Josh Wallaert

man, it sure looks like republicans are using threat of federal government force to try and silence journalists

Careful out there folks! This article comes with risk of electric shock.

"Societies are defined by their libraries — by what we hold, what we lend, what we borrow and return, the knowledge we create, the values we defend."

Extralibrary Loan: Making the Civic Infrastructure We Need Amid a war on public knowledge, libraries are pushing outward, enlarging the commons through new configurations of civic and creative life.

I wrote about public libraries as spaces of civic solidarity, common knowledge, and public infrastructure — all endangered by commercial and federal saboteurs

A stat we don't talk about enough: Newspapers have lost 77% of their jobs over the last 20 year, more than any of the 532 other industries tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

U.S. Postal Service Cuts Funding for a Phoenix Mail Room Assisting Homeless People The loss of support comes at a time of uncertainty for one of Arizona’s largest homeless services providers as the Trump administration calls for reducing and restructuring homelessness assistance grants.

NEW: For years, the Phoenix nonprofit Keys to Change has run a mail room for thousands of homeless people.

Now the U.S. Postal Service is cutting its $24,000 investment, leaving the organization to raise the extra money to keep it open.

The longer you listen, the younger you get!

"The entire human commons is about to become a Superfund site." The most Gen X (complementary) article I have read in a while. Worth reading if you have the stomach for it. All I can say is that the crash needs more care workers and librarians. (But yes, technologists, please return to blogging.)

Feeling this 💯 in the Bay Area. Thank you @kalxberkeley.bsky.social @gramophoneybaloney.bsky.social @djjohnrichards.bsky.social (plus JJ at #KPOO)

Americans are dying from extreme heat. Autopsy reports don’t show the full story Official reports are likely to overlook heat’s role in a death. As US temperatures rise, experts say the true toll needs to be counted

One of the many things @ninalakhani.bsky.social does so well is show the very real, very now cost of climate change at the most human level. This story is devastatingly good: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

This is how you blurb

Opinion | My Bosses Were Afraid of Crossing Trump. So, I Quit. A veteran journalist opens up on the censorship that he says led to his resignation.

The editor of Governing magazine has resigned after pressure to censor his work.

This is a tragic development for (what was) an excellent magazine.

www.politico.com/news/magazin...

What We Can Do About ICE ICE is in the Bay Area. And yes, we can all do something about it.

While this federal administration has been busy empowering ICE to become, essentially, an extrajudicial militia allowed to disappear people from our streets, the Bay has been organizing. We will not be beaten down.

Joyous crowd gathered on the steps of San Francisco City Hall celebrating the Internet Archive.

It's official! 🏛️ 🎉 The SF Board of Supervisors has unanimously declared October 22, 2025 as Internet Archive Day — celebrating our 1️⃣ trillion webpages preserved & our mission to provide universal access to all knowledge.

Learn more & celebrate with us tonight! ➡️ blog.archive.org/2025/10/22/h...

Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors “With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work.”

Wikipedia is seeing a significant decline in human traffic because more people are getting the information that’s on Wikipedia via generative AI chatbots that were trained on its articles and search engines that summarize them without actually clicking to the site

www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...

We are so grateful to everyone who signed our petition (1,300 OF YOU!) asking our management to agree to a fair contract with basic job protections for us! THANK YOU!!! We keep doing fearless journalism because you make us fearless 😍

Expropriated Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system.

The first and only MacArthur fellow identified as a cartographer* is Potawatomi mapmaker Margaret Wickens Pearce. See her atlas of Land-Grab Universities @highcountrynews.org + all her work at www.studio1to1.net

(*a handful of geographers have been previously awarded, including some who make maps)

Memory Maps of Homs, Syria A mapping workshop with refugees from Homs, Syria, illuminates the complexity of rebuilding after war.

This essay on place making in a pluralist city, valuing memory and identity and acknowledging fracture, but also moving toward a collective rebuilding and repair, is vital reading. It's about Homs in Syria, but no city can design its way out of history: placesjournal.org/article/mapp...

Local cops are not on the side of Democratic politicians or under their actual control. People refuse to understand this too even though we've been making this point for decades.

Memory Maps of Homs, Syria A mapping workshop with refugees from Homs, Syria, illuminates the complexity of rebuilding after war.

A mapping workshop with refugees from Homs, Syria, asked participants to draw their neighborhoods from memory, bridging gaps between houses to generate a shared image of a city destroyed by war. To rebuild justly, residents will need to understand this pluralist city as others have lived within it.

ICE began shipping immigrants to this tiny California town. Chaos has reigned ever since ICE began sending immigrants to a new California detention center in small town in August. Since then, it has been inundated with activists, desperate families and utter confusion.

"Newsom has yet to publicly acknowledge what’s now California’s seventh and largest ICE detention facility."

"The energy of San Francisco is always directed outward, never to return. It would be too much for a city to keep."

❤️ Rod Roland's review (history, memoir) of skateboarding in the new @sfreviewofwhatever.bsky.social

In early 2025, beaver activity in the Brdy Protected Landscape Area, Czech Republic, contributed to the restoration of a wetland ecosystem. A family of beavers constructed a series of dams that coincidentally accomplished environmental goals of the Czech government, which had delayed its proposed project since 2018 for bureaucratic and financial reasons. The beaver-built dams saved the Czech government approximately US$1.2 million,

imagine if a family of beavers randomly showed up right now and finished whatever thing you've been putting off

they think they can just erase trans joy and trans freedom. they can't. they can make things a lot harder and more painful. but that joy and that freedom is not theirs to take and it is incumbent on all good people to say so.

How America Became Hostile to Shade A roving history makes the case for shade’s centrality to public health, climate adaptation, and even a more robust and inclusive public sphere.

Another strong review for this "roving, inveterately curious" book. 👏👏👏

San Francisco and Bay Area folks: This is tomorrow!

Join me and @emmettfitzgerald.bsky.social of @99pi.org for a shady conversation at the Commonwealth Club.

A New Book on Shade by Sam Bloch This week marks the release of <em>Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource</em>, a new book by Sam Bloch that expands on an article published in <em>Places</em> in 2019.

OUT TODAY: “Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource” by @samkbloch.bsky.social.

The book, published by Random House, expands on an article Bloch wrote for Places in 2019, which has since become a definitive account of the value of shade as a civic resource and a mandate for urban design.

It’s Only Getting Hotter | Los Angeles Review of Books Lisa Kwon talks with Sam Bloch about his new book “Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource.”

the great darkening has arrived. read my convo with Sam Bloch about his new book Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social and let us all get shade-pilled 🚫🌴

lareviewofbooks.org/article/its-...

Private Worlds Today's billionaires and technofascists threaten to rob the American people of things we are supposed to hold in common.

Loved reading this rich (Detroit-centered), insightful story: it has a shout out to my book, Public Things, & puts it into a conversation that is rich & important: “We ultimately lose so much more than an acre-or 500 or 5 million-when public lands are devalued and reduced to financial assets” /1

Private Worlds Today's billionaires and technofascists threaten to rob the American people of things we are supposed to hold in common.

"We might cheer the retreat of seasteaders and space colonists from civil society, if not for the fact that the wealth used to construct their private worlds belongs to us."

From @timothyaschuler.bsky.social: the technofascists ruling our new gilded age threaten to rob us of what we hold in common.