genAI companies are now buying up rare and antique books so they can scan them and use them to train their AI. then they're destroying the books afterward.
AI companies are quietly obtaining rare books, ingesting their contents, and then destroying them -- even if they're exceedingly rare.
they've had to face settlements against stealing from current authors, so they'll just go for the old books now. they're also doing this so they have the only copies of rare books.
they're taking water, power, natural resources for their data centers. they steal. they're book burning, essentially. i'm just so angry, i'm at a loss right now.
"One small book seller said that in April, he suddenly went from selling no more than 20 books a week to hundreds, and he’s almost certain that the customers are AI labs, noting the random selection of the books and how they all have ISBNs. He added that his inventory is full with rare and out of print books, meaning that an AI company could be destroying some of the few remaining copies that can be found.
“I personally have mixed feelings about all of this,” the bookseller told 404. “It benefits me financially as well as by clearing out old inventory that is otherwise unlikely to sell. I’ve been well-suited for these sales with inventory from overseas and foreign language books.
From a Google search:
PISBN allows publishers, retailers, and libraries to track and manage books more efficiently. Each ISBN corresponds to one specific edition of a publication, making it essential for smooth global circulation.
Well Ciampa V Jericho was a fantastic display of wasted potential. Could've elevated Ciampa at all, as Jericho didn't need the win, and they just chose not to. And for what?
A cheap, wimpy, hometown pop? A bigger payday for a guy with a literal cruise package? To get more attention on the guy who comes out to his own band's music? What is this WWE-ass booking?
A tiktok screenshot that says "Hey guys I'm struggling mentally, but I don't want kind responses. I want you to respond like a mentally absent parent. Thank you."
It has 20,306 comments, some of which are included here and say:
"Well Kate, I don't know what you want from me"
"The phone goes both ways. When's the last time you checked on me?"
"You're the strong one, I never have to worry about you"
"Go in there and mentally struggle them dishes" - response from creator: "Yes ma'am"
"Reacted "👍" to your message."
"I struggled my whole life you'll be fine"
"it's always something with you"
"Well I guess I'm just a bad mom"
Almost all of the comments were liked by the creator.
Being a tumblr user really will convince you that creating and enjoying art is an absolute necessity but also that the vast majority of art (original and fanworks) sucks irreparably
very 🥰🥰🥰 when musicians leave bits in songs where they're saying 'is this thing on?' or 'it's still recording y'know.' chairs scraping, retuning guitars, saying 'let's do that bit again', 'was that take any good?'
🎸 META | why i prefer dante and lady as friends (and why making them romantic feels like a downgrade)
I finally got around to the DMC Netflix show (yikes). Lady's defence attorney is clocking in and I am submitting an extensive brief on behalf of friendship itself. There may be no romance here, but by the gods, there will be textual analysis.
WARNING: Back on my meta posting bullshit. Long post ahead about platonic intimacy, misogyny and why Lady would sooner shoot Dante in the head (again) than kiss him. So please proceed accordingly. 😭
Obligatory disclaimer before somebody shows up at my house with Kalina Ann: people are obviously free to ship whatever they want. I’m not arguing that nobody should ever interpret Dante and Lady romantically or that anyone who does is interpreting the games/story incorrectly. This is entirely my own personal opinion and interpretation; chemistry is subjective, and they undeniably have chemistry. I just…don’t think that chemistry is romantic. More importantly, I think their relationship becomes much less interesting when it’s forced into romance.
I’m not much of a shipper in general, so I’m naturally more interested in Dante and Lady’s friendship than in imagining them as a couple, but my frustration is bigger than just not enjoying this specific ship. I’m so tired of friendship being treated as a relationship’s unfinished state, especially between men and women.
Two characters can trust each other with their lives, understand one another’s deepest wounds, remain deliberately present for decades and become part of the same strange little family, and somehow that still isn’t enough?? The relationship has to “progress.” There has to be a confession, a kiss or sex because friendship is treated as emotional foreplay rather than a meaningful destination in its own right. Dante and Lady already possess intimacy, history, vulnerability, mutual transformation, loyalty and enduring affection for each other. If the only thing romance adds is that they kiss or have sex, then it hasn’t actually made their bond deeper. It’s just made it more conventional.
