As a librarian...this is fucked beyond all belief but we in the profession have seen it coming. And we're supposed to trust Chat GPT and AI? No. Bloody. Way.
The larger issue is this: remember during COVID when we were told - repeatedly - that "doing your own research" made you Goebbels, or something? As someone who researches professionally that made me *more* determined to do so. So this gaming of search engines is just icing on the cake. I would honestly go back to paper indices at this point.
That experience led me to believe that collecting hard copy books on science, history, and religion is a necessity. The electronic storehouse of information can disappear in an instant; and bad actors are most certainly rewriting everything.
Books on agriculture and pre-Rockefeller home remedies will be incredibly valuable. If I had the means, I would build an airtight underground shelter for this one purpose.
Encyclopedia vols lived in bookcase at foot of front stairs. How many times did I get no further because I had seen an interesting topic on volume spine, and bottom step was a good spot for reading? At supper, any time any of us asked, "what does bpxcv word mean?", my parents replied, "Go look it up in the dictionary"--which was kept just a few feet away, and doing which I hated (so learned not to ask the question), but we all were very comfortable using the adult dictionary.
Great insight. I think I’m going to start collecting hard copies again! To my husband’s rolling eyes I’m sure (where in the heck are we going to store all these?) as I bat my innocent eyes, but hey, I’ll leave details with my kids that upon my death they are not to be thrown away, burned, or given to a library. They must be kept in the family and passed on until such a day when their existence is an absolute necessity to prove factual history.
One day an archaeologist will uncover your copy of "1984" and "Animal Farm" and conclude these were instruction manuals for the 21st century governments.
Well definitely older prints of the Bible given how fast they are changing the original language in it to be inclusive of women in areas where it originally just says “brothers” or “men” (ugh get over it women! You’re hurting the whole world with your nonsense!) And any old schoolbooks about government and the constitution before they started rewriting those. History books both national and world before they started removing the truth. All the classics. Great writers who were exceptional in their time, like CS Lewis, HG Wells, Orwell, Twain, Hemingway, all the goodies too many to list off top of my head; definitely everything written by our founding fathers whether I agree with their political approach or not. Any personal biographical accounts. 🤷🏼♀️
Older prints of Bible--I'm currently reading(on phone, as I can display 3 texts at time) KJV 1611, Giovanni Diodati 1649, Louis Segond 1910. Husband gave me a Geneva 1560 for my birthday 3 weeks ago.
I’ve been seriously buying books for 4 years. I’ve always collected books, but it’s now a matter of making sure my kids and grandkids have access to reality
Many books come to me _used_ from sellers like Thriftbooks.
And I've noticed a trend that is troublesome... some of the more "controversial" titles are fresh from library's stacks - culled for content deemed "unsuitable"? .... by nameless wokesters that have burrowed in like termites.
You need to do so. The new cohort of librarians I encounter are the ones most willing to toss "problematic" titles into the proverbial fire. I'm not sure a more censorious generation has ever existed.
I've purchased a lot of what the lefties would deem controversial and unacceptable books from thrift books and others. A few were ex-library books and had a stamp "removed from circulation." I'm guessing they had been censored from the library. Perhaps someone complained.
Equally valuable would be to make high-quality scans of books. These can be OCRed to make proper ebooks, but that process is not foolproof and requires proofreading, formatting etc. Having a photographic image of the original lends authenticity and allows for verification. Of course any of that too can be altered by bad actors, but so could a real book, although the effort would be harder of course. Finally is the problem of preservation. Paper records have all manner of problems with preservation. Time, moisture, air pollution, the risk of fire, etc. probably have erased more records than any deliberate human destruction, whether an inconsiderate patron ripping pages out of a book so he needn’t be bothered wiring info down or making a photocopy, or more organized censorship or book burning. Electronic images are not immune to these risks either.
Sure paper copies degrade with time, but have you tried using any digital media from, say, 1995? The books I purchased in 1985 are still legible. The floppy disc from 1995 is not even a good coaster.
Ever watch Soylent Green? Edward G Robinson's character seeks out that coven of hidden librarians with the banned books tucked away in their secret library? I thought that would always be science fiction but...
Fiendish Librarian: All of it IS fucked up beyond belief; however, at least in the States (or some states) librarians have been leftist loons for my librarian-husband’s entire career of 30 years (he was a lone conservative in all of the librarian groups).
I am also in a very research-involved profession & I couldn’t believe how many supposedly “intelligent” people in fields like law & medicine bought into the bullshit w/out…researching
Lordy, yes. Our director was a dictator for almost a year and required masks for a year. Hence, my being hounded out of the building at one point. I lDemanded holds after that be placed on a cart outdoors for months. I pay for the damn place. They are MY books. One gal worker only recently took her mask off For God’s Sake. Still behind plexi however. 🙄
I have always kept hard copy books, lots of them starting with an HG Wells anthology I bought in grade school at 8yrs old.. In 2019 and 2020 when we were downsizing to a small house, I had to get rid of many books. 8 cases to friends of the library, about the same to a book exchange and a bunch more to a charity. I still have quite a lot. but i had to triage and gave away the great books set of 24 vol., several old sets of encyclopedias, some history books and dictionaries. I kind of wish I had them back. It is hard to memory hole printed sources.
