People have known for a while that AI companies are buying books, scanning them in, and destroying them in the process. Recently, unusually large anonymous purchases of "rare" books have been detected. AI companies at work? Now there's evidence!

"404 Media investigation was able to reveal Amazon’s book buying operation, which hasn’t been previously reported, by placing a tracking device in a rare book we suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data, and following it around the country to its final destination.

That final destination was an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada. Amazon employees who work at this location say all they do is receive massive shipments of printed books which they then cut the bindings off in order to scan the books more quickly. The printed book is destroyed in the process."

https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/

(1/n)

More recently, antiquarian booksellers have been seeing suspicious increases in sales. And the reason is pretty clear:

"Now, as 404 Media reports, this practice has become prevalent enough that even well-established book sellers are looking to cash in on the AI boom. One called ISBNdb, which boasts the “world’s largest book database,” extolls that the “world’s best AI training data is setting on a shelf,” upholding these physical texts as uncorrupted by shoddy AI writing that’s already polluted so much of the internet (and indeed, newer books).

[...]

Once focused on helping libraries, distributors, and book shops find and sell books, ISBNdb now helps AI companies bulk-buy anywhere between 1,000 to one million books per order, according to 404.

As an added bonus, it also promises AI companies that it’ll keep their purchases under wraps — nobody wants to end up in the spotlight like Anthropic and Meta, obviously — while clearly sounding aware about how incredibly shady the practice sounds.

“The optics problem is real,” ISBNdb’s site says. “‘AI company destroys two million books’ is not a headline that generates sympathy.”

One small book seller said that in April, he suddenly went from selling no more than 20 books a week to hundreds, and he’s almost certain that the customers are AI labs, noting the random selection of the books and how they all have ISBNs. He added that his inventory is full with rare and out of print books, meaning that an AI company could be destroying some of the few remaining copies that can be found."

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-destroying-rare-books

(3/n)

"Mathematics is an art. The difference between math and the other arts, such as music and painting, is that our culture does not recognize it as such." – Paul Lockhart
#quote #mathematics #math #maths #art

So mathematicians are doing really interesting things with LLMs while so many other people are - rightly! - complaining about how error-prone and bad they are. Why is that? There are lots of possible reasons, but maybe history is kind of repeating itself. From Adam Mastroanni:

"There's something very weird about the timeline of scientific discoveries.

For the first few thousand years, it’s mostly math. Maybe a bunch of math nerds hijacked the list, but it's pretty obvious that humans figured out a lot of math before they figured out much else. The Greeks had the beginnings of trigonometry by ~120 BCE. Chinese mathematicians figured out the fourth digit of pi by the year 250. In India, Brahmagupta devised a way to “interpolate new values of the sine function” in 665, and by this point we're already at mathematics that I no longer understand.

Meanwhile, we didn't discover things that seem way more obvious until literally a thousand years later. It's not until the 1620s, for instance, that English physician William Harvey figured out how blood circulates through animal bodies by, among other things, spitting on his finger and poking the heart of a dead pigeon. We didn't really understand heredity until Gregor Mendel started gardening in the mid-1800s, we didn't grasp the basics of learning until Ivan Pavlov started feeding his dogs in the early 1900s, and we didn't realize the importance of running randomized-controlled trials until 1948.

Oh, and for 13 centuries, people thought that rotting meat turns into maggots."

He tries to explain why. Briefly: math smacks you in the face with problems you *know* you don't know the answer to. Just-so stories don't work.

https://www.experimental-history.com/p/on-the-importance-of-staring-directly

I understand the sentiment of
@daringfireball
critique of Anthropic's watermarking.

The choice of words it generates is influenced by the method to create a watermark. In other words, it's the best it can do, minus the requirements of the watermark.

But the problem is, this assumes that "the best it can do" is really "the best" (however good that is), and not already influenced by a myriad of choices not in the user's but the company's interest.

And this strikes me as widely naive, even before the enshittification phase has begun.

https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/anthropics_watermark_text_adulteration_in_claude_is_a_perversion_of_writing

#civics #econ #economics #eattherich #allpowertothepeople

#taxtherich #eattherich #composttherich #nobillionaires #BillionairesShouldNotExist #billionairesTax

#MehrWertSteuer #SozialeGerechtigkeit #EatTheRich #TaxTheRich

RE: https://cosocial.ca/@alessandro/116993338975634719

We should not be at all surprised that the billionaires want to go back to the time when only wealthy, white, male, land owners can vote.

#democracy #canpoli #cdnpoli #canada #eatTheRich

Donations from businesses to politicians are bribes by another name.

#politics #eattherich #composttherich

#KapitalismusKritik #VermögensUngleichheit #VermögensSteuer #TaxTheRich #EatTheRich
#Erderhitzung #KlimaKrise
#ErderhitzungKlimawandel #Hitzewelle #Klima #Heißzeit #HitzeRekord

Ich möchte ergänzen: durch den Ausstoß dieses Übermaßes an Emissionen sind sie erst zu den reichsten 10% geworden. Und sie werden weiterhin in keinster Weise dafür zur Kasse gebeten.

How about the UK government stop doing business with US companies that have no intention of ever properly paying taxes against the income they generate in the UK…would that be wild or just common sense?

In 2024 the company, #Palantir paid just £2.1m in UK corporation tax, despite declaring profits of over £25m, giving an effective tax rate of just over 8%, researchers found. The UK corporation tax rate was 25% that year and remains at that level.

#EatTheRich
#FairTax

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/05/palantir-corporation-tax-uk-2024-accounting-practices

Is Your Child a Tinkerer? Why “So You Want To Be An Inventor” Is the Ultimate STEM Book

Does your child love taking things apart, asking how machines work, or building cardboard contraptions in the living room? Nurturing that natural curiosity requires books that go beyond basic science facts and teach real-world problem-solving.

Linda Soules’ So You Want To Be An Inventor (ideal for ages 10–14) is a standout STEM resource that shows young readers how real innovation happens.

Why This Book Stands Out for Young Innovators

• Focuses on Process Over Genius: Shows that persistence, trial, and error matter more than sudden “eureka” moments.
• Real Workshop Insights: Teaches kids about prototyping, engineering notebooks, patent reading, and 3D printing.
• Engaging Visuals: Features detailed photos and illustrations that break down complex mechanisms into easy steps.
• Inspiring Real-World Examples: Covers the cross-field thinking behind bullet trains, Velcro, and accidental discoveries like the Super Soaker.

If you have a child, student, or young family member who constantly asks “why” and loves hands-on building, this guide offers practical direction to turn curiosity into creative engineering skills.

👉 Read the full book review on BookBelow

Hey, speaking of old sci-fi, y'all remember #Heinlein? Cranky, misogynist, racist, nipple and incest fetishizer, who also radically influenced science fiction and reality?

Around 1950 he published "The Man Who Sold the Moon". In it, robber baron Delos David Harriman becomes obsessed with going to the moon, and uses his billions of dollars and a series of morally questionable actions to achieve a space program.

Anyway, I tell you that story to tell you this one: #ElonMusk has crashed a thing into the #moon, creating a new crater. So, that's fun, that we have robber barons that can alter the moon, huh?

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/aug/05/spacex-rocket-moon-crash-impact-falcon-9

#EatTheRich

Dolphin Carries Dead Calf in What Experts Call Grieving
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/science/dolphin-mother-dead-calf.html?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Most Emailed @most-emailed-newyorktimes