librarypunk - 165 - Backburner

Episode Date: May 23, 2026

We’re back after a break! We’re talking about our backburner episodes. Episodes we haven’t gotten to yet, guests we’d like to have on. Also: the AI booing at commencements which was very funny.  Media mentioned Violet’s AI zine https://violetbfox.info/against-ai/ Exposing Ex Libris zine https://librarianswithpalestine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ExLibris1Color.pdf Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171063 The Fall: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/ The Great Book Robbery: https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1636018 American Animals: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6212478/ All transcripts: https://podscripts.co/podcasts/librarypunk  Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/qWPTurTnkT

I'm Justin. I'm an academic librarian at an R1 institution. And my pronouns are he and they? I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library and my pronouns are they then. And I'm Jay. I'm a cataloging librarian and my pronouns are he, him. And we're back. We moved. We're done. We're doing an episode in our new place in the same room. It's confusing. But we'll figure it out. The band is back together. That's right. We had a test run of recording, but that was in Discord. And now we're in Cinder again and they can't do all the same stuff. It's confusing. It might reduce the amount of times

that I blatantly interrupt other people all the time because I have to basically keep myself muted when I'm not talking just to make sure that me and Justin don't get picked up on each other's microphone, even though we've got noise gate and everything on, you know, I'm loud and annoying. I have my noise gate on so loud that it's skipping words for me and Jay was still bleeding through. when he gets excited, he starts yelling. That's okay. The amount of times that my wife has been like, you're shouting when I'm just like saying something emphatically,

I'm like, oh, sorry. I have to do that when Jay's two inches away from me. I go, Jay, you're yelling. It's like ordering at the drive-in. Yeah, I'll have a... This thing on? Can you hear me? Yeah.

nothing to say in my own defense. So did everyone see the two different commencement speakers? Because graduations have just happened if someone's going to the back catalog or listening a few weeks. Every once in a while someone will be in the Discord and be like,

yeah, I'm just listening to the episode like three years ago. Do you remember this thing you were talking about? Like, not a bit. I have had gone through so many med changes since then. I don't remember most things. I've had some in my personal life.

I'm like, oh, yeah, I was listening to this and, like, this extremely niche topic you guys on. And I was like, that was two years ago, buddy, and that wasn't even my like thing. So, like, yeah, no, I remember shit about that episode. Sorry, glad you enjoyed it. There's extensive notes in most episodes. So it's, if it's not in the note description, I don't know if there's anything else we can go through. We try and include everything right away. But anyway, two different commencement speakers.

I'm going to cut in the audio here because it's incredibly funny. of people getting booed because the university's called someone in to like talk about the future. And sometimes these people are just like, they either work with AI or, but they do so in a way that where they're not used to people getting mad at them. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution. A few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives. And then on Friday, grads at University of Arizona booed former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt.

In the years that after I graduated, no one sat down and resolved to build a technology that would polarize democracies and unsettle a generation of young people. That was not our plan, but it happened. There is a fear in your generation yet that the future has already been written that the machines are coming,

that the jobs are evaporating. So one commencement speaker was like some real estate lady. I don't remember which university was at. I think it was the University of Southern Florida. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it was. USF or UCF? It was one of the Florida's.

Yeah. I think it was UCF, which I think is even bigger, which is funny because famously people don't graduate from there. It's called You Can't Finish. It's a party school. So I know so many people who went there for like a year and then go back to college. I've been to someone was like, oh, I was a faculty member at UCF. Have you seen their science building?

I've seen inside of the dorms when I was in college and went to parties. I don't know anything about UCF. but one was at Arizona State, which is also a massive university. And the guy was a little more used to getting booed. And so he like turned on the crowd like a bad stand-up comedian, which is the one I think I'm going to cut it in both, but they're both extremely funny. People not really getting why telling them that you just did all this work

to individually try and game the labor market by getting an education that other people don't have and that that investment isn't really going to work for you. On the other hand, living in a new gilded age means the inevitable resurgence of the IWW wandering into people's towns and getting into fights with the sheriff. We can only hope, right? Justin, why are you holding a box cutter? I don't know. I have box cutters for cutting. Constantly asking me why I have a knife? And it's like, why else would I have a knife for

cutting? Anyway. All right. So we had an idea for an episode, or Jay had the idea, which was, what about all of the episodes that we have never gotten around to finishing? So there's some that I still want to do, but can talk about. But I've been Yapin. So Jay, why don't you do one of yours first?

So we've, if you're in our Discord, you've probably seen us talk about this, and we probably mentioned it in other episodes. But we're sort of like an anti-Little Free Libraries podcast. And I would like to do an episode on why, because I think it confuses people, especially as the like,

mutual aid is good, community swaps, free things are good, like sharing resources, not just throwing things away, reduce reuser cycle, all that good stuff. That's good.

But we're, I'm kind of hostile to negative neutral on little free libraries. And it always surprises like non-librarians when I'm like, little free library. Like,

people always like, whoa, like you? I'm like, they're bad. And I think a part of the episode would be about like talking about sort of like the non-profit industrial complex and how it relates to libraries, but also this is not even related to libraries.

But like the fact that you have to pay to register your little free library to be a little free library and be like, whoa, you can't just set up a stupid box in your front yard and your bougie suburb community and put your old cookbooks in there. You can't just do that. I'm like, you can't. but it's not a Little Free Library TM. And obviously we would have to talk into like

how these things are like part of surveillance capitalism as well, like all of the stories of like particularly black people having the cops called on them just for using Little Free Libraries, which to me seems, I don't know, counterintuitive. But oh, when black people use them,

they're stealing, don't you see? And then I think this would like lead into a larger discussion on like sort of why these things exist because people say like, oh, well, they're free. I'm like, well, you're fucking your libraries. But if you are homeless, like if you don't have a permanent address or like a shelter whose address you can use,

can you get a library card, right? Like the inherent anti-homeless hostility that most public libraries operate under. So it's like, okay, fair point. But then also the sort of like, we have created, made the physical book paper and glue, right? This like sacred object

that people are afraid to throw away or they like don't know how to recycle it but like this leads into like donations or you know oh I'm going to give this to a secondhand bookstore or you know doesn't anyone want my crap that I don't want anymore and just how little free libraries are like

sort of helping to are part of this like Euroboros of like book guilt I guess of like we're It's a moral failing if you throw a book in the trash. Like, try to recycle the paper, I guess. But, like, I don't know, you can throw a book away. Unless it's like, I don't know, if you have some, like, rare fucking copy of something,

and it's the only copy in the human race will die without it, which what doesn't exist. You're that guy in what is, what was that movie that was like all freaked out about the Gutenberg Bible, like clutching it to his chest. Oh, the fucking day after tomorrow Gutenberg Bible, dude. Yeah, unless you got the fucking new Republican. book libraries Gutenberg Bible you know like you could probably

throw a book away so like that's like I would want the episode to be about that because I love an episode where we get to bitch about something where we just get to be haters

