158 - Flickr Commons feat. Jessamyn West
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Justin: [0:00] Is my soundboard working? Justin: [0:04] Yep. Jay: [0:05] I hate you. Jessamyn: [0:05] Look at all of you people with your professional microphones. I've just got my... Do I sound okay? I sound okay to me. Yeah, you sound fine. Jay: [0:13] We've been doing... Is this our five year this month? Justin: [0:15] Five years last week. Jay: [0:17] I only upgraded like last year. Sadie: [0:20] Yeah, same. Jay: [0:21] Like bought my own. Yeah. Jessamyn: [0:23] Now you're like, I'm a real podcaster. Jay: [0:25] Yeah, Justin's had his setup for a couple of years now. Justin: [0:30] Yeah i like having the i like the main reason i bought it because i like having this arm it's Jay: [0:35] Nice we all have the same one Justin: [0:37] Yeah we all have like a used exact same used blue yeti mine was with an arm oh you're new yeah mine was so old the micro usb was like broken and so i had to buy a different micro usb cable i do Jessamyn: [0:56] Have a professional headset but it like plugs into a thing that then turns into usba and i don't even have usba anymore so at least my laptop has a headphone jack Justin: [1:07] I was surprised i could find a six foot micro usb what i had to replace this one like when i bought it like three years ago i Jessamyn: [1:16] Have one of those in my basement Justin: [1:18] Yeah yeah i the Jessamyn: [1:20] Older you get the more you hoard old cables Jay: [1:22] I've just got a bag of cables just in case i don't know what half of them are four. I think I've thrown some of the things away but I'm like but they're The way things are going, I need to hoard my cables. Sadie: [1:33] A whole set of two of those white plastic drawers in one of my rooms. And when I was working IT, where I actually had to go out two branches to fix things, I had a tool bag full of random ass cables in my trunk and tools at all points in time. Because you never know when you're going to suddenly need a VGA to DisplayPort or whatever. Yeah. Justin: [1:59] You never know you never do know when you need those i like i had two graphic card inputs and like i had one of the weird graphic cards that had one vga and one dvi and to have a two monitor setup i had to have one going vga and one going dvi when Jessamyn: [2:17] I go to the library i just have this which is full of like dongles and widgets and whatever because you know do people have an android phone do they have an iphone do they have an old iphone do they have an antique iphone etc etc. And if you have the thing, maybe they can talk to somebody, do a thing, whatever. If you don't have a thing, they come back to the library next week and... Justin: [2:38] Yeah. Someone had a post that was like, this is really annoying for all the 3D printer boyfriends. The ice whistles have really validated their purchase decisions. Imagine if society depended on all of their hoarded cables and how validated they feel. Jessamyn: [3:00] I may have 94 of those whistles in my home, but yes. Justin: [3:05] Yeah i mean i have i'm torn between do i invest in the 3d printer or do i invest in the the diy chemistry set for making medication you know it's like which one is the the 500 oh Jessamyn: [3:17] God i think you gotta go chemistry right Justin: [3:19] I think the chemistry one is really you know that you can do so many more fun things with it um i already started recording and Jessamyn: [3:27] Everybody has a 3d printer Justin: [3:28] Sorry That's true. Everyone does a 3D printer. But yeah, you can always go use someone else's 3D printer. Jessamyn: [3:34] Yes. Jay: [3:35] Like at your local library. Jessamyn: [3:37] Unless you're in Vermont. I'm trying to think where the closest 3D printer to me is. I'm not actually sure. I know the closest library with a 3D printer is over an hour away. Justin: [3:46] Yeah. Jay: [3:47] Is it in like Burlington or is it like in New Hampshire or Massachusetts? Jessamyn: [3:51] It's like on the way to Burlington, Jay: [3:53] I think. Okay. Jessamyn: [3:54] Although actually New Hampshire, we don't diplomatically recognize New Hampshire, so I don't know. Jay: [3:58] Y'all are our socialist brethren to the north. I lived in New Hampshire for like four years before I moved to Boston. I was like, oh, God. Jessamyn: [4:08] Now, do you live in Boston, Boston, or like suburbs? I live in Boston. Only asking because my partner lives in Arlington. So nearby. Yeah. Jay: [4:17] Yeah. Justin: [4:18] Which Arlington? Jessamyn: [4:19] You're Arlington. We have an Arlington, too. And then there's other Arlington's. But yes, Arlington in the Massachusetts. Justin: [4:25] Yeah, I'm in Florida. There's not a Florida Arlington yet. Jessamyn: [4:27] You don't have an Arlington? Now I got a checker Washington has an Arlington. Justin: [4:33] You haven't lived until you've had an Arlington. Okay. Yeah, this is good. We'll keep shooting the shit. It's fine. So what we do is... Jay: [4:42] That's how this podcast is. Jessamyn: [4:44] You said ADD and I was like, say no more. I get it. Can I swear on this podcast? Oh, yeah. Jay: [4:51] Justin had to put an explicit label on the podcast because of how often I say faggot. Yeah, I have toned it down a little bit just because I'm like, oh, crap. they like assign us in grad school sometimes now maybe i should stop um but you know what Justin: [5:13] They're adults it's fine real life Jay: [5:16] Yeah you're gonna hear worse at the library kids because Justin: [5:20] Jay works there Jay: [5:21] Because i believe Jessamyn: [5:25] My representative just called uh the whole Epstein crowd, like a bunch of sick fucks in public media yesterday. Speaker0: [5:32] Good. Jessamyn: [5:33] Yeah, I know, right? Speaker0: [5:34] Good. Justin: [5:36] Okay, let's get the introduction out of the way. Let's... Justin: [6:06] I'm Justin. I'm an academic librarian. My pronouns are he and they. Sadie: [6:10] I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they and them. Jay: [6:15] I'm Jay. I am a cataloging librarian. My pronouns are he, him. Justin: [6:19] And we have a guest. Would you like to introduce yourself? Jessamyn: [6:23] Hey, my name is Jessamyn. I am a technologist and public librarian in Central Vermont, and my pronouns are she, her. Justin: [6:34] Welcome. That gets quieter every time I use it. whatever it gets louder in post it'll be fine welcome i i was explaining an honor Jay: [6:41] To have you here by the way Justin: [6:42] Yeah yeah no i Sadie: [6:46] Was when justin was like we're gonna have jessamine west on i was like how did it take us this long to get like the one person who's famous for being a library anyway i follow you guys on blue sky i think and i think it was that i don't even remember yeah Justin: [7:04] It's strange. I usually try and wait for an opening. I see someone talking about something and I go, oh, they're talking about that. Then I can get them to do an episode. So that's probably the reason. What does Jessamyn want to talk about? I don't really know. So I always wait for an opening. But yeah, anyone is welcome to email us at any time if you have an idea for an episode. We get more than enough AI emails of someone like, hello, I represent so-and-so who is writing a book about three children who are trapped in downtown Vermont. I don't know, like the big city, Connecticut. And they would love to talk to you. And it's always clearly like someone who's written it with the AI. And it's always clearly someone who has been conned by this person. so like an author has paid this person to get them on podcasts yeah and the person has farmed that out to ai and i kind of want to always email the author and be like you know you've been had right like i hope you can reverse the charges on this person because they're just sending me ai slot right Jessamyn: [8:06] They're doing no work Jay: [8:07] Yeah it's like the people who pay for ghost writers which is like a legitimate like type of writing you can do but then the ghost writers are just then using ai for like a tweet instead of actually using a skill it's like you could just pay you just take out that middleman right Jessamyn: [8:23] Or you know shocking use an aim yeah use an ai to send an email yourself if you're so plugged into ai Jay: [8:28] Yeah like if you're gonna go that route just do it Justin: [8:31] That's always the value proposition that i find confusing is like you should learn to do ai because people are going to rely on you to use ai i'm like can't they just ask the ai to do it well Jessamyn: [8:42] You know prompt engineer I'm told is very sophisticated work. See, we don't have AI in Vermont as near as I can tell. So like, I don't know. Justin: [8:49] It hasn't got there yet. Jay: [8:50] Our socialist brethren to the north. Jessamyn: [8:52] My partner's in Massachusetts. He uses it at work sometimes a little bit. Like he's a, you know, program administrator at an academic place. And so he uses it and he'll just talk to me on the phone like, oh, I made AI do this. And I'm like, I don't, I need it to chair this meeting. And we can't do that. In pre-roll, I just got out of a two and a half hour civics meeting that I had to chair. And that's the kind of non-reproducible, you still need human bodies to listen to somebody and be like, sorry, my toilet was running. I don't want to pay $1,000 because I didn't know my toilet was running. And you can just be there and be like, I don't think you should have to. And AI would always charge you $1,000 for your leaky toilet because it's maximizing value for the shareholder, right? Justin: [9:40] AI is the leaky toilet. Jessamyn: [9:43] Right right yes exactly Jay: [9:45] It's never for like the boring repetitive stuff that would make sense it's always for like the part that's like actually fulfilling or intellectually stimulating to do as a human that's always the part that it's trying to take away it's not the like oh i don't want to generate the millionth like table of contents for this cataloging record what if it could do that for me whereas like the the oclc thing is like it's doing subject headings it's doing call numbers that's all it's doing and i'm like but that's the fun part like Jessamyn: [10:12] Aboutness is actually complicated Jay: [10:15] That's what the intellectual labor is like what the i Jessamyn: [10:19] Like using my brain Jay: [10:20] I like using my brain can Jessamyn: [10:21] It shovel my driveway no it freaking can't we got like five inches of snow too which has also made my day a little hectic did you guys Jay: [10:28] So we got a little sleep overnight i think we got like a quarter of an inch Jay: [10:33] not real sleep we we did get the the snowmageddon a couple weekends ago yes Jessamyn: [10:38] Big fun yeah Justin: [10:39] Yeah yeah i got trapped in boston i was there for the weekend and then they're like by the way your flight's probably gonna get canceled and it was like doing that like two three days in advance it's like rebook now rebook now i'm like and nah you'll deal with it yeah and then so i was there i was supposed to fly back like three extra days and i was there to like wednesday oh Jessamyn: [11:00] My god but you didn't like get to logan to have them tell you like you don't You're not going. You just got to like stay there and check your phone and be like, oh. Justin: [11:09] Yeah. No, no. If I get to Logan, it's usually like for no reason my flight's not leaving. And then I'm there. Yeah. Jay: [11:16] For like five hours or something. Justin: [11:18] Yeah. For extra five hours. Jessamyn: [11:19] But I think Logan has the chapel that you can hang out in and charge your device and nobody's ever in there. Jay: [11:24] I didn't know that. Justin: [11:25] Maybe. I don't know. Jessamyn: [11:26] I think they do. They may not anymore. If I were Logan, I wouldn't have a chapel anymore. But like, you know, Boston. Justin: [11:33] Yeah, it was fine. Jessamyn: [11:34] In Vermont, it's a meditation room. Justin: [11:36] Yeah. Jay: [11:37] Of course it is. Jessamyn: [11:39] Vermont, it's exactly like you think. Jay: [11:42] Of fucking course it is. Justin: [11:46] It's a big interfaith chapel. It's fine. It's fine. Sadie: [11:50] The airport. It's fine. The airport is a big interfaith chapel. Sorry. I made a leap there that didn't make any sense. Justin: [11:58] No, it's fine. Year five, Sadie's Riffs. Jessamyn: [12:03] I mean, because whenever I'm at the airport, I am actually contemplating mortality more than I usually do just sitting around in my house, right? Jessamyn: [12:11] That's true. You ask the big questions. Yes. Justin: [12:14] Like, why am I here? Where am I going? Yes. Jessamyn: [12:18] Where do I charge my phone? Yeah. Justin: [12:20] Why does a TSA guy think that the TSA works the same in every airport when I know because there is another TSA at the other airport? And I can tell you, brother, I know it doesn't work this way at other airports. And they always insist that it does work the same way. It's like, you know that there's another airport at the other end of this plane, right? Jessamyn: [12:35] Taking off your belt is a universal, Justin. Justin: [12:38] Yeah. They do like the bin, like back and forth, you know, shuffle. like here's a bin no no bin for you no bin this time everything in one Jessamyn: [12:47] Bin nope use 17 bins Justin: [12:49] 17 bins yeah who knows no bin 17 bins they all make up Jay: [12:54] Logan has the airport jungle juice though where they've got that like thing where it's like dump all your liquids in here and then refill it and it's just like a a bin that you dump all your your water or whatever else wait what yeah it's I've Justin: [13:10] Never seen it in real life. I've only seen photos. I keep looking for the Logan Airport Jungle Juice. Jay: [13:15] For the Airport Jungle Juice, yeah. Justin: [13:16] They should put a little spig at the bottom of it. Jessamyn: [13:18] Right. Justin: [13:19] Even if it doesn't work, it would just be funny. Jessamyn: [13:22] Yeah. They should put a spig at the bottom linked to something completely, actual drinkable alcohol, just so you could prank. Justin: [13:28] They used to do that at the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa. It would be like, here's what your water will look like without environmental rules. And then it had a water fountain underneath it. you could drink from and the thing was it was the nastiest water fountain i've ever drank out of so i might have actually been hooked up to it but it was just like you know like plastic bottles and dirt in in this big clear thing and it was like and then why don't you take a drink kids children and then it was like a rancid water fountain yeah Jessamyn: [13:53] And then it turned out the water's bad and you're like this message so mixed Justin: [13:57] Yeah i should go and swab it and see if there's like heavy metals in it or something with your Jessamyn: [14:02] Home medical kit as we were discussing this is why this is what you need Justin: [14:06] I need to buy so many weird things. Sadie: [14:11] True joy in life same same evergreen yes Justin: [14:15] I was look i was looking into because i was talking i spend a lot of my free time on discord talking to transsexuals and also on a podcast doing that as well as one does yeah and so we got talking about home chemistry as one does and i was like how where does synthetic testosterone come from and we started looking it up it turns out it all comes from soy so i was thinking hell yeah hell yeah tell the gym bros that all the steroids they're taking is actually soy steroids and they'll stop doing it and they'll be healthier people it's like dude your gains are coming from like soy and beets yeah and Jessamyn: [14:54] They're just like well hell no then Justin: [14:55] Fuck it i mean they don't eat soy they they're they're like it it makes emasculating Because it's got phytoestrogens, Jay: [15:03] Which is... Jessamyn: [15:04] Well, because I was going to say, I thought there was like an estrogen-soy connection. Jay: [15:08] Yes. Yeah, but it doesn't affect human beings at all. Jessamyn: [15:10] It's just for plants. Jay: [15:12] Yeah. It's shaped similarly. Justin: [15:15] Yeah. Plant girls crave. Jay: [15:16] It's just about like structure, but it doesn't actually have the same effects on humans. Justin: [15:21] Yeah, it's just structurally estrogen. Like you call it the schematical estrogen, but it's... Jay: [15:25] What actually has estrogenizing effects is getting too much testosterone, because then your body turns it into estrogen. Justin: [15:31] Yeah. Jay: [15:32] Like all you people out there who are like, oh, my T levels are low. Or if you are a trans man and you're like, oh, my T levels are low. There's a reason why you get your blood tested while you're on T. And it's to see not just if your T levels are too low, but if they are too