madison
beastlibrarian.bsky.social
madison
@beastlibrarian.bsky.social
📍 seattle-ish
📚 art librarian
👩🏻‍🏫 part-time faculty teaching arts librarianship

this is an unprofessional account! I’m here for people with librarian in their bio.
Pinned
how can artists, writers, filmmakers, poets, etc
ever get a creative block
when small town historical newspapers from the 19th century exist
Reposted by madison
Milo, stays doing the reading.
@tressiemcphd.bsky.social has repeatedly observed that the MAGA feminine aesthetic, instead of aiming for a coherent beauty heuristic, is meant *only* to signal female willingness to self-subjugate to a male desire.

The outcome needn’t be “attractive”, it need only say “I’m willing to do this”.
November 10, 2025 at 9:27 PM
votes in local elections are sooo impactful! ahhh it’s too close!
November 11, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Reposted by madison
Unless you own a whole portfolio of real estate, or multiple millions of dollars in stock, you should not concern yourself with "the economy".

Instead, you should be concerned about the cost of living, and what happens to people who cannot afford the cost of living.
It seems crucial (and long overdue) that our national political discourse has finally shifted from an obsession with "the economy" to what actually matters: whether people can afford the basic things they need to live.
November 11, 2025 at 12:10 AM
Reposted by madison
1.) Here are my two original pieces:

newrepublic.com/article/2010...

newrepublic.com/article/2012...

2.) Here's a followup I wrote for my Substack, Backbencher:

timothynoah.substack.com/p/more-shahn...

3.) Here's what Heather Cox Richardson wrote:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...
The New Deal Masterpieces Threatened by Trump’s D.C. Downsizing
Your great-grandparents paid Ben Shahn and Philip Guston to create gorgeous public murals. Next year they could be rubble.
newrepublic.com
November 10, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Reposted by madison
It's driving me batty that nobody except Heather Cox Richardson, the Washington Monthly, and myself is covering Trump's race to sell off (for likely demolition) "the Sistine Chapel of the New Deal," w/ murals by Ben Shahn, Philip Guston, etc. I've furnish links below to help reporters get started.
November 10, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Reposted by madison
Prince loved to remind people that he wrote this song while looking in the mirror:

You're so good, baby there ain't nobody better
So you should never, ever go by the letter
You're so cool, everything you do is success
Make the rules — then break them all 'cause you are the best
Prince & The New Power Generation's "Cream" from 'Diamonds and Pearls' hit #1 on the US singles chart 34 years ago on November 9, 1991 | Listen to the album + revisit our tribute here: album.ink/PrinceDmndsP...
November 9, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Reposted by madison
This is an absolutely insane administrative process. Within the space of a week, states were told by judges/White House
*no SNAP benefits
*half benefits
*full benefits
*pause provision of benefits.
Result is chaos, uncertainty, and uneven access to benefits depending on where people live.
NEW: The Trump admin told states it must immediately "undo" the work to provide full food stamp benefits, or face penalties. The feds sent this in a late-night memo, only adding to the chaos and confusion around SNAP. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/b...
Trump Administration Demands States ‘Undo’ Work to Send Full Food Stamps
www.nytimes.com
November 9, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by madison
Not only that, but so much AI tech extracts the metadata and open info created/enabled *by* library and data workers. The labor of our field is being consumed and then resold to us in the hopes that we’ll decide our own jobs are obsolete @404media.co
Librarians told 404 Media they're being inundated with new pitches for AI library tech and catalogs are being flooded with AI slop books.

But more broadly, AI maximalism across society is supercharging the ideological war on libraries, schools, government workers, and academics.
AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge
"Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."
www.404media.co
November 8, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by madison
Hey folks, as news of Watson's demise spreads, please don't set aside his weighty legacy of misogyny and racism. He was truly among the worst of us. www.vox.com/2019/1/15/18...
DNA scientist James Watson has a remarkably long history of sexist, racist public comments
“People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty,” he said in 2003. “I think it would be great.”
www.vox.com
November 7, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Reposted by madison
I wrote about why I can't sleep at night: the devaluation of so many things (critical thinking, creativity) I thought were paramount. lithub.com/when-we-deva...
When We Devalue Art (Books!) We Devalue the Future
When you’ve spent your whole adult life working in and around book publishing you get used to hearing that people don’t read anymore and that the industry is on its last legs. There is always a cri…
lithub.com
November 6, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by madison
40 years ago we’d have congressional hearings falsely accusing metal bands of putting backwards messages in their songs that told kids to kill themselves & now we have a planet-killing chatbot that’s all like “bet you won’t commit suicide chickenshit bitch” & the government is like here’s $5 billion
November 8, 2025 at 4:23 AM
Reposted by madison
congrats to everyone for thinking this through before signing very big contracts to put it on every student’s device at the school or university you run
OVER A MILLION USERS