I find it very fun I love being a fucking hater and I love being a righteous hater you know like we can spill the tea but when we're right that makes it better yeah

so man that was that's my little free library's idea we'll do it one day I just have to like get more info. Yeah, I do have the weeding episode that I want to do because I was doing so much weeding at my last job because a lot of librarians are kind of hoarders, which is kind of a problem at every library. There's a lot of people don't want to get rid of books. There's like

the book is sacred object. In fact, today in the Discord, someone was like, oh, I went to work and there was a garbage bag full of moldy books waiting for me outside that someone left for us as a donation, which was like, really cuts out the middleman of what I've said, which is like, they're just giving you the books to throw away for them. Like you are, like, Audrey came up with this thing, which was like librarians are sin eaters for the community, which is we will take the books and throw them away for you because other people can't handle the sin of throwing away the book. Well, and somebody else in the discord was like, yeah, they, my, my supervisor changed my schedule because there was one person who kept walking by right after I had weeded and

thrown out a bunch of books. And instead of just being like, it's fine, they just changed their schedule. So they would be throwing them away when the person was not around to bitch of them about throwing out books, which is just ridiculous to me. Yeah. It's, and it's funny because I mentioned this, like when I started my new job, again, at a big university, we were planning on a renovation, which is now delayed, partly because they didn't have a plan. And so they were like, you know, we got all these books that we have to like throw away. And I'm like, let me at them. I'll throw them. I'll put them in the dumpster myself. I've done it. I spent a lot of time going back and forth to the dumpster at my last job. I think I broke the last dumpster because I put so many books in it. Because then our dumpster disappeared for a while. And they were like, yeah, the dumpster's like dangerously falling apart. So I was like, I'll do it. And they're like, well, we don't want someone getting mad that the books are being thrown away. I'm like, fuck them. You know, it's the fucking dumpster. Like, do you know how many times, like at multiple libraries where I've worked when they've done the dumpster full of books?

They've had news articles written about them because people find the dumpster full of books. I'm like, this library's throwing away books that could have give it away for free or recycled. And it's like, okay, then dumpster dive. Have fun. Like, if you want something in there, be my guest. You know, like, ideally have sort of maybe if there's like a local, like, secondhand book shop, that can be like, we want these books. don't want these books. If you can do a partnership with them, great. But yeah, I don't know. People look at it. Yeah. That can get tricky because it's technically, it's taxpayer money. So there might be

some sort of regulations or standards around how you can dispose of things. Because we have that problem in the IT department with like computers and monitors and stuff. And it's like, it still works, but it's like out of warranty. It's, you know, hard to recycle, but you can't just throw it out. because it's electronics and then it's just like, but we can't just like be like, okay, everybody grab a monitor and take it home like or like donate it to someplace that uses that kind of stuff like because it's all public money.

Yeah, that's not been a concern for me, but it is like, they're like, why don't you just give the books away? It's like we try to give the books away. Like someone has to come and load up a car full of books. And like,

you know, there's only so many like, 70-year-old women with free time who can lift 50-pound boxes of books and put them in their car. Well, I put them in their car. But then they've got to have someone to help them unload the car on the other end of it. You know, like, it's like, you know, try and give it to like a secondhand bookstore or whatever. Like, yeah, are they going to come and pick it up? Are we going to take it to them?

Like, there's an amount. Like, we were giving away books to, like, some kind of correctional facility, like, halfway across the state. And they were taking kind of like a bunch of stuff that I would have just thrown away because it's probably in too bad a shape for them to keep anyway because it was probably too moldy or whatever. But they were like, no, leave everything for us. Don't throw anything away. And so my boss like kept holding onto it. And I was like, this stuff is going.

This stuff is leaving this room one way or another. Like they're coming to get it or it's going in the dump. So I cleared out, you know, just like years and years of backlog. Like there were offices full books. And by the time I left, there was like a sister. for when a donation came in. If we were keeping it, if it was going to Better World, or if it was going in the dumpster,

I'm sure those shelves are going to be full in no time. But hopefully I instilled a culture of them throwing them out a little bit. But, yeah, there's also so many books that have to go. And it's like, who wants this, I don't know, 1970s D-list book in its own time that never took off about, you know, the blank child word we don't say any. more in special education. It's like,

are you, you know, am I going to donate that to Goodwill? It's like, no, it's just throwing it away. The slur child. So,

yeah, there's books that just are done. They're done with. Let them go away. We just did an episode where we talked about library science on another podcast. And one of the things

I didn't get the chance to talk about was part of like the five laws of library science. Like part of the library being a living organism. is like it needs to ingest, but also expel as a living organism. Like it inhales and exhales, it eats and excretes. Like, there's stuff that has to leave the library to be healthy. It takes in and it takes out. There's like a back and forth.

So, yeah. On that note, I also wanted to, like, I still have, like, the Batai episode that I want to do on, like, library sustainability. I still kind of, like, want to write an article about Batai to talk about, like, this, like, cradle to cradle problem. of like, we go through all the resources of making a book. The book has its lifespan and then what happens to it. And so there are people who have written about Batai and like ecology,

because when he wrote The Accursed Share, it's very much like, we get all this energy from the sun. Plant life took over the world. Then there's all this excess energy. Then things are eating these things. So there's always this like an extra amount of energy in the system that needs to like live and die to use up the energy that we're getting. Like, that's just kind of the way

ecosystems work. So people have taken that to apply to, like, manufacturing, which you could do to talk about books, like books coming in, books going out, like cradle to cradle manufacturing. So things are being made. They live out their life, and then they go into being made again.

