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We welcome all marginalized identities. This Mastodon instance is generally for folks who are LGBTQIA+ and Allies with an interest in tech work, academics, or technology in general.

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Honestly the state of the internet is miserable if you're trying to learn things.

Like, you want to learn how to care for an animal? Well, every Google result is a bot generated fake blog. Maybe try YouTube? Well, you have a few new options: there's the person who just got this animal for the first time talking like experts about them. Or there's the literal child telling you what they learned about caring for hamsters from the bot generated fake blogs they just looked up.

This goes for almost anything anymore. There's no expertise, the only advice is just from whoever is the best at SEO, which is often not an actual person. But if it is they probably know as much as you do.

In the last 6 or 7 years I've found myself more and more just digging up ebooks from people who know what the fuck they're talking about.

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And the most infuriating thing is, if you're older and have been online a long time, you know that the information is out there. There's ten billion websites out there on how to raise goats by people who have done so professionally for decades.

You just aren't allowed to find them anymore.

@lori

"Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one." - Neil Gaiman

I feel this quote in my soul more and more every single day.

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@AriaGrace @lori

I remember how much fun I had as a middle-schooler when i discovered the Ready Reference phone number of the Milwaukee Public Library.

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@AriaGrace @lori
#Google has become more about keeping you in #GoogleSpace than about giving you what you're trying to find.
At one time, Google was the best search engine, now it blows chunks.
Legit, you can get better answers asking on #SocialMedia by asking your #Network who they might know and following the links.

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@lori @ducker @AriaGrace This happened to me today. Google ain’t gonna tell you how to clean dust out of your laptop fans- but ping the Computer Guy you’re mutual with and he can point you to ifixit in seconds.

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@lori @AriaGrace I genuinely enjoy archival research. The process of starting from a semi-niche topic and chasing the Wikipedia citations back down to primary sources, then tracking down corroborating evidence for everything it mentions – the thrill of pinpointing an event with enough precision to run a single newspaper archive search within a few days and come up with five relevant articles – it’s glorious.

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@lori @AriaGrace There are no words for that feeling when you walk someone through all the cool stuff you’ve found. My latest deep dive started with a Japanese children’s song; now I’m looking up the prewar buildings of certain large shrines and checking family trees. It’s especially incredible with music, because sometimes you might be the first person to hear a song for decades!

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@AriaGrace @lori
It was really depressing when I got to the point where librarians could no longer help me.

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@AriaGrace @lori There is more than a nugget of truth to this. Librarians and archivists will easily be able to spot information that is not of peer-reviewed quality. They have the ability to filter out the pseudoscience from the respected science.

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@AriaGrace @lori My mom was an elementary school librarian and earned her Masters in Library Sciences later in life. Love librarians!! I feel like the role of librarians is as important as ever.

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@AriaGrace @lori and what will #ChatGPT bring?

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@AriaGrace @lori @donmelton it is a great one, and happy to see @neilhimself is here too 😁

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@AriaGrace @lori And now, I found out today that AI (specifically ChatGPT) will LIE to you if it doesn't know the right answer. It literally just makes shit up.

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@AriaGrace @lori But Google won't tell you to shush if you talk too loudly.

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@AriaGrace @lori @ZekeMD My sister is a librarian. I’m kinda laughing inside right now.

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@AriaGrace @lori
Exaggerating makes things clear. This looks a bit silly.
Handle Google with care and you will find some answers. Then use your own brain for the rest.
Lots of problems have more than one solution.
In the end you must choose the answer, depending on your situation.

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@AriaGrace @lori
I suspect this is a matter of trust.
I have no doubt there are many fantastic librarians, but I prefer to do the filtering of data myself.
Probably a Function of time in the saddle, so to speak; I have been working with data for more years then I wish to declare. 🥂

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@AriaGrace @lori Sorry, than, rather than then … talking to your iPhone only goes so far …