Mita Williams
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copystar.bsky.social
Mita Williams
@copystar.bsky.social
630 followers 680 following 330 posts
Law Librarian at Windsor Law.
https://copystar.neocities.org/
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copystar.bsky.social
Mita Williams @copystar.bsky.social · Dec 15
I don’t have a tagline for my newsletter, but I’m workshopping “Reader’s advisory for the utopia of the dimmer light” www.uofwinds.com
University of Winds
Three links to wonderful and thought-provoking things every other Saturday morning from Mita Williams.
www.uofwinds.com
copystar.bsky.social
"How I use Signal (and Why)"
librarian.aedileworks.com/2025/11/11/h...

This blog post is part of a larger series that might be of interest: librarian.aedileworks.com/tag/howandwhy/
How I use Signal (and Why)
This blog post will go into why I use Signal as my personal messaging app of choice and to point out its features in hopes that it might convince you to use Signal as well.
librarian.aedileworks.com
November 11, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
edroso.bsky.social
In a rare case of Substack notes usefulness, I just learned that Sarah Kendzior (author of They Knew and a brilliant writer) got bounced from Bluesky. What the hell? new @sarahkendzior.bsky.social
Sarah Kendzior • 4m I've been suspended from BlueSky. I don't know why. I wasn't online much today, and the last things I posted were excerpts from my substack newsletter articles. The suspension followed without explanation. It seems there's a crackdown. If you enjoy my work and want to make sure you can access it, subscribe! It's free - I would never paywall in times of peril — and voluntary paying subscribers keep it going. It would be great to have your support at this time. Thanks!
November 11, 2025 at 4:09 AM
Reposted by Mita Williams
bgrueskin.bsky.social
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…
November 9, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
malwaretech.com
I love that the Boston cop slide never got fixed and now people just willingly go down it in tribute. It’s basically a national landmark at this point
November 8, 2025 at 6:15 AM
Reposted by Mita Williams
lukelebrun.ca
Hi Bluesky 👋

Small life update: I’m at the centre of a multimillion dollar lawsuit in Alberta launched by a failed candidate for Jason Kenney’s UCP

It may be the longest and most expensive media trial in Canadian history

I’m ready to go public about it and I want to share more details with you 🧵
November 7, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
earlymodernjohn.bsky.social
Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.
October 30, 2025 at 8:21 AM
copystar.bsky.social
Meanwhile in Ontario…

www.cleanairalliance.org/rates-to-ris...
November 4, 2025 at 3:45 AM
Reposted by Mita Williams
volts.wtf
Absolutely amazing: they've got so much solar in Australia that they need more people to use more of it, so the gov't has instructed energy retailers to offer *at least three hours of free power* during the middle of the day.

Meanwhile fossil-addled US struggles with an energy-price crisis ...
Energy retailers to be directed to offer free power three hours a day
Saying there is enough solar power for everyone in the daytime, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen will direct retailers to provide three hours of free power every day to consumers.
www.abc.net.au
November 3, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
kristenthomasen.bsky.social
I’m quoted in 3 important media stories from last week. All different but share a common theme: how do we push back against surveillance that is undermining dignity, relationships, the possibilities of collective liberation? Not exactly CBCs framing but it’s a noticeable trend in public discussions:
November 3, 2025 at 11:21 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
nkalamb.bsky.social
The Canadian Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Research is launching a US-style attack on EDI in Tri-Council funding.

As part of this attack, they are demanding disclosure of confidential demographic info + reviewer comments of all Canadian researchers who have applied b/w 2000-2025.
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas: I'm tabling the following motion: That the committee request the three funding councils, namely the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), as part of the study on the impact of federal funding allocation criteria on research excellence in Canada, to provide it with the disaggregated data of all submitted applications, whether funded or not, for all student and faculty funding programs from the master's level onwards for applications made between 2020 and 2025. That this data include (1) demographic data of applicants and collaborators, including applicants' responses to the equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) questionnaire, (2) the institutions and departments of applicants, including the institutions of collaboration, (3) the language of the application, (4) all data regarding the type of application and project content (application year, grant program, discipline, title, summary, amount requested by the applicant), as well as (5) the identity of the evaluation committee, comments, opinions, scores assigned to applications for each criterion, and (6) the outcome of the application and the amount awarded. That the three funding councils submit all this data to the committee within 15 days following the adoption of this motion, in an Excel spreadsheet format.
October 31, 2025 at 2:33 PM
copystar.bsky.social
As a rabid fan of EEAAO, I both love the fact that you can play a rock in Stone Simulator in multi-player... but I take umbrage that being rocks together is a lesson of *stoicism*

www.creativebloq.com/3d/video-gam...