So there's a whole ecology there of libraries that you talk about. And I think that's like particularly relevant because, like, and I think I've mentioned this before about like one of my main criticisms as an anti- AI person. from like a, you know, like a Marxist perspective, right? Like one of my major criticisms of a lot of the like argument against AI is like the,

like, yes, it's terrible for the environment. But when, and like more so than most other things, I'm not trying to be like, it's all bad. But when you, like, are you looking at other sustainability things in your library? Like what other like things are relying on data centers or like server power? or like what are you throwing away? How much plastic are using? Is it necessary? Can you like all of this stuff is part of the sustainability of how a library functions.

And if you're one thing where you care about the environment is AI, to me that's not a very strong arguing point against it, even if it is correct. Yeah. And also there's this thing that like Hagen talked about when we had him on and he's been talking about more, which is like this trap of capitalist thinking where like there's no one single capitalist who can be like, oh God, we're working towards the like the cliff of climate change, but none

of them individually can say like, oh, we should stop. The only thing they can do is continue to live under the same capitalist logic, which libraries have a unique opportunity because they have an anti-capitalist logic. They can. They don't currently, but they can. can have that us of fructian property relation stuff that seriously wrong people talk about, which is like you have the right to use something, but you don't have the right to destroy something. And so, and if we think about libraries as, I guess you could think of them as like an individual trying to go green, but you apply that to like an industry. So you think of the library as a living organism, but also as kind of like one organism.

And it is trying to live sustainably. it gives you all these frameworks to try and approach, like, using something and not having the right to destroy it, planning on what you're going to create and what you're going to destroy and what you'll create out of that. Like, there's just a lot of things that you could use to talk about the library as its own ecosystem, and then apply that model to other things in society, like manufacturing and tool shares and, like, especially living in a city now. there are so many small things that people try to do like hey here's a tool share hey here's like because no one has room to hold a ladder in their house that's why the landlord left it in our apartment because she doesn't want to put it in her fucking apartment I should be charging storage

rent to her this is not your storage unit lady leaving all her shit don't don't throw away that microwave don't throw away my shitty little $30 microwave the other tenants like it we're here for 17 months. We have a 17 month lease. What do you mean the other tenants? It's just us. She said this to us. Jesus fucking Christ. It's a microwave. Old lady who doesn't know what's happening, which is, I guess, useful in some ways, but it's also annoying. We've got like a little Tom and Jerry hole thing. There's like a Tom and Jerry thing happening in our kitchen right now They're like a little like extremely like half circle shaped mouse hole. And our our cat is just sitting in front of it 17 hours a day waiting for another mouse to fucking try it because he got the first one he saw.

He's like a fucking wish you would. I wish you a poker. He's just Amundjeri shit happening in our house. It was extremely funny to me how much it activated the cat. And he's just like, I am on it. I am the Terminator. There is no mouse that is going to come in. his house again.

I was bred for a purpose and I remember instinctually right now. The mouse like tried to get away and then Arthur fucking got it. Like the mouse tried to make it escape after Arthur had already swiped at it once and got it. Immediately. He did a good job. But him and the bunny get on great. He's doing a good job. Yeah, he scared to her. Yeah, he's scared of the bunnies. Oh, what a big yon.

Good job, Arthur. And everybody was proud of you. sometimes cats and rabbits get along but usually it's helpful if the rabbit is bigger than the cat and heavier and old and scary that's the battalion

the library sustaining one there's also like as far as philosophers go I always I did want to once I found out the C's Hamelin was still alive he wrote this article in the like the 70s called an alternative news where he basically saw Twitter coming

but he imagined it would work in like a different way but he pretty much exactly kind of got it and the kind of media ecosystem in now and then I found out he was still alive and that one of our friends might have a way to contact him but he's...

Hello? But he's very old and like doesn't really do anything anymore. He's like an emeritus professor who just putters around and it's like I'll just leave him alone, I guess. But that's one guest wish I would think would be very funny to have on

but bring on this 90-year-old communications professor who wrote a paper that only I am upset with. I saw it cited like once in grad school. And I was like, wait a minute. Might be very validating for him. You never know. Yeah, maybe. It's not an easy article to get either. I've had to like ask other people to get me access to it every time I lose my copy. I hope I still have one around somewhere. But yeah, it's weird stuff. Jay, what's the facetting episode? So this is inspired by a recent change that Library of Congress is rolling out. So in the metadata world,

that a lot of like older school opax and the way that a lot of them still function is like if you have subject headings if they have subdivisions like they have a geographic subdivision or like a free form topical thing so for example they're changing a lot of like the Indians of North America things

to be like indigenous peoples subdivided North America for example or you could have like AI subdivision topical about that, right? And this is how you sort of get granular within subject headings, right? And in a lot of catalogs, that string is treated as like a unique

thing. So just searching for like indigenous people, like, we'll get you all of the indigenous peoples of whatever, but you won't necessarily like, if you're trying to like update your headings, like it recognizes this whole string is one thing, right? And Then OCLC introduced the fast headings, which is like faceted something subject terms, where it basically breaks down subject headings and their subdivisions into separate terms. So instead of like indigenous people, North America, cultural norms or whatever, I'm just making up subject heading off my head. Each of those is its own heading.

And the idea of this is that it's like faster and less complicated, but also in a lot of non-traditional OPEC discovery systems. You don't necessarily like browse by subject and collocation. You facet, right? It's like a form of filtering, but like you would facet by sort of like the topmost. Like you can't really facet when subdivisions are included, for example. And also facettings are subdivisions are kind of part in a linked data environment.

Just because of the way things are linked together works a little differently in a linked data environment than it maybe does in traditional like subjects. So since the Library of Congress has officially moved to Bibframe,

it's happening, they're in Bibframe now, they're all linked data, they are starting to, if you are a cataloger and you are working with connection or like another OCLC product, right?

