Information Flaneur - Links

What made law into a ‘white-collar sweatshop’ in the 1980s

2026-04-13T11:06:47+10:00

This is a fascinating excerpt from Dylan Gottlieb (co-host of Who makes cents?</a> podcast).

Lawyers’ misery was a side-effect of a mechanism that generated enormous profits while spreading insecurity to everyone else. That it all took place under a banner of meritocracy made it no less insidious – only harder to see. But make no mistake: while financialisation cracked open the door to a more diverse professional class, it immiserated the very white-collar workers who were tasked with remaking the US economy. </blockquote>
aeon.co</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure>

On The Enshittification of Audre Lorde

2026-04-12T07:14:29+10:00

A really thoughtful commentary on what "not using the master's tools" actaully means, by going back to the context of Lorde's speech.

There is something particular that happens when figures from Black feminist, queer, or decolonial traditions are cited in tech discourse. The citation tends to operate as credentialing rather than engagement, a way of demonstrating political seriousness before proceeding to make the argument you were going to make anyway. </blockquote>
On The Enshittification of Audre Lorde: 'The Master's Tools' in Tech Discourse</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure>

What Libraries Actually Do

2026-03-25T07:11:49+11:00

I've been referring to libraries as "infrastructure" for years without being consciously aware of the work of Margaret Egan and Jesse Shera. I guess it's time to remedy that.

What does it mean to be epistemic infrastructure rather than an information warehouse? The warehouse metaphor, which was easy to count in gate entries and items circulated, treats knowledge as something that exists prior to the library and gets stored there. The infrastructure metaphor treats the library as part of what makes certain kinds of knowing possible at all, not a convenience for accessing knowledge that would exist regardless, but a condition for the scholarly practices through which knowledge gets produced, validated, and preserved. </blockquote>
What Libraries Actually Do</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure>

Drones Like Bicycles

2026-03-22T17:57:29+11:00

An interesting piece from Phenomenal World about the economics of the Shahed drone, a weapon that appears to have already changed military strategy, not merely tactics.

Ultimately, the key finding here is that the production of a Shahed-136 drone is only as resource and labor intensive for Iran as the production of a basic agricultural tractor. As such, the pecuniary comparison understates the feasibility for Iran to continue its current drone campaign. The Iran Tractor Company produces 35,000 tractors a year, even under the significant restrictions of “maximum pressure” sanctions. But a drone is also not much more complex to produce than a small car and Iran’s automotive sector produces over 1,000,000 passenger vehicles annually, supported by a large steel and aluminum industry and ample domestic parts manufacturers. </blockquote>
Drones Like Bicycles</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure>

Overexpectations in e-commerce?

2026-01-26T11:31:36+11:00

This is not my usual thing but I found it a pretty interesting analysis of e-commerce realities. Of course it doesn't even mention the externalities caused by e-commerce like hugely expanded delivery traffic in neighbourhood streets.
Phenomenal World: Overexpectations in e-commerce?</a> 

How to be less awkward

2026-01-07T07:12:57+11:00

Some great advice and interesting study results here.

Participants estimated that only 50% of conversations would make it past five minutes (actually, 87% did), and that only 15% of conversations would go all the way to the time limit of 45 minutes (actually, 31% did). So when people meet someone new, they go, “that was pretty good!”, but when they imagine meeting someone new, they go, “that will be pretty bad!” </blockquote>
How to be less awkward</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure>

Imagining a better future: What I learned from solarpunk films

2026-01-06T07:07:38+11:00

I'm not a big film buff but this is really nice.
https://harrisroxashealth.com/2026/01/imagining-a-better-future-what-i-learned-from-solarpunk-films</a> 

How uv got so fast

2026-01-05T16:58:04+11:00

uv installs packages faster than pip by an order of magnitude. The usual explanation is “it’s written in Rust.” That’s true, but it doesn’t explain much. Plenty of tools are written in Rust without being notably fast. The interesting question is what design decisions made the difference. </blockquote>
How uv got so fast</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure>

Live at enmity with unreality

2025-12-22T07:34:31+11:00

Good advice in a world determined to distract us from the real business of life.

Unreality here is not the imaginary or the fantastical—for these are what emerge from a living and real mind—but the manufactured and manipulative mirages that draw us away from our creative powers, the noisy illusions made to drown out our own perceptions and visions, that make it impossible to hear ourselves think. </blockquote>
'What is meant by ‘reality’?'' asks Virginia Woolf</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure>

An insult to life itself

2025-09-24T10:52:34+10:00

I thought this was going to be another ironically over-written piece but this is exceptionally on point and matches my current mood.

