๐ฆAI 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.
Hedgie๐ค
โIf your husband cheats, the first thing is to find how to help him come out of the problem. Donโt be self-seeking about it โ Actor Daniel Etim Effiongโ
What heโs trying to say is
๐๐๐๐๐
If your husband cheats on you, do not cheat on him or leave him, find out what you did that made him cheat ๐ซข
Lovecraft Country (2020) hit with that mix of horror, history, and pulp, each episode shifting genres while tying it all back to real-world trauma, and HBO pulling the plug after one season still feels like a massive miss.
Sophia Ahuoyiza is hiring an Executive Assistant.
Not a calendar-blocker or an email-responder. A context manager.
She operates across multiple spaces โ product, tech, business โ simultaneously. She needs someone who can hold the full picture of her work life, keep her ahead of everything, and show up with the same standard she would.
Here is her TLDR:
๐ Core hours: 7 AM โ 3 PM | Output-driven, not hour-driven
๐ฐ โฆ100,000/month for the first 6 months
๐ Fully remote
โฐ My brief lands with me by 7 AM, every day and you build it
What I am looking for:
โ You are proactive. Deeply, consistently, without being reminded
โ You are reliable. Zero excuses
โ You read everything. Meeting notes, documents, long threads โ this is not a role where you outsource your reading to AI
โ You pay attention to details
โ You communicate at a high level and can engage on my behalf when needed
โ You are tech-savvy and you build systems naturally
What this is not:
โ A task-execution role
โ A role for someone with competing commitments or availability gaps right now
โ A full-time employment hire in the first 6 months (no leave, pension, or HMO initially โ this is reviewed after 6 months)
I have zero tolerance for laxity. I will terminate quickly if I notice it. The expectations are set clearly in advance โ that clarity is intentional.
I am also genuinely interested in people who are building towards something. If a career in tech, product, or business is where you are headed, this role will accelerate that.
The search is open for 6 months. I will shortlist within a week. Two-week paid probation.
Read the full JD before applying โ application steps are in there:
https://t.co/U08Fu014mI
Only the exceptional need apply.
Adesuwa: is food, fuel and electricity cheaper where you live?
Spokesman: Fuel is not only expensive in Nigeria. Go to America, the UK, and Canada, I have my family in those countries.
Adesuwa: Nigeria is improving. Why isn't your family here with us? ๐