You're going to start seeing that a lot of records that are from Library of Congress or that they have touched, there's going to be things interjected into them that makes them more bibbrain compliance to help crosswalk. And one of these things is that in DLC records

and also in Library of Congress subject headings, they are getting rid of form subdivision. So often say you have a kid's book that's about pumpkin. The subject heading will be like pumpkins and then subdivision, juvenile fiction, right? Because there are ways that you can indicate the audience in a mark record. But not all OPAs or ILSs index that in a way that is consistent or makes sense. So often this juvenile fiction or juvenile literature or there's some like rare books

ones that are kind of specific as well, like this forum subdivision, even though there's like a 655, which is the genre or form terms where you can put stuff there. Like a lot of the time there's only like there's not a genre form term in the 655, like in that vocabulary that is the same as what was in the subfield V or juvenile fiction or whatever was there. And so there's this debate on like what's the best approach for subject access in discovery layers and more modern OPECs? Like does faceting work? Does it not work? Because like in theory, I agree with removing form subdivisions from subject headings. The subject headings are about aboutness. They're not about form. But we didn't really have another way to.

put that and that's what the 655 was supposed to do but then the Library of Congress wasn't fucking developing that vocabulary and so like all of these holes exist where you could like maybe not put it in a subfield B and do a 655 but then sometimes they're different sometimes they do different

things sometimes there's just not an equipment so that's like a current discussion happening in OCLC cat and AutoCat and all these other catalog or nerd list serves of like is it bad to get rid of this? And what is the value of a faceted approach to discovery and retrieval

versus a non-faceted approach? Yeah. It just reminds me of reading about Ranganathan's colon classification where he tried to turn the classification system into a faceted system because he was a mathematician first. And so every classification in like Indian academic catalogs is now like five subject headings in a row. so everything has like five call numbers separated by colones. That's not fascinating. That's the opposite of faceting. That's doing subdivisions.

Well, there are manual facets. Yeah, but is that like one string? Yes. Then that's not facetting. Fasting is that they were all separate. Like if a search system could use them all individually,

that's faceting. No, but it is still facetting. It's you're taking the, all the things that are faceted are then put into a call number. So it's like if you did a fastening, faceted search, exported the search, and then that became the book's call number. So all those things are still facets. They're also technically facets. It's just manual.

I would have to see it. That's not making sense to me. I'm like, wait, what? Just Google colon classification. It doesn't make sense to do. It was overly deterministic when he did it, too. But he was mad that the Dewey Decimal system didn't work for like Indian subject heading. Dooh decibel doesn't work for most things, I would argue.

I found out recently because there's this Tumblr blog that's like Dewey Decimal whatever. So whenever people say something on Tumblr, they'll just give it a Dewey Decimal classification. Let me see if I can find it so people can find it. I want to follow this, please. I was so bad at Dewey. That was like in my cataloging class. That was like the thing I was bad at. I could get Library of Congress classification but trying to assign Dewey numbers.

I was like, what the fuck is this? I did not get it. It's called your Dewey Decimal Number is. But that's how I found out that Lodistic classifications like marsupial and things like that have their own specific Dewey Decimal number,

which is so fucking fraught because those classifications get reorganized all the time in phylogenetics. Like whole groups of animals get recatigatigized into different cliques. because you're dealing with its own classification system. So now you've mapped Dewey Decimal

onto another classification system, which is extremely fraught, which is like Linnaean taxonomy. So that terrifies me that there are people, like, you should not classify that deeply in Dewey Decimal

because then, like, what do you do when, like, that changes? You would have to recatalog all this stuff. It's like the same thing we're having at my current job where there's a lot of things that are not, that are like still an LLCR, AACR2 that like technically need to change because it's causing some problem for us. Embrace the mixed catalog. It will set you free. It's fine. Don't worry about it. Primo sucks.

I mean, well, thinking about Dewey, like wasn't the whole point of Dewey to be like kind of shallow. We always hear about like, you know, the depth of a public library, you know, breadth over depth and then depth over breadth for like, like, why would you want to get that specific with a dewey decimal number? For all its fault, like this is why I think LC works better for larger collections because the, like, the range of subjects and the way that you cutter by like title instead of like subject makes it way less complicated to catalog things and still have unique whole members. Cuttering is great. Everything should use cutters. It's awesome. Thank you, Mr. Cutter. Thank you, Mr. Cutter.

Literally, that was his name. Yeah. It is not because it cut the number. It's named after a dude name Cutter. And page rankings are not because their web pages. It's named after Larry Page. Didn't know that last bit. Yeah, the Larry Page ranking system.

This is my father, Mr. Website. But yeah, that terrifies me that Dewey Decimal can get that granular. because like I've had to go through those like when I've had this catalog like give something an LC number because it was like some self-published book and I just had to give it a number and I had to look through those huge books that every library has in the corner somewhere of the LC numbers. And it's like it's incredibly granular sometimes and has all these tables that you have to learn how to use especially for like literature because literature is crammed into like one tiny range. and so you have to do literature and then the person's name. But it's the second letter of their last name, not the first.

Stephen King's cutter starts with an eye, for example. Yeah, they have like set cutters and stuff. It's very confusing. It's very annoying. Luckily, that's not a problem when you're the one having to do it because if there's not already a Library of Congress one,

it's usually like very small book that doesn't really matter what classification number you give it. No one does shelf listing anymore. Don't give it fuck about like making sure no two things have the same. Oh, we have to make sure this is in the right space on the shelf. Well, no one cares.

It's just got to be in the right section. Also, like, I was explaining that as an e-resources person, like, classification numbers do not even matter because most of the things that I deal with don't have them because they're not physical items. So there's no classification number for, as far as, like, classification numbers really matter. It's just where physically in the building does the,

book live. So, like, you can have your own weird library. Like, you can, you can make your own library run off any classification system you want because as long as it's consistent for your library, you can go and retrieve the book from where it's supposed to be in your catalog. But that's why I also thought that, like, colon classification is very strange because you're doing subject heading stuff with something that ultimately is like a retrieval system or just where does the book live on the shelf. Yeah. Maybe that's, another episode of like classification. It's classification. We'll talk about faceting and classification.

Yeah, because I think that would, because there's like, doy decimal like ripoffs that are like base 10 or whatever that people use in personal knowledge management. They're like decimal based indexing and sorting systems that I find overly complicated. But like, yeah, in the PKM space, like people who use obsidian and stuff like that fucking. love this shit. They love their own little Dewey Decimal knockoff system and I'm like, why?

