Dr. Ben Mitchell

Though seriously, travelling while disabled hasn't felt like its gotten any better.

It took over three years, and it's not fully the remediation I requested, but Ben v. Air Canada had just been decided by the Canadian Transportation Agency, and I'm fairy content with the ruling.

Now that I'm back in front of students I have to explain to them "10 years ago I would have taught you how to use Google competently. Now I literally can't do that as well, so we're focusing on the catalog"

huh

Class and Librarianship - Litwin Books & Library Juice Press The current crisis of capitalism has led to the renewed interest in Marxism and its core categories of analysis such as class and exploitation. In our own discipline — … Read more Class and Librarians...

litwinbooks.com/books/class-...

Discord Replacers - Features are only counted if they are implemented, not planned.

An overview of alternatives to Discord (not mine) docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

OpenAI did not mention Tumbler Ridge shooter’s posts in meeting with B.C. officials day after mass shooting: province Company says it suspended the shooter’s account in June after posts were flagged by an automatic screening system

"A representative of tech giant OpenAI met with the B.C. government one day after an 18-year-old killed six people in a school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, but the company did not disclose that it had suspended the shooter’s ChatGPT account months earlier..."

www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/4e12d7e...

BTW if there's a librarypunk recommended reading list I'm putting this book on it fit.princeton.edu/publications...

158 - Flickr Commons feat. Jessamyn West

It’s a fun one! We’re talking with @librarian.bsky.social about the public domain, new and old technology, blogging at the DNC, and lots of inside baseball.

OpenAI had banned account of Tumbler Ridge shooter in June 2025; reached out to RCMP | CBC News The company said, in response to questions from CBC News, that Jesse Van Rootselaar's account was detected via automated tools and human investigations that "identify misuses of our models in furthera...

They know who you are. They can read your chats. They decide what's safe. When will Canada stand up to OpenAI for harming citizens? www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Thread full of people affected by this. www.reddit.com/r/yahoo/comm...

And Fiona Lane reviews @lucaspoy.bsky.social and @hannesrolf.bsky.social edited book, Rent Strikes: A History of Tenant Activism across the World (UCL Press, 2025), doi.org/10.1111/1468...

5 star Google Chrome Web Store review for Proctorio dated January 30, 2026. "The Proctorio extension offers a refreshingly clean interface and seamless integration that makes remote testing feel completely intuitive. It is incredibly easy to use and stays out of the way, allowing you to focus entirely on your exam without any technical distractions. Would you like me to condense this even further into a short "headline" style review?"

This 5 star Proctorio review was written by GenAI.

We're All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This.gif

“non-pathologising”

Now there’s a change. In general, everything about autism is pathologised, starting with the diagnosis itself.

I'm enjoying seeing people becoming educated about who the Luddites actually were in response to AI discourse.

Not anti-tech, anti powerful folks making others lives worse through tech.

Which seems like a pretty good position.

💯💯💯💯💯

Clearview AI lost in the BC Court of Appeals today. They tried to argue that the Personal Information Privacy Act was constitutionally inapplicable to their practice of scraping the internet for facial data. This is a win for all British Columbians.

Link: www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/ca/2...

📣 Announcing The 2026 Modern Intellectual History Lecture!

We're thrilled to welcome Prof. Marlene L. Daut (Yale) for her talk:

“The King of Haiti and Black Statecraft in the Nineteenth Century.”

📅 March 19, 2026
⏰ 2:15–3:45 PM CST
📍 Black Cultural Center Auditorium, Vanderbilt University

Back in 2023, I noticed the refreshed Ursula K. Le Guin website no longer had this essay. I reached out to ask if it could be restored, and a few days later someone from the foundation sent over the URL to show it was back online :)

You can completely uninstall/disable copilot on Windows. Your system and local search will run faster afterward. www.howtogeek.com/how-to-rip-o...

Many self-identifying autistic ppl lack formal diagnosis despite wanting it, & have higher unmet needs, unemployment & distress than many diagnosed ppl (as we found). UK is proposing to narrow diagnosis despite subtyping failures.👇 Rationing healthcare backfires!
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Aside from everything else wrong with this, the trope is so far out of date - I thought people stopped using that one decades ago.

New 'elbows up' just dropped: Protecting our sovereignty by destroying our capacity to tell our country's history.

Ask any Canadian historian and they will tell you that things were already extremely dire at Library and Archives Canada. Not sure it will even be functional after this.

Why your brain has to work harder in an open-plan office than private offices: study We all know poorly designed chairs cause physical strain. But here’s why poorly designed workplaces are so mentally draining.

As so often what many autistic people say is harmful for us turns out to be more subtly harming everyone else too.

theconversation.com/why-your-bra...

Conference We’re launching our first two day conference in 2026 with our call for contributions and our booking site, both now open. (See below). This page will evolve as we add more details about the c…

I just thought, we should have given a hashtag! We'll use #NLISN26 for the conference :) nlisn.org/conference/

Justification Doc THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS, IN IT’S EARLY STAGES! To be a (short & long versions?) list of reasons why it would be beneficial to individuals and their workplaces for people to attend. The final versi...

I've been trying to construct "reasons for coming to #NLISN26" for people to use when asking their bosses for permission to attend! This is the work in progress...

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Finally got a hold of the Orion Newby vs. Adelphi University judgment.

Link: www.nycourts.gov/REPORTER/3ds...

In short, Adelphi used Turnitin to accuse Orion, a student, of using generative AI to write an essay. He was sanctioned and experienced harm. He spent over $100K in legal fees and won.

Donate to Honoring the life of Fobazi Ettarh: Funeral & other costs, organized by Ysabel Gerrard NEW UPDATE Dear readers, This isn’t the update I was … Ysabel Gerrard needs your support for Honoring the life of Fobazi Ettarh: Funeral & other costs

Almost there, just a little more to go

gofund.me/ba4b91809

Anthropic didn’t want us to know that they were destroying millions of books to feed their software. Companies making machine learning and generative software aren’t just metaphorically ripping off books. In at least one case, they’re rather literally shredding millions of physical books to …

“AI giant Anthropic ran a massive program called Project Panama where they spent tens of millions of dollars to hoover up used books, which they then sliced, scanned, and pulped.”

New report urges broader definition of “open research" to include arts, humanities and social science practices As Open Research gains traction across the research landscape, a new report challenges funders and institutions to expand their understanding of openness to better reflect arts, humanities and social science (AHSS) research.

New report urges broader definition of “open research" to include arts, humanities and social science practices https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/stories/morphss-open-research-report