I had to leave 7 or 8 cases of books when I came to the States from Europe. 2 cases should have been kept for next visits, but my parents accidentally gave all of them away. I have found a few replacements, but not all, and regret the loss, specially since they were in Dutch and now and then I miss my old language LOL
In the 1970s I had a friend with and 1800s illustrated copy of the Grimm's Fairy tales. It was so lovely to look at though I could not read it. My closest such treasure is the 1889 2 volume set of THE VIKING AGE by Paul B. Du Chaillu. Lovely steel engraved image plates throughout and s few photo plates. I have learned more about the subject than all the other Viking books and YouTube videos combined.
I still have an 1887 Arabian Nights from a great aunt. I found a copy with the same lithographs for my stepson, but it has languished on the shelf.
We bought a fancy Grimm's for my wife at a bookshop in Arundel while visiting in England in 2018. I still regret cheaping out and not buying the companion Andersen's!
As a hoarder, I of course have retained my childhood two volume set.
Scour the thrift stores and garage sales! Most people don’t read many books any longer, and they can be picked up very cheaply! Maybe not in Dutch, though…
I buy quite a lot at thriftbooks. usually their prices are good and the books are in good condition most of the time, only had one disappointment so far
Me too, Amy thank God I have a lot of children’s books from my kids when they were little, but I would’ve saved every single one of them if I knew after the 2000s they would start to get perverted with too much feminism and belittling of males.
I had the Encyclopedia Brittanica set to read as a kid. My father bought it in the 1970's. There was another very interesting set called "The Book of Knowledge". I believe it was published in the 1950's, but it briefly described how everything created up to that time worked.
I grew up with Enclyclopedia Brittanica. The Book of Knowledge sounds interesting. DK from the UK has some good books that explain how things work, its a series for kids but is very detailed.
Better yet (maybe), in addition to paper which can get cumbersome, your own cloud: buy/build your own NAS/redundant external storage - tens of terabytes at hand, protected, redundant for a couple thousand $$$
In the novel “Vandenberg” (1972) by Oliver Lange: the Soviet Union has successfully invaded America. The hero of the story (Vandenberg) resists, fighting as a guerilla and keeping a diary. Alas, he eventually dies. The novel ends with one of his allies, an illiterate old Mexican who escapes, who finds the diary and having no other use for it, uses the pages to start his cooking fire.
the last 2 years I have gone back to paper books. it seems reading on the computer is more tiresome on the eyes as well as paper books reading seems to cling in my mind better. Screen is so temporary!
I find that from a printed book, I have a memory of where (left page or right, top or toward bottom) I have read something, and so can go back to find it, Digital has no sense of space for me. Yes, there may be a search function, but in writing this comment, I wonder if we lose a valuable exercise of mental faculty with digital reading. Actually, I have returned to these comments because I was reading the post 7/28 as we were on the road---car on road not conducive to note-taking--and wanted to note down the many search engine options you all offered.
I'm also big into researching and trusting paper at this point.
That said, my local library has changed since the lockdown period. Not sure if there were some retirements or a change in personnel/leadership, but I discovered that the library will no longer purchase any books (including classics) that are older than 5 years old. Shocking! I will vote against any future levy because this policy serves nobody except those trying to change or cover over history now.
I have always been greatly admiring of the fact that the biggest empires the world has known were run by guys with quill pens making entries in gigantic ledgers.
Let me ask this: Why would we trust AI like Chat GPT?
What is called generative AI is based on the principles of machine learning. The "intelligence" is the ability to learn from input. The resulting behavior is "intelligent" if we would consider it so coming from a human. Humans form views and bias based on the material from which they learned. This is why control of education is crucial in controlling mindset. This is equally true for AI - it is subject to conditioning just as are humans. Bias is assured.
This leads to many complex ethical and social questions and concerns. A lot of human grey cycles are being spent on these questions. Some think that bias can be neutralized. In my experience, people who think that have a view of "unbiased" that is aligned with their personal bias. Many have embraced the reality as a means to shape AI to further "the greater good" (again, as they see it) in much the same way suppressing certain aspects of history, biology and physics have furthered socio-political goals. This too is assured.
You can trust AI as much as you trust it's teachers.