high, because then if it's too high, it turns back into estrogen. Yeah. Justin: [15:51] Anyway. Jessamyn: [15:52] I didn't know that. I'm learning so much. Justin: [15:55] Mm-hmm. Yeah. Body is a miracle. Jay: [15:57] Can't tongue pop with my tongue pierced. Justin: [16:00] I was i was i was i was talking to again another one of these discords uh we were talking about your your background jessamine and i was like you you probably have one of the most extensive wikipedia entries of of many of our guests and i was saying it and then one of the people i was talking to was like is she single and is she poly or is she poly Jessamyn: [16:21] No and no like i'm barely monogamous I am barely even in this relationship. Like me and my partner, like both live in separate States and we don't even have, I mean, it's, it's ACE adjacent monogamy basically. Yeah. no i i i my life is complicated well Justin: [16:39] I had to ask for her Jessamyn: [16:40] No i appreciate it and you know very very flattering you Jay: [16:45] Can also cut that out if you want us to Jessamyn: [16:46] Oh i don't care Jay: [16:49] I'm like justin what the fuck are you Justin: [16:50] Jessamyn seems cool Jessamyn: [16:53] Okay i like to think i am cool yeah Justin: [16:55] If i'm being a jerk Jessamyn: [16:57] Yeah i'll just be like hey man not cool i refuse to answer that i don't even care i mean this is why i like podcasting right because people talk about whatever and it's kind of locked up in an audio file and perfect and it's already on wikipedia like i was telling somebody about this earlier today because it's like not only am i on wikipedia but like relatives of mine are on wikipedia so like i have like a family set of links on wikipedia and we were talking about anti-semitism as one does on social media and somebody was talking about like oh why are these people always like calling out all these individual people as jewish And I'm like, Wikipedia does this all the time. Like, if somebody is Jewish and they have a Wikipedia page, their Wikipedia page will mention their Judaism. Like, just for no reason. Just because, I don't know, back-end creeps. I honestly don't know why this is true. But my uncle has a Wikipedia page because he's like an actor and kind of people have heard of him. And that's how I found out that my grandparents were like a mixed Sephardic Ashkenazi couple. because Wikipedia is like really into that level of like weird genetic nerdicism in a way that's like a little cool, but also deeply creepy. Justin: [18:06] Yeah yeah what i know there's a joke in there's like a joke about the early like the the early life section but i forget what people call it no Jay: [18:16] So it's you look at someone's wikipedia page and if they've got like a personal life section that usually means they're gay is that what you mean oh yeah yeah Justin: [18:24] But there's a separate joke about that for jewish people and it's like oh if there's an early life section that's the part that tells you if they're jewish or not Jessamyn: [18:32] That means they're Jewish. Yes. Was raised in a blah, bitty, blah family. I don't even know if mine says it, actually. I'll be honest. I don't read it that often. I just like have a buddy where if something's wrong, I'll be like, can you fix this? I'm not allowed to edit this. And I'm like, yeah, we're cool. I'm like, great. Justin: [18:47] It says your father was a key figure in a book by Tracy Kidder. Jessamyn: [18:54] Yeah, that's true. My dad was a technology guy and worked on a computer project in the 80s that happened to be covered by Tracy Kidder as his first like kind of big novel that any or not novel nonfiction book about this computer project in the 80s that no one like it's back before everybody did computers. Right. And the book won a Pulitzer. And my dad was like the central guy, but he was also like a nerdy computer guy. And so he was briefly famous in the 80s. Very exciting for 12 year old me. And then kind of became unfamous, sort of, except or he was known for that one thing. Jessamyn: [19:34] And the book portrays him kind of correctly as like kind of a taskmaster son of a bitch. You know, like I loved the man but like he was a very it's all about him being like get the computer built like you can't even imagine it nowadays because just there aren't projects on that like tiny scale there's not like 10 dudes actually it was all dudes building the mainframe you know and one lady it was betty and i know her because like you know who the one person is who's different but yeah and so my father kind of like continued to work in technology for the rest of his life at the same company but his fame was in the 80s. I can't even imagine what that's like. I worry about that for myself. Like, what if I was only famous last century and then I just hang out in Vermont and do this? Actually, that's not so bad. Justin: [20:23] Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's you worry. There's like a double-edged sword of being too popular. Like, it does a lot of weird things to you, I think. People who thrive off of posting and things like that. It's always like you're rolling the dice. That's something a friend of mine says. You're rolling the dice with that every time where you're like, do I want to maintain this? Roll the dice. I'm like, is this going to negatively impact my mental health for the next five years or something? Jessamyn: [20:51] Right, right. Especially if you're talking about anything real, right? Like, it's pretty easy to be like, oh, you know, funny joke about Vermont or, oh, interesting thing about the Olympics or even Black History Month. Like, it's fine. But then if you start talking about like, you know, Becca Balint, my representative who called the Epstein pedos a bunch of sick fucks, like you start talking about that and suddenly you're involved in a conversation with a bunch of, let's be honest, mostly dudes who just want to have a sea lion in conversation with you about something you didn't even ask them about, kind of. It's kind of, I mean, I don't know, in terms of social media, it was interesting listening to you talk about Discord because, like, I just don't use Discord almost at all. But, like, I'm aware it's a very real thing for a lot of people, but I'm like a Macedon dork. And then, like, Blue Sky, I feel, is, like, where those communities can come together in a place where some people are without being, like, the Nazi world of Twitter or, I don't know, if you're on Twitter, I'm sorry. I just, or sub stack. I don't even know. It's fascinating to me. Like there's more choices, which is cool, but also they all say something about you, which can be weird. Justin: [21:59] Yeah. The discord, we, we avoided it for a while. I didn't really want to do one. And then I lost contact with so many library people when they all jump ship on Twitter and, And I was like, oh, I didn't have another way to, I didn't have a backup way of contacting these people. So I, like kind of the discord is just mostly like we can regroup here because it's not like the open social media where everyone is, every rando is yelling at you. Right. And there's all this discussion of like, oh, should we leave discord because it's going to do the face thing if you want to be in a, an adult restricted thing, which ours isn't adult restricted. So it's not going to ask, scan your face, but it's like, don't say anything you wouldn't say in public, but we're just here as a rallying point. Jay: [22:39] Subpoenaed you know yes Justin: [22:41] I think you have to say once in a while when something funny in the news happens and say don't look at discord subpoenaed because i know this is very funny but you're not allowed to joke on it because they are reading things that you type in here even Jay: [22:51] Though we all support what happened Justin: [22:53] We all think it was very funny yeah and he had it coming he Jay: [23:00] Could mean so many people Justin: [23:01] It has been it's been a few years it's been many people who had it coming Jay: [23:09] I'm just gonna like start singing from chicago Jessamyn: [23:12] Well and there's so many people who moved off of twitter and then like change their avatar and i'm probably still friends with them on different social media and i have no idea it's the same person i at least always kind of look like me and i've got like one name and there's only i have no imagination so i'm just me everywhere like if i'm lucky enough to be me everywhere i think instagram i have a different handle but I still have like my same picture of face and I'm like, it's me. Yeah, there are definitely, I was like, oh, you're that same guy or lady or other person or, oh my gosh, sorry. We've been talking for six months and I didn't know I knew you. Justin: [23:49] Whoops. That just happened to me the other, like today, like a friend of mine was like, oh, I have a friend who's going to go into an MLS program. Let me, let me connect you with them. And then they jump in and I see their name and I go, I know this name. And I go into Blue Sky and I'm like, hey, we're already, we're already been talking on Blue Sky. Jay: [24:05] Yeah, no, I knew the name immediately. i was like oh Justin: [24:07] I was like i know i know the name i don't know i thought you already were a librarian i mean i if you're following me on blue sky i kind of assumed it's like an 80 chance you're already a librarian anyways like you know well Jessamyn: [24:18] That's what i always tell people about blue sky it's like the librarian radio you know you can just kind of tune in what are the different librarian people talking about and then like tune back out again i Jay: [24:28] Try not to talk about anything related to libraries on blue sky Jessamyn: [24:30] Really not Jay: [24:32] Not not on like purpose but i just i don't know One, I try not to post that much on it. I try not to be on social media too much. I do tend to scroll Instagram too much, but it's usually just like pasta videos. Jessamyn: [24:47] Pasta videos. Jay: [24:48] Recently today, a bunch of Liza Minnelli videos was not complaining. Justin: [24:53] You just kept sending me Liza Minnelli stuff all day. Jay: [24:55] Because she was on The Muppet Show. I thought you would like that. Jessamyn: [24:59] So wait, who's that guy? Mario, what is his name? There's like a very gay stand-up comedian who also does cooking. Jay: [25:06] Mateo Lane. Oh, I love him. Jessamyn: [25:09] I fucking love him. He's so good. He's so good. Wait, is he the same stand-up comedian? The whole thing about like Call of Duty, like being in the closet and looking at the wallpaper and being like, Oh, we could live here. And then immediately getting killed. Jessamyn: [25:25] It sounds like it could be. He's definitely. Jay: [25:27] It sounds like it could be him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's hilarious. I love him. Justin: [25:33] We're not even going to talk about library shit this episode. We're just hanging out. Jessamyn: [25:36] We talked about library stuff on Blue Sky already. We've already talked about Wikipedia. This is going to be a podcast. Jay: [25:43] Blue Sky sucks because there's a whole bunch of people who don't have a sense of humor. Justin: [25:47] It is pretty bad. Jessamyn: [25:48] Wait, which one? Jay: [25:49] Blue Sky. No one knows what a joke is. Jessamyn: [25:53] Or they don't appreciate them. They know it's a joke. They just don't like that it's a joke. Jay: [25:58] Yeah, it's also true. Justin: [25:59] We all met on library tumblr back when that was still a thing and like you know we would have big big like tumblrian things and now it's kind of like people are still hanging out and doing stuff and it's fun to go on there I try to remember to go like check it because it's completely different from the other stuff that I see of course because it's you know I followed a bunch of people who are now the opposite gender of whatever they were and like everyone just swapped it's fine change places and you know your balance Jessamyn: [26:31] Is the same it's just all different people yeah Justin: [26:33] It's honestly kind of yeah kind of weird how that worked out um i find it so strange that people are like you know i don't know i don't know a trans person i'm like i only know them like i keep finding them i live in Jessamyn: [26:44] A town of like 4 000 people and i know a lot of trans people in my town like yeah you're not looking if you don't know any yeah or people don't feel safe around you and so they walk the other way when they see you coming, right? Justin: [26:58] Could also be. Jessamyn: [26:59] Every cis male friend I have made in the past 10 years has turned out to either be neither cis nor male nor either. Justin: [27:06] Has turned into a beautiful lady. Yeah. Jessamyn: [27:12] Which is just peak. Or good for them. Justin: [27:15] Yeah. Sometimes I worry about making friends now because I'm like, oh, no, I'm going to have to tell you something. I don't know if you know my track record, but every friend I have made, that's how it works. So people should read your Wikipedia page because you were like one of the first bloggers. Jessamyn: [27:33] That is true. In the last century. Justin: [27:36] Yeah, one of the first bloggers to officially be awarded press credentials at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Jessamyn: [27:43] Yes. I got to meet Vermin Supreme. I got to meet President Obama. I got to meet Howard Dean. I got to I was so weird and dumb. I mean, it was the first time like my partner at the time was like really into politics. And ultimately, he's not my partner because he went to law school and then wanted to go do politics. And I was like, enjoy that life. I'm not about it. And my current partner is just like a great, you know, office guy who does spreadsheets and it's lovely. But like, you know, he wanted to go to the Democratic National Convention. And so I was like, great, I'll try and go to the Democratic National Convention. You applied for credentials. Jessamyn: [28:19] And they didn't have enough women. Like they only invited dudes somehow. And then they had to scramble to fix it. And so there were a whole bunch of women that got invited late. And I was one of them. And I lived in Vermont. So it was really easy to go down to Boston. My sister lived in Somerville. It was so easy. I just stayed with her. Every day, I just took the subway into whatever the fuck it was, convention center. And it was where you got the idea, which we all know now, but was a little novel to me at the time, in how made for television everything was. You know, that there's just people handing out signs. Like, there's no organic sign waving at these things. Like, it's all orchestrated to play for the cameras. And blogging, like most of the bloggers were like, I mean, A, guys, and then B, political bloggers. And I was just like a library blogger. So I was like, let's see who mentions libraries. Nobody. John Kerry mentioned libraries and future President Obama mentioned libraries. And like, that was it. So I was like, well, that's pretty interesting. And then you just like go to parties. That's all anybody does. They just get hammered and sleep with each other and figure out who the next president's going to be. Like, cool, I guess. But I got really disillusioned with it. Justin: [29:34] I think yeah they should they should instead of like teaching civics classes just let high schoolers go to stuff like that remember that like that like elementary school that they sent to like go see the national bird be selected and and the kids had chosen it and then some like pedantic state senate member was like no this is a waste of taxpayer time and shut it down and like like, vetoed it in front of all the kids. They're like, welcome to the real world, Jay: [30:03] Idiots. Jessamyn: [30:03] This is how it really happens. Yes. Oh, my God. Well, because civics are really important, but federal-level shit isn't that. You know what I mean? It's so not the process. Like, I mean, I've always been kind of outspoken... anarchist in my heart, but also like, yeah, I'm an elected official in my town because the way to get things done and give people back their, you know, leaky toilet overcharge money is to have a position on the board and you get elected to do that. And it's awkward because occasionally you talk about sort of human with social media people here. I don't follow a lot of anarchists on social media because a lot of them are really purist about voting, which I get. I mean, less so now in this current ridiculous era that we're in. But up until fairly recently, before we saw mutual aid and direct action actually being literally the only thing that would work, people were just like, ah, if you vote, ah. And I'm like, I don't know. Even if you're a Democrat, nobody's purely a Democrat, right? We live in a republic. Jay: [31:06] Yeah, we tell people all the time if you are going to be involved in... It's not necessarily electoral to like vote for things for your city or your neighbor like like it's not like waste it's not wasting resources like you're not like draining the energy of organizing movements Jessamyn: [31:29] Right right by Jay: [31:30] Funneling for candidates and everything whereas like but like we'll tell people time like get on your library boards get on your school boards because otherwise it's just like fascist moms who get on those Jessamyn: [31:40] Great although fuck moms for liberty they got so fucked this last like election cycle because everybody hates them they're not even fun to hang out with you know what i mean like they have bad politics and they're terrible people like what a great combination everybody's like we don't want to be on a board with you we just want to sit around and like drink wine and talk about whatever and you suck yeah we hope i mean we hope right but yeah no my best friend in And I do a lot of like local organizing We're trying to like get some people on the select board And blah blah blah He's a socialist, we make it work Like it's fun Mm-hmm And now he's got Zoran. So like people actually know what socialism means. They're still not sure about me and my thing. Justin: [32:23] But I mean, yeah, it's it's fun having the arguments and it's like people just live in the real world. Like you, you, you know, you go vote takes 10 minutes. It's fine. Do whatever you want. It doesn't matter to me. Speaker0: [32:36] Oh, yeah. Jessamyn: [32:37] Oh, and I get to run the elections. I'm in charge of the election. Like, that's interesting, right? I get to help people once. Oh, my God. Justin. no but i get to like who Jay: [32:52] Knows what happens in vermont man Jessamyn: [32:54] Yeah i get to tell people you know who never thought about registering to vote that they can influence people or people who are like developmentally disabled and wouldn't otherwise necessarily think it was for them that they're allowed to or they're like i went to prison i'm not allowed to vote and i'm like in vermont you can like it varies state to state in vermont you Justin: [33:12] Can vote in prison i think Jessamyn: [33:14] Yeah yeah yeah you can It's Justin: [33:16] Like the one state you still can. I think there's a couple, Jessamyn: [33:19] But definitely not many. Justin: [33:20] There's not many. Jay: [33:21] This brings up one of the, like, I think, like, besides the, like, work that you do around, like, or, like, attention you've brought to... like government surveillance and like library resistance to that you know the fbi has not been here canary watch that you did right and and stuff like that like the other thing that i feel like i like you are known for is a sort of like you are the librarian in places that wouldn't necessarily have a library like you are very good at doing this sort of like not even just a reference interview, but this kind of like, I am providing information in places and to people who might otherwise not get it. Like you did that at like Burning Man. Jessamyn: [34:08] It was fun. And I didn't have anything else to do at Burning Man. Like part of the problem is this is really just who I am. You know, like I can't go to Burning Man and be like, this is a not me in the real world. Like I'm always me in the real world. So like a lot of my friends, and again, this was like late nineties, early aughts. I lived on the West Coast, so it was easier to go to Burning Man then. And also it was just smaller. But a lot of it was like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm not really like an arty person. I don't really like to take a lot of drugs. I would prefer to keep my clothes on. Like, I don't know. I don't know. Oh, there's an information desk that I can do. And there's a lot of people who have, for lack of a better word, like information needs at Burning Man, because you've got to figure out how, like, how do I deal with this water situation? How do I deal with this electricity situation? How do I deal with this internet situation? Jay: [35:00] How do I test my drugs safely? How do I, yeah, Jessamyn: [35:03] Like- Those things are really important. And it's not like they stop, people stop having information needs because they're at a party or at an event or something. It's just that they figure they just have to lump it. This is why everybody like uses JackGPT all the time, right? Because they can't have a librarian with them helping them. I mean, granted, not every librarian, but like, You can't, people want that idea of having an answer in their pocket, but like smartphones have never really delivered on that because it was all like isolated apps and bullshit and people trying to sell you stuff. But chat GPT is a little more and, you know, don't get me wrong, fuck chat GPT. But it's a little more like if it worked, which it doesn't, it's people's ideal thing, right? Like, how do I figure out? Jay: [35:49] It's natural language processing in a way that like other search engines have never been able to do. Jessamyn: [35:54] Yeah, it takes my own words and turns it into something that's an answer to what's in my brain. And people don't know that they're not any good at asking questions. If nothing else, ChatGPT will make people a little bit better at being thoughtful about their questions. Like it doesn't, it doesn't, the answers suck. But like maybe if you think about how to make a question that'll help you in your life. Maybe? I don't think so though. I don't know. Jay: [36:17] I mean, like part of my thesis was like I had to study like question formation a lot because like even just like the process of like searching in a library catalog involves question formation because it's like you have an information need. How does that then get translated into a query? And then how do you then translate that query to an interface or a reference librarian, which then gets translated like what gets lost in translation at each step? Right. um and like people don't really like we always are like there's no such thing as a bad question but everybody is bad at asking questions that is why like reference librarians exist is because people are bad at asking for what they want they like i know like if i were at you know like so i at parties i go to there's usually a harm reduction org tabling at it that has things that they have can there and they have like testing kits there for whatever people might be doing. Right. And like, I can only imagine like if I were someone like who, like, Jay: [37:19] You know, like if I didn't know how to test it, but like maybe I didn't know how to ask. Of course. Like, what am I supposed to do with this? Like, I know what I need, but like, I don't know necessarily how to translate that so that those people then know how to answer me. But that's part of our job, right, is to get that information. And like, people think that only happens in a library, but it doesn't. That's a skill that happens everywhere. where it's why when I have hired people, I always look for people who have food service or retail backgrounds. Jessamyn: [37:54] Oh my God, so much. Jay: [37:55] Yeah. Jessamyn: [37:56] Because you have to do that, like interfacing between whatever. I mean, I feel like everybody needs to work retail, but like not if they don't want to for any longer than it takes to like, just learn that sort of human interface thing. And that's why I think like the whole world of, you know, weird, dumb billionaires is happening because they're so used to getting serviced, basically, for lack of a better word, that they forget how to, they forget the human part of why they want to be alive in the first place, I guess. I mean, I always ask, like, I wonder that, like, well, why do you, why do you want this life if all you're trying to do is move to Mars or whatever? And maybe it's because they're, you know, novelty seeking and they have various kinds of things that they want. But the lack of empathy or willingness to understand that we're in a society and we live in community with one another and that that's like one of the great things about being alive. I'm always like, I'm so sorry you don't have that because it's so great. But also you're ruining it for everybody else who's trying to have that. Stop it. Justin: [39:01] So what's Flick or Commons? Jessamyn: [39:03] Oh. Jay: [39:04] We are 43 minutes into our quarantine. Good job. I was trying to reel us in I tried Jessamyn: [39:16] I have like two main jobs now. And one of them is I work at the public library and I help people learn how to use computers and I'm there and I sub and I fill in and do other stuff with, you know, little library, little town. And then my other job is I work for an organization called the Flickr Foundation. And I work on the community lead for this collection of online, like collection of photography that's called Flickr Commons. So it's basically like 115 cultural heritage organizations, which can range from like New York Public Library, big libraries that you've heard of to like tiny historical societies in Nova Scotia. Jessamyn: [39:50] And they just put digital imagery online. They get unlimited storage. They get like old school social networking. Like people can leave a comment or they can like or they can have a friend, but not much. Right. It's very slow old web social networking. And and then they're part of a community of practice kind of of other people who are sharing this information online and the snappiest part of it, it's like 2 million photos now, I think almost, is that it's all public domain. It's all no known copyright restrictions. So if you're the library and it's your photograph, but you're not sure who owns it, but you're pretty sure it's no one, you can just scan it, put it online, no known copyright restriction, which is basically saying we're not totally sure, but we're pretty sure we can make this available. And it's a huge archive of online photography with like pretty good metadata, depending on the organization, Jessamyn: [40:42] That's available to anyone and accessible through like HTML, like the old dumb web. And it's kind of great. It's been a weird week for us because the Flickr Foundation was founded like in 2022 with a grant from the Filecoin Foundation. They do. Justin: [41:00] Never heard of it. Jessamyn: [41:01] Yeah, I hadn't. I hadn't either, which is why it's not memorable to me. But there are a lot about like distributed web. They're like big distributed web people. Like, how do you put stuff on the Internet? have it, but it's just, they have a lot of money. And they gave the Flickr Foundation a bunch of money that is like running out this year, like in a couple months. So the good news is I will probably continue to be like, I don't know if you guys ever watched that movie where it's like the end of the world, but there's the guy at the gas company who like still is like telling people that the gas will keep running right up until the world ends. I think it's called Afterlife, The End. Oh my god i hate not knowing stuff when i'm actually talking about something live i'll figure it out but in post will you no i don't Justin: [41:48] Even re-listen to these i just hit the cut silence button Jessamyn: [41:51] Here's the secret so Jay: [41:52] All the times where i tell you to cut things and you haven't how dare you Jessamyn: [41:55] Here's the secret to me i always listen to every podcast that i'm on it is so like weirdly vain i like listening to hear myself talk it's so weird i Justin: [42:04] That compulsion like goes away after a while Jessamyn: [42:06] How old am I? How old are you? Justin: [42:09] I don't know. 40, 30 or 40. Jessamyn: [42:12] Wait, me? Justin: [42:12] I'm like 40 for the next 10. Jessamyn: [42:13] How old are you? Justin: [42:14] You asked me a question. How old am I? Jessamyn: [42:16] Well, either one of us. Justin: [42:17] How old are we? Jessamyn: [42:18] Well, you know how old I am because you see my Wikipedia page. I'm just saying it hasn't worn off yet. Justin: [42:26] Yeah. I mean, I not only have to talk, I have to listen to myself while I edit because I've edited every episode of this. And then. Jessamyn: [42:36] So you listen to it while you're editing it? Justin: [42:38] No, not anymore. Jessamyn: [42:40] Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This is why we stopped doing a podcast at Metafilter because nobody wanted to edit it because it's just. Justin: [42:47] I'll edit it. Jessamyn: [42:48] Is that your knee? Is it warm there? Jesus. Justin: [42:51] Oh, no. I just I have a I have a weird like a leg thing going on where I have a weird hip. so my legs just go in all kind of weird directions. Jessamyn: [42:58] Wait, no, mine do that, too. I was just, like, amazed that it was warm enough to be. Justin: [43:01] Oh, yeah, I'm in Florida. Jessamyn: [43:02] I can't. Sorry, I didn't mean to make you say that out loud. Now you'll have to edit the podcast. Justin: [43:07] They know I live in Florida. I only live in the worst. Jay: [43:09] Those are where we are. Yeah. Jessamyn: [43:11] It's so cold. But so Flickr Foundation, we do the Flickr Commons. Here's a link to, like, what's cool about it. But the thing that's awkward about it, which was kind of why I initially reached out to you all, is that, you know, we try to encourage people. like, hey, join Flickr Commons. It's great. You can put your stuff on the internet for free, slow web. It's great. Free, unlimited storage. And people are like, well, storage is free everywhere or basically free, right? Like AWS, very cheap, like that kind of stuff. Build a website, vibe code it, whatever. But one of the things we really wanted is to sort of expand our reach, right? We're mostly like Northern Hemisphere. We're mostly Western countries. It's a problem, right because it means it's the same sameness as the internet you know it's it's a lot of sort of represented and when you have people of color represented in many cases it's almost as likely that it's because of some like colonial gaze shit from like a hundred years ago and that's gaze with a c and so that like it's a bad Jessamyn: [44:16] Oh, look, here's some Japanese women. Oh, shit, they're all geishas. And there's nothing wrong with like photographs of geishas, but it's not representing what all Japanese people look like or are like. But because like AI robots like slurp up all of these pictures, they get these ideas based on the sort of paucity of information from these archives. And like, that's an awkward problem, one. But when we try and incent more people from different backgrounds and different, you know, rich countries, poor countries, whatever people in. Jessamyn: [44:50] Places that are more under-resourced are just less interested in putting all their shit on the internet for free, right? What, they give it away so that Getty can just go sell it back to people because they've got better SEO on the website. And so it puts, it's been an interesting problem at work to try to figure out if there's ways that like creators can still get some sort of rights to their content while at the same time trying to make stuff free a la Wikipedia or whatever, so that, you know, people can learn from it and people can can use it for whatever they want. I mean, it's one of the glory, glorious parts of like Wikimedia Commons is you can use that stuff for anything and you don't have to figure out like who owns the rights. I don't understand it. And like nowadays, I think people are just used to like taking stuff from the Internet. But if you're somebody in a cultural heritage organization, you have to be a little bit more careful. And so like that tension between give it away for free because that's how we build culture and that's how we learn about other cultures. Jessamyn: [45:50] And yeah, except the people that are in the sort of dominant capitalist cultures will just steal everything for themselves, try and sell it back to you, and then try and keep you from the rights to your own things, right? Like you see musicians on YouTube all the time being like, I put up my song, and then the record label took it down, basically. But it's mine, but the record label. And so it's a really interesting time. And AI figures into this only a little bit, but because you know that they're clawing all the stuff, I think about like, well, what would AI think about Japanese people or whatever based on what they can see in the Flickr Commons collection? And it's 2 million pictures. You would hope a lot. And in reality, not a lot. And how do you round that out without, I don't know, like telling somebody else that they need to give up their rights to things? Justin: [46:44] Yeah. And it's always the people that always get asked to give up their IP first is always like creatives who actually own their IP, educators who