Zettelcastin makes more sense because of what Zettelcastin is doing. But even then you can get too ridiculous with it. It's just about linking then. You can also just use tags. You can literally use like hashtags in Obsidian. You can just be like hashtag my twig. Hashtag

my twig. There it is. Thank you for that. We kept doing that for like weeks after the like so this is my jar it's got some holes in the top so I can breathe and I got some leaves and there's my

twig hashtag my twig kept doing that because in the Frankenstein movie he like gets given a leaf he gives a leaf as a present the monster does the Frankenstein and we just kept going hashtag my leaf hashtag my leaf

one that I have been trying to do for like two years now is scene of phobia in Skalkom. It's like fear of China. Yeah, S-I-N-O, not Z-E-N-O. Yeah, my accent, it doesn't work on that word very well. I guess synophobia, I guess you could do it that way.

But there's like a constant thing in scholarly communications of like we're trying to do openness. And but there's because the Cold War never ended, it just kind of went on hiatus long enough for Fukuyama to write that dumb book. And then and then it started up again. on September 11th. We just kind of still need there to be like a global power we're like flexing at all the time and that's just China. And so there's this constant like China's going to overtake us in publishing, which is like, yeah, there's more people. And they invest in their public infrastructure and the U.S. empire is kind of shooting itself in the foot every day. What did you think was going to happen when you dismantle your university and your research grant system?

I would also say, like, related to the cyanophobia in scholarly communications is, like, a fear and mistrust of India, because I feel like a lot of the, like, predatory open access journal stuff that you get warned about is, like, paper mills in India or elsewhere in the global south, sometimes in Africa, I don't, you know, from different countries, but a lot of times it's like, oh, cheap knockoff, fake scammy journals in India that are messaging. like and emailing, you know, grad students to be like, pay us a million dollars to publish. Like, I feel like the sort of like distrust of India and therefore like not taking Indian scholars and stuff seriously. I feel like that's a problem too. There's also like the research data like sharing and the fear of like because so many, so much research is like grant funded and so much of that is like coming from the Department of Defense or other federal agencies. It's like, oh, is China going to use our research for free? it's like the free rider problem like oh if we make this stuff free for anyone not only can it be institutions that don't pay for it but it could be our enemy countries and so we have to keep knowledge hidden because that's how like we're going to win the not war with china that we don't have which if we just keep putting here's the thing let's make trump president for life but every week he has to go back to hang out in china until he becomes fully chinese because he loves a strong man and he loves a guy who won't suck up to him and he will just become a malist if you leave him

alone long enough with President G. So I'm thinking this is how we finally, because if America was going to become any type of communist, it would become Maoist. Like it's just got all the pieces. Like, you know, it's got like the love of the countryside. Every conservative wants to send people out to the countryside to go farming. It's, you know, it's... We love guns. Mousat love guns. That's the kind of leftism where you get guns again, is Mowitz.

We love doing backyard redneck shit, which like the American peasant, the Chinese peasant and the American redneck are just like two halves of the same coin. We just need to get them together. It's, you know, the redneck malice is just a powerful energy. And I think it's the way forward. I'm just picturing those propaganda of like where was like the Chinese and the Russian

like dude and it looks a very homoerotic. The gay sovia propaganda yeah. Yeah but instead it's like the American redneck and the Chinese president like it's just a guy with like a white claw and like a Marlborough hat

and like the the guy who does the tornado beer drinking like holding hands and they both have like beers in their hands that are like, one's in a can and ones in a bottle doing a tornado. Someone please make that. Incredible. I just feel like this is a power.

They're both wearing overalls. Yeah, it's a powerful energy. And then we all shoot our landlord. Yeah. Like, while doing NASCAR shit. Oh, Chinese people love fucking NASCAR shit. Have you seen those big bowls in the ground where they put pickup trucks in there and they drive around in the bowl real fast and shit?

I'm just saying like, America needs to become Maoist. It's the only kind of communism we would tolerate. And then we would also have a bunch of trains. But anyway, we fear what we might love too much. But yeah, the thing Jay was mentioning about the fake science industry, there's like a Financial Times article I have in here about China's fake science industry. I think I have stuff in here from like 2022. That's how long I've been trying to do this article, like this episode.

It's just like it doesn't come together in terms of like what to point at because it's also slap dash. Like every once in a while, like a Chinese scientist will try and smuggle their research data to China and then they get like arrested or they just flee to China and like don't come back. And it's usually like they were working on a cure for cancer. And it's like, yeah, let them take the research data to China. They'll probably cure cancer. Like they're not going to do it here. So it's it's interesting. Like when we were hiring someone for a research data management position, one of the reasons I didn't hire her is like she had been gotten to by one of these. people. And she was like repeating it during the the interview of like data security for research

and things like that. And like, and I was like you've been given cop brain. I'm sorry, it's terminal. Like this is not the, this is not the attitude to bring to this job. Like you have, and it wasn't just me. It was like the person not on my team who noticed this. And she was like, that's a weird thing to be hung up on. And it's not what this position is for. It was someone who's coming from a compliance job. And so they saw this job as like compliance. And it's like, no, the compliance is actually not good. Like, we're here to make it easier to do it. We're not here to force people to do it or keep them in the rules.

So they just didn't understand the job, which is not their fault. Because we were going to be hiring someone out of the gate anyway. So it's like, do I hire someone who doesn't understand the job but has more practical experience? Or do I hire someone straight out of grad school who was just a blank slate for me to write on? It's like, either way, I'm going to be redoing this work. So it didn't really matter who I picked. So I just went for the blank slate rather than having to undo that. This is one that I haven't been able to do because I can't get a guest because no one wants to come on for me to make fun of what they do, which is the limits of information literacy.

Because I want to talk about how information literacy kind of doesn't work or the ways in which it does, but like the way most librarians understand it, it doesn't work. so like because we keep applying this information literacy paradigm to like other things and that's how we get like AI literacy and it's like this very shallow understanding of information literacy that kind of permeates. You know how it works and what it's doing and when it's bad. Literacy. It's like that's not what information literacy is actually. Yeah. A lot of it has to do with like a political understanding which never comes or like the people who I really like who I want to bring on are people who understand this but I want to like. do a critique of the liberalism of it or like we can educate our way out of these political problems like you can

individually educate yourself out of this problem and say no you can't you can't really do information literacy you have to do agitation and consciousness raising you have to do stuff like this show because like you can learn about the ecological impacts of AI but like what is that

if you don't learn how to talk to your community about it or organize like what good is it do it's like you can't just be a gold. Yeah, or the same problem of going to college and learning about things, but not learning like how to like negotiate with your boss or how to join a union, like the things that would actually give you power in the post-AI world. And it's like, yeah, that's the thing I have about information literacy. And it's just hard getting a guest who like is really into

information literacy, but also is willing to put up with me clearly going to be talking shit about it. But maybe now that I've explained the idea, someone will listen to it and say, hey, I'll talk about it. Come be a hater with us. We love when people are come on and be haters. A fun one I wanted to do that I think would be a good way to talk about broader issues of like thinking about archival stuff and preservation. But like the ways that culture is preserved is, I wanted to do an episode on the movie The Fall, drafted by Tarcim from 2006, one with Lee Pace, right? For those who haven't seen it, it's this really cool sort of like surrealist film. It's the same person who did the costumes, did the costumes on the Francis Ford Coppola Dracula movie in the 90s.