I stopped going to my local library b/c the shelves are bare. Every book I wanted to checkout was in digital format and most on a waitlist. Very sad. I loved going to the library!
when I open the substack there is a small printer icon on the upper right of the screen. I click that. It shows Print at the top. Under that is shows Destination with a drop down arrow that displays printers and options and "Save to PDF" I select that. It saves as a PDF with the article title headed with my email. I delete the email heading and replace it with the author name. In this case Bad Cattitude. This all goes to Downloads. then I want to move it to a file on my D drive or a file on an expansion drive I labeled "Sort." I take the additional step of opening the PDF and removing my email information so if I share the file, I don't have my email drifting around. From my Sort file I distribute the PDFs to folders off my computer on an expansion drive into folders titled with the names of the authors. But, wait there's more (LOL) I have subject folders that the author folders are in such as: Coof Folder (covid), Globalism Folder, Politics Folder. I distribute the PDFs along with other articles into those Folders with the author folders already in them. In the case of Bad Cattitude there may be a folder in each of the 3 master categories. ( I use a Dell XPS desktop work station, so my process may be slightly different than an Apple system. Mine has a C drive and a D drive with much more memory. I like to get stuff off the C drive to conserve resources. I have 2 Expansion drives, one 4 terabyte and one 6 terabytes which I occasionally bring up to date and keep in another location so if something like a fire happens I don't loose everything. I also store my expansion drives and back up drives in Faraday bags. When I use my laptop, I only have the C drive so I am always using a backup drive or thumb drive to move files to. Recently I discovered 2 TB SSD on Amazon. they are compact and handy, but a bit expensive. Mine is a Samsung T7.
I subscribe to Naomi Wolf's substack. I just watched most of her recent video with her husband. She believes we are already in a civil war. I cannot stop thinking about that.
It's impressive how one can simply do a few minutes of work and prove beyond doubt that the corporate media is full of shit.
My wife's cousin recently told me that she hates Trump "because he called McCain a loser for getting captured in Viet Nam."
Knowing that EVERY Trump quote I've seen in the media has always been misrepresented in some significant way, I looked into it.
Voila, Trump actually called McCain a loser for losing the presidential election after Trump raised a million dollars for McCain's campaign, not for getting captured:
But as usual, bogus misinformation continues to circulate even years later, because people need some reason to justify their TDS. Otherwise, they simply look insane.
My sister knows Catholics who believe, still, that Trump was responsible for putting kids in cages. A lie travels around the world while the truth is still putting on its pants. Sigh.
The first thing people read tends to be what they remember. The left knows this, and puts out deliberate lies. Even if the lies later get corrected, people remember the original lie and think it's the truth.
I love him, but Trump could limit just how much he is misquoted if he stopped using so many unnecessary words and going on several thought tangents then trying to get back to the question. He makes it too easy for him to be misrepresented. In the world he came from the way he talks works, but it doesn’t in politics.
True, Trump rambles and is often hard to follow, and this very quote is a good example:
"I will tell you John McCain goes oh boy Trump makes my life difficult. He had 15000 crazies show up, crazies. He called them all crazy. I said they weren't crazy. They were great Americans. These people if you would have seen these people you -- I know what a crazy is. I know all about crazies. These weren't crazies. So he insulted me and he insulted everybody in that room and I said somebody should run against John McCain who has been, you know in my opinion, not so hot. And I supported him. I supported him for president. I raised a million dollars for him, it's a lot of money. I supported and he lost. He let us down. But you know, he lost. So I never liked him as much after that because I don't like losers. But Frank, Frank let me get to it. He hit me... He's not a war hero. He's a war hero, he's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured OK I hate to tell you. He's a war hero because he was captured OK. You could have and I believe perhaps he's a war hero but, but right now he said some very bad things about a lot of people. So what I said is John McCain I disagree with him that these people aren't crazy. "
Thanks for providing this verbatim quote. I was acutely aware of the “some good people” misrepresentation from the get-go, but missed this McCain loser quote.
By the way, if you want to see the difference between Shrapnel and a Bullet, check out the Hezbollah Shrapnel that killed 12 kids playing soccer.
The Shrapnel in Butler, Pa. from whom ever (still not sure how a garage door opener on Crooks fires an IED) from IEDs never went off.
So our Dir of FBI Wray doesn’t know the difference between a cartridge (not yet used casing, powder and bullet) and a brass casing. Or the difference between a bullet and shrapnel.
If we then infer he’s not that “lowly informed/educated” …meaning he did it purposely to seed confusion and conspiracy rabbit holes to hide the real scenario (which JD Vance laid out yesterday at Trump’s rally), then he needs to be indicted as a co-conspirator. Either way he and Mayorkas need to be fired.
Similarly, the other day I was searching for "Lies told by media about Trump" and all sorts of similar searches (looking for a list of the things the main stream media had said about Trump that turned out to be false, from Russia collusion to "good people on both sides" type of stuff). Guess what? The I found hundreds of links to "lies that trump told" and only ONE for lies told about him, and it was buried deep in the search.
for issues where I know where there are strong gaslighting incentives I turn to Russian search engine yandex which shock of shocks returns the results you were looking for.
Isn’t yandex the Russian search engine? If so, those of us if a certain age feel like we’re in something of a Twilight Zone that the country of Pravda is the one not being Pravda’ed.
Sorry I posted before reading yours! It’s a weird place that we are looking up assassination attempts in our country on a Russian search engine (insert googly eyes here)
I hear that! I jumped to that one first for precisely that reason--to see if the theory that the search results were "curated" was more plausible than the theory presented above.