This also genuinely isn’t “jealousy” over Dante. Please, that man is not real. I dislike Dante/Lady because their friendship is one of the most compelling male-female relationships in the series and I’m tired of meaningful intimacy between men and women being treated like an incomplete stage of romance. Sometimes two people can change each other profoundly, be a part of each other’s lives for decades and love one another without secretly wanting to kiss. Nothing is missing from that relationship! Which is exactly why I find them more compelling as friends.
Dante and Lady’s relationship begins in DMC3 with attempted murder, which is perfect for both of them, when Lady fires a missile at him, shoots him in the head after he catches her, and then shoots him AGAIN when he complains about it. Dante responds to that by being Dante—incredibly unserious, irritating and almost impossible to kill. But under all the gunfire, there is actual recognition between them, and that is what their connection is built upon.
They’re both climbing Temen-ni-gru because of their fathers. Lady is trying to stop Arkham and avenge her mother; Dante begins the game by dismissing the entire situation as another mess Sparda left behind. They’re both dealing with the damage inherited from their families, but Lady initially believes that Dante cannot understand her because he’s a demon too. She sees humanity and demonic nature as a clean moral divide at this point because she needs that division to make sense of what her father has become.
Over the course of the game, Dante complicates that belief. He catches her when she falls, they fight back-to-back, he pursues Arkham even when Lady insists that he is her responsibility alone. When they fight in the Divine Library, Dante tells her that the situation began with his father and therefore belongs to him as well. Lady eventually trusts him enough to hand over Kalina Ann and finish what she is unable to.
That trust matters so much because Lady does NOT give it easily. She isn’t entrusting Dante with any ordinary job, she’s putting the confrontation with her father into his hands. She has finally understood that his demonic blood doesn’t prevent him from understanding grief, family or responsibility. Dante, likewise, respects Lady’s determination and recognises her fight as something more than just a reckless human getting involved in demonic affairs.
Then there’s the NAMING THING, which might actually be my favourite part of their entire relationship 🥹
Dante casually calls her “Lady” after she tells him she has no name. Later, when she kills Arkham, she fully rejects the name Mary, the name he gave her, and chooses Lady for herself!! Then, at the end of the game, she sees Dante crying for Vergil and gives his shop its name: Devil May Cry!!! They give each other language for an identity they’ll carry forward! Lady becomes Lady because of what she survives and chooses; Dante turns the remnants of his father’s legacy into his own purpose! Their meeting permanently changes the direction of both their lives, and none of that needs to be romantic to be intimate. In fact, I think it’s more meaningful when it isn’t.
Their relationship after DMC3 isn’t framed as some grand, unresolved love story either. It settles into something that feels a lot more lived-in and full of jobs, debts, arguments, gunfire and habitual presence. Lady brings Dante work, checks on him, hassles him for money, and she trusts him to handle threats that nobody else can handle while he trusts her competence enough not to hover over her or treat her as someone who needs protecting.
Even the claim that Lady uses his debt as an excuse to keep visiting every day doesn’t have to mean she’s secretly pining for him! Wanting an excuse to stay a part of somebody’s life is not exclusively romantic behaviour. Dante is her friend! He’s one of the few people that actually understands what happened at Temen-ni-gru and the person whose actions fundamentally changed how she understands demons. Of course she keeps coming back!
The way she treats him is only possible because she knows him so well. She can casually shoot him because she understands exactly what he is and what he can survive. She can criticise him without reverence because she doesn’t see “the legendary son of Sparda” when she looks at him; she sees Dante, her annoying, unreliable, absurdly capable friend who owes her money.
That normality is so important for Dante because so many of his relationships are tangled up in Sparda, his demonic heritage or the expectation that he will save everybody. Lady knows all of that and she still treats him like an ordinary person. She doesn’t worship him, she doesn’t fear him, she doesn’t need to redeem him or domesticate him or uncover the tortured man underneath all the jokes. She already knows the jokes are part of him, respects him despite his many flaws and trusts that when something truly matters, he will do the right thing.
Then, naturally, their later appearances make that friendship feel more established. Lady is the one who brings Dante and Trish the Fortuna job in DMC4. At the end, she underpays them, argues about the bill and then decides to accompany them on another mission even after Dante tells her she won’t be paid. She just goes because she wants to. They don’t maintain their friendship with dramatic declarations, they just keep choosing to be around one another.