are making OER. Like we always have this thing of like, oh, well, you should give it away because like it's important for you. It's like, but put on a graph the amount of IP owned by corporations and the amount of IP owned by real human people. And like you won't be able to see one of the bars on that graph. Right. And it's like, we're not asking them to give up all the IP that they hoard that they get from work for hire stuff. Jessamyn: [47:16] Or even some of it, a tiny amount of it, any of it, just to not sue people for using it for their dumb PowerPoint, for their, you know, graduate presentation that they happen to put online. Jay: [47:26] Right like we're pretty staunch like copyright critical copyright abolitionist anti-copyright whatever like on this podcast but that doesn't mean we don't want people to get like paid for their for their stuff or like you know if they need it to you know like because i think you're bringing up a very interesting tension here of like having a digital commons is good actually And this is like in the fight against AI, something I've always tried to harp against is when people are like, oh, but they were using it for this thing without permission. I'm like, no, but that's the problem here. Because people are wanting to lock things down and have it so people can't use and experience culture. copyright is a thing that has stifled a lot of creativity but then people go oh well so you do not want authors and artists to be able to live or have food or pay the rent i'm like no i want those things too like i think there are other ways of doing it but i think you're bringing up like an interesting tension of like when you're in the sort of we want to be able to build this kind of culture. Jay: [48:36] But when it still exists within capitalism, how most ethically do we do that? I think that's like an interesting ongoing thing to build. Jessamyn: [48:50] Well, I think each decade tries to approach it differently based on what technology they have available, right? Like Creative Commons, we thought that was going to solve the problem, or not solve it, but at least adjust it a little bit. And I'm not clear that it hasn't helped, but it definitely wasn't. it's it's remarkable how few people sort of really understand creative comments like all the copyright nerds totally get it yeah most other people have never heard of it right like if i talk to a random neighbor if they've ever heard of creative comments they assume i'm talking about a different thing because they legit have not heard about it and you know i would i would hope like my my library director would have heard of it kind of you know and and and like when flicker commons started it was i don't know 16 17 18 years ago back when like given stuff away you it wouldn't just get slurped up by you know giant corporate overlords in the same way that it 100 percent will now in the same way we see like the direct to getty pipeline of stuff going on if it's high enough resolution goes on flicker commons winds up on getty with a watermark pay us 75 bucks and they're not going to mention oh and by the way you could also get it for free if you just go to the source. We forgot where that is, though. So, how about 75 bucks? Good deal, right? Yeah, and it's hard to, like, nobody wants to talk about copyright. Like, I mean, we all do, but like, nobody else does. Jay: [50:13] But we're fucking nerds. Jessamyn: [50:15] I know, I know. Nobody who's not a nerd about this, or maybe a creator, which is not necessarily, like, you know, it's an overlap, but it's not the same. Like, who cares? Jay: [50:26] Are you Cory Doctorow? Jessamyn: [50:29] Bless him. I just read InShittification, and like, Jay: [50:32] Friend of the pod. Jessamyn: [50:33] Yeah. I mean, love that guy, but also so didactic. And like a lot of people don't want to have the conversation with Corey, even though he's lovely, right? Jay: [50:43] He's lovely. Jessamyn: [50:44] Lovely guy. But also very much. Justin: [50:47] Yeah, answers his email. Jay: [50:47] Yes, he does answer his email. Jessamyn: [50:49] He's like a real dude. Yes. Jay: [50:51] Yeah, he's on. It was really cool. Jessamyn: [50:53] I love him. I love him. Yeah. But also you see him on social media and he's a little intolerable. Like if you're trying to introduce somebody to Cory Doctorow based on how he is on Macedon, that person will never learn anything else about Cory Doctorow. But like he gave a talk at a library copyright conference I went to once and he was talking about like, look, I know and I borrow this for my talks. Like, I know I'm coming at this from a very specific perspective and it's probably way out on the end. And I'm not trying to get you to agree with me. I just want to move you in my direction. I want you to be convinced that my direction is the right direction to be moving in. And he's right, right? Like he knows how he is and he knows how he comes across. And I think he's fine with it because his job is to be way out there, getting people to move closer to his direction, right? Instead of just being some weird copyright centrist dick, like, you know, somebody right in the middle who's like, well, I can see, you know, what we really need to do is who doesn't like have a strong opinion because they just are trying to both sides it like he's definitely Mr. Know both sides and I love it Jay: [52:04] Very much respect that about him yeah yeah I Justin: [52:07] Get that a lot Jessamyn: [52:07] I can't talk about that with my neighbors mm-hmm it's complicated and the word is wrong and it's not his fault. And I get that it's important almost to have it be in your face. It still doesn't play in my town. And that's my tension that I deal with when I'm trying it. His book was really good. I was like, I don't need to know anything about this. I know everything he has to say. And then I read the book and I was like, oh, actually, no, this helps me frame arguments for people. That's awesome. Jay: [52:38] But yeah, we read Chokepoint Capitalism for our episode with him and it was really good. Jessamyn: [52:43] And I like his fiction, too. Like, you know, I have a bunch of nerdy friends, some of whom like his fiction and some of whom have strong opinions, not that direction. And, you know, I'm also like, I'll read his books. It's great. I like the fact that his brain can picture a world where things are better that is also this world. Justin: [53:02] Yeah. Jessamyn: [53:02] And I love that. Justin: [53:03] Yeah. And I talk to people particularly because I'm reading a book right now on the history of copyright. And it's very like copyright was a mistake. It's very, very short chapters. And each one of them is like, here's what copyright is trying to do. Here's why I didn't do that. Here was the decade that copyright almost got abolished because everyone was sick of it in the 1890s. like you know all kinds of weird you know how how it changed over time and i'm not that long ago i was on i was on blue sky and i was in i was talking about something and someone was like no copyright abolition is a bad idea because all the companies want to abolish copyright i'm like what do you think a tech company's main capital is it's intellectual property they don't want to abolish it they want to take yours and they want to proprietize it they don't Jessamyn: [53:47] Own anything anymore except for IP and rights to stuff, basically. Justin: [53:53] Yeah. Yeah, I want to finally make them give some of their IP up instead of always asking teachers to do it, you know. I want IP to just be gone because it's just, in many ways, it's just a labor-disciplining technology. Jay: [54:05] It's like, remember, kids, the abolition of private property includes intellectual property. Justin: [54:11] Yeah, it's the leftism leaving people's bodies when you tell them to stop defending IP. Jay: [54:16] Yeah. Justin: [54:17] That happens all the time. I'm going to make some zines about it. I can't decide if the zines should be focused on copyright abolition for librarians. Do I try and work this crowd? Or do I just try and copyright abolition for leftists and try and convince that crowd? Because both of them are going to fight me on this. I need both of them to listen to me because I'm right. Jessamyn: [54:39] I mean, I feel like you could make two zines. Justin: [54:43] I'm probably going to have to make two, but work smarter, not harder. Jessamyn: [54:47] Yeah, I mean, make it have like six panels for saying, and I'm like, sorry, Sadie, what was that? Yeah, just Jay's sigh when Justin said, but they should listen to me because I'm right. Justin: [54:59] But he knows I'm right. Jessamyn: [55:01] As it was. Jay: [55:02] About this, yes. Justin: [55:04] And everything else. Jessamyn: [55:06] My book the book i wrote about like you know whatever tech support in 2011 you know i bought my rights back and then i public domain didn't put it on the internet because you know what you don't get paid a lot of money if you're an author who's not popular right Jay: [55:21] I don't know if i received a single royalty check for the book i helped right because like we wouldn't get royalty checks until the revenue had Jessamyn: [55:28] Gotten bucks or something right a Jay: [55:30] Certain point and it was split and then after it was like split among four people so Justin: [55:35] And it's got to hit a minimum amount before they bail out the check yeah every single thing i've ever written has has been put out even when they told me i couldn't i had to self-pirate my my master's thesis because there were pro quest was like oh technically we can't make it open access because technically your your graduate school owns the ip and i'm like you know what research gate there it is so then i gave me a doi and it's fine yeah put it on research gate it's fine no one's what are they going to do like copyright claim my own work against me like fuck off and that's a fascinating good anecdote yeah i get to tell people about self-piracy right which happens a lot i Jessamyn: [56:11] Stole mine from the internet archive before i actually got the rights technically from the company i had to buy them from the company which oh my god yeah whatever they were like no one's ever done this before and i'm like well figure it out i guess well and that's another like interesting side hustle that i do is i work you know the internet archive i assume they have their print disabled disability program so if you're somebody who with print disabilities you know they have more content less now since the lawsuit but i I, you know, one of the things treaty is librarians can be qualifying authorities to say, oh, yeah, that person has a print disability. And so I'm a person who can qualify you to get access to the Internet Archives print disability program. If you know anyone. But it's great because I used to work for them a long time ago when I was on the West Coast. You know, I help with open library and, you know, the Internet Archive. They are also great. And also, they're not like a service-oriented organization, right? And I don't think they would argue with this. Justin: [57:19] I've gotten emails from the Internet Archive. Every time I open my mouth to talk about them, someone from the Internet Archive emails me and says, by the way, Jessamyn: [57:29] You and me both justin well we'll see we'll see i have enjoyed my time with them but and but the qualifying authority thing is basically them being like we know the law in this case and i respect that and so i don't work for them at all like i'm just a like independent volunteer but i can help people get access to that you know you write in and you're like i'm blind or i'm dyslexic or i'm whatever, there's a form. And, you know, I go through the forms and, you know, see if you qualify or not, and then can kind of thumbs up and thumbs down you. And then that goes to the Internet Archive. And then they can turn you on or turn you off for access to their print disabled collection, which is how it Jessamyn: [58:09] should work. And so rarely does, right? Like when my former landlady, a very elderly lady tried to get like access to books on tape in Vermont, she had to like fill out a whole form and like come to the library. And then my library director, who in general is fine and also doesn't listen to podcasts, but like doesn't really use technology in a way I think you should in this century, was like, well, I don't know how to blah, blah, blah. Like I signed it and they were like, well, you can't sign it. The State Library for the Blind or, you know, it's the ABLE Library, Jessamyn: [58:41] Accessible Library, which is great. They have to do it. And I'm like, no, any librarian can do it. And they're like, well, our process. And I'm like, Marrakesh Treaty. And they're like, well, and like, they're just, you know, it's rules and forms and boxes. And I respect it. But also, shouldn't we just be trying to get people access to information? Isn't that the thing? I mean, that's like the conversation about piracy that's always really complicated, right? Oh, if you can't get the book through interlibrary loan, should I tell you that Anna's Archive exists? Yes or no? Justin: [59:09] And also in the age of AI, and we're teaching people how to use AI, it's like, at what point am I allowed to just teach them how to do piracy? Because we don't care anymore. Jessamyn: [59:18] Clearly we don't care. Jay: [59:20] I think I've shared this on the podcast before, but I think it's a really great story. And I was at the, I think it was the Utah Library Association back when I still lived in Salt Lake City. And some librarians from one of the like private universities in the Salt Lake area, I forget which one. talked about how how they did piracy for their course reserves and about doing like risk assessment for that and how they did it because they were asked to get a film for a class and there was no legal way on this planet of getting that film for that class but they found a copy on a on a torrent site or something and they were like one this is an act of preservation at this point but But also it's like, well, all of our video reserves like go on this private server. It's only accessible by the people like in the class for that time period. They can't download it or anything. And they were like, you know, at a certain point, like librarians are going to have to be get more comfortable with kind of breaking the law and, you know, being comfortable with piracy. Because in some cases it is the only way we can do our job and it is an act of preservation. And I was like, hell yeah, you say that in that conference presentation. Jessamyn: [1:00:38] I'm actually very surprised you heard that at Utah Library Association. It was great. I know Utah contains multitudes, but still. Because I remember there was that course reserves lawsuit out of Georgia? Georgia Tech, I want to say. Justin: [1:00:52] Georgia Tech, I think. Jessamyn: [1:00:53] Yeah. 2012. Yeah. Oh, my God. But like that was like sort of a big deal at the time where we were like, OK, Georgia Tech was able to do this, so maybe you can do it. But there's there's not enough envelope pushers who are willing to go on the record. Like one of the reasons I can shoot my mouth off about most of this is my library director doesn't listen to podcasts and Flickr Foundation doesn't care. You know what I mean? But like if you had a job where your boss cared and listened to you, you'd have to be more careful about what you said. I didn't have, you know, jobs are important. Jay: [1:01:27] Jobs are important. Jessamyn: [1:01:28] I respect it, especially, and they're harder and harder to get, right? As robots take more and more of their jobs. I can understand, but I think it makes people less likely to shoot their mouth off about like, yeah, go fucking find it. And here's how to find it. Here's how NZB shit works. Here's how, you know, because here's how use networks, youngins. Like, let's talk about where content can come from because it can come from, like I don't even torrent like my partner got in trouble for torrenting something from some rights holder and so we don't torrent anymore because we're afraid although honestly I'm on a mesh network so I use my neighbor's wi-fi so it probably doesn't matter but you know I don't want to get him in trouble either so like we're all like straight to usenet for our piracy needs if we're not like watching other people's plexes but it's hard to talk about because you never know either who's going to be listening and maybe they have a problem with it or maybe they're going to start paying a lot more attention. Like, I'm getting to the point where I kind of don't give a fuck if somebody just judges me for it. But, like, think about it. You know, I have friends who are authors. They should get paid. I'm clearly reading somebody's stuff who maybe isn't getting paid. Like, you think about it, right? Does somebody really lose money if I pirate The Muppet Show? Jay: [1:02:45] Were you going to pay for it anyway? Like, otherwise? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Justin: [1:02:50] Is Disney falling on hard times? Are they? Jay: [1:02:54] Is Sabrina Carpenter falling on hard times? Jessamyn: [1:02:57] Is she? Is she? Justin: [1:02:58] I'll Venmo her five bucks if she needs to hold on to it for me. But like, you know. Jessamyn: [1:03:03] And that becomes the awkward other issue, right? Is it's very hard sometimes to pay the creators in a way that's equitable for them while not also paying like the corporate overlords who are less deserving of. But like, we've created a situation where there's now a huge structure in order to make an EPUB. It's one of the things I kind of like about the fact that like so many more people are self-publishing so much more good content is it's easier to pay creators directly and they can make an EPUB and it's not that hard or draw a picture or make digital imagery or whatever, whatever the things are, video, audio, any of it. It's easier to pay people directly, but it's still not as easy as it should be. Justin: [1:03:45] Right. And it's also hard to like make a living and like, you know, people who want to make a living doing their creative thing full time and then mixed with, you know, the people that I know who were, you know, just regular artists who have a day job and then also are, you know, a well-known comedian or whatever. And it's like, you know, and, and then get judged in that sphere for having a day job for like, you know, being a bartender or something. And it's like, well, very few people are going to make a full time living out of this. And so, you know, like all the people who just lost their jobs at WAPO, Justin: [1:04:17] like it would be great if some of them can spin off their own independent, you know, publications and get paid directly by me, like 404 Media or whatever. Right. But you need the brand recognition. You need the brand names to get out there. And otherwise, you're just fighting an uphill stream of other people's slop and content. And making a living out of that's really tough. And journalism should be a full-time job. It's one of the ones that should be a full-time job. If you write fiction, erotica, I'm not saying it's not important, but you can do that on the side. Jessamyn: [1:04:46] It's possible. Well, I can probably get a fan base that if they're rabbited into your thing... great like they can take Jay: [1:04:54] A lot of research depending on what you're writing i used to i follow kj charles on socials and the she writes historical like queer like romances and the amount of research that she'll do around like she went on this whole tear one time about researching the history of body piercing during like the victorian era and it was just doing all these posts i was like hell yeah i keep posting that stuff it's a rule take Jessamyn: [1:05:20] My money yes oh my And then it's all a tax write-off, which is extra cool, right? Jay: [1:05:26] Yes. My radiator is making sounds. Justin: [1:05:29] It's not picking up, luckily. Jay: [1:05:31] Okay. Jessamyn: [1:05:31] My radiator is too quiet. Jay: [1:05:34] Yay, New England. Jessamyn: [1:05:36] So dry here. Justin: [1:05:38] Because we were, because there were a couple of things you mentioned that like are interesting, like how like the work of librarians go into making these things. Like, you know, if, if you, if you want more people to start like participating in Flickr Commons, like people have got to do the scans, people have got to find the money, people have got to find the time, the volunteer labor. And then, and then Getty just takes it and charges money for it, which again is like, you know, another problem. Like, you know, what about the labor that just was not compensated? you know there should be like some sort of like you know if you are the ny public library and you put stuff up public domain and then you can tell that your file is being sold on getty you should be able to like tap them with like a legal notice and be like hey pay us like twenty thousand dollars that we had for that part-time worker if Jessamyn: [1:06:22] We had copyright laws yeah exactly and again if you were able to do sort of like micro payments and move content around with like sort of you know some sort of watermarky way so that you could figure that out. Like there's a way that could work technologically, but instead we're sending idiot billionaires to Mars. Like imagine, imagine like if you could like fractionally pay for, you know, every time you read something on the internet, right? People talk about this all the time. Like, you know, I read a news article, somebody gets a nickel, but if there was some automated way to make that all happen on the backend, because it's all arbitrage anyhow with these big payment corporations, right? They don't care. You just add up all the nickels and it's worth the transaction fee ah but nobody wants to do it because again it's like nickel and dime shit and yeah like Jay: [1:07:07] Instead of more robust like intellectual property law that just ends like giving profit to corporations what we need is just better like royalty systems yeah Justin: [1:07:19] Well, yeah, I mean, this was, this was the, in the 1890s, this was one of the things where they were like, let's, because when it was changing from like book printing monopolies to the author is the one who owns the copyright. it's like well then why don't we just do like royalty payment systems instead of having any copyright at all so like if you are an employee at a place like you just get paid for that thing and get paid in perpetuity you know five or ten percent for the proceed the proceeds of that thing that you created rather than ever having a copyright you know it's like if anyone ever uses it then they have to pay you and that sort of thing it's like it's not quite the same as a copyright. It's sort of like mechanical licenses for music. It's like, what if things were more like mechanical licenses? Jay: [1:08:06] But those just end up going to record companies. Justin: [1:08:09] Yeah, again, it all happens. Jay: [1:08:13] Weirdly, so one of my best friends from college is is a composer and musician that he makes really cool music he plays all the instruments himself and they are kind of like weird and ambient experimental and i i dig his work a lot um my Jessamyn: [1:08:32] Partner loves that kind of music send me a link to their Jay: [1:08:35] Stuff yeah justin i'll send it in the in the notes he's a v-e-i-i vey on band camp and on spotify and stuff and like weirdly he would actually get some checks from spotify sometimes because his stuff would get added to like meditation playlists right that are like auto-generated or whatever and because it's that kind of ambient stuff that people like like he but and like because he's not part of a record company he puts out all of his own stuff like he would it wasn't a lot of money but he would directly see yeah profit from that whereas like he might make more money off spotify what little he has made from it and like people on record labels Jessamyn: [1:09:18] 182 whose record takes it all yeah Jay: [1:09:20] Right exactly like and then i think it was like recently spotify like took away it's like if you have under a specific amount of listens or something then you're not even like monetizable anymore or something like didn't that happen it's just Justin: [1:09:33] Wage theft we're just gonna do wage theft by the way Jessamyn: [1:09:36] Keep your money Jay: [1:09:38] Like did i hallucinate no no i Jessamyn: [1:09:40] Remember no no i remember hearing something about that i don't know it's a Jay: [1:09:43] Question now but yeah Justin: [1:09:45] I don't remember that specifically but i mean it sounds like it's like we're not going to monetize it well then like do you not charge anyone like what is it prorated if i only listen to the non-monetizable stuff do i get my money back at the end of the month like i don't pay for spotify but like you know What the hell? Does that mean non-monetizable? Like, get the fuck out of here. Jessamyn: [1:10:03] It was something like that. It may have been slightly, nah, well, we'll have to, somebody will look it up. But at any rate, yeah. Jay: [1:10:09] There was some sort of like, if you're under a threshold for something. Jessamyn: [1:10:13] Well, it's like the whole royalty check. You only get the royalty check if you make above a certain level. It was a version of that except for millions of people all at once. Justin: [1:10:21] Probably. Yeah, it's like, we're not going to send you your five cent check, which honestly makes a little bit of sense because it's, you know, it's not worth printing on the paper. but like you know whatever i am interested does does flicker comments because you're talking about the metadata earlier before we like wrap it up like deep is there like a dpla connection because i know was approached by dpla for our to do metadata for like our archival collections and i looked at it and i thought this would be great does Jessamyn: [1:10:47] Dpla listen to this podcast Justin: [1:10:48] I don't know they haven't get they don't send me money like fuck them they Jay: [1:10:53] Even sent us weird dms on Justin: [1:10:56] Social media yeah but we were it was kind of like you know it would be nice to federate it and have like you know clean up it would give us an excuse to clean up our metadata basically but i'm really good at my job i'm good at oai pmh i'm good at pushing stuff out into the open web like i don't have to work i don't need dpla to make my stuff discoverable but in Jessamyn: [1:11:16] Fact it wouldn't help yes exactly Justin: [1:11:17] Yeah that was my eventually what i got to is like well there is as discoverable as i've already made everything because I know how this technology works right not everyone does so I can understand it as a service but well it was it was not there was not a valuable value proposition for us because I'm like this is exactly as discoverable as it already is yeah Jessamyn: [1:11:39] And for us We found that sometimes being co-located with a bunch of stuff can help a little bit, but no, no, not really. Like if you're somebody who's already, like what we found is that Flickr Commons is not necessarily like an alternative to hosting it yourself. Although I could argue stuff is more discoverable on Flickr Commons than it is on Digital Commonwealth, just because Digital Commonwealth is not super surfaced to, Justin: [1:12:05] You know, Google or whatever. I can argue, I think, that Flickr.com. I don't know a whole lot about Digital Commonwealth. I know a lot. I've been on it. Jessamyn: [1:12:19] Right, right. You know how to get there. And sometimes if you search for stuff, you'll find it. Yeah. And we have our own like little dumb front end that's kind of cute and fun enough that like people who are really into like open access shit, they love it. Right. And so what we're finding is that we're the alternative to a lot of people who otherwise were putting stuff up on Wikimedia Commons. And the big thing about Wikimedia Commons is you absolutely lose control of your content, right? Post it to Wikimedia Commons. And unless it's got a picture of a person who can say, I'm in that picture, take it down. The community owns it as soon as it's online. And I love Wikimedia Commons, but it's a different thing. And for cultural heritage organizations, sometimes that's tough. right? Because sometimes they want, I mean, they can edit their own metadata, but so can everyone else. And so being on top of that requires a lot more attention and bandwidth, and they couldn't get the statistics that would be what they would show to their, you know, funders, the board or whatever. That's like, we have a whole bunch of, I mean, and don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to sell anybody on any of this, though, if you're, you know, Flickr Commons interested, great, give me a call. But the big thing is, you still own your content. I mean, it's free on the internet, but you can also take it down. Like, of course, you can't get it back if it's out. But, you know, there's also like robust metadata on the back end that you can like adjust. You can use sort of like tags and albums and groupings and stuff where it's on Wikimedia Commons. Jessamyn: [1:13:45] Somebody's decided that that's a picture of whatever and they put that in the metadata and then you fight with them and then suddenly you're arguing with somebody on the Internet. Right. And if nothing else, like I'm a big Wikipedia fan. I use Wikipedia all the time. I like it, but it really is a community of like 1,500, 2,000 angry nerds and then everyone else who uses it, right? And so if you cross the angry nerds, suddenly you're having a fight, right? We built a tool actually to help move some stuff from Flickr to Wikipedia called Flickypedia because we're super creative. And even then, like getting tool that would interface between our two things because it lived, because it had to make calls to like, Jessamyn: [1:14:28] I don't even know the technical stuff, but like, because it had to make calls to the Wikipedia thing, we had to engage the Wikipedia, the Wikimedia community. And that's just challenging, right? It just takes work. Like there's nothing wrong with that. But I think for a lot of people, it's not the kind of work they want to do. But if you've got the chops and you can basically do it yourself and your website's got decent SEO and you're already sort of cross pollinating, I think The main thing that we have is like someone could leave a comment, right? Someone could create new stuff by putting it in a, you know, in a gallery, in a group with other stuff. And it's fun, right? Every now and again, you see some photo on Flickr from like, you know, 1910. And then you see a comment that's like, that's my grandma. And, and you're just like, oh, we learn more about this archival photo that we knew fuck all about because somebody recognized it because they were looking through old photos of Halifax. sex. And like, I love that stuff. But like, it's hard to make the argument of why you should pay me to get to just look for those comments. But like, I think that's what makes the open what makes open culture special is that whole idea that more people can look at the things, right, and maybe learn something or know something about it. But yeah, technical chops, Jay: [1:15:43] Right? Jessamyn: [1:15:44] It's all very like old web. But like, I don't know, do you know, a lot of library workers who have like that level of technical chops because maybe this is my vermont bias speaking but like man around here we don't Justin: [1:15:57] I mean the people i've surrounded myself with but you know i mean i have to think like libraries yeah and like even me i can't yes yeah and i i've only worked in academic libraries too but i mean i try to think about like you know a lot of my co-workers who don't work on the same kind of stuff as me Sure. No, I don't even know if they know what like OAIPMH is. Jessamyn: [1:16:19] I don't know what it is. Justin: [1:16:20] Yeah. It's just way of pushing out metadata. Perfect. And yeah, I mean, like there's a lot of things about Wikipedia and Wikipedia in general that I think people don't realize how like incredibly, it's a choppy sea. It's like, I don't want to say confrontational. No. But it has a confrontational aspect. It has a ability to rescind. Like you make something, it's easier to undo what you did because that stops vandalism, right? It's like, it's how it's designed. If someone makes 10,000 word edit, you can hit one button and undo all of it, right? It's meant to be that kind of adversarial system. And people don't understand that about Wikipedia. And that's why a lot of academics used to get bent out of shape. And it's like, I tried editing this thing I'm an expert on. It's like, you're not allowed to look at the rules. Jessamyn: [1:17:03] Right. But also there's so much reading in Wikipedia, right? It's like, oh, this 30,000-word document? Ah, I had ChatGPT read it to me and it said it was fine, right? Like, that's what winds up happening. Like, it used to be you just do the work and do the reading. Nowadays, people think, like, ah, reading, even though, I don't know, I love to read. That's one of the reasons I'm in this profession. But not everybody is. They want to, you know, see videos about how to do it or find it. Isn't there, like, an easier way to explain how this Wikipedia thing works? Nope, absolutely not. I've got a friend, my socialist friend, he's getting his Ph.D. in complex systems at the University of Vermont. I do not understand what he does almost at all. But partly what he studies is emerging. I don't