Etaleah @etaleah - Tumblr Blog

Finding out AI companies are chewing through - literally, they’re pulping and burning them as they go - millions of books often including 1/1s and old texts that cannot be reprinted

Meanwhile there’s always some dipshit telling me AI is the future and we’ve got to just let companies erase human history and literature so they can train their abomination machines to pretend to think like people because a judge said it’s fine

wageronancap

odessa-edmundson

AI companies are buying and scanning printed books for training data, raising copyright and cultural preservation concerns as rare volumes a

sophiemars

TLDR: company is bulk buying millions of books - including really old/rare/unique ones - to train AI. But in order to scan them quickly, they cut the spine out and trim the pages, effectively destroying these books, and then "recycle" the remains. A judge says it's legal. The company knows it's unethical and actively tried to hide the practice. None of the scanned copies are available to the public.

catchingflieswithhoney

The highly alarming thing to me is not the rarity of some books being gone forever, but the fact that they are taking millions of books off the shelves and away from public consumption. We are not allowed to buy books or seek knowledge. This is a digital age book burning.

#fuck ai #anti ai #social justice

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pangur-and-grim

I won't publish the ask (they asked me not to), but I thought I'd still answer it publicly!

no, royalties are not a significant source of income for most authors. if you wrote something like Project Hail Mary, then absolutely, the royalties would be substantial! but that's like winning the lottery. Ryan Gosling is not starring in the movie adaption of most books.

when you sell a book to a publisher, you get what's called 'an advance against royalties'. it's usually split into multiple parts, so you might get one third for the initial sale, one third for the final revised manuscript, and one third on the publishing date.

an advance against royalties is the publisher saying "we believe you will eventually make X amount in royalties, so here it is ahead of time." and then you don't actually see any money from royalties until the advance is paid off. most books do not make enough in royalties to pay off the advance (I have two children's books and one fiction book, and have yet to see royalties for any of them).

advances are still great, but you need to make them stretch! for instance, last year my net income was about 30k Canadian (21k USD), which is fantastic when you consider that I mostly made it through writing. but I'm definitely not a millionaire. I can live off my writing (not trying to undersell that!) but I'll probably remain in a low income bracket for the foreseeable future.

this isn't meant to discourage anyone from seeking out writing as a career! however, there is a reason that many authors have alternate jobs with writing on the side. or, you know, rich spouses.

pangur-and-grim

this isn't me making a fuss about pirating (I've pirated way too many shows to run my mouth on that lmao), but there IS actually a financial incentive to having people buy your books!

buying books shows the publisher that they can make money off you, which means they're more likely to give you advances for future books. and advances are what authors live off (if they don't have a side job). that's why I always push pre-orders so hard! you have to be a racehorse worth betting on, or else they send you to the glue factory....

if I can offer one alternative to pirating: asking your library to stock the book also helps authors, and doesn't cost anything. the only downside is the patience required.

pangur-and-grim

OOPS yes, @stjohnstarling makes a good point! everything I'm saying is from the perspective of traditional publishing, but it's a very different game if you're a self-published author

gollancz

I will also add that this is why pre-orders can make a HUGE difference to authors - because if there's enough hype, publishers can pull more levers to build that momentum and reach more readers to help authors earn out their advance faster.

gudgercollege

Trad publishing contracts person here to co-sign everything in this post. If you want to support an author you really like but are broke as hell, then you can buy their book when it's discounted, buy it used, borrow it from a friend, or use the library. The first step as an author is to get your book read, not to get it bought. The important thing for you as a reader is to spread the word about how good the book is so the publisher knows the audience is there even if sales aren't spectacular. Piracy of books, especially books from small/indie publishers, means the publisher will print fewer copies of their next book, and sometimes if it's an ongoing series the next books in the series will be canceled, either to be replaced by a book with a different premise or they'll cancel the contract for the next books entirely. The "hack" where you buy the ebook or audiobook and then return it for a credit also takes money directly out of the author's pocket since those payment/royalty systems are set up differently than if you were to buy a book from a bookstore and return it. In that situation the bookstore absorbs that loss, but returning the ebook means the money gets clawed back from the author's advance or royalties and they'll have to earn that back.

