When dead trees beat the internet

Ben Daubney has an excellent post titled ‘The web used to be a reliable library. AI has ruined it.’ A real-life Duck Duck Go (Bing) search he ran netted him six “AI slop” entries in the top 10, and I’m betting that Google isn’t any better. If search engines had kept up with the game, […]

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License from us, not from US

A Lucire KSA spread with a copy of Lucire KSA underneath it.

Anti-American sentiment harming sales of your licensed fashion magazine? We have a solution for that. We still provide US coverage but without being US-owned. But, importantly, we recognize that there are great fashion, beauty, lifestyle and travel stories the world over.   I have had to think a lot about whether our country-of-origin effect is […]

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Ad tech is suspect

Got to love the irrepressible Bob Hoffman. In his March 23 newsletter, he notes that Adlook studied target segments from popular data providers, and asked the people in those segments about themselves. I won’t spoil Bob’s entire list but the top two are: 47 per cent of the people who the data said were women […]

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These covers could be hazardous to your eyes

Of the public-domain paperbacks we’ve published, I like to think we’ve done a very decent job. In the case of A Farewell to Arms, we’ve had some custom because no one has published the book in its uncensored form till now. We’ve given something to the literary world and we finally fulfilled Ernest Hemingway’s wishes. […]

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Another advocate for non-tracking ads

Again, not alone here, just ahead of the game (at least ahead in terms of public pronouncements; I’m sure Jon has had this in mind for some time).   Post by @jon View on Mastodon   With an excellent reply by Dan Seitz further down the thread (a direct quote since Vivaldi Social isn’t displaying […]

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No matter how bad you had it, someone had it worse

Two things: I did say “AI” programs would ultimately make up false stories about us all. And what happened to me in 2024 was not as bad as what happened to Arve Hjalmar Holmen in Norway. There are still a few disinformation stories left about me—about four more where companies who would normally enforce their […]

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Autocade turns 17

Copy of Autocade Year of Cars 2025 and an issue of Lucire on top of it.

Above: The latest entry on Autocade, the DS Nº 8.   March 8 isn’t etched into my memory as much as October 20—the birthdays of Autocade and Lucire respectively. Autocade, therefore, has just turned 17, and back in 2008, I certainly never expected it to exist as print yearbooks come the mid-2020s. As mentioned, I […]

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If you want a slice of the pie, then compete

A very interesting analysis on Crikey by Bernard Keane on the turmoil the occident finds itself in. In the opening paragraphs we find this zinger about what the right wing believes it was to protect the west from. Protecting from whom? Name your favourite other—the Soviet Union. Islam. China. Declining birth rates. Secularism. Immigrants. Globalism. […]

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No one is an island, not even when on an island

With the dismantling of the US by Lone Skum and others, Mike Masnick wrote in Techdirt: ‘And now we’re watching Musk, Trump, and their allies destroy these foundations. They operate under the dangerous delusion of the “great man” theory of innovation—the false belief that revolutionary changes come solely from lone geniuses, rather than from the […]

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The end of US free shipping at Libriz (hopefully just for now)

US currency. Photograph by Engin Akyurt/Unsplash.

With regret, we’ve had to remove free postage for US customers at Libriz. The price had shot up considerably for us, and those of you who have been checking out the site will know that this was carried out last week, and has nothing to do with a certain meeting at the White House. Compounding […]

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