Interesting. I had problems back in April trying to find the proper dosing of Ivermectin once virus symptoms are in full swing and all ANY search engine I knew about returned was link after link about why you should not take it for a virus and how the FDA didn’t approve it for that use. I didn’t ask that, I asked what the dosing was. I never could get the info that I knew was out there because I saw it back in 2020. Just now I went to Yandex.com and ALL the results are appropriate for my what my search was actually for. I think I will use that search engine first from now on. Thanks for tipping me off to it! ❤️
I find it a useful second source for finding things the Western search engines may have edited out or downranked. But bear in mind that Yandex too might be curated to reflect an official point of view, in this case, a Russian one.
Ok good to know. I’ll keep my mind open about that. But these days I can’t help but wonder if Russia tells the truth more because the truth is a threat to the American government. LOLA. Why wouldn’t Russia then want to proclaim it?
I swear I never thought I’d live to see the day where American internet was censored but not Russia’s. 🤣🤣 We definitely are in the Twilight Zone!
I checked Yandex too and thought maybe it was because of international articles but most of them are US-based, including Fox and CNN on the first page.
As soon as you pointed it out, I went to the search engines and entered “assassination” and “assassination attempt.” There were no auto completes, but some (like ecosia) returned all top stories on Trump, and some, like google, stonewalled.
As a librarian...this is fucked beyond all belief but we in the profession have seen it coming. And we're supposed to trust Chat GPT and AI? No. Bloody. Way.
The larger issue is this: remember during COVID when we were told - repeatedly - that "doing your own research" made you Goebbels, or something? As someone who researches professionally that made me *more* determined to do so. So this gaming of search engines is just icing on the cake. I would honestly go back to paper indices at this point.
That experience led me to believe that collecting hard copy books on science, history, and religion is a necessity. The electronic storehouse of information can disappear in an instant; and bad actors are most certainly rewriting everything.
Books on agriculture and pre-Rockefeller home remedies will be incredibly valuable. If I had the means, I would build an airtight underground shelter for this one purpose.
And un-bowdlerized children's classics.
Good use of the term. I think people forget its origins.
I was one of those weird kids who read the dictionary for fun.
Dictionaries are being re-written in real time. Hold on to old editions.
Cold dead hands 'n all that.
I wish I had kept my dads encyclopedias!
Encyclopedia vols lived in bookcase at foot of front stairs. How many times did I get no further because I had seen an interesting topic on volume spine, and bottom step was a good spot for reading? At supper, any time any of us asked, "what does bpxcv word mean?", my parents replied, "Go look it up in the dictionary"--which was kept just a few feet away, and doing which I hated (so learned not to ask the question), but we all were very comfortable using the adult dictionary.
I'm not giving away my kid's Dr. Seuss, for sure.
And seal original Little Golden Books in archival-quality sleeves.
Isn't it funny? Back in the olden days, authors of children's books used animal characters that *any child anywhere* could easily identify with.
Great insight. I think I’m going to start collecting hard copies again! To my husband’s rolling eyes I’m sure (where in the heck are we going to store all these?) as I bat my innocent eyes, but hey, I’ll leave details with my kids that upon my death they are not to be thrown away, burned, or given to a library. They must be kept in the family and passed on until such a day when their existence is an absolute necessity to prove factual history.
One day an archaeologist will uncover your copy of "1984" and "Animal Farm" and conclude these were instruction manuals for the 21st century governments.
Farenheit 451
Which tomes do you feel are especially vital to keep on hand in the coming dark days?
Well definitely older prints of the Bible given how fast they are changing the original language in it to be inclusive of women in areas where it originally just says “brothers” or “men” (ugh get over it women! You’re hurting the whole world with your nonsense!) And any old schoolbooks about government and the constitution before they started rewriting those. History books both national and world before they started removing the truth. All the classics. Great writers who were exceptional in their time, like CS Lewis, HG Wells, Orwell, Twain, Hemingway, all the goodies too many to list off top of my head; definitely everything written by our founding fathers whether I agree with their political approach or not. Any personal biographical accounts. 🤷🏼♀️
Older prints of Bible--I'm currently reading(on phone, as I can display 3 texts at time) KJV 1611, Giovanni Diodati 1649, Louis Segond 1910. Husband gave me a Geneva 1560 for my birthday 3 weeks ago.
You go girl.
I’ve been seriously buying books for 4 years. I’ve always collected books, but it’s now a matter of making sure my kids and grandkids have access to reality
Many books come to me _used_ from sellers like Thriftbooks.
And I've noticed a trend that is troublesome... some of the more "controversial" titles are fresh from library's stacks - culled for content deemed "unsuitable"? .... by nameless wokesters that have burrowed in like termites.
Yes. I also use thriftbooks.