There is also something so funny to me about Lady, Dante and Trish watching Nero and Kyrie’s romantic moment from a distance. DMC4 is perfectly capable of portraying an explicitly romantic relationship—Nero and Kyrie are right there. Meanwhile, Dante and Lady are standing on the sidelines discussing payment of all things. That doesn’t definitively prove anything, obviously, but it does illustrate how differently those relationships are presented to us.
By DMC5, Lady is not positioned as Dante’s potential love interest in any capacity. She and Trish are two of the most capable devil hunters Dante knows (he literally calls them “two of the most badass women in the world”) and well established members of the weird little found family that has accumulated around Devil May Cry.
Lady’s most personally significant moment in DMC5 isn’t even about Dante at all! It’s when she warns Nero that killing his own father is something he will never recover from. Her history with Arkham still belongs to her and the experience she gained from it is what lets her recognise what Nero is about to do. She exists as a character with her own trauma, perspective and relationships rather than as an extension of Dante.
At the end, while Dante and Vergil are off doing what they do best in the Demon World, Lady and Trish are eating his pizza, arguing over who gets his office and wondering if he ever intends to come back. It feels a lot less like a girlfriend waiting faithfully for the hero and more like a dysfunctional family trying to work out what to do with the shared home their idiot has temporarily abandoned. That’s the dynamic I love most. Dante, Lady and Trish as this bizarre little unit held together by their shared history, professional trust, unpaid bills and affection that not a single one of them is interested in verbalising.
Making Dante and Lady romantic doesn’t necessarily contradict every part of that history, but it changes how all of it is read. Lady visiting the shop becomes evidence that she was pining, the debts turn into flirtation, the bickering becomes sexual tension, her trust in Dante becomes a sign that she is in love with him. Every part of their relationship gets pulled toward romance as its presumed explanation and eventual destination.
It also risks reducing Lady to the extremely familiar role of the hypercompetent woman who spends years tolerating an immature man because, underneath all the annoyance, she secretly loves him. There is something so very gendered about the assumption that the capable woman in an action story must eventually become responsible for recognising the wounded man beneath the performance, enduring his emotional unavailability and guiding him towards maturity only to reward his development with romantic access to herself.
It also changes the meaning behind Lady’s behaviour. Her irritation becomes suppressed attraction, her continued presence in his life becomes pining and her willingness to care about Dante despite finding him profoundly aggravating becomes proof that she secretly wanted him all along. Even her rejection of the romantic role can’t be taken at face value because people will translate it into “she’s only protesting because she loves him.” Lady’s actual boundaries and desires become less important than what her relationship can provide for Dante’s story. Her interiority is swallowed by the cultural conviction that a woman who becomes close to a man must ultimately be romantically available to him.
Lady deserves so much better than becoming the endlessly capable woman waiting at the end of Dante’s character development to prove that he’s finally grown up. She’s not the emotional rehabilitation programme or romantic reward assigned to a difficult man, and Dante doesn’t need to acquire a girlfriend as evidence that he is capable of loving, being loved or becoming emotionally healthier.
They already love each other, but love is not synonymous with romance.
Their friendship is not a lesser version of a romantic relationship, nor is it an unfinished one. It is a complete relationship in its own right. They are two people who met during the worst nights of their lives, changed how the other person understood family and humanity, and then continued choosing each other for years afterwards.
Could Dante and Lady function as a couple? Yeah, sure. That’s just not the most interesting version of them to me. “Chaotic man and competent woman bicker because they secretly want to fuck each other” is a dynamic I’ve seen countless times. A man and a woman sharing profound trust, intimacy and lifelong devotion without that bond becoming romantic is far more rare.
I don’t want their friendship treated like the waiting room before the romance finally arrives. I want Lady to remain Dante’s closest friend, trusted partner, emergency contact and most aggressive creditor. I want them to love each other without needing to be in love.
In conclusion: people are free to ship whatever they want, friendship is not an incomplete form of love, and I don’t know who that red-coated man kissing Lady is but I wish Daniel and his girlfriend all the best.
