jessamyn

jessamyn, 8 months ago to random

Important tech tip for Slack users not sold on the new "design"

If you hard-refresh Slack Command-Shift-R, and then type Command-Shift-S, you get an extra vertical sidebar that disaggregates your individual slacks.

Thanks to @snarkout who has improved my life for the better, this day.

jessamyn, 1 month ago to random

My "day job" is working at the Flickr Foundation helping nurture and grow Flickr Commons. We're approaching an important milestone, re-opening the doors to Flickr Commons, a collection of photography collections all of which have no known copyright restrictions.

It's been around since 2008 and is comprised of nearly two million photos. Do you work for a GLAM institution that might want to be part of it? If so, please read our main post and send us your details. 🤩

https://glammr.us/@flickrfdn/112299229081607353

jessamyn, 6 months ago to random

Hey old web people, I'm working on assembling some bloggish reminiscences about Flickr similar to this one for an upcoming birthday party for the Flickr Commons (in January). Got any deep cut blog posts you'd like to share?

https://www.cybercultural.com/p/flickr-before-smartphones-and-instagram

jessamyn, 10 months ago to random

I asked why the library didn't have a Juneteenth holiday. The response was "It's not one in the policy manual." I wrote to the trustees, they put it on the agenda, voted unanimously for it, and now it's a library holiday.

When we talk about white supremacy and we talk about libraries, let's just think about how a group of well-meaning but ultimately non-proactive trustees (and director) just kind of... didn't think about this for two years, just never put it on the agenda. That's how it works.

jessamyn, 3 months ago to random

The Worcester (MA) Public Library will forgive your fines if you bring in a picture of a cat next month. A program they are calling "March Meowness."

While going no-fine is a good goal, not all libraries have that option. This is an excellent outreach project (don't have a cat pic? you can draw one) to try to get people back in the library.

Fave part? You are not eligible for forgiveness if the lost item can be seen as an attempt to restrict access to diverse content.
https://mywpl.org/cat-month

jessamyn, 5 months ago to random

My neighbor is a good friend and engineer and one of those "linux is fun to play with" people.

I am a librarian and open source fan and birdwatcher. Together we got BirdNet up and running from my back porch, linked it up on BirdWeather and now you can see what tiny dinosaurs are flocking to my backyard feeders.

https://app.birdweather.com/stations/2588

Build your own: https://github.com/mcguirepr89/BirdNET-Pi

jessamyn, 6 months ago to random

When I heard the news about Kissinger, I remembered what Tom Lehrer (who stopped touring about the same time this happened, and is still alive) said about his legacy.

Lehrer put all his songs in the public domain. Legend.

https://tomlehrersongs.com/

jessamyn, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

Just wanted to brag that the Flickr Foundation @flickrfdn team and I were able to create and get approved a Wikidata property for Flickr Photo ID which will allow for more structured data for free and "no known copyright restrictions" images on Wikimedia Commons that come from Flickr.

I feel like this is some sort of librarian level-up.

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Property_proposal/Flickr_Photo_ID

jessamyn, 1 year ago to random

Even if you don't read court opinions this preliminary injunction overruling FLs stupid ban on gender affirming care for minors is worth a read.

"The elephant in the room should be noted at the outset. Gender identity is real."

"Any proponent of the challenged statute and rules should put up or shut up... Dog whistles ought not be tolerated."

"If ever a pot called a kettle black, it is here. The statute and the rules were an exercise in politics, not good medicine."

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flnd.460963/gov.uscourts.flnd.460963.90.0_1.pdf

jessamyn, 21 days ago to random

If you participated in the discussion about Libby and maybe-targeted ads and privacy policies, you might like the read the Register's deep dive on what they could determine about what actually happened from @thomasclaburn

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/18/mystery_of_the_targeted_mobile_ads/

jessamyn, 6 months ago to random

I wish there was a "digital divide simulator" which takes your existing computer and makes it work slightly less well, each click/response takes a bit longer, each application loads more slowly, each tab opened gradually slows down the machine, newer apps (Slack) don't work at all. Wifi iffy.

I'm using a machine exactly like this, and even being totally savvy and being able to make good choices, it's still wild having to suddenly be this parsimonious and economical with my tech use. Educational

jessamyn, 1 month ago to random

"Two works published by The New Yorker received Pulitzer Prizes today—and one of the winning stories is by a library worker.... "Phones and cameras aren’t allowed on Rikers, but I’m an illustrator,” de la Cruz writes in the piece. “Sometimes I saw things that I felt compelled to draw from memory later.”

https://ilovelibraries.org/article/library-worker-wins-2024-pulitzer-prize/

jessamyn, 3 months ago to photography

I got to nerd around looking up a lot of Black history surrounding archival images (freely) held in Flickr Commons and it's the happiest I've been in a non-drop-in-time job in a long while.

https://www.flickr.org/black-history-through-archival-images/

#BlackHistoryMonth #Flickr #Photography

A Black woman wearing makeup and her hair done up, stares into the camera with one hand on the side of her face. She wears a grey dress with white patterns on it.
A Black man in a white hat stands among an audience of other Black men. He is wearing striped suspenders over a white shirt and dark tie. He has his arms crossed.
A young Black man wears a military uniform and is standing in front of a 48-star American flag.

jessamyn, 1 year ago to random

What does it look like when nearly 100 of your volunteer moderators go on strike because they've been told not to moderate AI-generated content? Let's watch Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange and see what happens (or sign on with our support).

https://openletter.mousetail.nl/

jessamyn, 4 months ago to random

I have a bunch of "for work" stuff I've been working on the past few weeks on the run-up to Flickr Commons 16th birthday today, but this is the one I am the most proud of.