It's the same person. And it's about this little girl in like 1911, 1917, something like that, early, who is, I believe she's Roma. and she breaks her arm while picking oranges and so she's in this hospital in L.A. because she's a migrant worker with her family. And she meets this film stuntman named Roy who is sort of paralyzed from the waist down after botching a stunt.

And he's trying to get more morphine because he wants to kill himself because his girl left him for the lead act. And so he starts telling her this fantastical story and then be like, hey, I'm not feeling good in order to remember the story, I need you to bring me more pills so that she can get morphine for him. And the way, when he's telling her the story, it's, we see what she's imagining. And it gets very Wizard of Ozzy where, like, the people in the hospital are also the people

in this, like, story within the story, like, the actors are. And one of the cool things about it is all of its, like, shot out, like, it's all, like, quote unquote, on location. Like, it's not really using sound stages and stuff. Like, they film a lot in Asia, in South Asia, in Western Asia. I believe in parts of North Africa and the Middle East, but, like, all over the world, right?

And it's gorgeous. It's like Lawrence of Arabia levels of, like, epicness. It's beautiful. And there's this one little very quick montage where they're looking for, they're like reading a map and following the map. And it's like very quick editing. Like every single second is like a different shot.

Right. And in this one sequence, I think is every single UNESCO world heritage site. And they physically went there just to get it on film for like half a second. So like there's one where the Eiffel Tower is there and like all these like these like wonders of the world. Right. But they're all caught on film and preserved permanently. and I wanted to do an episode on that because it was like how cool

because Tarcum did that on purpose. He wanted to capture all of these cultural sites on film so that they would be preserved forever as long as the film exists. Like as a act of cultural preservation they were put into this movie, right? And I thought that was dope

and I thought that was cool. But, and I remember reading that when I was, because this was really my favorite film for years. And so I read everything I could about it. And then when I went back to like, oh, I think this would be a cool idea for an episode because it got like a re-release in theaters a couple of years ago.

I got like a new restoration and like a 20-year restoration or something. And I was like looking at the I and DV and I was looking at the Wikipedia and that information is not there anymore. About like, oh, this is preserved like all of the whatever World Heritage sites are now preserved in this film.

So now I'm like, where did I read that? So it's like I wanted to do an episode on that because I think it's cool and thinking about the ways that we preserve both tangible culture but in a way that you can't put the pyramids in a library or in an archive, right?

But also other sort of like intangible cultural heritage things. Like how do you preserve that? And thinking about media, just like popular media as a way of doing that, whether purposeful or not, I thought would be really cool to talk about. But then I just couldn't find

that citation of hey, by the way, these are all like UNESCO World Heritage sites, and they're like put in this film for that purpose. So if anyone else remembers that and knows where I can find that information, I will do this episode. I just like couldn't find

that citation when we wanted to do it. Like, this was like last summer or something. It was I think before you moved out of Texas. But yeah, I would love to do that episode. But yeah. So if you know, please help me. Please end it my way.

because I want to do this episode. Yeah, another problem of recording in the same room is Jay has the urge to turn around and talk to me, which is the opposite direction of his microphone. And I just watched him do it. It's very cute to watch on camera. We just need to put a second microphone over here. I guess that would be my microphone. There is like a guest wish list.

A lot of them, I don't know how many I would like to do. But like the people who run the Anarchist Library online, because that's been going like, for a long time and they get like there are clearly a lot of people who are doing a good job of like getting newer essays up there because a lot of like short essays and things like don't really get preserved there's like gale used to do this the the publisher would save these little like white papers and pamphlets and stuff and put them into these curated databases so one that i noticed they did this a lot and was like opposing viewpoints in context so it would take like an issue and give you like two different sides of it,

usually like a pro and con. Right for your freshman 101 writing course when you have to do an opinion paper. Yep. Yeah. It kind of like does a lot of the research for you, but I noticed a lot of the stuff in there is stuff that wouldn't normally be in a library database.

It's like, you know, like right wing screed email blast, kind of like bircher society stuff that normally wouldn't be in there, but they needed like a point counterpoint. So there's a lot of stuff from like the, I think that, you know, just political advocacy groups that would be considered, you know, not something you'd find in a normal database like that for, like, aimed at freshmen.

But I think the idea was they're kind of curating the garbage for you. And so I like how the anarchist library is like finding these short little pieces and getting them up and saving them. Like the amount of stuff I find on the anarchist library, like a lot of it's like clearly pirated, which is cool. but I would love to get the mods from Anarchist Library and talk to them about how they've been running it for so long. I think anybody can submit to it. Yeah, but someone's got to be maintaining the infrastructure and tagging system and stuff like that.

And obviously there's going to be people who are like high contributors more than other people. But there's also the YouTuber Dan McClellan, which was an episode idea we came up with like last night. Yeah, we were walking around and we were walking near the Christian Science Plaza in Boston. Yeah, so we were talking about Mormons because it's very similar to the temple

reflecting pool, but he does a lot of responses to people on TikTok doing Christian apologetics and weird like, there's like this whole weird industry of like, I don't know what you would call it, like graphology, it's like numerology but with letters where they're like, you know, every word in here

means something and then they're like, They will look at like the Hebrew letter and then take it back to the Egyptian hieroglyph it came from. And like this letter means door and this letter means that. Then they'll just come up with like a sentence based on like this line in like this one word or something. And then like come up with some weird, you know, just connecting dots in a weird way. And he's like that's just not how it works. The letter is just the first sound from the word for door. And that became the letter for that sound.

