Eggplant.place

13d

Pavlos Roufos – A Happy Future Is a Thing of the Past: The Greek Crisis and Other Disasters Search on Anna’s Archive (they only have pdfs) Neutral and specific, which is really the best form a book like this can come in. Page · lemmy.ml <a href="https://annas-archive.pk/search?q=a+happy+future+is+a+thing+of+the+past" rel="nofollow">Search on Anna’s Archive</a> (they only have pdfs)Neutral and specific, which is really the best form a book like this can come in.Pavlos Roufos – A Happy Future Is a Thing of the Past: The Greek Crisis and Other Disasters<a href="https://lemmy.ml/post/51023079" rel="nofollow">https://lemmy.ml/post/51023079</a>

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1d

Hidden Life by Madhuri Vijay - The New Yorker, August 24 issue I have just started getting into reading magazines and specifically using Libby to read bits of articles here and there. I like the current political stuff and some media coverage but on the whole it hasn’t been a very interesting experience until I came across this short story I didn’t even realize The New Yorker published short stories, at first I thought it was just an excerpt. It’s about an Indian girl who has to go live with her aunt for a little while while her mom and dad work through the grief of having gone through a miscarriage. The mystery and intrigue builds up in little blocks, each paragraph showing us a little moment in Nidhi’s (our protagonist) life: her life with her parents, the going away to live with her aunt, meeting her aunt’s mentally handicapped daughter… I thought it was really well-written and compelling and by the end of it it built such a well-realized cast of characters that each had shades of darkness and human qualities in them that I wanted to explore their stories more, to spend a little more time with their thoughts and personal griefs. It’s a simple coming-of-age story that read like a thriller that was brilliantly paced and I would love it if other people learned about it as there wasn’t a lot of discourse online Page · lemmy.ml I have just started getting into reading magazines and specifically using Libby to read bits of articles here and there. I like the current political stuff and some media coverage but on the whole it hasn’t been a very interesting experience until I came across this short storyI didn’t even realize The New Yorker published short stories, at first I thought it was just an excerpt. It’s about an Indian girl who has to go live with her aunt for a little while while her mom and dad work through the grief of having gone through a miscarriage.The mystery and intrigue builds up in little blocks, each paragraph showing us a little moment in Nidhi’s (our protagonist) life: her life with her parents, the going away to live with her aunt, meeting her aunt’s mentally handicapped daughter…I thought it was really well-written and compelling and by the end of it it built such a well-realized cast of characters that each had shades of darkness and human qualities in them that I wanted to explore their stories more, to spend a little more time with their thoughts and personal griefs.It’s a simple coming-of-age story that read like a thriller that was brilliantly paced and I would love it if other people learned about it as there wasn’t a lot of discourse onlineHidden Life by Madhuri Vijay - The New Yorker, August 24 issue<a href="https://lemmy.ml/post/51532459" rel="nofollow">https://lemmy.ml/post/51532459</a>

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17h

If you like to read books seasonly or set during certain holidays, I've added an index page that's sorted by different holidays / events.<a href="https://pussreboots.com/redirect/holiday.html" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="pussreboots.com/redirect/holiday.html">https://pussreboots.com/redirect/holiday.html</a><a href="/tags/reading/" rel="tag">#reading</a> <a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="/tags/bookstodon/" rel="tag">#bookstodon</a> <a href="https://fedigroups.social/@bookstodon" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@bookstodon</a>

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8h

On That Disgraceful, Disreputable, (Wonderful) Form of Punctuation: The ParenthesisFlorence Hazrat on the Contentious History of a (Perfect) Literary Tool<a href="https://lithub.com/on-that-disgraceful-disreputable-wonderful-form-of-punctuation-the-parenthesis/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01M0AJ42D5Y1TM6VKY2T1HMKM4&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="lithub.com/on-that-disgraceful-disreputable-wonderful-form-of-punctuation-the-parenthesis/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01M0AJ42D5Y1TM6VKY2T1HMKM4&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER">https://lithub.com/on-that-disgraceful-disreputable-wonderful-form-of-punctuation-the-parenthesis/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01M0AJ42D5Y1TM6VKY2T1HMKM4&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER</a>Books about Punctuation at PG: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/5744" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/5744">https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/5744</a><a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a>