Pre-orders and Amazon/Goodreads reviews are used as a gauge by publishers to predict how many copies they are likely to sell and therefore how many copies they want to print. They want to sell most of what they print rather than print too many and end up with a bunch of copies no one wants that they'll have to pay to store or sell at a huge discount or recycle, which is what happens to unsold books. Most publishers have a limited amount of money and manpower to dedicate to any particular book, so if there's a book building up a lot of buzz, that'll give them reason to put their resources towards promoting that book to get a better return on their investment. If the publisher can't make money off a book or author they'll dump them.

Generally, every aspect of the publishing and book industries, including writers, agents, publishing employees, librarians, and booksellers are overworked and underpaid. Unless you're Stephen King or already famous, you don't make money off of books. We do it for sheer love of the game.

Use your library! Publishers have a whole department dedicated to selling their books to libraries and the author gets part of those sales. Increasing circulation of library resources means the libraries can make a better case to get more money from the government to buy more books that you want to read and they're a place to hang out for free. Libraries are the best gift humanity gave itself, use yours as often as possible.

mirasmirages

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Several independent publishers have had their books removed from Kindle Unlimited bec

Stop the unfair removal of titles on Amazon — Change the KDP Select Policy!

You are absolutely hurting indie writer by pirating books. This is not the same as pirating popular movies or tv shows. Don't pirate books.

etaleah

I’m just over here trying to wrap my head around the stupidity of those screenshotted tags.

“Writers are poor and barely get paid anything, therefore they shouldn’t care if we steal from them and refuse to pay them” W H A T

I—what—how. How does that make sense. How does that make one iota of sense. How do you type that out and not hear how incredibly stupid and counterintuitive that sounds.

Like I could understand the logic of pirating a super rich mega bestseller who will never have to worry about money like James Patterson, Stephen King, or Joanne Rowling, but the idea that pirating a poor or even a middle-class author is fine because they barely make anything has got to be one of the dumbest notions I’ve ever seen. The fact that writers barely get paid anything should be all the more reason to support them legitimately, not less.

I swear this site will be all “Labor is valuable! Pay your writers! Pay your workers!” until it comes time to put your money where your mouth is, at which point everyone turns into Veruca Salt stomping her feet and saying, “But I want it NOOOOWWW!”

#books #reading #books and reading #piracy #social justice #my thoughts #writing

nyantara

things that would exist if intellectual property wasn't a thing

so much cheap generic medication. reverse engineering compounds would be even more financially profitable.

fewer people dead of vaccine preventable illnesses in the global south bc the greatest barrier to distributing some vaccines like hpv is their ip

plant seeds and grafts that come from the plants instead of licensing them. don't invest so much in preventing cross contamination. more localised experimental breeding.

library of the world: every book and journal article in the world could be digitised and be searchable for every person in the world to read regardless of where they live. cheap reprint runs and local translations everywhere.

an online interface where every citation could actually lead to the text in question

freedom from the hell that is DRM software

everytime someone reverse engineered your shitty proprietary software we would all be freed from it instead of them getting DMCA'd

so much hardware would be opened up & therefore made so much cooler.

so many more songs that riff off and sample and interpolate shit from this decade instead of like 70 years ago and more analysis of music that didn't keep getting nuked off the internet

preserving movies and tv shows and games as long as someone, somewhere has the desire to host them

just go publish your fanfic/art/vid as is instead of all us pretending it isn't fanwork or begging the corporation for mercy / licensing

a world without ip lawyers. im getting chills just imagining it.

gossipgurlingursht

I've seen this sentiment before on tumblr, and I can't take this particular post seriously. Only bringing up the pros of a policy change and not the cons is disingenuous. I could go ahead and argue “Things that would exist if robbing banks were legal: free money”

When I see this type of post on tumblr, I typically see supporters say “We have IP law and it isn’t protecting small artists, it’s protecting corporations!” Well just because a law is implemented or enforced poorly doesn’t mean we should not have the law, it probably means we need to FIX it instead of abolishing it. The rich find loopholes to not pay taxes, does that mean we should abolish taxes on the rich?