even remember what it's called, but like emerging systems, whatever. Jay: [1:17:51] He learns how like old school like cybernetics and shit. I was going to say cybernetics. Jessamyn: [1:17:57] Yeah, it's like how things... This is so embarrassing. But at any rate, it's like how systems kind of grow and morph into whatever they morph into. And so some of what he studies is how... about disinformation or misinformation or how people deal with disinformation and misinformation and how that spreads through Wikipedia, right? Like, how do we know what a reliable source is? How does Wikipedia decide what a reliable source is? Because you can get all the data out of Wikidata, it's a good thing for studying. It's one of those like, oh, the light's better over here, right? Like, I'm studying Wikipedia because I can actually get someone to give me the data, but it's still pretty interesting. But he doesn't know anything about Wikipedia. So our signal chat is just him being like, what the fuck is this? What is going on here? Why are these people mad at each other? And I'm like, oh, that person is a band user. And you can tell that because of this, you know, nerd, nerd, nerd. And he's like too much reading. And I'm like, you're not that much younger than me, but he's, you know, a different generation where he doesn't want to read 30,000 words to figure out some kind of drama, right? He just wants to do his work. Couldn't be me. I will read 30,000 words to find out the drama. Also, we'll read 30,000 words. I read fast. It's fine. But like, I understand people's distaste for it. Justin: [1:19:12] Yeah, I mean, I'm very interested in Wikipedia. I took classes on Wikipedia in library school. I made my own course, basically, because my schedule was weird. And so I was just a Wikipedian in residence at my own job. And that was my class. I love it. Jessamyn: [1:19:28] I love it. That's awesome. Justin: [1:19:30] It was fun. But I still don't understand. Jay: [1:19:32] Yeah. That's fun. Yeah. Justin: [1:19:34] Kathleen Cook. Jessamyn: [1:19:36] Kathleen Cook's the one who edits my Wikipedia page when I need stuff edited. Justin: [1:19:41] Yeah she was she was she was the professor that i pitched this course to and i said can you yeah so can you let me yeah because she was really into teaching wikipedia yeah yeah yeah so yeah she was she was the one who signed off on that class for me so that i could take it because i didn't want to take anything else that was happening and the schedule was weird and i was like just let me do wikipedia at my job on the clock and then i will send you the edits and we'll call this a wikimedia class yeah she was great and so that was i still don't understand like a lot of like talk page etiquette like i never bothered to like learn a lot of the cultural stuff i don't understand like grokipedia just came out and i'm very interested in it because i understand a little bit of like wikipedia and so i understand like what grok was doing because i wrote like some very obscure religious wikipedia articles right so i wrote about like very obscure deities like semitic deities right and so i know like where the sources of this came from and so i go to look at grokipedia and it's like okay tell me about shahar and i look at it and i go okay because grok has been told to do a few things never cite back to wikipedia and never cite you know like certain websites and so what it does is it Justin: [1:20:55] Adds references it doesn't add the footnote links it just says references at the end it doesn't really have footnote links and then it will find things that kind of sound like the stuff in the body text that it stole from wikipedia and then it will back Justin: [1:21:08] cite them as if that's where the information came from and you can see very clearly that it's doing that which is fascinating yeah which is really fascinating because it is a wikipedia that is built entirely on like hallucinations intentionally all Jessamyn: [1:21:23] I know about grokipedia is my middle name is charity and if on grokipedia it took it out they just don't have my middle name on it because woke maybe it's like yeah too woke middle name Justin: [1:21:33] Your middle name duo sorry sorry women can only have two names Yeah. Jay: [1:21:41] Charity is one of them words that they look for in the documents and then like, Jessamyn: [1:21:46] Oh, that's on the bad list. Jay: [1:21:49] No, no, no. Justin: [1:21:49] No empathy, no charity. Jessamyn: [1:21:51] Some of the people in Wiki in Flickr Commons are actually like people who work for the U.S. government. And so we had to like when they went through the big like you've got to remove all the DEI stuff. And, you know, we tried to sort of talk to them about like, well, do you like could you make those like like like pictures private? it like like let's work with you on a way to not lose all of this information and you know we had a whole sort of like side project not my project but like within the organization to just like save all the stuff that was actually gonna wind up getting taken down by people who were in organizations that were part of the whichever branch of the government executive branch i guess that had to had to do that and like like i feel like any digital platform like one of the things that's hard about wikipedia is that every single thing has to be out in public right and one of the things you almost need to have in a 2026 mindset is a way to speak privately about certain topics somehow you need to Jay: [1:22:53] Bring mukitu back Jessamyn: [1:22:54] What remember mukitu no what'd Justin: [1:22:58] You call me Jay: [1:22:58] Oh so this was i wrote it was it looks like mukurtu or murkutu or something but it was this in sort of like geared towards like indigenous digital collections Jessamyn: [1:23:10] Yeah but Jay: [1:23:14] Its system is basically a way of like how do you have a digital collection and restrict parts of it only to some people which is you know a fascinating question for like a digital collection and You know, like you don't want to make the whole thing private. And even the stuff that is private, it's only private to some people. Jessamyn: [1:23:38] Well, and you see, you know, zinesters talking about that a lot, right? Like, hey, I made this zine about sex work and it was fine, but then it got scanned by the Internet Archive and now everyone's seen a picture of my butt. That isn't what I wanted. That's not what the zine was supposed to be, right? Like the zine was supposed to be for the audience you made it for, right? But when it becomes digitized, it becomes oddly atomized. And especially like I've got a friend who's, you know, kind of a my age librarian who writes a zine. And one of the things that's now in the zine and like really big letters is don't fucking digitize. Like, that's not what this is for. But like, that's not like that's not a copyright statement. It's just like you hope somebody is going to accede to your wishes. Right. And and like whenever. Justin: [1:24:24] Or tell you about it, you know? Jessamyn: [1:24:25] Yeah, yeah. And then, I mean, I don't remember, God, there was this woman who I used to follow a lot. Again, we were talking about, like, following people on Twitter back in the day. But yeah, she was like a sex worker who had done zines and then, like, for a while spent a lot of time talking about what it was like to find her content in the Internet Archive. And she's like, I like the Internet Archive. Like, this isn't about them. it's just about the decontextualization of something that you want to be a little private right but there is no a little private you know it's just private or absolutely not private i mean maybe like friends lock but like that's not a thing you could trust i feel like and Jay: [1:25:05] Especially with zines like i feel like to so many people zines which are online there's like most of the time that is such a at least in my sphere a lot of that is coming from like the sort of like diy anarcho anarcho punk kind of like here's how you wheat paste here's how you throw a squat party here's how you like they're like organizing political like pamphlet you know whatever zines here's Jessamyn: [1:25:37] The forbidden information here's how you do your own abortion Jay: [1:25:40] That everyone is supposed to share and that there's redundant copies for a reason yeah online and so the people go all zines are like are like that right they're all free for everyone all the time when like i think sometimes like the sort of like anarcho movement you know inspired zine is kind of outside of the realm of what most zines kind of are in their sort of like limited yeah like the limited distribution versus every web you know so many websites are now going to host a free digital copy right Jessamyn: [1:26:17] The indie media version of zines from like 30 years ago yeah Jay: [1:26:20] Yeah yeah Jessamyn: [1:26:21] Yeah and it's so much more personal now you know that people and and i think also people are a little bit better at sort of managing identities you know so you can have personal stuff as long as it's not linked to you but then but then You know, there's something great about being able to sort of share something about yourself within a closed community, but being who you, you know, this is my face, this is my name. And I think, you know, having alts is also like useful and important. Like I'm all for being anonymous or synonymous online, but it is something that can be tricky to sort of figure out like how do you do a, how do you make personal statements to the people to whom you want to make the personal statements without having a whole bunch of weird, creepy eavesdroppers being like, Like, hey, like, saw you talking about whatever. I've got some opinions about that. And then you're like, oh, right, the internet. Like, there should be sort of a half internet that you can sort of get to that's just some of the stuff, not all of the stuff. Justin: [1:27:19] Yeah, because I've been building, like, a zine collection at my library to try and get students interested in zines so that they have something offline to do. And, like, you know, reading through, like, all of the zine librarian code of ethics. And it's like, you know, you have to ask every single person, can I add this to the collection because there's all these different things. and there's a lot of them where I'm like, well, I don't, you know, if it's one, if it's like a mass distribution from the 80s, who do I even call? I'm just going to make a couple copies of a couple issues, put them out there. I don't put anything in the catalog. I've made some adjustments to it myself to keep in the spirit of them. It's like, I don't put anything in the catalog. So there's no metadata I'm creating about names and titles. It's like searchable. Jessamyn: [1:27:58] Yeah. Justin: [1:27:58] So it's literally only exists in the real world as printed out single copies that I create like one copy of. If it's like an art thing that's new and I'm buying it, it's like I usually send them a message and I'm like, hey, I'm buying this. I would like to put it in a collection, but if not, I'm just going to keep it in my own personal collection. Let me know. And usually they're like, yeah, okay, fine. You didn't need to ask me. And it's like, well, you've got a code of conduct. I kind of have to ask you. Jay: [1:28:24] It's like, technically, no, we don't. But, you know, we were nice. Jessamyn: [1:28:29] Well, everybody on the internet just assumes that all their stuff's just going to get jacked all the time, right? I feel so bad for people who... Don't feel like they could have like an early blog that only their six friends read and that everybody else wouldn't read, you know, or screenshot and share on social media or whatever. Like it was kind of a fun time. And I also like this time, but they're different and it's hard to sort of, you know, genie back in the bottle or whatever you say about it. Justin: [1:28:57] And me and Jay have both talked about like, when, when do we just say, we don't need to save this. When do we just say like, this doesn't have to be preserved. Like I've worked in special collections and archives. I'm comfortable with weeding old shit. And a lot of people aren't. A lot of people are not okay with throwing away books. That's why they come to me when your dad dies and all his books. I literally got a donation the other day. Jay: [1:29:18] That's what happened, yeah. Justin: [1:29:19] I literally got a donation. I get so many donations of people. And then every time I get them, I can tell the story of like how these books got to me. And it's just like a cardboard box that says dad's paperbacks and underneath it, a box of depends also full of dad's paperbacks. And it's like, this is your dead dad's paperbacks. And it's now they've come to me to throw away for you because you should have had the heart to throw these away. Jessamyn: [1:29:45] Right. Because their value runs to nothing. I'm in the I'm on my you know, I'm the guy, the lady from the historical society, basically, who people email and they're like, when you take our whatever. and either I say no or I say yes and I let the other person at the Historical Society like get rid of them. Partly it's because we don't have a collection development policy the way we should so we can't say no the way the library does actually. It's one of the things our library really does correctly. It's like we've got a friends group, they're very selective, they don't take donations except for like certain things, the end. But like, man, everybody, they don't want to get rid of their own stuff. Again, they can't bear to, I mean, I was like, books, you can recycle them. You can like soak them in paraffin and use them for fire starters. It's fine. Like not every book has value. Like what what was valuable about it is like the sentimentality to you. And that's real. But like also it doesn't transfer. Yeah, it can be done. It can be over. It can be like a temporary autonomous zone of your relationship with that book. And you don't have to. It doesn't have to continue forever. Everything doesn't have to continue forever. Right? Justin: [1:30:53] Yeah and and i i also noticed that with like digital spaces like every time people were worried twitter would go away they're like oh my god i built my life on here this Jay: [1:31:02] Is how we came up with john d fucksmith was Justin: [1:31:04] This kind of thing yeah that's our sponsor that's that's we we work at the john d fucksmith institute for getting it in i love it under yeah so we that's we are the archive of the john d fucksmith society like he's our major donor and then in the crypt underneath the library that's where horror vanguard our our sister podcast lives yeah Jay: [1:31:23] We came with it because people like oh if i want to who should i get my twitter archive to who should who's going to archive my stuff and we're like no one do you have a bunch of money Justin: [1:31:32] You don't have a bunch of money to donate stuff and that are you john d bucksmith Jay: [1:31:37] And you'll have a building named after you no Justin: [1:31:39] Okay otherwise your shit doesn't matter yeah and also it doesn't have to matter to matter Jessamyn: [1:31:43] Like that's the joy of it to me Jessamyn: [1:31:46] Right like i mean i want to make sure like my mother a kindness to me like she passed in like six seven eight years ago and oh mine too yeah 2018 yeah yeah and like she she was like a lady who had her shit together and was just like look my stuff is just my stuff it was meaningful to me in life it doesn't have to be meaningful to you after me do what you want do what you want with the house. Do what you want with all of these things. Like, please give a couple of special things to people who are important to me. Jessamyn: [1:32:21] The end. Like, I don't care what you do. I'm dead and practical. The end. And I love that because it just my sister and I both just felt free to do whatever. My sister's a little bit more like, oh, mom, special things. And so we still have too much of my mother's things. But like, that's a sibling problem, not a not a my mother problem. But I just feel like that's like such a kindness to like the people in your life to be like it's just things like if you want to sell it all and make money off it that's your business great if you want to throw it all in the bin that's your business if somebody wants to shame you and say you're doing the wrong thing with it which oh my god everyone did all the time non-stop your mother never would have we had a huge dumpster out in front of the house and just you know big house she lived in it for 50 years there's a lot of stuff you have to throw away i have one box and people have opinions good for you yeah good for you i hope you're comfortable and happy with that decision yeah Jay: [1:33:18] I