There is one thing I am going to miss if Twitter disappears: hashtags. This is a tiny, revolutionary thing that groups like ideas and makes them highly searchable.

Yesterday, I wrapped up my attendance at ACRL 2023. This is the conference for academic libraries. It's a place for us to share our research, what we've learned through work, and projects worth replicating. It's a massive conference with many overlapping virtual sessions, panels, presentations, posters, round tables, and lightning talks. Oh, and the exhibit hall was essentially in an airplane hanger. 

It is impossible to go to everything you want to go to. Even with many sessions being recorded there is no way to consume all the content. That's where hashtags come in. Many of my colleagues (myself included), still tweet during sessions. That makes it possible for me to catch the important points from sessions I would otherwise miss. Plus, it creates a conversation where we can bounce and amplify ideas.

While I mostly use hashtags for conferences, I also use them when I'm curious about trends, to ask #LibraryTwitter questions, and to keep an eye on niche things I'm interested in. 

Twitter is problematic, but searchable hashtags are great. I hope they stick around.

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I'm still making my way through Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham. I got bogged down in the early chapters discussing exactly how nuclear power generation works and how the design of the RBMK reactor was a recipe for disaster. It was all good stuff, just very detailed. They were the kind of details I had to read several times because my brain was mush at the end of the day. Now, it seems like we're moving more into the narrative of what happened. It's all very tense - even for something that happened three decades ago. 

​Books shared here are affiliate links for Bookshop.org.

• "Our allergies are a symptom of our relationship to the places where we build our lives." [Men Yell at Me]

• This is going to throw me off the next time I need to replace my spices. [CNN]

• Have you tried marsala wine outside of cooking? [Wine Folly]

• Whence the garden gnome? [WaPo - gift link]

• Is "please" no longer polite? [The Atlantic - may be paywalled]

• Goats on the loose! [NPR]

• An explainer on what is happening with streaming services. [Planet Money]

• Why Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. [The Indicator]

• We all hold implicit biases. [Hidden Brain]

• We can't bring back the dinosaurs, but we may be able to help at risk species. [Short Wave]

• POC and the history of horror films. [Code Switch]

• I didn't watch much this week because of my conference. When I was relaxing in my hotel room, I defaulted to the Food Network. I ended up binging a night of Beat Bobby Flay. I like it when the ingredients are sort of out there. How do you make a single pepper the star of a dish? Also, I must be bad luck. I rarely see the challengers beat Bobby. [Food Network]

• This person is insanely talented. [willsmith]

• As much as I love the giant cookies that seem to appear during conferences, I know I should balance them out with vegetables. For dinner on Thursday, I met up with a friend who is a Pittsburgh local. She recommended a place near the hotel that was "convenient and not half bad." I ordered the ahi tuna chopped salad and thought it was delightful. The greens were a bit over dressed but the tuna was seared to perfection. A flavorful outside and still rare and rich interior. I just wish there had been a few more pieces. [City Works]

• Instead of leaving my hotel room every morning to find breakfast, I opted to bring a box of stuff I grabbed at the grocery store. I found a blueberry, soft-baked muffin bar which was enough to get me to snack time, highly portable, and pretty tasty. The texture was a touch crumbly, but these made for a decent and easy way to start the day. [Nature Valley]

This was my first real trip to Pittsburgh. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was surprised by the excellent and diverse architecture. I loved this glass building near my hotel. [PPG Place]

Chronophoto is a game where you try to guess when a picture was taken. Simple premise; harder than you think. You go through five rounds and your score is based on how far off you are.

I’ve got almost two weeks of work email to dig out of. My inboxes are a disaster.