I have never seen the argument that we should abolish IP given with any description of how we’ll actually protect artists and motivate new research if that happened. I mean if you want to just abolish all capitalism period then just say that. But I don’t think you can explain how abolishing IP law inside a capitalist system would actually work in our society.

etaleah

Any time someone says they want to abolish all IP law, my response is to say, “Okay, James Somerton.”

Because that’s exactly the type of person who would most want that and most benefit from it and there is never any consideration given for how to stop grifters and plagiarists like him.

#social justice #my thoughts #intellectual property #ip law #copyright #copyright law

melia-antifa

#funny #funny video

I see you’re about to make a post mocking or criticizing the behavior of White women. Before you do so, please answer the following questions:

1. Are White men also guilty of the same thing?

2. If the answer to the above question is yes (and I find it very hard to believe there is a circumstance in which it is not), why are you only criticizing the women? Answer quickly.

3. If you removed the word “White” from the sentence, would it start to sound misogynist?

4. If the answer to the above question is yes, does the word “White” actually change that and make it not misogynist, rather than simply acting as a shield? Explain your reasoning.

#whatever bad behavior you want to criticize White women for White men have done in equal and often greater numbers #I don’t think there is anything in the world you could criticize White women for that White men have not also done #so when you zero in on the women and don’t even mention the men I’m instantly suspicious #and this goes for terms like Straight Women too #social justice #my thoughts #feminism #misogyny

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makingqueerhistory

Instead of Leaving This Hate Comment You Could Read This Book!

People Without History Are Dust

Queerness remains one of the most stigmatized and overlooked aspects of Holocaust history, often erased due to the lingering homophobia of survivors. People Without History Are Dust challenges this silence, weaving together compelling stories of German, Dutch, Czech, and Polish Jewish Holocaust victims and survivors - including Anne Frank, Molly Applebaum, Margot Heuman, and Gad Beck - whose experiences help illuminate the hidden history of queerness in a time of genocide.

Drawing on extensive archival research, this groundbreaking book uncovers the lives of those who were doubly marginalized, not only persecuted as Jews but also as queer individuals. In doing so, it confronts the ways in which history has excluded or minimized their experiences, urging us to question normative accounts of the Holocaust.

By shedding light on these long-overlooked stories, People Without History Are Dust deepens our understanding of identity, survival, and memory, reminding us why an inclusive and complex approach to history is essential - not just for the sake of the past, but in service to the present and the future as well.

*Affiliate link above*

shofarsogood

Hey @makingqueerhistory, this author claimed that a Holocaust survivor had an affair with a Nazi guard without proof that it actually happened. That is incredibly disrespectful to the survivor named and her family. Claiming that ANY Jew was in love with a Nazi is psychologically damaging. The lie that Jews seduced Nazis or fell in love with their captors is repulsive and Jews have been fighting back against such stories for ages. It's not homophobia to acknowledge that. A Jewish woman sleeping with a male Nazi would be just as damning to her family. It is shameful in our community. It's especially distressing when there's no real evidence that the affair happened, and that the woman's family said as much. It's not like there were letters between the two women, or anything with real proof.

Frankly, the fact that Hajokva promised to use a pseudonym and then used the woman's real name and photograph in promotional material is such an ethical breach. This is very basic stuff. If a source requests anonymity when talking about something as complex and damning as a Jew sleeping with a Nazi, you should honor that.

That's not even touching on assigning a sexuality to a Jewish child who didn't live long enough to decide whether she was queer or not. She was murdered for being Jewish. Plain and simple. Her sexuality was never a factor in her death, regardless of whether or not she was bisexual.

Please don't promote this book and the utter disrespect of Hajkova.

maimonideznuts

How many times do we have to say, as queer Jews ourselves, to leave the questions of a dead Jewish girl as her own questions and not voyeuristically assign answers for her.

