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Reading and writing can lower dementia risk by almost 40%, study finds Cognitive health in later life is ‘strongly influenced’ by lifelong exposure to intellectually stimulating environments, say researchers

Many people, including many librarians, like to talk up libraries being "more than just books." And while it is true we've always been more than just a warehouse, I think that framing does our work a disservice. (1/3) 📚

PS I suppose one could say that doing so would be a pro-arts polemic they were right to avoid. But even providing readings etc on the purpose of the arts, and letting us work through our thoughts & responses, would have been good, IMO. (Sorry for wordiness; they did try to make me more concise!)

I felt, ultimately, that they were an intellectual exercise at best, and a stupid waste of time at worst. At 19, I read Powers by Le Guin and finally heard it from someone. (I changed my major and wrote her a letter, thanking her for changing my life.) But it would have been good to hear earlier.

That may be so! Certainly, it was a very prescriptive, New Critical approach to teaching English, from Junior Great Books thru AP English. But in addition to autonomy, I needed someone to say, “books can matter, they can change your life, they can change the world! Art can change the world!”

Because I was a child and a teenager. I believed what I was taught by good teachers in a big, average, public school. I was looking for meaning in subjects I loved, but we never discussed applications of learning to life and the world. That is what radical education can support, in my opinion.

I don’t see radical ed as prescriptive of conclusions or viewpoints, but as providing support for exploring connections to one’s life, community, future hopes beyond the classroom. I had the agency / individualism in school; was desperate for even the idea there could be more to it than aesthetics.

I am escorting the Crespo-Gonzalez family, including their seven year old daughter, back to Oregon now.

Out of respect for the family, additional information is not being shared at this time.

Please consider donating towards the funerary and hospital costs for Fobazi Ettarh; and showing support for her partner Elena.

As a severely disabled person, I’m haunted by what the regime did to Wael Tarabishi.

They ripped his father away from him.

His father was his full time caregiver.

They killed Wael. You can’t remove a person’s full time caregiver and expect them to survive.

There’s no “back up”.

And staff! Staff who have neither union nor academic freedom protections.

We do have Gale Elementary, for now. A major dependency for the entire state, increasingly feeling like single point of failure with general disaster of current internet, and now Factbook shutting down. And for high school, all of it seems worse re options.

It‘s weird. Has it all been captured by classroom curriculum products that expect no outside sources to be used, or…? I’ve hit a point with some high-interest topics, realizing I’ve already bought everything available and reputable, and this is just a tiny k-4 school lib inside an academic lib!

Reading this and thinking of all the LSTA-funded Gale k-12 database subscriptions lost or hanging by a thread. I didn’t realize how bad the reference nonfiction situation was beyond lower elementary, and it’s not great for the little kids either.

My actual job description is activist and here’s what I tell people in despair all the time: do not underestimate how much harm you can prevent by being just a little bit annoying.

three thick big books, all titled "vegetable situation"

quick, someone help, we've got a vegetable situation

Spotlighting The World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell Somewhat devastating news today from the CIA: One of CIA’s oldest and most recognizable intelligence publications, The World Factbook, has sunset. There's not even a hint as to why they …

The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions!

This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/t...

In addition to all this, Fobazi was funny. Really funny. She wasn’t just vocational awe. She would have hated that. RIP.

A good time to read this again. Fobazi gave so many of us an essential language and framework for understanding certain traps it’s easy to fall into and perpetuate. She will continue to do so for generations to come. <3

I am so sorry. Thinking of Fobazi and her family and friends. This is a very sad loss of a wonderful person, and also a very hard loss for the library community.

man's always hated books and the people who love them tbh

this is absolutely true. but i also think there's a phase where you re-examine the work of a shithead and recognize places where their public persona made you more charitable to their art then you needed to be. it helps to understand how you've been conned.

one thing that would be cool, when prominent creators turn out to be terrible people, would be if we didn't have to go through this performative dance of insisting that their work was never good in the first place.

This jeering, ableist behavior hurts your students with IBS, your aunties undergoing chemo, your grandparents who are too ashamed to leave the house. Please don’t.

This is so so frustrating to watch. Thank you for saying it.

I cannot believe how many people think it's okay to double down on making fun of disability when it's someone they don't like. Get right with god, all of you

Morning announcement... I'm seeing that video with a joke about Trump soiling himself float around. As a reminder, having the punchline of your joke be related to disability is ableist. Same when people joked about how he'd "need a walker."

I recommend reading 'Disability Visibility' by Alice Wong.

U.S. citizen injured by federal agents in Salem who demanded to see “papers,” union says - Salem Reporter A home care worker and union worker was pulled from her car and injured by federal agents Thursday according to a statement by SEIU 503. To comment on this story, use the form at the end of the repor...

4 federal agents pull over an elderly US citizen for the suspected crime of being brown, break her car window, throw her to the ground, then drive off after they find her US Passport in her purse. The Salem Police, when called, say there’s nothing they can do. www.salemreporter.com/2026/01/31/u...

A cloud of tear gas outside the Portland ICE facility. A person in a shark costume emerging from the cloud.

Like many have said, the gassing outside ICE today was really bad, and it impacted a huge group of people. I heard multiple people say they felt like they were going to throw up as they tried to leave the area. (I experienced similar effects.) It followed a peaceful protest led by labor groups.

Just experienced the most intense tear gassing of my life by federal officers outside the ICE facility in Portland where marchers gathered. There was no fast exit as they indiscriminately threw loads of gas and flash bangs. Children were in the crowd screaming. @oregoncapitalchronicle.com

For us, that was kind of the end of DVD course reserves. After, faculty reports were that they wouldn’t/couldn‘t. I’ll be super interested if your students go for it! Will say, we’ve been really pushing our DVD collection & players in lib, and had a jump in usage (!!). So maybe now is the time!