Title: Punctuation personified or, pointing made easy

Author: Mr. Stops

This is a children's book illustration, showing a fantastical figure whose body is constructed entirely from punctuation marks (commas, parentheses, exclamation points, question marks, brackets, quotation marks, an ampersand-like symbol, and asterisks) with a human head, floating hand holding a small book, positioned before two children seated on a decorative sofa within an ornate curtained stage setting.

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2h

Ebook and print: <a href="https://books2read.com/SheHuntsDemons" rel="nofollow">https://books2read.com/SheHuntsDemons</a> Also in Ebook omnibus (volumes 1-3): <a href="https://books2read.com/AshenBladesOpenWounds" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="books2read.com/AshenBladesOpenWounds">https://books2read.com/AshenBladesOpenWounds</a>She’s small and cute, but this half-demon New Yorker lives to exterminate demons, because they murdered her parents. The demonic curse preventing her from saying anything but “it’s a secret” only fuels her desire for revenge.<a href="https://fedigroups.social/@bookstodon" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@bookstodon</a> <a href="/tags/indieauthor/" rel="tag">#indieauthor</a> <a href="/tags/writing/" rel="tag">#writing</a> <a href="/tags/fantasy/" rel="tag">#fantasy</a> <a href="/tags/actionadventure/" rel="tag">#actionadventure</a> <a href="/tags/fiction/" rel="tag">#fiction</a> <a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a>

(Left) The cover of She Hunts Demons, by Owen Tyme, illustrated by Ryan Johnson.

Sitting on the roof of a building in New York City is a teenage girl wearing an old, black dress, fingerless, elbow-length black gloves and a battered, black top hat, with a blue rose attached to the band. The tearing of her clothes hints that she's recently been in a fight. Her hair is short, but messy. Her eyes are blue.

In her hands is a wakizashi, a short sword of Japanese design. The tsuba, or hilt guard, is in the shape of an opening, blue rose. The blade shines blue.

The image is black and white, aside from the details in blue, hinting at film-noir influences in the art.

(Right) An image of a dog with glowing, red eyes, with the following text laid over it:

“Will we ever be safe again?”

“Your people call you traitor, as do mine. Hunted by Heaven and Hell alike, there’s nowhere we could turn for peace.”

“Will our daughter ever know peace?”

“I pray she will.”

(Bottom) https://books2read.com/SheHuntsDemons

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2h

Head over to StoryGraph for a chance to win a copy of The Expert of Subtle Revisions! Now through September 18 (US only)AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A thrilling historical mystery about a young woman searching for her father, a young man trying to solve an impossible problem, and the quest for the power to transcend time.“From Vienna to San Francisco, I was swept away by this fascinating search for family and for answers.”—Janet Skeslien Charles, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Library and Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade<a href="https://app.thestorygraph.com/giveaways/50e04d18-4b3e-476d-9450-ed1f60c1196c" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="app.thestorygraph.com/giveaways/50e04d18-4b3e-476d-9450-ed1f60c1196c">https://app.thestorygraph.com/giveaways/50e04d18-4b3e-476d-9450-ed1f60c1196c</a><a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="/tags/writersofmastodon/" rel="tag">#writersofmastodon</a> <a href="/tags/bookstodon/" rel="tag">#bookstodon</a> <a href="https://fedigroups.social/@bookstodon" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@bookstodon</a>