As for "holocaust survivor has affair with a Nazi guard" that is literally a trope in post war Nazi apologia to sanitise the violence inherent in *Jew during the holocaust exchanges sex for survival*, a circumstance that happened a lot, you don't have to be a genius to understand that.

There are actually books celebrating Jewish queerness in history that don't do either of those things.

maimonideznuts

@makingqueerhistory you're getting criticism, not hate comments. We have very strong feelings about Holocaust Universalis action for good reason. You didn't even tag your holocaust post "#jewish history" thereby erasing us, because you know what you're doing is dishonest, but you are profiting from casting the quite relevant criticism "they were too focused on not being murdered for being Jewish to write interesting work about being queer"(to paraphrase), as hate.

It's not a representation issue, this is family to the Jews who are upset with you.

It's just a complete disconnect from the existential nature of the holocaust as a method of exterminating all of the world's Jews forever, and how there was a time that the Nazis thought they could logistically do it, and how the only thing for Jews to celebrate from it is "even though many of us did not, as a people we survived."

The holocaust was about the extermination of a racial/ethnic group.

hazel2468

@makingqueerhistory maybe you need to examine why being corrected by a Jew about Jewish history (and why Jews centering the Shoah, a genocide about killing Jews), makes you feel so inclined to make, frankly, offensive posts like this.

Stop telling Jews how to feel about the Shoah. Stop trying to center queerness in the Shoah. Just. STOP. Because the more I see my fellow queers, goyische queers, doing this. The more it just drives home that the motivation is that you cannot stand the idea of the Jews "having" something like the Shoah to claim.

I'm disgusted. Stop. When Jews tell you to cut it out and you double down by promoting a book that claims, as those above me have already pointed out, something deeply offensive and uses Jews, who were MURDERED FOR BEING JEWS as queer fodder. It just makes you antisemitic.

Signed- a Jewish queer trans man who is really, REALLY sick of the queer community acting this way.

#thank you #the Nazis dgaf whether Anne Frank was queer they didn’t even ask #and being straight would not have saved her #antisemitism #jewish history #social justice #shoah #media critique #media criticism

Starting to feel like we need to retire the term “representation” and replace it with “relatability.”

‘Cause the thing about describing a character as “representation” is that it sounds like the character is an elected official whose main function is to issue statements and make whoever they’re representing look good, which is an unfair burden to place on them and the person writing them. No character can ever represent everyone, because every member of any given demographic is so different. Acting like these characters need to represent an entire group means that we can never have minority/women characters who are messy, difficult, complicated, or otherwise not role model material, at least not unless you have another one who is role model material to cancel it out. And that’s just not fair. Women and minority characters shouldn’t always have to be role model material.

What we really need is for characters to be relatable, so people feel like they can connect with them and understand them, even if “understand” doesn’t necessarily translate to “like and/or agree with.”

This character isn’t good representation! Okay but are they relatable? Are they interesting? Are they complex? Are they entertaining and memorable? Do we understand what’s motivating them? I feel like those kinds of questions are way more important than “Does this character set a good example for children?”

#it’s especially galling in media for adults because it’s for ADULTS #you shouldn’t need to have your characters be role model material when the audience is full of adults #adults aren’t supposed to need role models anymore they should just know how to behave at that point #and if their parents failed them in that regard well that’s not the writer’s fault #and not their problem to fix #my thoughts #media critique #media criticism #writing #diversity in media #media representation

tributary

people are often averse to criticizing the voter base. sure, focus on the candidates, but someone has to say “why are these dipshits attracting so much positive attention in the first place? are the voters stupid?”

i could not run for office because i would not be able to hide my disdain for entire swathes of the electorate and i’m simply not male enough to pull that off.

#voters and non-voters get so furious at the idea that they have literally any responsibility at all #it’s one of the worst parts of American individualism #the idea that you don’t owe anybody anything ever #social justice #my thoughts

bisexualhunterbiden

Starting a list of things that make me proud to be an American.

