Smol Pub

fuck off with your AI that doesn't even understand my job

2026-05-08T13:35:20Z

One of the other librarians emailed this morning asking if the rest of us had gotten an email from an outfit called Librar Labs.

We hadn't, but I looked them up. And yeah, this whole webpage can fuck off:

Librar Labs

How can it fuck off specifically? Let us count the ways:

"Librar makes it easier to set up and manage a school library even before you find a librarian."

Oh, shut up. Even calling yourself "AI for Librarians" doesn't change the fact that you are CLEARLY gunning for our jobs. This thing is selling itself as a way to replace librarians with $15 an hour parapros.

"Point your phone at any shelf. In seconds, every title is identified and ready for action."

1. Oh? And where is all this data going? Who are you going to sell it to? Because Moms for Liberty would LOVE to get its hands on this fucking info.

2. "Ready for action"? Who processed all those books, jackass? And why do you think cataloging is somehow the time- or labor-intensive half of "process and catalog"? Because I promise you it is not.

"Catalog new arrivals, spot misplaced items, or run inventory without touching a single spine."

1. Books get cataloged before they go on the shelf. Otherwise the system doesn't recognize them at checkout and they have to be briefed while the patron stands there awkwardly. Since I'm in a high school, this often means the student is late to class while I hold them up, which means I have to write a pass, which is more work for me. BOOKS GET CATALOGED BEFORE THEY GO ON THE SHELF.

2. I can spot misplaced items already. I have eyes. So do my students.

3. Why would I want to run inventory without touching the books? How do you think I find the ones with shelf wear, bug damage, or rolled spines? By definition, those are the ones I WON'T catch when they come through circulation. They don't come through circulation! That's why they have shelf wear, bug damage, and rolled spines!

"Many organizations struggle to hire trained librarians, so the library is often empty or run by teachers. Librar ILS is powerful for professionals, simple enough for anyone and intelligent enough not to need a trained librarian."

1. The "struggle" is money, fyi.

2. Libraries are SUPPOSED to be run by teachers. That's what a school librarian is. A school librarian is a CERTIFIED TEACHER who also has an MLIS. They are not paid extra for that MLIS, by the way. If a teacher is running your library, they cost the same with or without that MLIS.

3. "not to need a trained librarian" is saying the quiet part loud here.

"Managing a school library should be about the love of reading, the community and curiosity - not about memorizing commands in the ILS."

I don't memorize commands in the ILS. Our ILS has tooltips and a comprehensive manual for that. Stop making it sound like we manage libraries in a Unix terminal or some shit.

This is absolutely aimed at administrators who don't even set foot in their schools' libraries.

"Anyone can run the entire library from the shelves with a mobile phone without special scanners, messy cables or pen and paper."

.....*sigh*

1. No. They can't.

2. "Running the entire library" is like five percent cataloging. It is 95 percent communication and relationship-building. "The love of reading, the community and curiosity," as you ghouls noted above.

3. Whose mobile phone? And what permissions does your app help itself to while it's there?

"98% of the world's schools still don't have a library system. We want to change that."

...I have a feeling they had to say "world's" to make the dataset big enough to make this claim un-fact-checkable. Because [citation needed].

"If you prefer barcodes or RFID, those can be added later."

I'm sorry, what? Did you just admit your system DOESN'T catalog everything at a glance like you just said it would? Did you just imply that I WILL have to "touch spines" to get books cataloged under our barcode system? How the fuck else would I check them out to students? Do you think I'd just scan the ISBN? What if the item doesn't HAVE an ISBN, or the book has been damaged or the ISBN covered up? What if I have multiple copies of the same item, which have identical ISBNs? Am I just fucked then, or do I have to ADD A FUCKING BARCODE?

Because I DO have multiple identical copies of books. Because this is a HIGH SCHOOL. Where certain books get POPULAR and MULTIPLE KIDS want to check them out and if I DON'T have multiple copies my WAIT LIST gets a MILE LONG and kids forget or give up and then DON'T READ A BOOK. My job is to GET KIDS TO READ BOOKS. You see how not having multiple identical copies sort of UNDERMINES MY JOB.

in summary, fuck off

ALSO, FOR THE RECORD, it sounds like this "snap a photo" approach only works on books with live ISBNs. Yet they're also trying to sell it to academic libraries, which often house (a) books too old to have an ISBN, (b) books encased in buckram the moment they arrive, and (c) both.

I have a high school library. It includes several books put together by student groups, several books that are local history compilations gifted to us from the township, and a wholeass case of former yearbooks. I guarantee this system will not recognize those.

