Books to burn

 My father had an entire bookshelf filled with Italian legal books— a collection of mostly blue hardcovers about civil law procedures (Diritti Civili). At one point, we were threatened with eviction. In preparation for a forced move, he decided to liquidate his books. He offered the Italian books to the Academy, the Central Library, and a legal library, but none of them showed any interest. One day he told me in a proud voice. "I solved the book problem." How?  "talked to garbage collection guy that will take and burn them. for a good tip." 

Now it looks like AI companies buy old books copy and burn them.  

Maybe it is true that Guttenberg went bankrupt because he had bought too much paper and could not sell fast enough.

in the air

About to fly to Detroit. Boarding now. In the airport i ordered a G&T but did not tip. The barmaid definitely gave me an evil eye. If anything happens during the flight....you will know why. Hopefully some other passnger tipped.

Auto dissection

 Learned today two acronyms:

NPC (Non-Playable Character): A term—recently highlighted in a NYT opinion" improv" —used to describe a person who lacks individual agency or moves through life on autopilot.
PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance): An anxiety-driven profile of autism where ordinary, everyday demands trigger an involuntary nervous system threat response (fight/flight/freeze) rather than standard defiance. (Note: This was recently mentioned by my daughter; otherwise, I only knew the initials as standing for Personal Digital Assistant).
I wonder how much or what percentage of these these two traits actually characterize me.

As to the opinion piece, it was explaining that "central to Mr. Johnstone’s argument is that human beings are unconsciously playing status games at all time".

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