16 weird and quirky stories-behind-the-photos that researched, assembled, and then wrestling into blog format

Please enjoy what I learned about photographers, cats, Washington DC, kayaking, caravaning, tattooed women in the 30s, aviatrices, how they move books around, and how they built lighthouses

https://www.flickr.org/sixteen-stories-for-flickr-commons-sixteenth-birthday/

A motorhome which looks like a fancy school bus with racing stripes and awnings over the windows
A group of men build a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean.

jessamyn, 10 months ago to random

We're getting catastrophic rain here in Vermont (I am in a town with a river, but I am not close to the river, so this affects my community but probably not me directly). My region is pretty digitally divided with a lot of people not very online or not very fluent in online discourse. Emergency management agencies use x-posting on social media as one communication channel. Twitter WAS one of them and now suddenly isn't, with results you can imagine.

jessamyn, 1 year ago to random

Helped a friend get an Apple TV+ subscription up and running on her ancient (3rd gen) Apple TV. The machine is too old to have a mechanism for accepting 2FA verification codes and she was stuck in an authentication loop.

The Apple solution: when the device asks, again, for your Apple ID password, enter the password and append the six-digit code. So like if your password is "rabbits" you'll write rabbits123456. This actually works and is so smart and also so dumb I always forget about it.

jessamyn, 5 months ago to random

Ninety day countdown to a solar eclipse happening across a lot of the US. Libraries, do you have your viewing glasses? While this site is out for them (maybe just for now) they do have a lot of good public education information.

https://www.starnetlibraries.org/about/our-projects/solar-eclipse-activities-libraries-seal/

You're welcome.
Love,
A librarian whose town is just south of totality but the library in the next town is in the path

Here's a throwback eclipse photo from 1900. You heard me.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/2534500722/

jessamyn, 1 month ago to random

Happy #NationalLibraryWeek to those who celebrate. I love my smol library/archive Mastodon instance. I love my local library (where I check out books and also sometimes work) and I love the distributed mutual aid system that is public libraries in the United States.

There are some real problems, ones that need attention and caring (both internal and external) but I'm happy I chose libraries and am happier they chose me.

(photo is old novelty headshot but it always makes me smile)

jessamyn, 1 month ago to random

I love this The Australian Literary Heritage Project which identifies out of print books that they consider "Australia’s lost literary treasures" and does the work to find the rights, scan/OCR the books, and make them available to libraries.

Plus they crunch the numbers to show what's being used and why this sort of work is important.

https://untapped.org.au/

This exhibition showcases some of the titles which were selected.

https://www.austlit.edu.au/untapped

jessamyn, 3 months ago to random

"[Older adults] might use the web differently than younger users, but that doesn’t mean we need to design a 'barebones' version for them. What we need is a reliable, inclusive digital experience that helps everyone feel independent and competent."

A Guide To Designing For Older Adults by Vitaly Friedman

Considering there are over a billion people over sixty in the world, it makes no sense that there aren't more accessible versions of easily-skinnable websites for them.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2024/02/guide-designing-older-adults/

jessamyn, 19 days ago to random

I wrote an opinion piece about Vermont's Data Privacy Act which is sitting on the Governor's desk while the big tech lobby pressures him not to sign it. Threaded here so people can read it and I don't just give you an image with a huge alt text wall.

---

I support Vermont Data Privacy Act a bill which has passed the House and Senate and is on its way to the Governor's desk. Vermonters deserve to be able to understand and control how their personal information is collected and used online [1/7]

jessamyn, 5 months ago to Wikipedia

New Year new #Wikipedia list. Reebee Garofalo was one of the original people who put together Rock Against Racism Massachusetts but you may know him as the snare player for the Good Trouble Brass Band playing in the HONK! Festival of Activist Street Bands. He was cited in a ton of other Wikipedia articles and made that Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music chart you may have seen in an Edward Tufte book. A good guy to get to know, deserves a longer article but this is good for now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reebee_Garofalo

A man in a red beret with a white beard looks into the camera. He is standingbehind a podium that has an apple laptop on it. He is wearing many strands of multicolored beads and a red HONK t-shirt

waldoj, 21 days ago to random

Heat pumps and induction ranges are two strong examples of products that are better environmentally and better products than their gas/oil competitors, for almost everybody. (EVs will get there, but they’re not there yet.)

Because carbon emissions are free, it’s important that low-emission new products be clearly better than the polluting status quo. It’s a high bar, it’s not fair, but I’m glad we have heat pumps and induction ranges as a model.

jessamyn, 5 months ago to random

Book 1: System Collapse. I'd been eagerly awaiting this book. I enjoyed it but it wasn't quite the Murderbot book I was expecting. May have been a me problem, it was a long time since I'd read the last one and I had to re-learn who the characters were and this novel seemed short on "get to know the characters" stuff. A lot of Murderbot's inner mind, some of their relationship with ART, the usual clusterfuck on a remote planet. Last year's reading list https://glammr.us/@jessamyn/111666401754992583