The Expert of Subtle Revisions by Kirsten Menger-Anderson

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14d

📚 The World Jones Made by: Philip K. DickFloyd Jones has always been able to see exactly one year into his future, a gift and curse that began one year before he was even born. As a fortune-teller at a post-apocalyptic carnival, Jones is a powerful force, and may just be able to force society away from its paralyzing Relativism...<a href="https://bookblabla.com/book/the-world-jones-made" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="bookblabla.com/book/the-world-jones-made">https://bookblabla.com/book/the-world-jones-made</a><a href="https://fedigroups.social/@bookstodon" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@bookstodon</a><a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="/tags/reading/" rel="tag">#reading</a> <a href="/tags/libraries/" rel="tag">#libraries</a> <a href="/tags/fiction/" rel="tag">#fiction</a> <a href="/tags/sciencefiction/" rel="tag">#sciencefiction</a> <a href="/tags/generalfiction/" rel="tag">#generalfiction</a> <a href="/tags/literary/" rel="tag">#literary</a>

Floyd Jones has always been able to see exactly one year into his future, a gift and curse that began one year before he was even born. As a fortune-teller at a post-apocalyptic carnival, Jones is a powerful force, and may just be able to force society away from its paralyzing Relativism. If, that is, he can avoid the radioactively unstable government hitman on his tail.

Precognition; a world ruled by Relativism; giant alien jellyfish. The World Jones Made is a classic Philip K. Dick mash-up, taking deep philosophical musings and infusing them with wild action.

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1d

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/74144681 The symbol for Amazon’s VGT3, the Las Vegas facility where it scans book for AI training data. Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process. A 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. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands. “Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use,” an Amazon spokesperson told me in a statement. The world’s AI companies are constantly looking for, and spending extreme resources to locate, more material to train their AI models. With books, that sometimes means destroying them in the process, something that large parts of the public have spoken up against, and which we can now confirm Amazon is doing. In July, I published a story about booksellers who reported a historical spike in sales starting in the past year. They suspected this spike in sales was due to AI companies acquiring any books they can in search of new training data. Printed books are valuable as training data because a lot of the text they contain is not readily available on the internet, which AI companies have already scraped. The data is also conveniently organized and, if the book was printed before 2022, is guaranteed to be free of AI-generated text, which can make any AI model that is trained on it worse via a recursive process called “model collapse.” 📖 Do you know work at a facility where you scan books? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at @emanuel.404. Otherwise, send me an email at emanuel@404media.co. These booksellers suspected AI companies were behind these large bulk purchases because of the high number of books they were buying, the seemingly random choice of books, and the fact that these buyers, unlike libraries and universities, did not seem price sensitive at all. But booksellers couldn’t say for certain who was behind the large purchases because the marketplaces where they sell their books keep the buyers anonymous. When an order comes in, a bookseller ships the sold books to a warehouse operated by the marketplaces, where books are sorted and then sent to the buyer. In July, one bookseller told me they received a very large order of around 1,000 books on Biblio, one of these marketplaces. The seller agreed to put an Apple AirTag provided by 404 Media in one of the books included in this order so we could see where the book was going. And by extension, which company, AI or otherwise, was behind this massive order. 404 Media granted the bookseller anonymity because they worried sharing this information would harm their business. Biblio did not respond to a request for comment. Page · lemmy.dbzer0.com cross-posted from: <a href="https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/74144681" rel="nofollow">lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/74144681</a>The symbol for Amazon’s VGT3, the Las Vegas facility where it scans book for AI training data.Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process.A 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. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands.“Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use,” an Amazon spokesperson told me in a statement.The world’s AI companies are constantly looking for, and spending extreme resources to locate, more material to train their AI models. With books, that sometimes means destroying them in the process, something that large parts of the public have spoken up against, and which we can now confirm Amazon is doing.In July, I published a story about booksellers who reported a historical spike in sales starting in the past year. They suspected this spike in sales was due to AI companies acquiring any books they can in search of new training data. Printed books are valuable as training data because a lot of the text they contain is not readily available on the internet, which AI companies have already scraped. The data is also conveniently organized and, if the book was printed before 2022, is guaranteed to be free of AI-generated text, which can make any AI model that is trained on it worse via a recursive process called “model collapse.”📖Do you know work at a facility where you scan books? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at @emanuel.404. Otherwise, send me an email at emanuel@404media.co.These booksellers suspected AI companies were behind these large bulk purchases because of the high number of books they were buying, the seemingly random choice of books, and the fact that these buyers, unlike libraries and universities, did not seem price sensitive at all. But booksellers couldn’t say for certain who was behind the large purchases because the marketplaces where they sell their books keep the buyers anonymous. When an order comes in, a bookseller ships the sold books to a warehouse operated by the marketplaces, where books are sorted and then sent to the buyer.In July, one bookseller told me they received a very large order of around 1,000 books on Biblio, one of these marketplaces. The seller agreed to put an Apple AirTag provided by 404 Media in one of the books included in this order so we could see where the book was going. And by extension, which company, AI or otherwise, was behind this massive order.404 Media granted the bookseller anonymity because they worried sharing this information would harm their business. Biblio did not respond to a request for comment.We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility<a href="https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/74145057" rel="nofollow">https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/74145057</a>