just have a box Jessamyn: [1:33:19] I still have a Jay: [1:33:20] Stupid facebook account but Jessamyn: [1:33:22] I have her stupid facebook account and her stupid flicker account but Jay: [1:33:27] I'm like fine i'll have my mom's ghost facebook account for the rest of my life it'll be fine yeah Jessamyn: [1:33:33] Yeah. But like, you know, explaining to people what's important and realizing that other people's issues with that are just that, their issues, right? Like, oh, I want you to have dad's special books. The fact that you can't give those to me is your issue, not our issue. You know, people ask me a lot because, oh, librarian, what do I do with all these old books? And I'm like, if you soak them in paraffin, they make really good fire starters and people just get really mad. And I'm like, yeah, I don't care. We do actually have a Valentine's Day program that we do at my library that takes old books and makes like little, like, you know, cut them up and make little hard stuff out of them. I appreciate that. Jay: [1:34:11] Yeah. Justin: [1:34:11] Yeah, I have a graduate assistant who's, I'm teaching, me and her are working on a lot of book art stuff because I just did a reference weed and we have so many books. Of course. And our dumpster rotted and then I filled it up with all the books I've been throwing away since I've been working here because everyone else is a hoarder and I'm the only one who's okay with throwing stuff away. And I'm like, well, if I'm not going to be here very long, I have to be the one to throw everything away. So I'm doing just weeding project after weeding project because once I leave this job, no one's going to weed for another 20 years. so I need to do Jessamyn: [1:34:40] Anonymously write this all up if you haven't and if you have tell me where to read it because oh my god that's me Justin: [1:34:45] Yes yeah I mean it's not much to write up it's just I do this and then I complain about it in the Skullcum Shit Dog discord and I'm like throwing more Jay: [1:34:54] Books away today he sends me fun photos of fun outdated like gay encyclopedias Justin: [1:35:01] Aww I'm keeping them if it's my rule is if it's funny I'm keeping it it just moves to circulation Jessamyn: [1:35:07] We had a big dumpster at our library conference last year because so many libraries have this problem. And for a lot of the tiny libraries, they just can't even move the content out of the building because they have to put it in a rolly bin. So we were just like, bring your boxes. Every library can pitch a couple boxes. We'll put it in this big dumpster. It's all got to be recyclable. We'll put a big sign on the side of it that explains to people what the hell's going on so that they don't shame us into oblivion because that's what I was... And it was a great service. It was a great thing that they did. And I'd like to see more, you know, any kind of cultural workers being able to like be like, you know, the discernment is the job, at least part of it, of like, keep this. Do we get rid of it? And you find people on both ends. But honestly, let's be real, mostly on the hoarding end. You know, I have this cultural building. We're just going to fill it up until it's full. And then, yeah. Justin: [1:36:01] Yeah. And Jay said to me, he's like, you love weeding. I'm like, I don't love weeding. It's just, I understand I'm the only one who can emotionally do it. And it's like, and that's my job and that's fine. I'll be the one to do it. And then I'll be the one who's unapologetic about it because I need to drag everyone more towards the not hoarding side. And I have to be really big. We never hoard. We're throwing all the shit away. Books is dead. a friend librarian emotional Jessamyn: [1:36:28] Reader I love it I love it Justin: [1:36:29] Yeah I have a friend drew this there was a drawing that someone made for me that was the Grim Reaper and it said books is dead I had that as my header for a long time I love it who made it I gotta email her and ask her to draw it again so we can put on shirts but yeah books is dead and yeah I know that I have to do it and I have to be the one to do it and if anyone complains about books in the dumpster send them to me I will tell them what's going on I have no problem explaining it. Jessamyn: [1:36:57] Yeah, exactly. And I think that's part of it too, right? Is that It's the hoarding problem, but it's also the like soft skill. I need to talk to somebody who's pissed off about it. How do we make that work? Justin: [1:37:08] Yeah. And that's fine. I understand. But like, you know, there's a certain point you have to tell people in the same way people like are worried about their Twitter stuff going away or when stuff's in the archive and it's like, do you know, what if we lose this? It's like, well, does the person whose stuff this is want it to be preserved? Because like with the expectation shifting that everything you put on the internet is just going to be stolen and swiped we should be tending more towards the Justin: [1:37:31] privacy side of making of pulling back because like you know the internet 30 years ago was let's put stuff out there Jay: [1:37:38] I was really crushing with that like archival absence presentation i did that one time where i argued that sometimes it's a good thing uh-huh Justin: [1:37:46] That was what four years ago five years ago Jay: [1:37:48] Yeah that was um the uh new england or maybe just the new ham i think new england or maybe new new hampshire Archive Association or something invited me to do I got to do an invited talk I was like oh Arthur yes you can come up here buddy the Justin: [1:38:07] Big city New Hampshire Jay: [1:38:08] Yeah the big city New Hampshire Jessamyn: [1:38:10] Nashville Manchester or Concord those are your options Jay: [1:38:12] It wasn't even in any of those so I think I think it was New England because there was there was some Boston librarians there too but I they invited me to do it on archival silence um and like in metadata and I talked about a couple instances I'm like where it's obviously bad that this happened but then I was like but also have we considered that sometimes this is a good thing wow and then I like played a little clip from F for Fake my favorite Orson Welles movie where I I was like, you know, even if it's archival silence, like, isn't always a good thing? Because I was like, sometimes it is. But even when it's not, like, we have to get more comfortable with letting things go and the knowledge that we will not always be successful in saving things. And then I just, like, played a little clip from the end of F or Fake, where he talks about how all these works in stone and paint or whatever will all turn to dust one day. you know all these voices will be silenced and then he goes but what of it keep on singing or something because i fucking love orson welles and i was just like yeah you know sometimes it's a bad thing sometimes it's a good thing you have to know which and also be more comfortable with failing Justin: [1:39:31] Yeah and also it's the historian's job to reconstruct over those silences like our job if you're the archivist and you're seeing yourself as the preserver your job is to do the best you can and your obligations are to the living when you're dead and some historian who is not your living colleague comes along their responsibility are to their living people and they try and reinterpret the past for them but you're not you don't have to worry about hypothetical future people you really don't i mean don't poison the water or whatever but like you don't have to worry about their ability to do history your obligations are to people who are alive now Jessamyn: [1:40:03] I worry ever so slightly that they're going to figure out how to live forever at some point right after I am no longer living. Jay: [1:40:12] Oh, that dude force-femming himself in an effort to live forever, and he's just taking estrogen. Jessamyn: [1:40:18] I'm sorry, what? Justin: [1:40:19] I had an Amazon skirt. Jessamyn: [1:40:21] I mean, live your truth, whatever it is, but that guy. Yeah. Jay: [1:40:26] He was looking worse, and then he started looking dewy. I'm like, hmm. Jessamyn: [1:40:31] Right. We know what's going on here. Jay: [1:40:32] I was like, okay, girl. Jessamyn: [1:40:34] And also from a technology perspective, too, like, if you're worried about Twitter, I mean, obviously that context, you can't save it. But like, I just backed up all my own tweets, right? Like, backed up all my own tweets, left, kept my account so no one would take over my username. And then I made my peace with it. And people will be like, yeah, if you're doing that, you're part of the problem. I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. Sometimes, yeah, we're all different. But we're all part of the problem. Justin: [1:41:01] Yeah, I did a big data dump of my Facebook and then deleted it. Jessamyn: [1:41:05] Yeah, I didn't even do a data dump. I've still got the backup somewhere. I just did a data dump of my Facebook like a month ago because somebody asked me how to do it and it occurred to me I had no idea. Justin: [1:41:14] I only did it because the entire time a buddy of mine was deployed, we talked over Facebook chat the whole time. So there's like a whole correspondence of like part of the war in Afghanistan that is technically in my personal files that I felt should have been preserved. Yeah. so it's like okay i'll save that for posterity or whatever Jessamyn: [1:41:32] Sure but Justin: [1:41:34] You know other than that that was kind of really the only reason i even bothered to do it Jessamyn: [1:41:38] Yeah and like the rest of it again whatever like you know i wake up every morning i feel like i remember slightly less than i did the day before it's fine like if you fight it it just makes everything i mean i don't know i'm maybe a little bit buddhist at this end being like oh you know desire the root of all suffering and like wanting that stuff what i'm Jay: [1:41:59] Like it sure is i'm also buddhist Jessamyn: [1:42:04] Yes, from that great Jew-Buddhist tradition in my family. But yeah, you know, Jay: [1:42:09] I just grew up with- There's several in my sangha, yes. Jessamyn: [1:42:11] Yes, with those ideas in the air. And I feel like it is a helpful framing device. I think, wow, there's a whole thing you could probably do. Like, well, what's your background? What's your religious tradition? I bet I can tell how you feel about archiving. Justin: [1:42:26] Yeah. I mean, we should charge a class Buddhism for librarians. Jay: [1:42:32] And then I would teach it it'd be great Buddhist Jessamyn: [1:42:35] Meeting for librarians yeah Justin: [1:42:37] Yeah yeah honestly could help let's Jay: [1:42:40] Let you go Justin: [1:42:41] I'm very good at it i'm very good at uh every time i move i get rid of about half of everything i own well Jessamyn: [1:42:49] My father used to say three moves equals one house fire right i moved into this place and i haven't like a couple years ago and i haven't filled it up yet and other people are like you haven't really moved in and i'm like no no this is just all the things it's fine like Justin: [1:43:03] This is the first time i actually have like a storage unit of stuff waiting for me to move because i'm like in between kind of i'm trying to move up to boston and so like i i'm in like a holding period in my life boston boston oh yeah so we're waiting to see what happens but yeah the archival silence thing again i learned about that from oral histories i learned about that from you know the the ira oral histories that were supposed to be secret or working with you know i learned about this stuff before but i put it into practice when i was working in a border town and we were doing oral histories and all these people were undocumented and I was like this isn't good we don't have archival privacy laws in Texas so they don't even need a subpoena to come in and like request materials from us there's no expectation of privacy in an archive so we can't you know here's how we can did and we did this whole thing we went and presented at the Society of Southwest Archivists and at the same conference where we were talking about everything you can do to like anonymize it to like delete the information off the computer the copyright transfer we came up with because like you can't keep the copyright because we can't know who you are. Right. So you have to give us the copyright. At that same one, there was someone from University of Arizona who had a dreamers thing and they found out because they had a friend who worked in Border Patrol or whatever. Border Patrol was listening to their oral histories and they had to take the whole thing down. Jessamyn: [1:44:26] I bet they did. It's a little shocking they didn't think about that, but yeah. Justin: [1:44:30] Because they're dumb. People believe that the law is on their side and that they're doing a good thing. And that dreamer was a thing that was going to last as if like the moment there was a Republican administration who was anti-immigration, they weren't going to undo all the dreamer shit. Jay: [1:44:44] Yeah. One of the, the, the good example ones that I've found when researching for the presentation, I forget which library archive it was, but it was oral histories of like, uh, of people who had gotten abortions as well as like doctors and stuff and, or like families and friends of people who had gotten abortions before Roe v. Wade. Yeah. was law and even though it was legal in the united states you know and you know this these oral histories were taken and like in the time when roe v wade like this collection existed during roe v wade times the amount of redaction and like redundancy redaction that that library did because they didn't know what would happen if roe v wade ever got overturned and what the statute of limitations was because depending on the laws what was in those oral histories could be felonies but they just weren't at the time and so they would like have everyone redact their stuff and then send it to another person who would then go over it again like there was like tripled quadruple redacting going so that they could still have these important stories out there but like all Like, it was kind of amazing the amount of, like, redundancy that they did when redacting all of the personally identifiable information. Jessamyn: [1:46:04] Well, and it just sounds super thoughtful. Like, very thoughtful about how this material could be used in a future you could envision that wasn't necessarily a good one. Jay: [1:46:13] Yeah. Which, I mean, hey, like, Roe v. Wade got overturned. Like, they weren't wrong. Justin: [1:46:19] Yeah. And the same thing at the university I worked at. We came up with this whole thing and we said, one, if a student is asking to do an oral history in an undocumented person, ask them to not. And if they insist on it, here's how to handle the process. And we were very clear about like, there is no unredacted version. There is the redacted version and then any unredacted version is deleted. Jay: [1:46:43] Yes. Justin: [1:46:44] The audio files are deleted. You don't work on your work computer. You don't use any OneDrive backups. Like you use a deep freeze computer, like all these things we came up with to absolutely. And then like Texas was pretty, was relatively normal. It wasn't doing all the Florida stuff at the time. After I moved out, they started copying a lot of Florida stuff. And so there's a lot of stuff there that, you know, even while I was there, people in my library started freaking out about like, we have a collection called DEI. And I'm like, it's in the institutional repository. That's my business. Don't you worry about it. And then they were like, I don't want to call it the DEI collection. And it's like, and I'm sure like after I left, that probably was something that legislators were like Googling DEI UTRGB or whatever. And it's like, you know, and they might have found it. But, you know, at the time I was there and I was like, don't worry about it. But yeah. Jessamyn: [1:47:36] Well, and it should, whatever the archival practice is, the whole thing about archival practice is it should be able to outlast you. Right. You shouldn't. I mean, that's like the Internet Archive, like concern. Right. If it's not run by Brewster, is it going to be the same place? Because he's got a certain amount of risk tolerance and it's really like, you know, he's he's the guy. And whether or not that place would be the same with a different person running it. Really interesting question. Justin: [1:48:02] Yeah, definitely. And it's a whole resiliency question. Yeah. It's a political discussion, too, which is the whole point of the show. Jessamyn: [1:48:08] Yeah. And a lot of people, I think, shy away from the political discussions because maybe they live in some kind of world