Does it only do books? Because a LOT of K-12 and academic libraries maintain more than books. I have a board game collection that has to be cataloged, for instance. Our elementaries still have a ton of DVDs, which teachers do still use. The local university has microfiche; half the second floor is maps.

WHERE IS THE DATA GOING? This website promises student data security, but it says nothing about what's on shelves. WHERE IS IT GOING? WHO WILL BE ABLE TO BUY OR ACCESS THE DATA ABOUT WHAT'S ON OUR SHELVES? YES THIS FUCKING MATTERS. A LOT. FUCK OFF.

This site also implies you can somehow process books without knowing your cataloging system. You can't. That little tag on the spine that tells you which shelf it goes on and where? THAT IS CATALOGING DATA. YOU CAN'T MAKE THAT LITTLE TAB WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING YOUR LIBRARY'S CATALOGING SYSTEM. WHICH IS A THING YOU LEARN IN LIBRARY SCHOOL.

I hate these people and their app so fucking much. Fuck the whole way off.

Player 2

2026-05-08T10:02:00Z

Player 1

2026-05-08T10:01:29Z

The Setting

2026-05-08T09:46:27Z

all the difference

2026-05-07T19:23:58Z

     is there a woman  in your bed      
     who's perfect in all the ways      
                I am not                
      I only allow  myself to ask       
                  here                  
     to rid myself  of the thought       
        it makes  no difference          
      it makes all the difference

RSS 4 Noobs (Getting Started)

2026-05-07T04:14:34Z

I have a habit of insisting RSS is great and that people should be using it, then making no follow-up effort to explain how that's done or why. This is meant as a clear, actionable guide to getting started with RSS feeds if you're not even sure what they are.

Only the fruits, no vegetables.

What is RSS?

Put persuasively, RSS is a better way to keep up with most anything online. It's a vestige of old web optimism from before executives understood how little the average netizen expects so long as they get porn and circuses.

RSS may be for you if you're...

tired of deleting newsletters you never get around to reading
alarmed by how fast video content eats away at your data plan and attention span
overwhelmed by social media tailor-made to overwhelm you
nostalgic for the idea of an open internet beyond a handful of sites
wary of how many accounts, subscriptions, etc. are required to step outside those walled gardens
generally insecure and/or unfulfilled in your life

If any of these vague emotional appeals are working, at least do yourself the courtesy of skimming this to see if it sounds useful.

Step one:

Install an RSS Reader

You'll need software on whatever device you're using, either a desktop program, mobile app, or browser extension. This is what you'll open to check your feeds. Here are some options:

Feeder for Android (Samsung, Pixel, Huawei, etc.)
NetNewsWire for Apple Devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac)
RSS Guard for Windows, Linux, and Mac

Your First Feed

Poke around your newly installed RSS reader until you find the option to "add a feed" (it may even offer suggestions). Let's add The Hard Times, a punk-themed satirical news site. Their feed URL is https://thehardtimes.net/feed/

Just paste that in the right spot, press OK, and boom: all the latest Hard Times headlines. What a bunch of knee-slappers! You can even click/tap on them and make your way to the full article. Groundbreaking!

But we've got to dream bigger than one feed.

Two Feeds

How about you add the site you're reading right now? (Don't worry; this is a rhetorical performance, not self-promotion.) (Unless..?)

My URL is https://ardea.smol.pub/atom.xml

Add that in your RSS client and bam: you get my blog and The Hard Times presented together. Now you're cooking with crazy!

For real tho... pause for a second and think about what's you've done.

You've set up one place on your device to check for updates from two unrelated websites, without making any new accounts, seeing any ads, or giving out your email address or credit card numbers.

Still not sold? I've got one more trick up my sleeve.

Three Feeds

This part has taken me the longest to write by far, because I have to concisely pitch you the entire internet. I don't want to throw the phonebook at your head, but I want to you sense of the possibilities.

Let's start with the news. Believe it or not, there are still countless journalists diligently reporting on the world (with varied intentions and results). Most news sites (even independent ones) will have at least one feed. Big networks often have multiple, split by category, region, or sport.

Then there's online magazines for most every niche, spanning the gamut from *news with perspective* to *influencers with masthead*. These are basically fancy blogs, so they're perfect for RSS.

Some publish on Medium or Substack, both of which provide feeds. As do YouTube channels, Tumblr blogs, Mastodon and Bluesky accounts, and subreddits, for that matter. If a website is built around blog-style updates, there's a good chance it's quietly writing those updates to an RSS feed. (Wordpress, Wix, and Drupal do it by default, if you know what any of those are.)