we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility

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23h

What book(s) are you currently reading or listening to? August 18 Oh, I forgot about today’s weekly thread. So without further ado, What have you all been reading or listening to lately? Check Official Bingo Challenge Post and the accompanying Recommendations Post for our Bingo for 2026! Page · discuss.online Oh, I forgot about today’s weekly thread. So without further ado,What have you all been reading or listening to lately?Check <a href="https://lemmy.world/post/46300888" rel="nofollow">Official Bingo Challenge Post</a> and the accompanying <a href="https://lemmy.world/post/46300898" rel="nofollow">Recommendations Post</a> for our Bingo for 2026!What book(s) are you currently reading or listening to? August 18<a href="https://discuss.online/post/44232568" rel="nofollow">https://discuss.online/post/44232568</a>

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8h

Submerged memory: C.S. Lewis and the art of forgettingby Henry Oliver<a href="https://www.commonreader.co.uk/p/submerged-memory-cs-lewis-and-the" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.commonreader.co.uk/p/submerged-memory-cs-lewis-and-the">https://www.commonreader.co.uk/p/submerged-memory-cs-lewis-and-the</a>More information about C.S. Lewis: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis</a><a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a>

The undergraduates of University College, Trinity term 1917.

A black-and-white studio portrait photograph of a young man, likely a university student, wearing a suit jacket, white collared shirt, and dark tie. He has neatly combed dark hair and a serious expression.

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📚 The Great Alone by: Kristin HannahAlaska, 1974. Ernt Allbright came home from the Vietnam War a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes the impulsive decision to move his wife and daughter north where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.Cora will do anything for the man sh...<a href="https://bookblabla.com/book/the-great-alone" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="bookblabla.com/book/the-great-alone">https://bookblabla.com/book/the-great-alone</a><a href="https://fedigroups.social/@bookstodon" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@bookstodon</a><a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="/tags/reading/" rel="tag">#reading</a> <a href="/tags/libraries/" rel="tag">#libraries</a> <a href="/tags/fiction/" rel="tag">#fiction</a> <a href="/tags/womenfiction/" rel="tag">#womenfiction</a> <a href="/tags/familylife/" rel="tag">#familylife</a> <a href="/tags/thrillers/" rel="tag">#thrillers</a> <a href="/tags/domestic/" rel="tag">#domestic</a>

Alaska, 1974. Ernt Allbright came home from the Vietnam War a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes the impulsive decision to move his wife and daughter north where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Cora will do anything for the man she loves, even if means following him into the unknown. Thirteen-year-old Leni, caught in the riptide of her parents’ passionate, stormy relationship, has little choice but to go along, daring to hope this new land promises her family a better future.

In a wild, remote corner of Alaska, the Allbrights find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the newcomers’ lack of preparation and dwindling resources.

But as winter approaches and darkness descends, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own.

#1 New York Times Instant Bestseller

In Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone, a desperate family seeks a new beginning in the near-isolated wilderness of Alaska only to find that their unpredictable environment is less threatening than the erratic behavior found in human nature.

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