The library where I volunteer has kept the classics, but others are purging the more traditional titles. That’s why I’m buying
You need to do so. The new cohort of librarians I encounter are the ones most willing to toss "problematic" titles into the proverbial fire. I'm not sure a more censorious generation has ever existed.
Taking only a glance at the American Library Association and its leadership says all you need to know. Marx would be so proud.
I've purchased a lot of what the lefties would deem controversial and unacceptable books from thrift books and others. A few were ex-library books and had a stamp "removed from circulation." I'm guessing they had been censored from the library. Perhaps someone complained.
We set up all the big brother books in a display by the main desk so they would be seen and read Lol
Yes to buying/collecting hard copy of EVERYTHING that lives in electronica but that could all vanish in the blink of a grid collapse.
And even as electronica marches on sans book burning, we are living a version of Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451".
Equally valuable would be to make high-quality scans of books. These can be OCRed to make proper ebooks, but that process is not foolproof and requires proofreading, formatting etc. Having a photographic image of the original lends authenticity and allows for verification. Of course any of that too can be altered by bad actors, but so could a real book, although the effort would be harder of course. Finally is the problem of preservation. Paper records have all manner of problems with preservation. Time, moisture, air pollution, the risk of fire, etc. probably have erased more records than any deliberate human destruction, whether an inconsiderate patron ripping pages out of a book so he needn’t be bothered wiring info down or making a photocopy, or more organized censorship or book burning. Electronic images are not immune to these risks either.
Sure paper copies degrade with time, but have you tried using any digital media from, say, 1995? The books I purchased in 1985 are still legible. The floppy disc from 1995 is not even a good coaster.
Shades of Fahrenheit 451.
Ever watch Soylent Green? Edward G Robinson's character seeks out that coven of hidden librarians with the banned books tucked away in their secret library? I thought that would always be science fiction but...
Especially kids books because all the books now have feminism and a lot of other perversion. I’m so glad I saved my kids books from 30 years ago.
Brilliant!!
Fiendish Librarian: All of it IS fucked up beyond belief; however, at least in the States (or some states) librarians have been leftist loons for my librarian-husband’s entire career of 30 years (he was a lone conservative in all of the librarian groups).
I am also in a very research-involved profession & I couldn’t believe how many supposedly “intelligent” people in fields like law & medicine bought into the bullshit w/out…researching
Lordy, yes. Our director was a dictator for almost a year and required masks for a year. Hence, my being hounded out of the building at one point. I lDemanded holds after that be placed on a cart outdoors for months. I pay for the damn place. They are MY books. One gal worker only recently took her mask off For God’s Sake. Still behind plexi however. 🙄
It's as bad, if not worse, in Canada.
"I would honestly go back to paper indices at this point."
Man, it's sure hot out.
*licks finger, holds up*
Feels like about 233°C.
That's 451 Fahrenheit, for you people still using Imperial Units.
Getting a little smug with the metric system, aren't we?
I studied a little science back in the day.
Behold the Powers of 10.
It's mean to pick on minorities 🤣😂
🤭
There are two types of countries in the world, those that use the Metric System and those that...
....grew up with US schooling.
...have been to the moon.
Werner von Braun was German. I'll bet he knew his way around a meter stick.
Loved that book
I have always kept hard copy books, lots of them starting with an HG Wells anthology I bought in grade school at 8yrs old.. In 2019 and 2020 when we were downsizing to a small house, I had to get rid of many books. 8 cases to friends of the library, about the same to a book exchange and a bunch more to a charity. I still have quite a lot. but i had to triage and gave away the great books set of 24 vol., several old sets of encyclopedias, some history books and dictionaries. I kind of wish I had them back. It is hard to memory hole printed sources.
I had to leave 7 or 8 cases of books when I came to the States from Europe. 2 cases should have been kept for next visits, but my parents accidentally gave all of them away. I have found a few replacements, but not all, and regret the loss, specially since they were in Dutch and now and then I miss my old language LOL
In the 1970s I had a friend with and 1800s illustrated copy of the Grimm's Fairy tales. It was so lovely to look at though I could not read it. My closest such treasure is the 1889 2 volume set of THE VIKING AGE by Paul B. Du Chaillu. Lovely steel engraved image plates throughout and s few photo plates. I have learned more about the subject than all the other Viking books and YouTube videos combined.
I still have an 1887 Arabian Nights from a great aunt. I found a copy with the same lithographs for my stepson, but it has languished on the shelf.
We bought a fancy Grimm's for my wife at a bookshop in Arundel while visiting in England in 2018. I still regret cheaping out and not buying the companion Andersen's!
As a hoarder, I of course have retained my childhood two volume set.
We hope future generations will find and appreciate these books
Scour the thrift stores and garage sales! Most people don’t read many books any longer, and they can be picked up very cheaply! Maybe not in Dutch, though…
I buy quite a lot at thriftbooks. usually their prices are good and the books are in good condition most of the time, only had one disappointment so far
Gosh, now I am REALLY happy I have hung on the the Winkler Prins and
the Funk and Wagnals. They are in boxes and in mint condition
Ingrid, I have the old Winkler Prins from the 1940s 50s
Ouch. This hurts to imagine, but I’ve also had to get rid of a lot of books. There’s just not space. But I wish I had them all back now.