Then there's all the other internet titbits... weather forecasts and warnings, phases of the moon, Wikipedia articles and images of the day, webcomics, smut, podcasts, keyword alerts, recipes, and who knows what else.

Imagine a curated feed full of actual information and entertainment, not just evocative stimulus and promotional excerpts, where you can take in headlines at a glance and choose what you want to put your attention and data towards, whether it be short-, medium-, or long-form content.

No, it won't fix the lingering malaise of your life, but it will probably make your scroll an awful lot more pleasant, and help you stay more on top of the information you actually care about.

Finding Feeds

This is where we get into the vegetables, so I'll be brief and send you on your way.

There's not one trick for finding RSS feeds. (I've actually been using RSS as a catch-all term for a few different formats. It can all be a bit confusing if you aren't expecting it.)

Sometimes, if you're lucky, adding "/rss" or "/feed" to a website's URL is enough to reveal a feed. Failing that, websites like *www.rsslookup.com* and browser extensions like *RSS Feed URL Finder* can check a few common spots for you. Failing that, entering the name of the website plus "rss feed" in your favoured search engine can yield results, though you'll have to pick through all the services asking you to make an account to generate bespoke feeds.

I hope that's enough to get you started. Let me know if you have any questions or corrections. Peace.

Restless

2026-05-07T01:45:52Z

[20260506]

So restless

I'm foaming at the mouth

I want to [ move. create. something. anything.]

I need it

I'm not satisfied

The scraps I have

forgiveness

2026-05-06T20:58:47Z

draft after draft of lines

that sound like confessions

but whose forgiveness

am I asking anyway

Work and Consumption

2026-05-06T06:40:56Z

Its the first warm day in weeks and I'm outside, by myself, at a local bar. Staring up at the sky, I try and think:

"What job can I have thats similar or more that would allow me to create? Cause I REALLY need to quit this one!"

This question is combined to this constant underlying thought:

"I am so tired of just consuming! They just want us to consume. So I need to share what I create!"

My relationship with creating has been feeling a bit more hopeful since switching to Adderall to Ritalin. But hope tends to lead me to feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities of something bigger.

Urgh, I don't know. For now I should just be happy I'm drawing and writing more. Eventually I'll start sharing in my own way again.

the axe

2026-05-05T20:53:53Z

if someone hurt me

my mother would visit them

with an axe

only a slight exaggeration

so how do I tell her

anything

even the tiniest bit

and expect her to sit still

while I let fear win again

Wikipedia naturalist

2026-05-05T13:33:52Z

Most of my friends pull out their phones even in the middle of the woods. I tend to roll my eyes and tolerate this. Merlin and PlantNet are certainly useful. But I grew up on field guides and conversations with more experienced naturalists. Instant AI-enabled possible-answers feel more like junk food info to me.

That said, my favorite "field guide" recently has been Wikipedia.

I don't usually look stuff up while in the field. I do what I've always done: make notes, maybe consult a book if I have it, then come home and do some searching. I Wikipedia from my couch, not from the field. I like Wikipedia for looking up various species, though, since it tends to be pretty thorough.

For example, my backyard groundhog is back. He (she?) abandoned the burrow last summer when the fence was put in. Too much construction in the neighborhood, I guess. But they're back now, and now both the entrance and peephole appear to be on my property.

I looked them up because I wasn't sure how much or when to fear for the chickens:

Marmota monax

Answer: Groundhogs are diurnal, but she's probably not even home during the day. Adult groundhogs can eat up to a pound of vegetation a day. Nothing is eating a pound of vegetation in my yard a day. I'd know. Probably she gets up early, slips out through the little belly slide she dug under the new fence, and trundles off into the neighbor's six-acre woods to eat all day.

Wikipedia says groundhogs are less interested in eating other animals than a lot of their cousins are. That said, I know people whose chickens have been killed off by groundhogs. They don't always eat the chickens, but groundhogs are aggressive little shits, and I'm not surprised they'd kill a chicken if it was standing between them and food. Fortunately, it's unlikely the groundhog and chickens will ever cross paths.

Groundhogs don't tend to attack people unless they're cornered, which I already knew. They'll always run if they can. I'm not foolish enough to chase one unless I'm armed.

I'm torn. I don't mind the tubby furballs. My parents, however, have a "kill or relocate on sight" policy toward groundhogs, and they've been farming a lot longer than I have. I'll have to ask dad.