1. Big drink

2. Air conditioning

3. Biscuits and gravy

etaleah

4. Burger 🍔

5. National parks 🏞️

6. Halloween 🎃

7. Broadway 🎭 (thanks, Jewish Americans!)

8. Buffalo 🦬 (thanks, Native Americans, and I’m so sorry for what we did to them and you!)

9. Bald Eagle 🦅

10. Jeans 👖

11. I know the Walt Disney Company is no angel, but I really do love that we have the world’s best theme parks. 🐭🏰

12. PUBLIC LIBRARIES. YOU WILL NEVER CONVINCE ME THAT THE USA IS WITHOUT ITS MERITS AS LONG AS WE HAVE PUBLIC LIBRARIES. 📚

13. Comic books and superheroes (thanks, Jewish Americans!) 🦸🏻‍♀️

14. Jazz music, blues music, rock ‘n roll, rap, and hip hop (thanks, Black Americans!) 🎶🎼🎵

15. Birthright citizenship 🗽

16. The Americans with Disabilities Act ♿️ (thanks, disabled Americans!)

17. Animation and cartoons (shoutout to Mel Blanc, another Jewish American who gave us all the Looney Tunes voices) 📺

18. The Muppets 🐸🐷

19. No official language 🌎🗣️

20. Mac and cheese 😋

21. Our Mexican cuisine (thanks, Latino Americans!). I know it’s probably not what you’d get in South/Central America, but if you’ve ever tried to get a taco outside the Americas, you know what I mean. 🌮

22. State and county fairs 🎡

23. Despite its shitty origins…Thanksgiving. It’s a holiday about sharing a meal with your family and being thankful for what you have. It’s nice to have a holiday that isn’t about buying stuff. 🦃🍗

24. Juneteenth and MLK Day (thanks, Black Americans, though I fully acknowledge that if we lived in a just world, those holidays would not have been necessary) ✊🏾

25. Labor Day and the labor movement. ✊🏻✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿

26. USAID 💔

27. PBS 📺 We have AMAZING public media and I am forever grateful for it.

28. Movie theaters 🍿🎥🎬🎞️

29. Our universities and the fact that not only are women allowed to attend them, they’re actually becoming more educated than men. 🎓

30. No school uniforms 😎

Might add to this as I think of more 🇺🇸

#this is healing #sometimes we need to pull a Samwise Gamgee #and remind ourselves that there is good in this word and it’s worth fighting for #instead of being doom and gloom all the time #my thoughts #usa #america #united states of america #usa 250 #america at 250

etaleah

HELP THIS IS SO FUNNY

Happy Pride Month everyone 🏳️‍🌈

etaleah

I understand this is probably meant as a bros before hos thing and that the author of this book isn’t actually trying to make them gay but like. He succeeded in doing so anyway.

#sherlock holmes/john watson #acd john watson #acd sherlock holmes #sherlock holmes #john watson #gay stuff #my thoughts

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HELP THIS IS SO FUNNY

Happy Pride Month everyone 🏳️‍🌈

#sherlock holmes #john watson #acd holmes #acd sherlock #acd john watson #holmes and watson #holmes/watson #sherlock holmes/john watson #funny #gay stuff

transsexualpuffin

“the rest of the world is way further left than the USA”

uh does “the rest of the world” in this context mean western europe and canada? because i don’t know how to break it to you gently but that’s not the whole wide world buddy

pusheenthenerdcat

do they mean just democracies maybe

transsexualpuffin

i mean maybe? but even so, in the grand scheme of things while the US needs to implement great changes it’s still not nearly the most right wing country. we have same sex marriage which not every country in the EU has. we have stupid fascist politicians which most of the world has.

it’s just not clear cut in the way a lot of people seem to think it is, which is half the point i’m getting at. the other half is that eurocentric approaches to anything don’t usually meaningfully help.

idk, i don’t want to minimize the great impact of many things europe has done for progressive causes. europe has spearheaded labor reform and moved away from hyper-capitalist policies more than any other region. i just find the insinuation that europe is basically the whole world to be more than a little offensive.

myfootyrthroat

I think people work backwards like "Immigration in the US is fucked up, and the US is behind the times, so everyone else must have better immigration policies."