Me too, Amy thank God I have a lot of children’s books from my kids when they were little, but I would’ve saved every single one of them if I knew after the 2000s they would start to get perverted with too much feminism and belittling of males.
I’m looking for an encyclopedia set- is there one of a particular vintage you would recommend?
I had the Encyclopedia Brittanica set to read as a kid. My father bought it in the 1970's. There was another very interesting set called "The Book of Knowledge". I believe it was published in the 1950's, but it briefly described how everything created up to that time worked.
I grew up with Enclyclopedia Brittanica. The Book of Knowledge sounds interesting. DK from the UK has some good books that explain how things work, its a series for kids but is very detailed.
Old 20 volume sets of the "Book of Knowledge" are still available on eBay. I believe it was last published in 1952.
We also had Brittanica, also early 70s. It had color photos of the the Apollo 11 Crew and the whole mission.
I’m looking at a set from 1994, Is that the last time things were kind of normal?
Maybe. 1970's would be better.
Funk and Wagnals was the one I grew up with. it is from the 60s
I have old Funk and Wagnells from the 60's
I have Winkler Prins (Dutch encyclopedia from the 40s, lots of maps and cools stuff)
I gotta recommend Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything"
Print out everything you have of importance, wrap it in industrial plastic and bury it in the back yard. You'll need to dig it out sometime.
I would prefer we eliminate the leftists and fascist globalists who are making this discussion necessary. By ANY means available.
Better yet (maybe), in addition to paper which can get cumbersome, your own cloud: buy/build your own NAS/redundant external storage - tens of terabytes at hand, protected, redundant for a couple thousand $$$
When there's no power you'll need paper.
I did agree, "in addition to paper"
I will say that rather than a hole in the backyard I store my valuables, paper or otherwise, IN A SAFE.
In the novel “Vandenberg” (1972) by Oliver Lange: the Soviet Union has successfully invaded America. The hero of the story (Vandenberg) resists, fighting as a guerilla and keeping a diary. Alas, he eventually dies. The novel ends with one of his allies, an illiterate old Mexican who escapes, who finds the diary and having no other use for it, uses the pages to start his cooking fire.
Similar soul destroying scene in Dances with Wolves, log book used as toilet paper.
What a terrible worldview, as if there’s no God and no hope 🤦♀️
That sounds like a "prequel" for "A Canticle for Liebowitz."
the last 2 years I have gone back to paper books. it seems reading on the computer is more tiresome on the eyes as well as paper books reading seems to cling in my mind better. Screen is so temporary!
I find that from a printed book, I have a memory of where (left page or right, top or toward bottom) I have read something, and so can go back to find it, Digital has no sense of space for me. Yes, there may be a search function, but in writing this comment, I wonder if we lose a valuable exercise of mental faculty with digital reading. Actually, I have returned to these comments because I was reading the post 7/28 as we were on the road---car on road not conducive to note-taking--and wanted to note down the many search engine options you all offered.
I'm also big into researching and trusting paper at this point.
That said, my local library has changed since the lockdown period. Not sure if there were some retirements or a change in personnel/leadership, but I discovered that the library will no longer purchase any books (including classics) that are older than 5 years old. Shocking! I will vote against any future levy because this policy serves nobody except those trying to change or cover over history now.
which is why I bought all the books by substackers so that my grandkids can know the truth some day!
I have always been greatly admiring of the fact that the biggest empires the world has known were run by guys with quill pens making entries in gigantic ledgers.
Let me ask this: Why would we trust AI like Chat GPT?
What is called generative AI is based on the principles of machine learning. The "intelligence" is the ability to learn from input. The resulting behavior is "intelligent" if we would consider it so coming from a human. Humans form views and bias based on the material from which they learned. This is why control of education is crucial in controlling mindset. This is equally true for AI - it is subject to conditioning just as are humans. Bias is assured.
This leads to many complex ethical and social questions and concerns. A lot of human grey cycles are being spent on these questions. Some think that bias can be neutralized. In my experience, people who think that have a view of "unbiased" that is aligned with their personal bias. Many have embraced the reality as a means to shape AI to further "the greater good" (again, as they see it) in much the same way suppressing certain aspects of history, biology and physics have furthered socio-political goals. This too is assured.
You can trust AI as much as you trust it's teachers.
I stopped going to my local library b/c the shelves are bare. Every book I wanted to checkout was in digital format and most on a waitlist. Very sad. I loved going to the library!
Agree about the paper indices!!
Libraries recycled card catalogs a couple of decades ago, alas.
I tried to post this article to Fakebook and it was immediately removed because they claim I was “trying to get likes and follows in a misleading way”
Jackasses - this will get worse the closer to the election we get
Facebook has been an Intelligence operation from the beginning.
"Trying to get likes"??? Isn't that the whole point of FB?
