#AcademicRunPlaylist - 4/23/25

It was a travel day for me, but luckily on the way I was able to listen to lots of talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an engaging conversation with Dean Buonomano on time in neuroscience and integrated information theory on the Brain Inspired podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtR1-bmZXpA

Next was an important panel on the past, present, and future of public sector labor organizing at the Cornell University ILR School with Joseph A. McCartin, Todd Dickey, Aurora Rojer, and MT Snyder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIjtRktlO_Q

Next was a compelling talk by Majeed Kazemitabaar on how LLM-assisted coding effects learning at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l7niSzEdQI

Next was an interesting talk by Sewon Min on federated open language models at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB17xGkDSiU

Last was "The Library: A Fragile History" by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen. This book traces the evolution of written text, the development of commercial activity around it, and the eventual (extremely recent) emergence of modern libraries. For those unfamiliar with the book industry these chapters will be especially illuminating, and the dominance of a subscription model for libraries until quite recently was fascinating. The book is a more Western-focused than I'd like, with strangely little coverage of libraries under the Ottoman Empire or in Asia more broadly. Overall, however, this is an incredible view into the forces that led to the creation of modern libraries and just how fragile those institutions can be. Highly recommend https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/andrew-pettegree/the-library/9781541600775/