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Frank Skornia

@fskornia@glammr.us

mastodon 4.7.3

Public Digital Librarian. Don't join dangerous cults. Practice safe sects.
Other interests include SF/F/H, gaming, quilting, and astronomy
He/Him/His

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50 Posts

Joined November 17, 2022

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 1w ago

Criterion Channel has updated its UI on both the website and the Chromecast app. It has some nice changes, but unfortunately the performance has gone straight to hell. Had to bail on the Chromecast because it was buffering every 30-60 seconds. Plugged my laptop into the TV and it's playing continuously, but jerky at times.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 3w ago

Replying to

@jcrabapple@dmv.community In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight...

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@DeliaChristina@sfba.social At this point, Beshear should be sending state troopers or someone to confirm McConnell's status. It would be in the interest of the entire state of Kentucky.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

I just realized a small thing that helps me really appreciate my subscription to the Criterion Channel: there is no algorithm saying "You may also like this". You can either browse through the collection that is available or rely on themed showcases compiled by their curators. It is very refreshing not to have constant engagement shoved at you.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@RandamuMaki@mstdn.social @libroraptor@mastodon.nz It depends on the student. There are students who will be into chemistry purely for the analytical & pure science aspects of it. And there will be students that need the narrative of the historical, economic, and cultural significance of it. Teaching should be able to accommodate both students.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@overholt Translation: "Not enough people are following or engaging with the fascist and offensive content, so we are going to make sure it is all you can see. Then we can point to the statistics that say a lot of people engage with this sort of content."

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Last night I watched the penultimate episode of #Babylon5. I was going to watch the last episode as well, but it had gotten late and I decided that it would be more fitting to watch the series finale along with the season premiere of the next series I'm watching: #Farscape

I never watched Farscape when it was airing, and I've heard good things.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@abetterjulie@wandering.shop Do you know about the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Jelly Cam? https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cams-videos/live-cams/jelly-cam It's perfect for a few moments of contemplation when stuff gets hectic.

montereybayaquarium.org

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@benroyce@mastodon.social What does it mean when the traffic light is orange? Chinese fire drill?

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@doctormo@floss.social This is the thing that gets me about complaints against universal healthcare. People think they're going to have to pay more money on top of what they're already paying. No, the contribution they're paying to private healthcare would just switch to the universal healthcare system. It very likely would be close to the same or less.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@overholt@glammr.us Lucky! I hope you enjoy! Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, and Ryan Coogler are doing a lot of hard work to demonstrate the full depth of film and how things like aspect ratios are important

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@mrundkvist@archaeo.social If there are going to be bailouts, I hope they're for all the pension funds that got forced into investments.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@Bfordham@infosec.exchange I forgot to reply to this! I thought 'The Long Walk' was very good and about as good an adaptation you can do of the book (which I loved). It hits really hard in a similar way that 'The Road' did. The actors playing the main walkers are excellent, and Mark Hamill steals the show every time he appears.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@markmalowany I just started typing the list out in Notepad. It's kind of wild. It reminds me of those challenges where color names would be printed out in colors different than the name and it would be incredibly hard to reliably say either the color name or the color it is printed in.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@jalefkowit @catmisgivings I remember that in the months prior to 9/11 was filled with scandals and he was about to leave office in absolute disgrace. It's always frustrating how 9/11 changed that image of him.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Playing #FinalFantasyXVI and everyone keeps giving Clive marks and seals to show their support.
I kind of feel like his armor is like a racing jumpsuit now with all the sponsor logos on it.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Was reading in an article about a bunch of billionaires moving offices and homes to Florida to avoid taxes and I got to wondering how their insurance bills measured up to the taxes they would have paid...

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

I am also deep into 'The Use of Weapons' by Iain M. Banks on audio. I've mentioned this before, it's taken me about 4.5 books to feel like I grasp the mindset of the Culture books. And this book may turn out to be my current favorite because of that understanding because I'm greatly enjoying this book. The Culture books are usually presented as big space opera - but the books so far have been really intimate, deep in the thoughts of its characters. #FridayReads @bookstodon

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@tlapka "The same age as my tongue and a little older than my teeth."

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@Nonilex@masto.ai DC didn't even exist 250 years ago. The celebrations should be centered on the places that mattered then: Philadelphia, Boston, NYC

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@overholt@glammr.us ✊

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@sarahscully@glammr.us Then it sounds like there has been some value. I've been working with digital repositories for nearly my entire library career, so if you have any questions or just want to bounce ideas or thoughts off someone, I'm available

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

And the press really has no one to blame but themselves.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/04/us-falls-below-ukraine-in-press-freedom-as-global-autocracy-takes-hold/

arstechnica.com

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

This seems relevant with the latest information about OpenAI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b7EqQKAfIU

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@phette23 I really can't think of much. I feel like too much is going down the LLM dead end that feels largely as an attempt to extract money from libraries

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@lina 'Mr. Roboto' by Styx 'Little Boxes' by Pete Seeger (not quite anti-ai, but I feel the sentiment would be in there) 'John Henry' also by Pete Seeger