"and it was immediately removed because"
🎯
AND BEYOND! This evil and their evil, simpleton pawns, are pervasive.
Screen shot everything - has to be done
I also pdf many of the substack articles. Even if Substack disappears those pdfs will be around.
How do pdf the articles? That’s a great idea.
when I open the substack there is a small printer icon on the upper right of the screen. I click that. It shows Print at the top. Under that is shows Destination with a drop down arrow that displays printers and options and "Save to PDF" I select that. It saves as a PDF with the article title headed with my email. I delete the email heading and replace it with the author name. In this case Bad Cattitude. This all goes to Downloads. then I want to move it to a file on my D drive or a file on an expansion drive I labeled "Sort." I take the additional step of opening the PDF and removing my email information so if I share the file, I don't have my email drifting around. From my Sort file I distribute the PDFs to folders off my computer on an expansion drive into folders titled with the names of the authors. But, wait there's more (LOL) I have subject folders that the author folders are in such as: Coof Folder (covid), Globalism Folder, Politics Folder. I distribute the PDFs along with other articles into those Folders with the author folders already in them. In the case of Bad Cattitude there may be a folder in each of the 3 master categories. ( I use a Dell XPS desktop work station, so my process may be slightly different than an Apple system. Mine has a C drive and a D drive with much more memory. I like to get stuff off the C drive to conserve resources. I have 2 Expansion drives, one 4 terabyte and one 6 terabytes which I occasionally bring up to date and keep in another location so if something like a fire happens I don't loose everything. I also store my expansion drives and back up drives in Faraday bags. When I use my laptop, I only have the C drive so I am always using a backup drive or thumb drive to move files to. Recently I discovered 2 TB SSD on Amazon. they are compact and handy, but a bit expensive. Mine is a Samsung T7.
I save substacks as pdfs also. I have a Mac and I go to File > Export as pdf. Can do it from the email itself or once opened in the browser.
Excellent. Thank you for the info!
and make pdfs to store off your computer as well as the screen shot files. And, don't forget your own family history.
I subscribe to Naomi Wolf's substack. I just watched most of her recent video with her husband. She believes we are already in a civil war. I cannot stop thinking about that.
Obama lit the fire. The revolution has been smoldering and breaking out once in a while to full blown violence as we know.
Bingo
Started in 2016.
Nada. At least the FBI issued a statement that it was a bullet that grazed Trumps ear…. Despite Director Wray’s inappropriate speculation……
It's impressive how one can simply do a few minutes of work and prove beyond doubt that the corporate media is full of shit.
My wife's cousin recently told me that she hates Trump "because he called McCain a loser for getting captured in Viet Nam."
Knowing that EVERY Trump quote I've seen in the media has always been misrepresented in some significant way, I looked into it.
Voila, Trump actually called McCain a loser for losing the presidential election after Trump raised a million dollars for McCain's campaign, not for getting captured:
https://patrick.net/post/1381754/2024-07-27-trump-quote-about-mccain-was-horribly
But as usual, bogus misinformation continues to circulate even years later, because people need some reason to justify their TDS. Otherwise, they simply look insane.
He was being nice about McCain being a loser. It would've been more accurate to say he was a traitor.
Yes, yes he was. He was the only POW that GAINED weight while in captivity.
My sister knows Catholics who believe, still, that Trump was responsible for putting kids in cages. A lie travels around the world while the truth is still putting on its pants. Sigh.
Lol, I tell them about Obama's kid cages and they don't believe me, regardless of how much proof I show.
The first thing people read tends to be what they remember. The left knows this, and puts out deliberate lies. Even if the lies later get corrected, people remember the original lie and think it's the truth.
I love him, but Trump could limit just how much he is misquoted if he stopped using so many unnecessary words and going on several thought tangents then trying to get back to the question. He makes it too easy for him to be misrepresented. In the world he came from the way he talks works, but it doesn’t in politics.
True, Trump rambles and is often hard to follow, and this very quote is a good example:
"I will tell you John McCain goes oh boy Trump makes my life difficult. He had 15000 crazies show up, crazies. He called them all crazy. I said they weren't crazy. They were great Americans. These people if you would have seen these people you -- I know what a crazy is. I know all about crazies. These weren't crazies. So he insulted me and he insulted everybody in that room and I said somebody should run against John McCain who has been, you know in my opinion, not so hot. And I supported him. I supported him for president. I raised a million dollars for him, it's a lot of money. I supported and he lost. He let us down. But you know, he lost. So I never liked him as much after that because I don't like losers. But Frank, Frank let me get to it. He hit me... He's not a war hero. He's a war hero, he's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured OK I hate to tell you. He's a war hero because he was captured OK. You could have and I believe perhaps he's a war hero but, but right now he said some very bad things about a lot of people. So what I said is John McCain I disagree with him that these people aren't crazy. "
Thanks for providing this verbatim quote. I was acutely aware of the “some good people” misrepresentation from the get-go, but missed this McCain loser quote.