Yesterday, I got out of my car at the gym, and there was a kildeer:

Charadrius vociferous

I love these birds. I think they're beautiful. Their babies look absurd. Sideways-sticking-out fluff, heads too big for their bodies, legs so long they don't look functional. They look like God built them off a kindergartener's bird drawing.

ornithology illustration is my passion

I love them so much.

My life's ambition is to pet a kildeer in the wild without getting beakstabbed, which I know will never happen in real life. We've always had a ton of them at work. They like to hang out on the football field and nest in the gravel under the bleachers. There's a lake right across the street, which attracts them too.

TIL their Latin name more or less translates to "noisy chatterbox." I would have given that name to the red squirrel or maybe the grackle, but that's why God did not make me Charles Linnaeus, I guess.

And then there's the ivory-billed woodpecker:

Campephilus principalis

A copy of Ranger Rick from the 1990s told me these are extinct in the United States. The last confirmed sighting was in Cuba in 1987. Yet every so often, someone will claim they heard one or turn up video or photo "evidence" of them. Are they still out there? My head says no, but my heart hopes. They're terrifying.

unlocked

2026-05-04T20:53:52Z

newly unlocked desires

never explored

growing eager

no longer still and hidden

slumbering safely

beneath the surface

imagine

what you'd do if you knew

you held the key

eat the colonizers

2026-05-04T12:44:47Z

Quackgrass, aka couchgrass, aka Elymus repens:

(this little mumbletyswear)

has long been my sworn foe. Only recently did I learn its roots and grains are edible.

i'm sorry, you can eat WHAT

Close up, quackgrass reminds me of corn: a tough central green stalk with leaf blades that fold away at intervals, sharp and fibrous.

(Aside: seriously, go look at a field of corn sometime, covering the edges of your vision to hide anything that might give you a sense of scale. Corn is grass. It's just mutantly large grass. It's grass that has been exposed to the green ooze in the Ninja Turtle movies. It's terrifying.)

But quackgrass doesn't root like corn. Corn stalks put out several shallow roots, grasping the dirt like mangroves. Quackgrass grows from long, rubbery white strings underground - its rhizomes. The rhizomes can be a meter long or more. My chickens will eat smaller pieces, but the long ones they leave lying on top of the soil.

Quackgrass is quick to part with its stems and leaves. They snap right off at ground level, making you think you've weeded. Nice try. The rhizome will send up a new set by breakfast. Of these meter-long roots, the plant only needs a couple centimeters' worth to start sending out new shoots again.

In this way, quackgrass reminds me of morels. The part that grabs our attention is actually least important to the organism. The organism has a whole life underground that we don't even think about. It's not about us, but it's everything to them.

I spent Sunday hunting morels on Ye Olde Family Farm - the place I grew up. Our forty acre forest plot pushes up some monster whites every year. I also spent some time ripping out garlic mustard.

I've described quackgrass as a colonizer before. One would think I'd appreciate it more for what we have in common. We're both the descendants of 17th century Europeans who decided the continent of North America was theirs for exploitation. Over the centuries, our ancestors shaped the terrain beyond recognition, and our generation is now impossible to get rid of. For all I know, quackgrass and my ancestors came over on the same boat.

I don't appreciate it more, but I do recognize it. And just like I don't know what I'd do with myself if I moved to Europe, I don't know what I'd do with myself if all the quackgrass vanished tomorrow. I'm too used to it.

I am somewhat less sentimental toward garlic mustard, aka Alliaria petiolata:

the incredible edible colonizer

Garlic mustard didn't get included in this year's "wait, you can eat that" because I already knew I could eat it. There are four quart bags of it blanched and frozen in my freezer now, awaiting winter soups and frittatas. I also knew it's categorized as an invasive species.

What I learned this year is that some invaders suck more than others.

Garlic mustard doesn't just grow rampantly, taking over whatever it occupies. It actually kills your soil.

Garlic mustard is a biennial. In its first year, it puts out leaves and not much else. This is fine. It's also when it tastes best.

In its second year, garlic mustard does two things. One is "make flowers" - little white four-petaled things, not terribly exciting. The other is to secrete chemicals that kill the fungal layer in the soil around it. This is how it scorches out the competition, so that its seeds can have a nice place to grow all to themselves.

This is like if you enrolled your child in a competitive kindergarten, but instead of giving your child attention and homework help and tutoring, you added a slow poison to the drinking water so all the other kids slowly withered away around your child.

