Dan Lerch

In an age of attention scarcity, the greatest act of good citizenship may be learning to withdraw your attention from everything except the battles you've chosen - Oliver Burkeman.

See also: Toronto mayoral race, BC provincial election

Suddenly all those debates about PHP vs Python 12 years ago feel relevant again.

Here comes the extortion. Progressive voters treated not as partners to be negotiated with, but as hostages. Our fear of the alternative is weaponized against us, effectively rendering our political leverage nothing in the eyes of party strategists. This is emotional abuse. Divorce the NDP

Penticton library to remain independent after council vote #Penticton

My BlueSky experience: 1) open app to see what’s trending. 2) see thousands of hot takes but unable to understand what the news story actually is 3) Realize this a dumb and close the app 4) Forgets 1-3, process starts again

My new blog post about digital sovereignty and why it matters. danlerch.ca/why-digital-...

The United States sanctioned Chilean officials who were assessing a proposal to build an undersea cable between Chile and Hong Kong. It wants to ensure South America data flows through cables owned by US companies, giving it the ability to surveil that data.

The fake map of Ukraine posted and then deleted by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard misplaced Kyiv by 350km - distance between London and Paris. Chernihiv misnamed "Cherniv" and misplaced by 620km. Distance between Lviv and Vienna is only 585km.

New Yorkers need affordable homes. New Yorkers need great public libraries. So we're building both. Today, we took the next step toward creating a brand-new library and more than 200 affordable homes at the New Utrecht Library site in Brooklyn. Because public land should serve the public.

“One mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 loss.” “Which means that Copenhagen, a city of 1.2 million people, saves $357 million a year on health costs because something like 80% of its population commutes by bike.” #CityMakingMath Some costs are savings.

The European Parliament is ditching Google as its default search engine in favor of French service Qwant. (That’s the one I use too!)

eBook licenses for libraries are basically extorsion it is past time to fix that www.ala.org/news/2026/05...

Lately I’ve been thinking about how we tried to build big structures to fight disinformation, but maybe they should be much smaller: open.substack.com/pub/wicziped...

I continue to be flabbergasted that other (non-insane) governments aren't making similar changes. The Canadian government won't shut up about how important "digital sovereignty" is, and then it pours resources into posting everything to Twitter and Facebook.

I DO NOT WANT TO 'CHAT WITH MY FILES'

Parliament voted down a motion on April 15 to ban a practice most Canadians have never heard of, but that retailers are already rolling out: surveillance pricing. Jake Okechukwu Effoduh reports. 🛒 #canpoli

Reading the FT front page story about a Chinese company introducing a battery with a 1500 km range & six minute recharging time & about how two Chinese companies own more than half of the global EV battery market & I am struck by the different realities the US and China occupy. We’ve lost the plot.

Viktor Orbán has been ousted—and efforts by Washington and Moscow to prop the autocratic leader up give his defeat implications that extend far beyond Hungary, Isaac Stanley-Becker reports from Budapest. Read more: theatln.tc/lkSi38Qn

The rights to read, to information, and to an education are human rights. Human rights don't come with age limits.

Amazon may stop supporting your Kindle, but your public library won’t stop supporting *you.* just saying. 📚

Penticton council to consider exploring a shift from municipal library to a regional service model www.castanet.net/news/Pentict... Penticton City Council will decide next week whether to continue exploring a possible change to its library services model.

Surf combines Bluesky, Mastodon, RSS, and other content into customizable open feeds on the web. I’ve been using it and love it. Let’s bring back the open web!

This is unreal. The 2026 code4lib conference has been cancelled unilaterally by Carnegie Mellon University because the Department of Education raised issues with the diversity scholarships: > An applicant must be a member of a group not well-represented within the code4lib community, including […]

So the business model is dependent on theft.

You can’t fix autism because autistic people are not broken.

Unsolicited advice: If you find yourself dropping streaming services for whatever reason, you can fill some of that time by forming relationships with humans actually in the world around you. Doing so will help a lot of things.

Like every masterpiece, the video game Silk Song is deeply flawed. I wouldn't change a thing.

We had to say au revoir to our amazing friend Monsieur Serge today. Without a doubt one of the best cats to ever do it. The absolute G.O.A.T. Rest in Peace my sweet little dude.

We're hosting #Code4lib #BC at Emily Carr on October 16 & 17. If you're interested in the intersection of #libraries #archives and #technology, join us! Registration, proposals, bursary and more info: https://wiki.code4lib.org/BC #Vancouver #Code4LibBC #LibTech

enshittification | noun | when a digital platform is made worse for users, in order to increase profits

In order to survive, the Republican party ditched institutional conservatism. It’s long past time the Democratic Party do the same.

RCMP confirms one person killed, two injured after vehicle strikes Granfondo cyclists #Penticton

As a cranky elder statesperson representative of librarian bluesky I feel very comfortable saying that anybody trying to replace librarians with AI has a serious misunderstanding of the value of librarians and probably libraries too.

Today I saw a City of Montreal electric cargo bike (different from the park maintenance ones I've seen before). “Viens lire dehors” (“come read outside”) — a library program maybe? I was actually interviewing a city politician at the time but he didn’t see it so he couldn’t identify it.

🔴 URGENT - Festival de Cannes : “Un simple accident” de l’iranien Jafar Panahi remporte la Palme d’or

Growing up 90s 2000s NYC, you just knew something special was happening with Hip Hop. Despite being a metal/rock kid it became clear the real youth energy was on two turntables, not 6 strings. It was brewing in France too. This mix is an AWESOME example. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp8C...

After this election, we need to start a campaign to get the Canadian government and public institutions like the CBC off US cloud services like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.