It's a phonetic alpha. But he does a lot of responding to people, and he's also worked on a lot of reference works where you can study, like, particularly like grammars, like lexicons, like how is this word used in Greek? How is this word used in Hebrew? Here's every single time that word has been used. Here's every single context the word could be used in.

Like he's a Bible scholar specifically, and so, like, thinking about like biblical Hebrew and biblical Greek and the way that like mistransmblations and misunderstandings and like things out of context, the way that like people on TikTok and YouTube shorts like sort of like use that like miscontextextual, misleading and like a propagandistic way. So one thing that sort of surprised me was like there's videos he does all the time where like people try to argue that like the Bible is against slavery, right? and Dan actually has several videos arguing against apologetics who are trying to whitewash bad things out of the Bible that they don't agree with anymore.

He's like, no, the Bible does support this actually in this, this in this way. But for practitioners of it, we have since decided that that no longer suits our society. And so we don't do that anymore. Like the way that he talks about the Bible as like both a like text he believes in, but like a text that also. exist within society and context is really fascinating. And so like I love the, like a string of episodes of which this would be one was like info seeking behaviors of blank. It's like info seeking behaviors was something I studied for my master's thesis. And I just find it fascinating how it's like you can break down like a group of people by like an occupation or an identity or something.

And like what are their unique information seeking needs and habits? And so like both like like Christians on the internet in like a short form video conspiracy theory, apologetics space, and like people who are Christians or even people to studying the Bible who are wanting to research these things and then having to wade through this sea of bullshit and how do you understand resources? And Justin was in talking about like the way that Primo shows or doesn't show different versions of biblical, like, reference texts or like different versions and stuff. Like I think all that's really cool. Like another like info seeking behaviors of blank that we wanted it to do for a long time.

I just need to reach back out to him and see if he still wants to do it. So we're friends with Dave Labor Lifts. He has, if folks are listeners of horror vanguard, he did the bloody bodybuilders in hell, I think is what it's called, that episode. He teaches like Latin, but he also. is like a bodybuilder and like specifically an anti-fascist. Like he got into bodybuilding for anti-fascist for reason. Like he saw the way that people who worst had strength could stand up to assholes in bars and stuff.

And so like got involved with like the IWW, like all of this stuff. So he's this like a cool anti-fascist bodybuilder. And one thing I thought would be a cool episode would be to have him on talk about like the information seeking behaviors and like information literacy needs. I know info lit, but like needs of like people searching physical fitness or health stuff, especially like bodybuilding, right? Like there's like the bros, forums and whatnot, but like there's all this like health and physical science info that's like outdated or contradicted or not can agree to bond, like all of this stuff. And I thought it'd be cool to have him on to have an episode to talk about navigating that. But that's like.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff on YouTube that I still watch, even though I don't really lift anymore. But I am fascinated about like the science lifters versus like the bro lifters because they're all on YouTube, right? Because they've all got something wrong with them because they all spend like hours in the gym every day. But they'll be like, you know, this is the way to do your loading and here's the way to do your diet. And here's the way to do your steroid injections because they're all like, yeah, we're, all on steroids. Like, yeah, it's just like an arms race. It's gotten out of control, but we've all got like real body image issues. It's, it's really funny. Like I showed J1 where the guy was like, don't go on steroids when you're 16, wait until you're 28. Like, like, you know, well, he was

responsible advice actually, I think. Yeah. In terms of harm reduction, good advice. He's like, you're going to have tradeoffs. And he's like, here's why I'm on steroids. And it's because I'm crazy. and he's just like, he's like, I don't recommend you do what I do, but it's like responsible drug use basically. He's like, it's basically the same as a person being like, I use heroin. Here's how I keep myself from going into withdrawal. And like, there was this pamphlet from the 70s I always think about. And I don't remember where it is. It's called like the ethical drug users thing manifesto.

And I always think about it because the whole manifesto was like, use any drug you want. Don't inject. Your body has no way to stop an injection from. doing something. Like, you can take any drug you want, but, like, snort it or eat it or do any other, I could smoke it, but, like, injection is too intense and it's too risky. And it's, like, you know, always convince people not to inject, convince them to do the drug any other way.

It was just really interesting, like, ethical drug use in a context where, like, the drug war in some ways was, like, way more intense because weed was, like, as illegal as heroin in, like, the 70s, but also everyone was smoking weed and was also on heroin. So I guess that, and then in the 80s, they all went on to crack. Yeah. Now we have nice, safe, DIY frat called meth. Fetanol. Yeah. Oh, I found, yeah, I also started following some guy who does the, is like a doctor who talks about like how cops are not having fentanyl issues. It's like there There was some person I'm following who's like anti-cop, which is great. I always followed them on blue sky. And she was talking about this. There was this cop who works in like the evidence locker and he destroys drugs. And then he had a fentanyl overdose. And it's like, yeah, by shoving it up his nose. That's how it happened. And it's like, and it's like, yeah, well, he destroys them and it aerosolized. And then I watched this video. It's like fentanyl, they have been trying to aerosolize fentanyl in like. laboratories for years. It hates doing it. It does not aerosolize. Like they've been trying to create

drugs of aerosolized fentanyl because it's a really useful drug, but the compound doesn't like to aerosolize. If it gets in your system, you did it. And even if it's like made for going on your skin, like those patches, like the actic patches, that's like the brand name for fentanyl. I think if you also called fentanyl actic, more people would be like, oh, my grandma was on that. And more people would know about because it's a very common like if you are like opiate resistant they give you these sticks of actic and you just kind of put them in your tongue under your tongue all day like hours and hours but it's the same drug but yeah this doctor made like this whole video about like if you were exposed to fentanyl you would not have these panic responses like all these cops are having because

it's literally an anti-anxiety drug you would calm down if you were exposed to fentanyl if you were having this like panicked response even if you were afraid because you had been like you were afraid because you were exposed to fentanyl the fentanyl itself if it were affecting you would calm you down it would stop you from having the panic attack so it's just very good and it's really annoying seeing the news media again and again

just parrot these cops being like we give them nine doses of uh of narcan and thank god they're still alive today And like, that dude had like a stroke and he's not been treated for the stroke. It was another, it was a different story where a guy was like just in a cruiser and just like blacked out. And they're like, oh, my guy, it was fentanyl. And it's like, no, he's got something else wrong with him. But I guess you're not going to find it today.

