piece by @penamerica.bsky.social 's @tasslyn.bsky.social and Jon Friedman: many book banners consider ALL queer content sexually explicit. www.slj.com/story/The-Ug...

Alberta bans school library books it deems sexually explicit | CBC News Alberta's education minister says sexually explicit content must be gone from school library shelves as of Oct. 1, but says the announcement is not about book banning.

This is absolutely book banning, despite the minister's denials, and I have no doubt that LGBTQ+ books will be targeted. But also- many Alberta teachers and librarians are deeply committed to queer inclusion and to readers' rights and will continue to fight book bans.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

My guess is we'll see more of this, especially with the "on the record" stating the problem, offering "solutions," and requesting Canada act.
But that's just a guess.