Maybe it's absurdism. But maybe it's love ❤️

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X1s...
Stone Simulator is an Unreal Engine 5 game where you literally do nothing
(because you're a stone).
www.creativebloq.com
October 29, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social
Blue Jay (rotated), by Helen Frankenthaler, 1963, 📸 by @haffeyphoto
October 29, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
kristenthomasen.bsky.social
The US will soon require entry & exit photos of all Canadians crossing the border for biometric analysis.

To me the exit photo in particular signals more widespread & indiscriminate biometric surveillance of *all* people in the US to use this database.

CBC story here: www.cbc.ca/listen/live-....
© CBC/Radio-Canada 2025. All rights reserved.
www.cbc.ca
October 28, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
tressiemcphd.bsky.social
www.dailytarheel.com/article/opin...
Column: Information is the most human thing you can study
"This detective work, this human ability to read between the lines and see what’s missing as well as what’s there, is the real work of information and library science. The information is all the littl...
www.dailytarheel.com
October 28, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
uofwinds.com.web.brid.gy
UofWinds 423, Week 43: Technology Connections, how to actually be enjoyably well-educated, How I use ActivityPub (and Why)
Good morning. I am writing this without a coffee beside me because there are an assorted array of teenagers sleeping in the living room and I don't want them to wake them up to the whirl of our coffee grinder. Not yet. My husband in the study with
www.uofwinds.com
October 28, 2025 at 2:49 PM
copystar.bsky.social
I thought this was an exceptional interview by @reckless.bsky.social with Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of Lexis Nexis on how Ai might influence our legal systems

youtu.be/g-1A72BGztA?...
LexisNexis CEO says the AI law era is already here | Decoder | Full Episode
YouTube video by Decoder with Nilay Patel
youtu.be
October 28, 2025 at 5:57 PM
copystar.bsky.social
How *you* ( 📚librarians and those working in publishing, law, and government) should use ActivityPub and why

librarian.aedileworks.com/2025/10/27/h...
How *you* (librarians and those working in publishing, law, and government) should use ActivityPub and Why
This post contains reasons why librarians and those working in publishing, law, and government should pay some attention to ActivityPub
librarian.aedileworks.com
October 27, 2025 at 6:38 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
gaudipern.bsky.social
A hard truth is that the search for artificial general intelligence as a commercial tool is fundamentally a reproduction of slavery. Not because computers are people or anything so silly, but because of the impetus: To acquire the products of humanity without the need for a human to consent.
October 26, 2025 at 7:30 PM
copystar.bsky.social
📚 "Creating with instead of creating for"
librarian.aedileworks.com/2025/10/22/c...

Earlier this week, I read an article that I want to celebrate here: “From Notes to Networks: Using Obsidian to Teach Metadata and Linked Data” by by Kara Long and Erin Yunes, code4lib Journal, Issue 61, 2025-10-21.
Creating with instead of creating for
Yesterday I read an article that I want to celebrate here: “From Notes to Networks: Using Obsidian to Teach Metadata and Linked Data” by by Kara Long and Erin Yunes, code4lib Journal, I…
librarian.aedileworks.com
October 23, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social
i physically cannot stop myself from posting this even though no one will care but hands down best book for a hand cameo has gotta be "hand book". exact perfect book for a hand. thanks to this hands on google books employee whoever you are!!! (via wikimedia commons)
October 21, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
ubisurv.net
#AI #data centres coming to #Canada, with little thought to the huge implications for #water consumption...

www.cbc.ca/news/ai-data...
Thirsty AI data centres are coming to Canada, with little scrutiny or oversight | CBC News
Canada is poised to join the data centre boom. But as such projects face greater scrutiny around the world, there is little debate here about what this will mean for the country’s water.
www.cbc.ca
October 19, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Reposted by Mita Williams
lauraolin.bsky.social
October 19, 2025 at 12:02 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
shannonmattern.bsky.social
The Metro NY Library Council is creating an outdoor library in Westchester County. We now own 26 acres — and this wknd we’re hosting a group of international librarians to help us think about what this place can be! It’ll soon be open to the public + usable by all our 100s of member institutions ☺️
The underpass of a stone bridge A campsite in the woods The group walking up a trail, lined with stones quarried from the site 100 years ago A shot of our library field field guide
October 17, 2025 at 6:41 PM
copystar.bsky.social
I still am posting through it.

Avoiding the magical trap of ✨
librarian.aedileworks.com/2025/10/17/a...
Avoiding the magical trap of ✨
We cannot assume that we are immune to falling into the traps of ✨ Technologies of Enchantment ✨
librarian.aedileworks.com
October 17, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Mita Williams
philsalv.bsky.social
"Cryptographic science, he argued, could not solve Kryptos — 'but library science could.'"
October 16, 2025 at 4:56 PM