But yeah, that's also now that I'm working with X Libris a lot, I do want to do an episode about XLibrous is bad and look into the connections with like Unit 80200 of the IDF. and see if we can dig up any people who worked at the same thing, or like the universities that made ex-Librous and their culpability with scholasticide. And on that, sort of like the all-in sort of Israeli industry of AI, the use of it for surveillance, the use of it for suppressing information about Palestinians, the stealing of Palestinian artifacts that's going on in the West Bank and in Gaza,

which has been going on since the war started, since the latest post October 7th. And we did that one episode about the great book robbery or whatever a couple years ago that documentary. Yeah. Every time, yeah, I learn about like, if I see someone who's like a librarian at some Israeli university, I always like look up where it was founded and when it was founded

and if they have a collection of like stolen Palestinian books, which is what the AP collection, abandoned property. Was that what they called it in that movie? AP collection, AP call range. Yeah. So I think I need to find the zine about X Libris and then start from there. And then... They can have it around here somewhere. Yeah.

Because Violet made that one, right? No, I don't think it's Violet, but they were handing it out at the Zene Library, at the Zene Pavilion Table. I think it was other folks who made it. Violet may have made one of them, but I don't think she made that one. She made the AI one. Shout out to Violet, if you list. Yeah.

I do. Yeah, I will be at the Zine Pavilion. at ALA and I will be doing a show hopefully with some other library people who had conference or who had a presentation too hot for ALA so we'll be doing ALA underground more information on that I think it's closer but go by the Zeme pavilion or volunteer for the zine pavilion that's my plug for the episode was there anything else you wanted to talk about Sadie any ideas for episodes you've never been able to do I've been trying to think of some and I just don't have it

I have like so many that were so like HVAC in libraries. Or like the library website one. Oh yeah, the library website one. Why are library websites always bad? Which is more just kind of explaining to non-library people why they're bad. I've kind of done this on other podcasts of like explaining, okay, the reason is imagine you had to manage like 90 different subscription services and also each of them had to have access to 30,000 people.

And that's my job is to make sure that all these subscription services work together. That's why our websites suck. Also, the company that owns our website sucks. It just sucks all the way down. I think there's like other where it's like, I don't know what the episode would be about, but there's like guests. Like I was like, it would be cool to have them on, but I have no idea what they'd talk about because they're usually like not a librarian.

But it's like, oh, that person's doing the podcast rounds right now. I wonder if we could get them on, but what would they talk about? We got really lucky with Josh Borman of Rich of Apostle World because of the Patmas connection with him. But it's like if we want to have him back on, what would he talk about, right?

Although I know he's doing the rounds again. It'd be cool to have him on. But like there's a lot of like cool journalists or podcasters or scholars where it's like, I just don't know what like we could ask them what they might want to talk about. But like I know I love being like, well, how can we make this about impromes?

information or whatever. But sometimes just like if there's not a topic there, but there's like loads of cool people where I'd love to have them on because the two main goals of this podcast is to like do consciousness raising and also to meet cool people. Yep. So. Yeah.

I'm like, who would top Chuck Tingle? Because I think I have. Well, a lot of people. Okay. Fair? Legit. the handsome feller space raptor butts or god what was it he was just talking about it he was just talking about it on tumbler how like he had a transcendent moment when he came up with like space butt raptor's title or something like that and i'm like okay that lines up yeah there's so many people we've also like had some guests were like that we had an idea and then like the idea fell through or like the scheduling fell through and then i felt like the timing didn't work or they died because I was putting together

an episode pitch for Steve Albini and then he died. Because we know Jake and he was on Steve went on at Pod Dam so it's like we could have had Steve Albini on. I was putting together like the pitch idea and then I was going to like

talk to people who had just had Steve on their podcast there was more than one podcast he went on. Oh okay. But yeah I was going to try Jake first and see like hey like well do you know this Gmail or whatever? I guess personal email, how were you talking to them? Or just like cold email, because that also works sometimes.

Or record doctoro and Chuck Dingle. I think I emailed Chuck twice. Or they'd like DM'd them on Twitter and then it didn't work so I email them and then it worked. But yeah, people are pretty generous with their time, even though we, you know, we have funding available for episodes. Still like not a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah, because there's been like several, yeah, like a lot of things were just scheduling, didn't work. out or by the time it would have worked out, like the time has passed.

Like, we were going to have Kim Kelly on and then something in the schedule, like, fell through. And now she's, like, doing the rounds. Now it's like she's very busy doing stuff. So it's like, I don't know when we might have Kim back on again. I would love to have Kim Kelly on. We're reading Fight Like Hell for my Union Book Club. Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah.

All right. We'll reevaluate the episode. But yeah, it was going to be around, like, the episode was going to be around, like, a specific union thing that was happening at in Philly while ALA was happening. And all three of us were in Philly at that time. And me and J. were at, like, one of the actions for a different union in which librarians were crossing the picket line to go into their stupid hotel because they couldn't wait 30 minutes to not cross the picket line, literally walking through the people marching. Like, there was another open door. Shame on you if you did that. If you're listening and you cross the.

that picket line at ALA 2025, you should feel ashamed of your shell. I'm not going to sugar up that. You should feel ashamed of yourself. Yeah, they had signs. You could have grabbed a sign and joined a picket. There were a lot of library workers there. They made signs, library workers support hotel workers. And you could have just grabbed a sign and marched with us for 30, 45 minutes.

It's, you know, the least you can do. You were literally staying in that hotel. It was your hotel that was like the picket ad. You were just like walking through it. like, what is wrong with you? And of course, the police were there to, like, you know, intimidate them, too, which was really annoying. There was this big standing there with, like, a stupid body camera pointed at us the whole time.

It was very annoying. But they kept them on the other side of the street. Most of them, there were two that came over and stood there to capture faces, I'm sure. But it was very annoying, but that was what we were going to talk to Kim about, and then it didn't work. We'll have to, we have to reevaluate the pitch or the episode idea. But that was what we were going to talk about mostly was just shitting on the people who were crossing the picket line.

The one thing you don't do. People weren't raised, right? Yeah, like, who fucking raised you? Yeah. Okay. I think that's an episode. Yeah, we did one in our new place. Hooray.

Yay. All right. Good night.