Interesting things (20260922)
"AI Existential Risk" Was Invented to Distract Us
What does the thing that they believe allow the organization they're a part of to do that it wouldn't be able to do if the people in the organization didn't believe that thing?
In Queens, Immigrant Women Sew a Truer Atlas
How can we delve into the archives of the present? Is it possible to unveil and touch the documents that communities are creating today to record and remember their history, or does understanding only arise with the passage of time? When does an object become an archive?
Earliest surviving solar eclipse film found, restored
It was filmed by Nevil Maskelyne, son of a London magician who was also the co-owner of the Egyptian Hall on Piccadilly magic theater. The magic shows employed the latest technology to craft astonishing illusions on the stage (he had an orchestra of automata), and he was an early adopter of the moving picture camera.
A new children’s book archive defies the right’s effort to erase LGBTQ+ identity
Housed in San Francisco at the Mechanics Institute, a private 19th-century library, the collection includes over 200 books, magazines, and other printed materials that feature queer characters, themes, and other diverse representations of families.
It’s one of the most thorough catalogs of early LGBTQ+ children’s literature in the United States, said Myles Cooper, a librarian at the Institute who helps manage the collection.
“This is a very fragile area of collections,” Cooper explained. “They’re being banned, even in public libraries in California. It really is an area that we need to collect and keep and maintain just for our own history.”