where it's not part and parcel of labor, you know, of work, of money, of capitalism, of how we live our lives. And I'm not here for it is sort of what I always tell people. I'm like, I mean, thank God libraries finally moved away from the like fake idea of neutrality. But there's still a lot of places where if, have they? Speaker0: [1:48:36] Yeah. Jessamyn: [1:48:38] I feel like even in my Vermont, well, maybe that's a Vermont thing, but like in my circles, at least, you do at least get people who are like, oh, shit, it didn't really occur to me that, yeah, having this stuff is seen as a political thing by people. Like, I don't know. We don't see people trying to fake neutrality just to sort of appease like, you know, our current weird fascist situation in a way that in the past you could kind of believe you were, I mean, not, But like when you were starting to talk about how you couldn't be neutral because libraries are inherently not a neutral proposition in society, that was like an argument we would have like on, you know, ALA Council back in the day, whereas I don't think people have that argument anymore. Hope? Justin: [1:49:24] Hopefully i mean that's literally the whole point of this podcast is like saying stop thinking the status quo is like some like immutable law of nature and like the liberalism which undergirds it is like the stable state of society like we're bringing like a leftist perspective that is like one that is explicitly not liberal and it's like what do you do what do you do if you're bringing an anarchist conceptualization libraries what do you do if you're bringing a socialist like an actually socialist anti-capitalist ethic to libraries What Justin: [1:49:52] do they look like? What would they be? What would what what assumptions that you think are natural are not? Jessamyn: [1:49:57] Well i mean yeah even moving from purchasing to licensing content i'm aware this is a whole door and like oh my god it's late for me but but just that whole idea of when we made those shifts from like here's a book it's in a building you paid for you can look at it to here's the thing we license it if we don't pay for it anymore we don't have it was like a profound shift that i don't feel like we talked about at the time we only looked back and we were like oh gosh yeah we weren't as thoughtful as we could have been when we decided to make those switches we Justin: [1:50:28] Could have we could have you know tried to change the cockpit act or something in the 90s or something if we saw it Jessamyn: [1:50:34] Coming i mean i remember like the sunny bono act like when people were talking about that and it just I wasn't aware at that time really as much, but like you look back at sort of which like inflection points or pivot points and yeah, we had opportunities. Justin: [1:50:52] But yeah, I mean, you would have had to see it coming and it's not an easy shift to predict, but still like I feel like there are a lot of things that now as you know, as you're an adult and then be an adult for a while, you start to realize, oh, people are talking about things for a long time before like someone had to make a decision. it's just no one listened so that's the fun thing about getting older is you get to like because now i like talk to college students and it's it's a point there's enough of an age difference where i'm like like i've had to start saying like young lady because i because my general thing is like lady if i if i see a person it's a lady person i just go oh that lady over there yeah but i feel weird doing that to a student now so i now have to say that young lady because like i feel weird young Jessamyn: [1:51:34] Whippersnapper yeah me and my partner call everyone kids if there any more than like five or ten years younger than us Justin: [1:51:40] Yeah and i don't want to do that because like i went to the i'm working at a place where i was undergraduate they have a big problem with being like really condescending to their students who are all adults sure and so i i make sure never to say kids and all that stuff because they are there's it's a catholic institution they're they're they're very talked down to them that that has not that is the catholic tradition we have inherited is talking down to our students um you treat people honestly and you treat people like adults they respond as adults and so that's all you have to do is you have to stop treating them like children stop treating your student workers like children that's why they don't respect you I am the librarian Jay: [1:52:15] I am today because Kathleen De Laurenti shouts out who was my boss in undergrad treating me like an adult I am the librarian and gave me adult work to do. Justin: [1:52:24] Hi, Arthur. You're not treating me like your kid. Jay: [1:52:26] Yeah, no, I got to do cool shit, and it made me want to be a librarian. Justin: [1:52:30] Yeah. Hey, boy. So it's, yeah. I don't know why I was talking about that. Jessamyn: [1:52:36] Because we were talking about ladies, young ladies, kids, and the generational, having the generational space to be able to. Justin: [1:52:42] Yeah, talking to students and saying like, You know, there's there's something I start to notice the longer I am an adult that like, yeah, people talk about stuff and it's more that this these ideas are in the air, but they didn't hit the critical mass or not enough people heard about them to really make a difference policy wise. So I'm sure there are people in the 90s screaming about this, but and I'm sure they felt very vindicated 20 years later. But, you know, that doesn't that only goes so far. Jessamyn: [1:53:10] Well, and you don't just want to be the person to say, I told you so. you'd like to be the person who could have made a difference so that you didn't need to have to. Justin: [1:53:17] I don't get a whole lot out of auto juices. I mostly just get more frustrated of like, could I have done this different? Like, you know, could I have reapplied a year or two later and tried it again? And maybe it would have worked that time. Right. That's mostly what I feel is like, could I, could I, instead of giving up, could I have tried it another year later and maybe I would have gotten through, you know? Jessamyn: [1:53:38] Well, and for me, a lot of times I'm like, all right well what do i need to do differently tomorrow yeah Justin: [1:53:42] So we've gone two hours is there is there anything you want people to check out that i can put in the show notes uh no and you want them to go look at no okay good or do you just or do you want people to leave you alone Jessamyn: [1:53:54] No no no no i love not being left alone actually i think people think that i'm out here living my fabulous life and i am not i am underscheduled and under programmed and i love to hear from people who have interesting ideas about anything just don't call me on the phone even though you can probably find my phone number on the internet. Contact me in literally any other way. Jay: [1:54:15] Let's get you booked and busy. Jessamyn: [1:54:18] No, I, you know, I tossed a bunch of links in the chat that are like links to some of the stuff that I found because of course I multitask. Like Tara Robertson is the lady who was the sex worker zine digitizing person. And you should read that blog post if you haven't, because it's really good. No, you know, I'm just like, you can find me on all the sort of usual idiot spots online. Or if If you're coming through central Vermont, look me up and we'll have a cup of coffee. Like, it's great. I have a really nice porch. When the weather gets better, cool. No, no. Other than that, I just, you know, check out Flickr Commons. It's neat. Justin: [1:54:50] Yeah, it is neat. I love stuff like that. But, you know, it's always like a question of like, are we duplicating something that doesn't need to be duplicated? And it's a DPLA problem. Every time I see something like Flickr Commons, that's why I was excited to have you explain it to me because I was like, Jessamyn: [1:55:03] What's different about it? Yeah. Well, and DPLA like started out to be a place where content could be and then just became like yet another portal that didn't have a bunch to SEO, right? And then they became like URL in search of a revenue scheme. And I felt bad for them, right? Like, they're interesting people. I'm hoping this ebook thing goes in a direction that solves a problem for librarians because as of now, nothing they have done has solved a problem for librarians that I know. Like, maybe other people, maybe it was really helpful back in the day but yeah Justin: [1:55:37] Yeah there there's some there's some hope i'm i just interviewed for a job i haven't gotten the offer yet open this week hope when i get the offer this week but i was talking to them about cdl and even though the internet archive threw a wrench in all of my fucking my fucking job made my fucking job harder i'm still Jessamyn: [1:55:56] Mad about that Justin: [1:55:57] Thank you you should listen to my episode uh that i got emailed about send Jessamyn: [1:56:04] Me a link and then we'll just like back channel chat about it Justin: [1:56:07] Yeah and then i also got emailed about a book chapter i wrote like years before that and that was when the head of the way back machine emailed me robert um so i've almost no mark mark matt you Jessamyn: [1:56:20] Said we're not video recording right yeah correct Justin: [1:56:25] Yeah all right how many how many divisions do they have i need to get a email from every division okay so i've gotten there's two division heads i need i need to get to all of them i mean there's chris Jessamyn: [1:56:36] At books but he's actually a write-on guy and andrea who does well i guess andrea does books and chris does i don't know what chris does but andrea's cool Justin: [1:56:44] And email from andrea yet i need to piss off andrea good Jessamyn: [1:56:47] Luck she's unpiss offable she's my contact there and she and i get along like a house on fire no but i understand what you're saying like maybe offer before Justin: [1:56:57] I still have a job application out with internet archive but we Jessamyn: [1:56:59] All do i'm getting it we all do i was working for open library and actually wound up leaving the internet archive because i wanted to get paid more than 15 an hour for being the only email contact point and to be fair it was 10 years ago but also to be fair it was 10 years ago what the Justin: [1:57:16] Fuck why for 15 was 10 years ago yeah i Jessamyn: [1:57:20] Was i was stared at by a certain founder and told well but you don't code and i'm like yeah i know thank you Justin: [1:57:26] Thank you we're getting an email for this episode thank you someone mr Jay: [1:57:32] The head of niles crane's wine club that gets made fun of in that one episode of fraser Justin: [1:57:37] You know about that right you know about the fraser do you Jay: [1:57:40] Know about this jessamine i can imagine i Justin: [1:57:43] Mean me me and j so jay was we have a friend who we have friends who have a relationship a podcast we've been on and they have a sub podcast of it which is Frasier and Jay Jay: [1:57:54] Was on where they watch all the Frasier episodes Justin: [1:57:56] Yeah watch Frasier and me and Jay are watching Frasier and we're sitting in bed and we're watching Frasier and Niles is talking about his wine club and he goes Brewster Kale the president of my wine club and we like shoot up in the bed like 90 degrees and Jay: [1:58:12] We looked it up Brewster was friends with the writers of Frasier Yeah. Jessamyn: [1:58:19] I mean, of course, right? Justin: [1:58:21] It was like a gunshot went off in the room. Jay: [1:58:24] We were like, what? Jessamyn: [1:58:26] We had to rewind. For the chances. Jay: [1:58:30] It was insane. Justin: [1:58:33] Yeah, the writer was like, it's a unique name. We'll just use it. Jessamyn: [1:58:37] Sure. Justin: [1:58:39] It was right as we put out the Internet Archive episode about the lawsuit. It was around that time, because I had been yelling about Brewster Kale. like months to this point to Jay. Jessamyn: [1:58:51] Yes. I can only imagine what that would have been like if that had actually like affected your job as opposed to me just being like, eh, I really wish that had gone a different way because it was the right way. Justin: [1:59:03] Yeah. Made my job harder because now I have to explain to people, okay, yes, CDL was said by a judge not to exist, but here's how we can, here's how Bernie can still win. It's kind of like the argument is... Jay: [1:59:19] Our position on this podcast is it's like, we are totally for abolition of cop. We want people to get things for free. I thought it was cool and based that they did that National Emergency Library thing. Howst ever. Justin: [1:59:33] That it was dumb to get sued. Jessamyn: [1:59:35] With you and with you. Jay: [1:59:36] And then lie about what you did. Jessamyn: [1:59:39] And predictable that you were going to get sued. And not in a cool getting sued way. Justin: [1:59:44] Yeah. In a dumb ruins Justin's job kind of way. you fuck with my job it becomes my problem and Jessamyn: [1:59:54] So many people's jobs Justin: [1:59:56] Yeah it's completely irresponsible it was completely irresponsible to do but there are people who are in that circuit and that circuit decision applies to who still want to do cdl of course Jessamyn: [2:00:07] Cdl is still a sound idea it's so cool yeah it is a way to balance some of these things Justin: [2:00:13] I'm hoping if i get this position, they will let me do CDL. They have the technical infrastructure. They just need the bandwidth and someone who knows what it is and someone who wants to do it. The supervisor for this position was at the CDL conference recently that I was also at. I'm like, okay, cool. We can do this. We can actually do it. Do the thing that we need to do. Right. Yeah. So people are out there still wanting to do it. You just got to find the right place and you got to find the right interest and you Jessamyn: [2:00:40] Got to get lucky. It's a risk management thing, right? A little bit. Jay: [2:00:43] I really wanted to pick up the music libraries because so many independent composers only make their sheet music available as PDFs. And there have been efforts to sort of make licenses for like, hey, can I print this? You know, like that kind of thing. Can I print this and circulate it in my library? But also a lot of students just scan things and put them on their iPads anyway. Right. Right now, and I feel like MusicLive, because there are some digital sheet music subscription platforms, they have their pros, they have their cons, they have their privacy issues. I like some of them, but I see the cons in them. But if music libraries could get on board with doing CDL, I think it would be a fucking game changer for music libraries. It would be a game changer. It would be so good. Justin: [2:01:36] The infrastructure is still a problem, but if we can fix the infrastructure and the tooling problem so that a small conservatory library can afford that tool, then game changer. The concept is a game changer, but we also need the tooling. you know it's something we i don't remember what episode we're talking about but it was like bib frame we're talking about bib frame and it's like the tooling's not there concept sound tooling's not there right Jessamyn: [2:01:58] And everybody's like oh eventually the ai will build it and you're like it fucking won't is what it won't because you can't extract value the right way with it but maybe yeah i don't know make libraries pay for it Justin: [2:02:08] Yeah yeah get get money for to pay your smart coding friend you know not enough money I got five thousand dollars for a friend of mine to code something and they still like let it slip and it's like you make too much money and then I lost the money I wasn't able to pay them yeah anyway I still am working on that so Jessamyn: [2:02:29] Ending on that up note Jay: [2:02:31] Ending on that up note Justin: [2:02:32] If you want to code a weird open access project hit me up it's very easy also it's been so great Jay: [2:02:37] Having you on yeah it's been so fun Jessamyn: [2:02:40] This was super fun to talk I did not think I would be able to find two more hours worth of energy after my absolutely soul dream meeting. I am shocked. Jay: [2:02:49] We have held you hostage. Jessamyn: [2:02:51] Yeah, thank you for giving it. Jay: [2:02:52] Yeah. Come back on whenever. Jessamyn: [2:02:55] Good luck putting me up. Yes. Justin: [2:02:57] Underbooked. Jessamyn: [2:02:58] This was big fun. When I have something else, who knows? Jay: [2:03:02] Everyone, invite Jessamyn to your podcast. She's cool. Jessamyn: [2:03:05] Love doing podcasts. Underscheduled. Underscheduled. Underscheduled. Justin: [2:03:10] And good night.
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