DISCUSS SUICIDE WITH CHATGPT

EVERY *WEEK*

what the fuck are we DOING here
Panera’s moderately caffeinated lemonade was loosely associated with 2 deaths before it was taken off market.

This article alone has 4 examples of ChatGPT encouraging young people to commit suicide, and OpenAI’s own public stats estimate over a million users discuss suicide with ChatGPT each week.
November 7, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Reposted by madison
Cornell agrees to "invest" $30 million in things like AI farming.

Cornell also agrees to pay $30 million to the U.S. for no clear reason or purpose.
November 7, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by madison
Cornell agreed to pay $30m, hand over admissions data with demographic breakdowns, produce annual "campus climate" surveys to check on antisemitism and changes "since October of 2023," and—here's the dumbest part they agreed to—that the govt can open new investigations whenever it wants.

Appeasers.
November 7, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by madison
“And then you have librarians who are experiencing a real existential crisis because they are getting asked by their jobs to promote [AI] tools that produce more misinformation. It's the most, like, emperor-has-no-clothes-type situation that I have ever witnessed.” - Alison Macrina
AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge
"Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."
www.404media.co
November 7, 2025 at 7:15 AM
jealous about anyone who gets to go to this 😍
Join us on Sunday night for a special screening of MoMA's gorgeous new restoration of 7th Heaven (1927) with *live music* by The Poor Nobodys at the majestic Heights Theater in Minneapolis!!! 🎞️🎶❤️ @archivesonscreen.org

ticketing.useast.veezi.com/purchase/588...
November 7, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by madison
Librarians told 404 Media they're being inundated with new pitches for AI library tech and catalogs are being flooded with AI slop books.

But more broadly, AI maximalism across society is supercharging the ideological war on libraries, schools, government workers, and academics.
AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge
"Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."
www.404media.co
November 6, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by madison
"World's first potential trillionaire has killed 600,000 people, including 400,000 children" is the only headline that anyone should ever read about Elon Musk
November 7, 2025 at 1:33 AM
Thread
BREAKING: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is illegally closing 13 campus buildings (including ~100 laboratories).

Report coming from GESTA, the Goddard employee union
November 6, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Reposted by madison
There can be a culture of “we’re lucky to get anything, mustn’t ask for more, after all it’s embarrassing that we need it in the first place”

No. We create jobs. We create value. Our work is pro-social. Our work is vital. We are underpaid. Demand more!
November 6, 2025 at 9:49 AM
Reposted by madison
This sort of thing is why arts organisations should be absolutely unapologetic about seeking and getting public funding. Massive companies demand state largesse all the time, and they don’t even acknowledge it.
BREAKING: OpenAI is requesting US government support to help guarantee financing for the massive investments in AI chips and data centers it needs for expansion, per Bloomberg.
November 6, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Reposted by madison
New survey researching how recent policy shifts within the U.S. in higher education are impacting DEI reparative metadata/cataloging efforts in academic libraries & archives in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico. 📚 #critcat uncg.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
Ramification of DEI shifts in higher education on reparative cataloging activity
Survey for "Ramification of DEI shifts in higher education on reparative cataloging activity".
uncg.qualtrics.com
November 5, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Reposted by madison
I love that Mamdani is what the right claimed Obama was: A Muslim socialist born in Africa. The right practically manifested Mamdani into existence.
November 5, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by madison
Hello dearies, I've made available online my syllabus for the course titled,

Bodies and Sexualities: Transnational/Queer Feminisms

It's a reading-heavy course (3hours each week, 8 weeks in all) for MA Year 2 students with a guest lecture. You can consult it here: doi.org/10.13140/RG....
November 4, 2025 at 3:41 PM