I myself was quite shocked to learn that Trump had raised so much money for McCain. It is literally never mentioned in the corporate media.
Exactly. The point is buried and the media LOVES this.
By the way, if you want to see the difference between Shrapnel and a Bullet, check out the Hezbollah Shrapnel that killed 12 kids playing soccer.
The Shrapnel in Butler, Pa. from whom ever (still not sure how a garage door opener on Crooks fires an IED) from IEDs never went off.
So our Dir of FBI Wray doesn’t know the difference between a cartridge (not yet used casing, powder and bullet) and a brass casing. Or the difference between a bullet and shrapnel.
If we then infer he’s not that “lowly informed/educated” …meaning he did it purposely to seed confusion and conspiracy rabbit holes to hide the real scenario (which JD Vance laid out yesterday at Trump’s rally), then he needs to be indicted as a co-conspirator. Either way he and Mayorkas need to be fired.
Similarly, the other day I was searching for "Lies told by media about Trump" and all sorts of similar searches (looking for a list of the things the main stream media had said about Trump that turned out to be false, from Russia collusion to "good people on both sides" type of stuff). Guess what? The I found hundreds of links to "lies that trump told" and only ONE for lies told about him, and it was buried deep in the search.
Sharyl Attkisson keeps a running list of those lies.
And this
https://vigilantnews.com/post/search-engine-manipulation-and-the-2024-presidential-election/
I just tried it. You're right.
I just succeeded on FB
for issues where I know where there are strong gaslighting incentives I turn to Russian search engine yandex which shock of shocks returns the results you were looking for.
Go ahead and add "Trum" to that ("assassination attempt on Trum....")
Still no Trump. They show Truman instead.
It wasn’t an assassination attempt;it was a long distance involuntary ear piercing procedure. Wonder if that comes up in google?
Lolol
Yup. If no one says the tree fell, why would you listen for the echo? You have to know it happened.
https://vigilantnews.com/post/search-engine-manipulation-and-the-2024-presidential-election/
Heck. If I told my (now likely former) Friend From Fifth Grade, she'd say we're all a bunch of Dark Webbies.
Isn’t yandex the Russian search engine? If so, those of us if a certain age feel like we’re in something of a Twilight Zone that the country of Pravda is the one not being Pravda’ed.
Perhaps we've fallen through a mirror into one of those really bad post-apocalyptical SF novels?
It's like Deja Vu all over again. Except a mirror version.
Well, there's your problemo right there: "...at the media level..."
The Googler should have tried "...fell down due to loud sounds..."
That is how it was first reported, IIRC.
Future HS students will do Research Papers on Presidents Who Fell Down.
Will there be a distinction between Presidents who fell down after loud noises, and presidents who just fall down like Joe Biden?
But, of course.
These History Ph.D. theses aren't going to write themselves!
"A Study and Comparison of Presidents Who Fell Down and Presidents Who Fell Down after Loud Noises in the Context of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion"
This doctoral dissertation will practically write itself.
"These History Ph.D. theses aren't going to write themselves!"
Nah, they're gonna be written by AI.
(Or, in true Ivy League fashion, simply plagiarized from someone else's work)
Work smarter not harder!
🤣🤣🤣
Yandex.com comes up with plenty of Trump hits on this search term, many of them with dates more than a week old.
Sorry I posted before reading yours! It’s a weird place that we are looking up assassination attempts in our country on a Russian search engine (insert googly eyes here)
I hear that! I jumped to that one first for precisely that reason--to see if the theory that the search results were "curated" was more plausible than the theory presented above.
Interesting. I had problems back in April trying to find the proper dosing of Ivermectin once virus symptoms are in full swing and all ANY search engine I knew about returned was link after link about why you should not take it for a virus and how the FDA didn’t approve it for that use. I didn’t ask that, I asked what the dosing was. I never could get the info that I knew was out there because I saw it back in 2020. Just now I went to Yandex.com and ALL the results are appropriate for my what my search was actually for. I think I will use that search engine first from now on. Thanks for tipping me off to it! ❤️
I find it a useful second source for finding things the Western search engines may have edited out or downranked. But bear in mind that Yandex too might be curated to reflect an official point of view, in this case, a Russian one.
Ok good to know. I’ll keep my mind open about that. But these days I can’t help but wonder if Russia tells the truth more because the truth is a threat to the American government. LOLA. Why wouldn’t Russia then want to proclaim it?
I swear I never thought I’d live to see the day where American internet was censored but not Russia’s. 🤣🤣 We definitely are in the Twilight Zone!
Comments are great! I learned of Yandex, Mojeek, and Swiss Cows (which I haven't tried yet) from them.
I checked Yandex too and thought maybe it was because of international articles but most of them are US-based, including Fox and CNN on the first page.
As soon as you pointed it out, I went to the search engines and entered “assassination” and “assassination attempt.” There were no auto completes, but some (like ecosia) returned all top stories on Trump, and some, like google, stonewalled.