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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32427 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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An update to a post I made after Christmas lamenting the state of children's books, and all their on the nose, "current year" agenda pushing nonsense. Specifically an update in reply to this comment.

This is why we only have classic little golden books and some innocuous stuff from the 80s and 90s on our bookshelf. Also Roald Dahl, he's great. As others have said, there's no reason to buy modern propaganda children's books. Not only are they proselytizing, but they're mostly objectively ugly.

Roald Dahl goes PC in a world where no one is 'fat' and the Oompa-Loompas are gender neutral

archive link

The publisher, Puffin, has made hundreds of changes to the original text, removing many of Dahl’s colourful descriptions and making his characters less grotesque.

The review of Dahl’s language was undertaken to ensure that the books “can continue to be enjoyed by all today”, Puffin said.

You can read the litany of changes for yourself. I guess I missed the boat on stocking up on Roald Dahl children's books. As is feeling increasingly typical these days, there can be no escape from current year. Fuck me I guess.

Welcome to early Ingsoc. As more content goes digital, there won't even be any (legal) way to possess content that is deemed oldthinking and thoughtcriminal. The books would be edited right in your electronic device, and they would always have been like that.

In one of history's little winks almost the first book this happened to was 1984.

Some copyright SNAFU meant that Amazon had distributed the thing when it wasn't allowed to, so they disappeared it off people's Kindles. This wasn't an attempt at censorship, other editions were readily available, but it was a clear case of memory-holing.

I'm really wondering when is Amazon going to do something about the fact I buy cca 3 books from them for a year, but pirate roughly 10 each year, and put them all on the same device.

Been 3 uncalled for updates of the OS so far, and ..nothing ?

I don't know whether or not they scan Kindle's actively for sideloaded stuff. But there is probably specific pressure to go after you.

I think in the case above, Amazon wasn't acting out of a general programme to enforce copyright, they were reacting to someone with laywer who was upset about a particular e-Book that they had actively distributed.

You mean there isn't pressure to go after people who sideload ?

I expect there is, and I don't know how that affects Amazon's behaviour. That's a generalized thing though. Distinct from "some specific lawyers are going to sue us unless we do this specific thing".

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