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Birds are coming home to roost and they're pecking at the shell of that bubble.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/github-will-start-charging-copilot-users-based-on-their-actual-ai-usage/

arstechnica.com

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@kimlockhartga@beige.party @JaneinNJ@newsie.social Overdrive keeps pushing us on this, and we keep resisting because hold times on some of our ebooks are already pretty bad and that's just with our community. It would get worse if the entire state could access our ebook library, and then we wouldn't be effectively serving our community. It's a system that can work for a large consortium, but the math doesn't work for an independent library system like us

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

It was also an interesting and not really great choice to center DiCaprio's Burkhart on the film. I feel it would have been more appropriate to focus more on Molly, even if that meant that more events would have been shared through characters explaining. This wasn't so much an issue with Grann's book because it was written more as a straightforward history, and it also focused more on the start of the FBI, as this was one of their first major cases.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

The Mummy from 1999 is such a fantastically written movie. It moves at a remarkable pace, but it's never confusing, the action is crystal clear, the dialogue is snappy. There is very little loose weight, everything in the film is there ultimately for a reason.
And Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are pitch perfect with great chemistry.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Sophie I remember when, years ago, I was with a group of friends and we were assembling or setting up something and I pulled out the instruction manual and began reading it. A friend said, "Why are you looking at the instructions, you're so smart." My response was, "I appear so smart because I read the instructions."

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@meltedcheese@c.im @futurebird@sauropods.win The tech behind the simpler rice cookers and how they determine when it is done is ridiculously straightforward and simple: they have a temperature sensor and as soon as they detect the temperature rising above 100 degrees C, they click off or to warm because that means there is no longer water absorbing the heat. And it usually ends up making perfectly steamed rice, no matter what type of rice you're using.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Msloftis@mastodon.art The last time they will look so neat and organized! :-)

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@stina_marie@social.horrorhub.club I just cracked the cover and started the intro on this last hour! Really looking forward to reading it.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@kimlockhartga@beige.party @JaneinNJ@newsie.social And even on print books there are usually limitations on the age of the book. A lot of libraries will not lend a book that is 6-12 months old because demand in their library is still high. But once that threshold is met, most books just languish on the shelf, so any usage is great. In my opinion, ILL is one of the greatest examples of modern library services. I just got a book today that my library would never buy, but a university in AZ did and now I get to read it

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@kimlockhartga@beige.party @JaneinNJ@newsie.social The CT State Library does manage a large and growing collection of ebooks that are available to all card holders in the state though. Again, hold queues can get pretty long on that app too.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@jake4480@c.im From what I'm finding in discussions online, it was mainly coincidence. The actual design specs were based on the intended size of the cassette and the hubs in the machines.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@jake4480@c.im This got me to wondering about when they began determining the specifications for cassette tapes: were the holes sized for pencils because they knew that people would have to commonly manually wind the tape onto either spool and wanted it to work with a readily available object? Or were they sized that way for another reason, and it just happened to work that pencils were ideal for manual winding?

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@colorblindcowboy Don't go in expecting something serious and dark. When I first saw it in the theater, I didn't like it much because I wasn't expecting the comedy. But rewatches over the last 25+ years have raised it a ton in my esteem. There is a lot of cheese, but it is so earnest and well earned. And the antagonist is great - formidable and scary, but also sympathetic in ways.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@colorblindcowboy I really enjoyed that movie. If you liked that and also the first Pirates of the Caribbean, then you would also enjoy The Mummy

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

I also have been thinking that I'm really going to have to go back and reread through all the Culture books in print, because while the audiobooks are fine and the narrator is great, sometimes I feel like I'm missing stuff.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@carkner I think I agree with you. Fisk's relationship with Vanessa is a good example. If you didn't watch the first series, then some of the impact in how Vanessa has evolved is lost. Same with Karen too, who I feel has had one of the most incredible character development arcs in the entire MCU.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt This is very very very cool. I wonder if there will be a point (haha!) that officials will be able to use it for review on difficult right of way decisions.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 2mo ago

'The Long Walk' is just brutal. I remember the book being a brutal captivating read. This was a good adaptation, but I don't know if it's a movie I would want to watch again. Now on to 'Obsession', which I've heard great things about.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Aww. That sound you hear is me playing my tiny violin.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/24/global-oil-crisis-changed-fossil-fuel-industry-for-ever-iea-chief-fatih-birol

theguardian.com

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@sarahscully How goes the certification? I remember looking at things like Digital Archivist certificate years ago, and it was always outside of my means to pay. I think my current library would be okay if I looked at something, but I'm not really sure what I would like to do.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@sarahscully Wow! I could never imagine Slack being used in the place of an LMS! I wonder if it is because the instructors never got proper training or access to Brightspace in the way they would like, and decided to go rogue. Are they adjuncts or actual faculty? Are you going to bring this up in the course evaluations? There may be some hope that administrators see it and work to improve the circumstances for the next cohort.

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Frank Skornia @fskornia@glammr.us

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@tsutrav I would still recommend it. It's still good SF, but The Expanse is such an incredibly high bar to measure against that I feel bad for Franck and Abraham and their ongoing endeavors.

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