Ankush

Ultracrepidarian /
Bibliophilically promiscuous

[Ankush @ankushag]

Familiarity is often confused as truth. Is that why frequently repeated falsehood often become indistinguishable from the truth itself?

[Ankush @ankushag]

Rainbows end 😢

[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🤗

[Narendra Modi @narendramodi]

#Congress will have to answer 120 crore people of India about its inhuman act of brutality on innocent protestors http://bit.ly/knpjSJ

[Sarthak Sidhant @sidhant_sarthak]

transparency needs to be accessible.
from today it is.

within the past 2 weeks, around 1 crore 66 lakh records were scraped from the government's CPP Portal.

The Nation's procurement database is now publicly available to all.

link below

[Ankush @ankushag]

@sanitarypanels @juggernautbooks Wao. I have downloaded the Kindle version and will start this on the weekend.

(Unless Juggernaut is gracious enough to send me a hard copy as well)

Kudos to the publishing house.

[Ankush @ankushag]

@Paperclip_In I'm waiting for blame it on nehru to be organised in Mumbai

[Narendra Modi @narendramodi]

Italian marines mercilessly killed our fishermen. If Madam is so 'patriotic' can she tell us in which jail are the marines lodged in?

[Ankush @ankushag]

On this day in 1949, Orwell gave us 1984.

NEWSPEAK, DOUBLETHINK, competing truths, and the struggle over memory all feel familiar.

Some novels age into history. 1984 ages into the present.

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

[Ankush @ankushag]

In India, the river became Tons.

In London, the river became Thames.

But both were originally called Tamasa. The dark one.

(And yes — River Tamari in Georgia, Tamyrus in Lebanon too.)

Ancient names traveling farther than we imagine.

#PIE #Etymology

[Ankush @ankushag]

Dating:

The art of grieving early—
mourning a future
before it's had the chance
to die.

[Ankush @ankushag]

@SadaaShree Wao. How about the current NCPA property at Nariman point?

[Ankush @ankushag]

#Guess the #Monument

[Ankush @ankushag]

एम.ए. करने से नौकरी मिलने तक जो काम किया जाता है, उसे रिसर्च कहते हैं। वह दफ्तर जाने के पहले किया गया हरि-स्मरण है। इसीलिए अधिकांश शोध-प्रबन्ध विष्णुसहस्रनाम हैं—यानी उनमें एक ही बात हजार तरह से कही जाती है

- Harishankar #Parsai
(Nithalle kii diary)
#Quote

[Ankush @ankushag]

@ElysiumCricket @DowloaderBot still working?

[Ankush @ankushag]

@Paperclip_In @debdutta_c @ThePrintIndia Looking forward to your next show in Mumbai (and a discounted/free ticket 😉)

Hopefully after 28th April.

[Ankush @ankushag]

bees saal baad

[jack @jack]

just setting up my twttr

[Ankush @ankushag]

#Quote
#HomageToCatalonia
#GeorgeOrwell

[Ankush @ankushag]

@parasVK And the highest score in one over in a test match is by Bumrah.

[Raghav Chadha @raghav_chadha]

Periods are natural. Stigma is not.

If a girl misses school because there are no sanitary pads, no water and no privacy, it is not her personal problem. It is our collective failure.

We live in a country where alcohol and cigarettes are sold openly, but sanitary pads are still wrapped in newspaper as if they must be hidden. Somewhere along the way, society turned a biological fact into a social taboo.

A matter of science has been turned into a matter of silence.

Menstrual hygiene is not charity. It is not a favour. It is not a side issue.
It is a matter of health, education and equality. Above all, it is a matter of dignity.

Raised this issue in Parliament today because it affects over 35 crore women and girls in India. A nation cannot call itself truly progressive if millions of girls still face fear, shame and silence for something so basic. The real test of progress is simple. The day every girl in India can go to school, live with dignity and speak about this without stigma, that will be the day we can truly say our society has moved forward.

[Ankush @ankushag]

Wao. Another beauty.

[Ankush @ankushag]

Hahaha. That's subtle. This is page 3 and I'm hooked already.

Started reading the much awaited #MrsFunnybonesReturns by @mrsfunnybones