I had planned to leave my garlic mustard up by the fence, until I learned it's poisoning the kindergarten. I can't install a food forest without a fungal layer. Full stop. Hence all the bags of it now in my freezer. I'll still pull and eat it each spring, but I don't have to cultivate it on my tiny one-tenth of an acre.

Here is a partial list of edible invasive species:

Edible invasive species

Eat the rich. Eat the colonizers.

(Not listed: dames'-rocket (Hesperis matronalis), which is honestly one of my favorites.)

underneath the ash

2026-05-03T20:56:56Z

the wildfire calms

and the glowing embers

quietly smouldering

underneath the ash

wait for a waking gust

set me ablaze, love

A map of London bookswaps

2026-05-03T19:57:12Z

I had a copy of a paperback that I had very much enjoyed and thought that others might enjoy but it had sadly been battered beyond the point of being saleable in a charity shop so this helpful map reminded me that there is a little bookswap hut just two streets away from my house.

https://londonist.com/london/maps/a-map-of-london-bookswaps

ritual

2026-05-02T20:58:33Z

one hand

on thigh

then hips

both sides

you hold

I stay

you grip

I sway

you're lost

in me

I'm found

you see

you're mine

I'm yours

you moan

I pray

My Parents Living Room

2026-05-02T13:05:27Z

I'm home alone. It happens somewhat frequently, a whole house to myself. Yet here I am, in my room, with my things and my thoughts. I could be downstairs with the big tv and a movie or some other activity, but instead I sit in my room at my desk.

Living with my parents has it's benefits sure, the rent they make me pay is small, they often cook me meals, I don't have to do all the chores. There is, however, a few downsides of course. They don't entirely vibe with my politics or my gender, they aren't always the nicest to me, and my opinion doesn't matter.

That last point is why I still find myself in my own room even on these days where I am given the whole house to myself. My room is that. Mine. I chose how to decorate it. I choose what goes in and comes out. My sanctuary. The other rooms in the house aren't mine. They don't have any of "me" in them. Decorated and structured in ways that don't feel right to me, with any of my inputs or opinions being met with either confusion or hostility.

That living room ends up feeling not hostile, but not homely to me. The sort of place where you don't QUITE feel at home, or like you should be there. The vibes, as some would say, are off.

So here I sit, in my one small corner of the house, while the rest sits empty. In a house that doesn't feel like a home. In a place I don't feel I truly belong.

12-28-25

2026-05-01T22:46:00Z

1.6.4: out, damned bug! out, I say!

removed all Sweet Sausage Seasonings references. as it turns out I already thought that ingredient was bs & removed it but just forgot to remove it EVERYWHERE

confined

2026-05-01T20:57:25Z

I am as soft

as the moss under feet

after a long winter

waiting, hiding

under layers

protected

confined, rather

feel me

the softness

and break me free

that hot librarian content you crave, part 3: shelf ranges

2026-05-01T17:37:03Z

My library shelves are organized by genre. There about 14 subdivisions. Within each subdivision, books are arranged alphabetically by author's last name.

Each shelf has a tag indicating its range (which authors, alphabetically, are on each shelf). The ranges use the last three letters of the authors' last names, since that's what is also on the spine label.

All this creates a lot of opportunities for shelf ranges to spell silly things.

I re-did the range tags for most of the fiction today. Some of my favorite new range options:

ABB-BEY

KAL-LOW

OPA-QUE

CIA-DOA

GOT-HER

SMI-THI

ADA-BRO

DEL-ETE

FAL-GUY

RAD-SHY

LOC-NES

GOO-HUG

KIT-LOB

REE-SET

The reshuffle eliminated my previous favorites, PAR-ROT and ACE-BRO. I also had the good sense to (narrowly) avoid a BRA-CUP (now BRA-CUR). This is a high school, after all. I am waiting for a student to giggle over DAH-GOD and the range that ends in -FUQ, however. (It is not my fault J. Scott Fuqua's last name is spelled that way and The Reappearance of Sam Webber is the last horror/suspense/mystery novel we have that ends in F - one of a group of F-last-named authors that just so happens to fit perfectly on a shelf together!)

LOC-NES is, appropriately, in the science fiction section. In case you were wondering. GOT-HER is also, appropriately, in the romance/relationships section. (GOO-HUG is in historical fiction.)

No, librarians don't usually force ranges to be silly. Yes, we absolutely do giggle over them when they happen. We also laugh when we're making spine labels that spell silly or rude words. (I particularly enjoyed FIC POO.)