Kin Lane @[email protected]

Street artist Jim Bachor fills potholes with incredible #mosaics of famous #art.

https://mymodernmet.com/jim-bachor-pothole-mosaic-art/

"Elmo, who brought Twitter in October for $44bn, tweeted late on Wednesday that the site, “Works for me.”"
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/12/29/twitter-suffers-major-outage-leaving-users-unable-to-logon

The Fifth U.S. National Action Plan for Open Government has been published.

You can read the White House press release here:
https://whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/12/28/white-house-releases-fifth-open-government-national-action-plan-to-advance-a-more-inclusive-responsive-and-accountable-government/

You can read the full plan here:
https://open.usa.gov/national-action-plan/5/

#opengov #opendata #SummitforDemocracy

Excellent piece from @mikejones and @bestqualitycrab for @theconversationau covering the funding issue with #Trove at the National Library of Australia (who I don't think are on Mastodon).

Trove is an #API, which I've demo'd before at places like VALA, which makes the NLA's collections easily query-able.

Trove is #digitalinfrastructure for #digitalhumanities, #socialscience, #archives, #museums and other #GLAM activities.

And it's invisible. Which means it doesn't attract the funding or attention it deserves. Trove archives over 6 billion digital items. Items which speak to Australia's #CulturalHeritage.

If Trove were a supercomputer, it would be funded. If our digitalhumanities were as sexy as #STEM, Trove would be funded. But they're the same type of thing - digital #infrastructure that helps research. Trove is #ResearchInfrastructure. And we should fund it properly.

https://theconversation.com/troves-funding-runs-out-in-july-2023-and-the-national-library-is-threatening-to-pull-the-plug-its-time-for-a-radical-overhaul-197025

I created a @getpostman collection to automate pulling of trending tags from my Mastodon instance. https://www.postman.com/api-evangelist/workspace/mastodon/documentation/35240-8212f086-11ac-4340-beab-ac199efd7336?entity=&branch=&version=

@kin That looks amazing. I just read Kim Stanley Robinson's High Sierra. You are looking at it!

also as a PSA for people who haven't been to libraries in a while:

- libraries offer comfy silent tables and sofas for free, with free Internet and charging ports and free toilets, in the middle of the city where everything else costs.
- most library cards will give you access to some gatekept online resources, like the OED, and "borrowing" ebooks
- libraries also have selections of movies, music, console games etc. to borrow home or enjoy on spot. those classic movies that are hard to find in torrents can be found here
- comic book selections in libraries are pretty great
- language learning books and dictionaries for free
- if the thing you want is not in the library, you can request them to loan from another library (usually for a fee)
- you can also suggest additions to the collection
- boardgames are available, also many other novelties like VR etc. depending on where you live (one around me has an escape room)
- those fantasy beings who reside in the libraries and seemingly merge with the wallpapers and book smell, they're not just there to control which books you're loaning. they also can help you find stuff. they're very good at finding resources for a thing you want to know about, super nice talking to you, and invariably cool as heck