“May Old Acquaintance Be Forgot”

Hopefully the new year will bring new leadership for the Sask NDP that will be able to build and grow the party in a way they couldn’t during the last leader’s tenure. 🙁

Saturday Snap – ‘Tis The Season (For Candy!)

Friday Fun Link – The Eric Andre Show Compilation

I stumbled across this performer while surfing around YouTube…which is always a dangerous thing to do. 😉

Eric Andre is a nihilistic anti-comedian who has a surreal, absurdist talk show on the late-night “Adult Swim” block of the Cartoon Network in the United States.

The show parodies everything about talk shows from the set to the role of the sidekick and band to the way that the guests (especially “B” level celebrities) will go through anything in an attempt to promote their latest project.

For example, they apparently tape the show in a studio where the heat is cranked and they record for around an hour just to get a few minutes worth of material while Andre does everything from stripping naked to hitting himself to releasing live snakes in the studio!

Definitely not for everyone but fascinating nonetheless as a weird commentary on the institution that is the television talk show – sort of like a modern-day mash-up of “The Larry Sanders Show” and “The Tom Green Show“.

Throwback Thursday – #tbt – Google’s “2017 Year in Search”

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…for all the many “best of” retrospective lists and articles and posts that come out.

The Google Search compilation is usually one of the best (the YouTube Rewind one, not so much!)

“Because you have to swear on the Bye-ball!”

This guy was elected three times and doesn’t know that you aren’t required to swear on a Bible when taking your oath of office?

Wow.

The only thing that would make this clip better is if Tapper said “Because he says he’s  Christian” when the Moore spokesperson tries to pivot away from his slack-jawed, empty-eyed response by saying “Well, Donald Trump swore on a Bible!”

Democrat Doug Jones Wins Over Accused Pedophile, Roy Moore in Heavily Conservative Alabama

It’s wild that it was even this close (49.7% to 48.6% as I type this with write-in ballots accounting for *double* the vote differential!) but the people of at least one deeply conservative American state has soundly rejected Donald Trump and his brand of “anything goes” politics.

Music Monday – “The party’s on/The feeling’s here/That only comes this time of year/Simply having a wonderful Christmastime”

Another re-imagined Christmas classic

Wonderful Christmastime” – Tom McRae

“I Made My Shed The Top Rated Restaurant on TripAdvisor” (And Some Quick Thoughts on Fake News)

At RPL’s recent Staff Development Day, I was asked to moderate a panel discussion on fake news.  The panelists included a local education prof who specializes in social media and digital technology, a journalism prof who specializes in mass and alternative media and a journalist who is the assignment producer as well as having responsibility for various aspects of her organization’s social media content and long-term strategy.

We covered as much as we could in an hour using three focus areas as jumping off points – the history of fake news, the impact of social media, and finishing up with some ideas on how to spot fake news – but the reality is that we could’ve easily spent a day looking at all the different aspects of the topic.

We touched on most of these in passing but it would’ve been useful to get into greater detail about the political impact of fake news, the role of fake accounts and bots, the psychology of why people are susceptible to fake news (and which people are most susceptible), the role and limits of skepticism, the possibility that the library, in its goal to not make judgements about people’s information needs might be complicit in spreading fake news.

Even something as basic as how a trusted review site (that I’ve promoted often myself but also had my misgivings about) might not be as reliable as you’d expect makes for fascinating reading.

Saturday Snap – Treats

Shea and I were both off Friday and with Pace in school, we did one of our annual traditions, putting Sasha in daycare and spending the day doing Christmas shopping, having lunch out together at a nice restaurant, and running a few other errands (eg. passing a bunch of Sasha’s clothes that she’s outgrown to a family friend who have a younger girl.)

We got home mid-afternoon and started wrapping presents but it was getting close to Pace’s home time so I went out to intercept him and then him and I walked over to pick up Sasha at her daycare centre which is a few blocks from our house while Shea finished wrapping a few final things.

After we picked up Sasha, as we sometimes do since the strip mall near our house has a convenience store, the three of us stopped in for treats.

Friday Fun Link – Does New Movie “The Public” Have a Trailer That Instantly Makes It The Best Library-Themed Movie Ever?

There are a few choices out there but this trailer makes me think “The Public” might be the best library-themed movie ever, in part because it appears to address so many of the issues we deal with in the library every day – homelessness, community engagement and creating a welcoming space, the library’s relationship to other agencies and the government, and big picture questions about what is the library’s role as a public space and how libraries can be seen as the embodiment of democracy in society.