I regret to inform you...

queenofnots

I truly just think they mean "they have nationalized health care and more vacation days".

dancinbutterfly

Ya know before Trump fucked it? And even after? It's Women's Rights. *snaps figners* Look at me. Women's rights. WOMEN'S FUCKING RIGHTS. I do not think yall understand how much of the world still just doesn't send its girls to school. How much of the world's girls stop going to school when they get their period because they dont have period products. How much of the world doesnt have access to contraceptives. How much of the world doesnt have marriage freedom for women. WOMEN'S FUCKING RIGHTS. WOMENS GODDAMN RIGHTS. Wake up. Not everything is about the gays. Not everything is about capitalism. In a lot of places? It's still about getting women human fucking rights. WOMENS RIGHTS.

#yeah it gets really aggravating when people act like healthcare is the only metric that matters #how do they treat women and Jewish people #how much reproductive freedom do they have #how do they treat immigrants #social justice

feminist-space

baddywronglegs

The people who insist AI is smarter than a human are doing their fucking damnedest to manifest that

shrewreadings

Не верите. Доверите.

Do not trust: verify.

etaleah

*insert Simpsons meme* Is the chat bot making things up? No, it’s the trained professionals who are wrong!

#anti ai #fuck ai

skymagic16

It's a national holiday

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic #happy birthday sonic #sonic 35th anniversary #funny #shitpost

It kind of annoys me whenever fans try to insist that a writer wrote something badly on purpose to get back at the fandom because (as is the case with most conspiracies) I feel like there’s a level of narcissism in assuming that someone who has never met you and has no real reason to care what you think would take that big of a risk solely for the sake of messing with you specifically.

I mean, think about how hard it is to have a career in writing for the screen and then think about how much a writer would be throwing away by purposely creating a shit product they know won’t be liked. They’d run the risk of never getting work again in an industry where steady and well-paying work is already hard to come by. They’d risk tarnishing their reputation and legacy. They’d risk never being able to get funding for any projects they want to do ever again. What studio is gonna wanna hire someone who writes badly on purpose? Why would they ever waste money on that? And why would they ever hire someone who deliberately pisses off their best customers and therefore makes them less likely to spend money?

Sometimes good writers make bad decisions and those bad decisions don’t necessarily have anything to do with fandom. I promise you that no movie or TV show was ever written badly on purpose. They were trying to make something good and failed. Even experienced professionals can fail.

Like I dunno, maybe it’s because we see so many conservative grifters doing things solely to “own the libs” and so people think writers work the same way, but the thing is that unlike those grifters, writers actually have to work. They have to sell themselves on their skills and not just their personality and follower count. Which means there’s a real danger in them being associated with poor quality material.

Writing a season or movie badly on purpose just to make the fans mad would be an enormous and very permanent career risk for a very small and temporary reward of “dur hur I make fan mad.” I do not buy that any writer, even one who was disliked by the fanbase, would ever do that.

#my thoughts #personal #anti-conspiracy #writing #media critique #media criticism #fandom

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klapollo

We watched toy story 2 today and they say suicide prominently in the first act. So whenever someone says "unalive," they are operating at a sub-toy story level of vocabulary maturity

etaleah

I have literally seen Sesame Street segments that used the word “died.” Those censors are operating at a sub-toddler level.

#my thoughts #sesame street #social justice #anti nonsense #censorship #anti censorship

I will never relate to anything as much as I relate to SpongeBob gleefully saying, “I’m doing it! I’m doing it!” as he starts writing his essay in the Procrastination episode. That thing aired a quarter century ago and I still hear that voice in my head whenever I do anything I’ve been putting off for a long time.

The relief. The excitement. The shock at realizing that accomplishing this hard thing actually is possible. Production crew really hit the nail on the head with that one.

#yes I know it turns out he just wrote one letter of the essay #but the point still stands #spongebob squarepants #my thoughts #personal #procrastination

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