What is life but what we choose, who we know, what we experience? Incoherent empty men want to sell me the chance to stop reading and writing and thinking, to stop caring for my kids or talking to my parents, to stop choosing what I do or knowing why I do it. </blockquote>
I am an AI Hater</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure>

Open Source Has Too Many Parasocial Relationships

2025-09-20T12:33:08+10:00

If you don’t want to do all the work yourself, you need to establish a relationship with other people. But if you’ve just been picking up software you found lying around the place, you don’t have a relationship with the people who built it. </blockquote>
Open Source Has Too Many Parasocial Relationships</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure>

Salvage infrastructure of the future web

2025-09-16T06:45:03+10:00

I didn't understand much of the technical detail here, but I love the concept.

I wouldn’t want to be the lawyer who one day will have to argue how a device with USB C and a rechargeable battery can be classified as “disposable”. Thankfully, I don’t plan on pursuing law anytime soon. </blockquote>
Hosting a WebSite on a Disposable Vape</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure>

Mike Olson on LIS labour politics and its broader impact

2025-09-08T17:22:31+10:00

I'm not sure this article provides us with much in the way of practical tactics, but it's a pretty good summary of the current situation and the stakes when it comes to libraries and metadata. Also, this quote was just :chefkiss:</code>
The disconnect between AI promises and library reality was already starkly apparent at the 2024 Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA) conference. While Ex Libris staff delivered polished presentations touting AI integration into every facet of their products, from customer service to cataloging, user sessions revealed a different story entirely. Librarians shared workarounds for basic functionality that had remained broken for years, struggling with vague documentation and systems that failed to deliver even simple results like getting resources to appear prominently in search results. The tension was palpable during Q&A sessions, where librarians voiced disinterest in AI features while grappling with fundamental system problems. </blockquote> Beyond Classification: The Human Cost of Library and Information Labor Under Digital Capitalism</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure>
We go to school to better understand problems 2025-09-07T14:28:02+10:00 I too, have never liked the concept that university is a place to "learn how to learn". The university is an institution that is made up of many disciplines that employ their own approaches to understanding problems. We go to school to learn these approaches; we don’t go to learn answers. One does not go to art school to find answers, but approaches to constraints. One takes courses in literature to learn and apply theory. The social sciences and the sciences have their own research methods. </blockquote> We go to school to better understand problems</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure> Cost accounting for generative AI in the workplace 2025-09-01T10:23:21+10:00 I like this because it takes a very "serious businessperson, no 'politics'" approach to provide a formula showing that generative AI is likely in most businesses to reduce productivity and profit. And that's if you're optimistic in your calculations. What’s the ROI of genAI, and how can we tell? In this post, I’d like to explore a logical framework for evaluating genAI expenditures, to determine if your organization is getting its money’s worth. </blockquote> The Futzing Fraction</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure> Designing text, and who gets to be canon 2025-08-31T11:29:18+10:00 Interesting piece from Arena on typography, footnotes, and their impact on who gets read. Danielle Aubert collected, scanned, and compiled 100 used copies of Ursula Le Guin’s 1970s sci-fi novel The Dispossessed to make Marking the Dispossessed — a version of the book that features annotations and marginalia only. We don’t see the words so we can focus on how others have experienced them in the past instead. </blockquote> It’s telling how telling a telling can be</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure> Work|Cognition 2025-08-31T08:59:05+10:00 I was led to this piece via Mita Williams' own University of Winds newsletter. Some really interesting observations about "workplace productivity" (a current obsession of Australia's political class), and how physical affordances impact "knowledge work" like mathematical theorising. As an incorrigable whiteboard user I definitely identified with the latter section. Just Two Things: 26 August 2025. Work | Cognition</a> Authenticate thyself 2025-08-24T14:11:57+10:00 Really interesting piece from Aeon about life in the post-LLM information landscape. Being a legitimate self now requires one to be publicly identifiable, authentic and, increasingly, fully authenticated. What began as a celebration of individual uniqueness that avidly encouraged the production of digital evidence is evolving into an elaborate system of verification that will treat any trace as a potentially suspect record. As fake versions of ourselves start to circulate, we may soon find ourselves caught in endless cycles of proving and defending the reality of our own existence, submitting ourselves more and more to a machinery of institutionalised scepticism that would have repulsed the early internet’s champions of identity play and experimentation. </blockquote> The sovereign individual and the paradox of the digital age</a> </cite> </figcaption> </figure> What counts as reading in Australia? 2025-08-19T07:02:35+10:00 Great to see the Guardian taking a proper look at reading data beyond the easy headline. Honestly the thing that surprised me the most in all this data is 7% of men claiming they read a play in 2022. Have men really stopped reading? We take a deeper dive into the data</a>