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Ursula K. Le Guin - A Wizard of Earthsea Ogion and Ged

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I suggest that we stop looking for AI and start looking for where our content comes from. - @copperbadge has it right there.

As AI art gets harder to clock, I feel like we are going to need to have a discussion about attribution and it's probably going to bum some people out.

Because the surest way to avoid platforming, reblogging, or encouraging AI art posting is to know where every image you share originated and that's 1) boring, tedious research and 2) extremely limiting in what you feel you can reblog. But if unattributed images never gets traction, people will start attributing their images.

I've been guilty of this in the past, but for a while now it's been my policy that if I can't verify the origin, I don't share the image. That goes for stuff like screen grabs of headlines too -- more than once I've avoided spreading misinformation by saving a post to research before I reblog, then seeing the post refuted before I've been able to verify it.

And I usually try to attribute photos I take -- case in point, the "woman with shrimp" post gets a lot of attention but not one comment about it being AI, despite it being pretty similar to something you'd get from an AI. That's because I clearly state it's in a museum and link to its catalogue page.

I'm not saying this to scold anyone -- I think yelling at the Internet to cite its sources is very much a losing game -- but because I don't see this discussed much. We're such fertile ground to be fooled by AI art because we've grown accustomed to not questioning the origins of any given image. And of course I also want to encourage both OPs to attribute their images and rebloggers to verify unattributed ones.

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Cutter-outer. haha.

Wood Engraving Wednesday

Here are a few delightful wood engravings from a recent gift showing the various processes that go into binding a book. This little pamphlet is entitled A Short History of Bookbinding and a Glossary of Styles and Terms Used in Binding … .printed in London at the Chiswick Press for the bookbinder Joseph William Zaehnsdorf in 1895.These images were probably printed from metal plates that were made from the original wood engravings. The engravings are not attributed, as was the case for most commercial engravings.

Click or tap on the images to see the definitions for these activities as provided in the booklet’s glossary. 

View more posts with wood engravings!

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LAMINATION!! NOOOoOOOOOOooooOOoo!

This stupid idea* before I disbound it and made it better

*SOMEBODY** LAMINATED ISSUES OF OUR STUDENT NEWSPAPER FROM 1912 AND BOUND THEM WITH STUPID BIG STUBS IN THE 1970s

**Our FIRST UNIVERSITY ARCHIVIST AAAAARRRGFFFHGFFHHHHHGGGGHG [agonized warbling continues]

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Special Collections, Libraries, Archives, (GLAM) Links 7/25/2025 Part 2

Weekly GLAM news roundup. 7/25/2025 Part 2.

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Special Collections, Libraries, Archives, (GLAM) Links 7/25/2025 Part 1

I post library, archives, special collections, museums, and general GLAM news to by BlueSky account each week. I will compile them here once a week.

There seems to be a limit to how many links I can include, so this will be Part 1.

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Title page of John Baskerville's Virgil (1757)

Cathy Baker making paper

In this video, Dr. Cathleen A. Baker (U-M Conservation Librarian Emerita) takes us through her years-long research into the earliest Western-made wove paper, including papermaking experiments to replicate the paper that first appeared in John Baskerville’s Virgil, published in Birmingham, England, in 1757. This paper, which is now the most commonly used type by people all over the world, had its origins in East Asia perhaps as long as a millennium ago, but until the mid-eighteenth century, it was unknown in the West.

View the video of Baker's talk!

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https://archiveofourown.org/works/66992527

Y'ALL THIS IS THE COOLEST FANFIC I'VE EVER SEEN.

It is a complete narrative about SecUnits on a Planetary Survey trying to communicate and keep their clients safe while dealing with the restrictions of their govmod.

IT IS ALSO A FULLY INTERACTIVE GAME OF MINESWEEPER.

The story is told BY PLAYING MINESWEEPER.

This fic is criminally underrated go look at it!!!

(edited to add: the story is about original characters so even if you haven't read Murderbot, you can still read this story!)

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A Professor’s Hunt for the Rarest Chinese Typewriter

A historian went down an 18-year rabbit hole in search of obsolete machines. But there was one he thought he’d never find.

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/nyregion/mingkwai-typewriter-china.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZE8.0bI-.HlMH06aqUv8e&smid=url-shar

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i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

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I took this photo. Manicure by Lindsay Morecraft, and this is from the University of Iowa's Special Collections' Tumblr.

Original post here. Rita Benton Music Rare Book Room FOLIO M2 .C428 2010

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I sidle up to you and wink as I open my trench coat, revealing...

(NO it's not the real one, but it's still cool. And I'm telling you first because it seems like something you'd be into. Yes, you.)

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Here's some photography related book covers I found on the Internet Archive this week!