Startled Normie

Don't have a Pokémon sippy cup.
Do have a Goose House coffee mug.
Notaku. Weebn't. NoJo. nEva.
MAL: Startled-Normie

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

@johnfund Like the fruitflies here.

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

This is a horror. Those who thought it up should visit the same shredder. They're more replaceable than the books. As if anyone would want to replace them.

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world."

My Take
This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
ISBNdb's website literally says "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation."

I've covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.
"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline.

Hedgie🤗

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

@Dobiedobes_CD @BNONews I figure you missed my point, which is the insane adoption of "after" though "when" is called for. Such as "was killed after his car hit a pole." Did someone come and finish him off? Or did he die when, not after, he hit the pole. It is news consultant avoidance of past tense.

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

@Dobiedobes_CD @BNONews Wow. Militantly illiterate.

[ウェザーニュース @wni_jp]

【台風情報】
7月28日(火)3時現在、台風13号(ドルフィン)はマーシャル諸島を西に進んでいます。31日(金)にはウェーク島近海で猛烈な勢力となる予想です。 まだ日本からは遠いものの、8月上旬に国内に影響がでる可能性が否定できません。今後の進路に注意してください。
https://t.co/8VmQE995jX

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

@RBrookhiser Didn't run for president, did he? Also, I think he was a Republican. Billy the Kid spoke well of him, for a time.

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

@Lileks Been there, done that.
https://t.co/4LoyxJxaXh

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

@RBrookhiser What is the deal with Democrats named Wallace? We at least picked a Wallace named Trump.

[Phil Kerpen @kerpen]

Fauci August 7, 2021:

"Governor DeSantis is a complete disgrace. He is blocking the local authorities from mandating masks in various locations including schools."

That's why we love you @GovRonDeSantis.

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

@charlesmurray Now do James Joyce!

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

@Marian_L_Tupy Nor Naomi Wu.
https://t.co/Iv9wS2hnUX

[The Jeremy Boreing Show @JBoreingShow]

"I don't think we're friends anymore; he cut me off."

@roddreher visited his friend JD Vance last fall, warning him to draw a red line against groyperism and Jew-hate rising on the right.

The response left Dreher questioning Vance's ability to lead.

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

@NancyAFrench But it will come back.

[Charles Murray @charlesmurray]

Shhh, everyone. Let him try it. It’ll be fun.

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

@Knapsack @RBrookhiser @phillipstheosem Just poked around a little and discovered that Confederate Rock got moved 11 years ago to the Centralia battlefield. Rebels won.
https://t.co/GzXQSVpJWv

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

@asymmetricinfo Yet we're overrun with deer and wild boar and tigers are endangered. Poor bet, apparently.

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

@rickhess99 @EducationNext And before AI could fake pictures.

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

Columbia has curious monuments: Confederate Rock (since moved to some rebel graveyard someplace), Jefferson's tombstone, and the the columns left when Academic Hall and the courthouse burned down, at the south and north ends respectively of Eighth Streets. Which recently they've tried to market as "The Avenue of Columns." Chamber of Commerce there isn't overly bright. Avenue of Ruins, really.

[Startled Normie @StartledNormie]

Probably did. Only in recent years have they seemed to have made a fuss over it. I found out about it by accident when I was a kid and went looking for it. Its existence wasn't widely known locally. You'd have thought they'd make a big deal of it with the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial a/k/a the Gateway Arch. Maybe they were afraid the feds would move it to St. Louis.