Staff Picks

We put out a bird feeder a couple of weeks ago. It took the birds a few days before word began to spread among them that there was a new place to eat in the neighborhood. My daughters have been enjoying seeing birds right out our window, and I have been enjoying how much they enjoy them. Together we have been enjoying learning about birds from books and by using the Merlin Bird ID app on my phone to listen to the songs of birds and look at the spectrograms of those songs that we read about. (It’s a pretty hefty app, so make sure there’s enough space on your device before you download it.) It comes from the Ornithology Lab at Cornell University. Birders probably already know about this resource, but anyone interested learning more about birds will have a lot to on this site. The online courses they offer in the Bird Academy are expensive, but there are also videos, free recordings of lectures, and games to help novice birders of all ages learn to identify birds. And the Macaulay Library has almost 20 million photos, videos, and audio clips for you to explore.

This post was inspired by an article in the NY Times this weekend: 7 Tips for Watching Birds During the Spring Lockdown.

By now you’ve probably of the historic week at the Supreme Court of the US. Due to COVID-19, the justices have agreed to hear oral arguments via teleconference, and although audio recordings have always been available at the end of every week, this has been the first time the public has been allowed to listen to oral arguments live as they are happening. They will stream live them this week as well. Listen on C-SPAN starting Monday at 10am.

I listened to a discussion of the live format and a deep dive into one of last week’s cases from Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick and the New York Times‘ Linda Greenhouse on the Amicus podcast.

“The grand essentials of happiness in this life are: Something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” [Read more…] about Thought for the Day

Last week, MML’s monthly book discussion group known as Readers Circle held an online meeting, and it was great! Since the library was closed and the readers did not necessarily have access to the regularly planned book, they held a readers pot luck, meaning that everyone brought a different book to discuss at the circle. Here’s a list of titles that participants brought:

[Read more…] about April Readers Circle Pot Luck

The New York Times has made some pretty interesting multimedia stories in the past few years, including a few great podcasts. The most recent (as far as I know) addition to their roster is called Rabbit Hole, and through the story of one young man, it tells how some great sites on the Internet like YouTube can slip from alluring to addicting to dangerous without the user necessarily being aware of what’s happening. So far there have been three episodes of Rabbit Hole. I’ve listened to all three, and the story seems over, but maybe they’ll start focusing on another person’s story. Here is a link to the podcasts, a link to the introductory essay by reporter Kevin Roose, and another version of the same story that appeared on the Times‘ website last year.

For what it’s worth, I think YouTube is great. I am not a fan of recommendation algorithms where I have encountered them, but I am in not danger of falling down a rabbit hole of right-wing radicalism.

The other story I listened to over the weekend was on a British podcast called Intelligence Squared where they interviewed the American author of a new book with the provocative title Abolish Silicon Valley. The author Wendy Liu used to work at Google before founding her own start-up. This is her first book, and she admits that the title is a bit of an exaggeration. She points to some practices and attitudes that she accepted while working in Silicon Valley that she later realized were harmful. She doesn’t want to abolish tech as much as get the people who create and consume tech products to consider the ethical implications of those products and refocus their energies on the public good. The book was released about a week after COVID-19 shut our doors, so I don’t know of a library that has it yet. [Read more…] about Recent stories about the perils of the Internet and tech