Notices by Richard Carroll (cheshire_ocelot@cawfee.club)

This article starts off discussing AI slop making its way into library catalogues, mostly because of ebook vendor Hoopla, which is definitely a problem. Then it segues into concerns about “fascist propaganda.”

In February 2022, two organizations of librarians, Library Futures and Library Freedom Project, sent Hoopla and OverDrive a letter demanding accountability over “fascist propaganda” materials being included in their services.
“These are books that are of such low accuracy and quality that not even Amazon will sell them. This includes materials from white nationalist publishers Arktos Media, Antelope Hill Publishing, and Castle Hill Services,” the organizations wrote. “In Hoopla, for example, the third search result for the word ‘Holocaust’ returned a Holocaust denial text not carried by most book distributors.”

One person the author spoke to anticipated the obvious response and said, “We're always standing directly against censorship at every step of the way,” but of course, a de facto censorship is exactly what they want and it makes things like “Banned Books Week” seem even more nonsensical than they already are.

Libraries by nature must implement some degree of curation, and honestly, librarians should accept that and just be honest about it. “We can get you almost any reasonably-available book you want, but these are the ones we recommend and believe to be high quality.” Unfortunately, the bulk of current librarians aren’t frank about this role and have taste as bad or worse than the general public.

https://www.404media.co/ai-generated-slop-is-already-in-your-public-library-3/

Vladimir Lenin taught that “he who says A must say B.” He was correct, but Patrick Deneen has not listened. Deneen says A, that our Regime, our ruling class, is destructive and evil. But he then refuses to say B, that the Regime is therefore wholly odious and illegitimate, and before any new system is possible, it must be destroyed. Instead, Deneen’s response to A is magical thinking. When the people peacefully complain enough, you see, the Regime will dismantle itself voluntarily and hand over power to a new ruling class, which will hold and implement opposite views on every matter under the sun. This absurd fantasy, even when cushioned within much fancy philosophy, harms rather than advances the postliberal project.

This is a recurring problem with conservatives. They can be okay at identifying problems, but seldom have solutions and don’t think things through to their logical conclusions.

https://theworthyhouse.com/2023/06/22/regime-change-toward-a-postliberal-future-patrick-deneen/