The new logo is awful in my opinion. I've visited the Library of Congress many times to locate some hard to find books and journals. Seems the Library of Congress catalog doesn't use the new logo, so I hadn't seen this yet despite using the catalog a few times over the past few days.

Glad to see I'm not the only one reading this as "Library Library of Congress".

"Library Library of Congress"

Also "Libr Library of Congress ary"!

that logo looks amazing, referring here especially to the ability to create endless logo variants by interspersing thematic visuals between the letter of the logo...

for some logos the "base case" doesn't really matter, you want something based on which you can create infinite variation, something that's open to "mutations".

you example is basically a good case of why automatic or AI-driven design tools will "always" suck... nobody really ever wants a design that "just looks f awesome", that's useless...

"powerful ugliness" is always more beautiful in the end...

Not really. It generalizes to make something unique to barely recognizable. It’s like Microsoft’s new logo is “Software Company”. When you put this logo on road signs, brochures etc without variations, it would look aweful. Also, notice that all these variations could have been possible with virtually any other designs. In fact the particular way they have chose to do variations produces sizes that would be incompatible in too many scenarios. I now know which company not to approach for my logo designs :).