Reading Rooms at the British Library are closed *all week* because so many of its workers refuse to work for pitiful wages in a contemptuously authoritarian and obliviously managed environment.
We need leaders who get it and are big enough to sort it out!
It’s a mess and a disgrace.
Lift it up!!

This is the creature Wes Streeting thinks should be trusted with your medical data.

A poster on 8.5 x 11 inch paper saga Fishtown fish facts: red lipped catfish or of ocephalus Darwini. Then a pic of that freaky fish with 4 limbs it rests on the ground and then the words “stg this fish real red-lipped batfish walk ocean floor with they flippers RLBF have RBF, not they fault RLBF have a bioluminescent lure that glows to attract dinner RLBF lipgloss is popping, RLBF lipgloss is cool, all the fish keep jockin, they chase RLBF after school RLBF got scales like armor and shine bright like a diamond Red-lipped batfish will teach you how to dougie, I can promise u that. @yaboyni Take a moment And and realize the moment You took has already passed Thank you See you next time

One of my neighbors has been putting up these fish facts posters. All kinds of different fish, marine, freshwater, deep, shallow, all kinds. This is a good one. “Stg this real fish” took me out. Good work, neighbor.

How much do museums and heritage organisations pay freelance writers? An informal, unscientific and totally anonymous survey asking how much museums pay writers. This is for my personal research only, results won't be published.

Museum folks! I'm running a small, anonymous & unscientific survey about how much museums and other heritage organisations pay writers. If you have a moment, please respond, and share if you can. Thank you!

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

How a New Hampshire libertarian utopia was foiled by bears Seriously, this happened. You should absolutely read about it.

It is never a bad time to post this reminder of what happens to places when they're run by people who don't think you need to understand how anything works:

www.vox.com/policy-and-p...

This post made me want to start a thread of places you can buy bookish/literary/librarian-type holiday gifts that donate back to their orgs. So, first up, the Internet Archive!

I must have missed this when Joe posted it last year. No way I could have forgotten it

this is a great article, should be read widely

YouTube video by bobbynoe1 Stax Volt Tour 1967 feat. Otis Redding, Booker T. & The MGs, Sam & Dave

Steve Cropper played on the most enduring records ever made—his work with Otis Redding, an American treasure gone way too soon, is unreal (and that’s him on the Soul Children debut and many others). Here’s Cropper w/ the pioneering Booker T., Otis, and Sam & Dave in 1967 youtu.be/kUk1WTAReyE?...

Imagine seeing this. Incredible.

A stainless-steel, side-by-side refrigerator with a built-in touchscreen display on the right door. The screen shows a bright yellow Apple TV+ advertisement reading “WE’RE SORRY WE UPSET YOU, CAROL” for the series Pluribus. The left door includes a water and ice dispenser. The fridge is in a modern kitchen with small appliances visible in the background.

Fresh dystopian hell from Samsung fridges with ads.

Almost 530 museums have closed since 2000, study finds - Museums Association Research project shows that first decade after opening is the most precarious for museums

This is some depressing, but entirely believable, reading. Over 500 museums closed since 2000 - particularly grim reading about local authority museums.

www.museumsassociation.org/museums-jour...

A book from the 19th century that depicts the Rhine Valley by creating an impression of three-dimensionality and spatial distance.
@MasayukiTsuda2 #globalmuseum #books #travel #19thcentury

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

be the bitch doing something yourself that you want to see in the world

YouTube video by Beat-Club Fanny - Hey Bulldog (1971) | LIVE

There are lots of very good covers of Beatles songs out there. But I still reckon one of the best is by the wonderfully named female group Fanny, absolutely kicking the shit out of 'Hey Bulldog'. Lovely stuff!

Solidarity Stitches Us Together: Today, World AIDS Day, Is Also the 70th Anniversary of Rosa Park's Historic Protest I saw two radically different versions of what a quilt could be yesterday and yet they spoke to the same issues. I caught the show Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California ...

An essay for World AIDS Day and the 70th anniversary of Rosa Parks's valiant act of resistance, an essay on quilts and solidarity, on stitching the fragments together.

SUCH BEAUTY

A generously proportioned man in papal robes with a mournful look on his round, round face

1 December is the day we must mark the sad passing 504 years ago of Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici – or Pope Leo X, as he was also known. Leo was not one of those popes memorable for a sordid life, but is known for two things. Firstly, this:

There is not one PhD between the directors of Nous, they have no experience of research or teaching and yet they're advising universities, student unions & governments on how to run HE.

Is your child texting about Buckinghamshire Archives? Here are the signs to look out for:

BRB: Buckinghamshire records, blimey
LOL: Lots of ledgers
SMH: Some medieval holdings
WTF: Where's that folder?
ROFL: Researching our former lacemaking
IDC: Is Duke corrupt?
BTW: Big trees, Wendover

A post from the US Homeland Security, reading “This Thanksgiving, there is no room at the table for invaders.”

And still, there are those who say that Americans can’t do irony.

Honestly, it is possible to think 'I work hard to earn money; I deserve that money' and *also* 'it would be good if we created a more equal society: I'll help'. Exhausting to see everything presented as a fight to the death between those two ideas, seemingly forever.

UK rejects visa for girl left destitute in Jamaica by Hurricane Melissa Lati-Yana Brown’s parents had asked for application to be expedited so she could join them in UK after house ruined

Home Office #HostileEnvironment - seems nothing has changed

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Truth coming out of her cup o’noodles to shame mankind

What makes historic collections difficult? And how do researchers work with “difficult” collections?

New CFP from Paper Trails here:

blogs.ucl.ac.uk/special-coll...

Deadline for proposals 31/1/2026
🗃️

It Starts With a Whisper A celebration of the strength, wisdom, beauty and humour of Native women; of Native culture and people, surviving and thriving.

A collection of environmental films made by Indigenous filmmakers that I've screened in Ecocinema over the years (shared today for obvious reasons):

1. It Starts with a Whisper (Shelley & Gronau Niro, 1993) vucavu.com/en/cfmdc/199...

Happy Chompsgiving!

YOU BOY! Do they still have the 80cm acrylic snowman in the window?