Marlene Manoff

Data centers, chips, electricity - basically infrastructure costs

BREAKING: LLM “reasoning” continues to be deeply flawed A new review underscores the breadth of the problem, and shows that close to a trillion dollars hasn’t changed that

Reasoning and abstract thinking as ongoing challenges to building intelligent machines
garymarcus.substack.com/p/breaking-l...

The End of Books Coverage at the Washington Post Becca Rothfeld, a former critic at the Washington Post, on the death of the paper’s books section.

An eloquent case for book reviews from a former nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post
www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

As AI training data has been largely limited to digital materials, this piece also reinforces the notion that claims about large language models encompassing anything like the entirety of human knowledge are vastly overblown

The British library is in crisis: why does nobody care? The widespread indifference to the British Library's crippling cyberattack demonstrates a perilous failure to value the knowledge infrastructure vital for national prosperity

I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight
www.cityam.com/the-british-...

AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge "Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."

How new AI library "tools" serve "the political project to devalue" or erase the work of librarians, teachers, and scientists: www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

History Has Left The Building Trump isn’t preserving America; he’s rebranding it, one gold-plated illusion at a time. History erased, monuments renamed, and a nation rebuilt in the image of its showman-in-chief.

History Has Left The Building
www.meidasplus.com/p/history-ha...

Libraries Can’t Get Their Loaned Books Back Because of Trump’s Tariffs Libraries have shared their collections internationally for decades. Trump’s tariffs are throwing that system into chaos and can ‘hinder academic progress.’

www.404media.co/libraries-ca...

As if....

Apple Banned an App That Simply Archived Videos of ICE Abuses Eyes Up's purpose is to "preserve evidence until it can be used in court." But it has been swept up in Apple's crackdown on ICE-spotting apps.

very interesting what is not allowed these days. in this case, basic archiving of real videos

www.404media.co/apple-banned...

AI Refusal in Libraries: A Starter Guide - ACRLog This week I was on a panel at the Generative AI in Libraries (GAIL) virtual conference. Along with my fellow panelists Andrea Baer and Emily Zerrenner, I joined moderator Sarah Appedu to discuss the c...

acrlog.org/2025/06/11/a...

The AI powered Library Search That Refused to Search From Clarivate's Summon to Primo Research Assistant, content‑moderation layers meant mostly for chatbots are "quietly" blocking controversial topics from being searched

More on the failures/erasures that ai chatbots introduce into library search tools aarontay.substack.com/p/the-ai-pow...

Librarians Are Being Asked to Find AI-Hallucinated Books It’s a trippy time to have a library card.

www.404media.co/librarians-a...

Smithsonian removes Trump from impeachment exhibit in American History Museum A temporary placard, on display since 2021, described the president's historic impeachments. Officials said the exhibit was restored to an earlier version following a review of legacy content.

When a president gets to decide what counts as American history
www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

“We Couldn’t Generate an Answer for your Question” - ACRLog Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Jay Singley, Document Delivery and Circulation Desk Manager at North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. In March 2025, Ex Libris unveiled thei...

Librarians are finding that their AI assisted commercially produced search tools are providing no search results for topics like Tulsa race riot, Covid, January 6, Gaza War, lynching and history of genocides acrlog.org/2025/07/21/w...

The book publisher prepping for Trump censorship Indie publisher Melville House is racing to preserve history, before the US government buries the evidence

"Determined not to let this stage of American history become “lost culture”, the publishers believe that old-fashioned print is still the best way to preserve for the future" www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/6952...

Right wing creators are dominating Lively-Baldoni coverage Conservative commentators are leveraging the case to dismantle support for #MeToo and amass unprecedented audience growth.

It’s so devastating to watch Depp v. Heard happen over and over again, pushing more women into conservatism and damaging the cultural narratives around sexual harassment, violence, and abuse each time
open.substack.com/pub/taylorlo...

Tools for Feminist and Women’s Studies Scholars in Literature: Issues and Problems." Bibliography in Literature, Folklore, Language and Linguistics: Essays on the Status of the Field (2003) (No electronic copy)

Historical context? In 2003 the editor of a chapter I contributed to a volume on bibliography in literature informed me that I could not use the phrase “feminist literary bibliography” in the title as such a thing did not exist.

Who Is in DOGE? Tracking Its Staffers and Allies in the Federal Government The Times identified 49 people within the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a group formed by Elon Musk that in a short few weeks has radically upended federal agencies.

The People Carrying Out Musk’s Plans at DOGE www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

My 2017 essay on the disappearance of government information (and attempts to save it) under the first Trump administration is creepily relevant: works.hcommons.org/records/aytt...

Like I was saying, we are losing control over the film, music, books, games, etc that we can now only rent

What We Lose When Streaming Companies Choose What We Watch Maybe don’t throw away all your DVDs just yet.

"just as the arts are more than mere nutrients, the medium is more than a delivery system: it has an aesthetic and a psychology of its own"
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Defying the Algorithm #25

If ever there were an opportune moment to make the case for the value of higher education and for the Dept of Education this would seem to be it

When neither my room key nor my partner's could get us back into our hotel room it took a security guard then a maintenance guy & finally someone who could reprogram the lock to get us back in. Sometimes analog is just simpler

The optical disc onslaught continues, with LG quitting Blu-ray players Streaming uncertainty has some people clinging to their discs.

The relentless contraction of our ability to own and maintain control over the music, films, books, games and other media that we now merely rent
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024...

Nat'l archives agency requests preservation of martial law documents The state-run archives agency on Friday requested the presidential office and the defense ministry to preserve all documents related to this week's botched martial law declaration.

The importance of national archives:
www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2...

Happy holidays to you. It's great to find a new community away from the other place

THIS is why we wrote this. archive.is/2024.10.31-1...