Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 1h

Chatbots and AI slop are going to ruin countless brains. Yours doesn't have to be one of them. Study history. Read poetry. Get acquainted with Bach, Shakespeare, George Eliot. In a time when people are rapidly getting dumber, we need communities devoted to the life of the mind.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 16h

amazing tweet

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 1d

very well said.

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Reposted by Boze the Library Owl

Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 7d

Saw someone say, “Stop hoarding books, we don’t need paper books anyway” and I can’t express how misguided this is. Online libraries disappear, digital books can be altered, and with Big Tech seeking to destroy history and literacy, print media has never been more essential.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 7d

Saw someone say, “Stop hoarding books, we don’t need paper books anyway” and I can’t express how misguided this is. Online libraries disappear, digital books can be altered, and with Big Tech seeking to destroy history and literacy, print media has never been more essential.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 7d

The part of Orwell's 1984 that everyone forgets is how human music has been replaced by soulless, machine-generated pop songs. The AI attempt to take over the film and music industries is an attack on the human spirit. Boycott AI actors. Boycott AI bands. Support human artists.

“There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime, and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator.”

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 13d

this is so important.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 13d

Learning in school is not enough. You must continue to teach yourself throughout your life. Study history, read myths, memorize poems, get acquainted with the greatest philosophers & writers. In an age when tech is cooking many brains, we need an army of autodidacts.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 17d

Insane haul today at the library book sale - seven books for seven dollars ... the librarian told us they had been donated and the donor worried that the books were too niche to sell ... I've been searching for some of these for AGES 🤓

[The Anatomy of Melancholy, Briggs' Anatomy of Puck, The Folklore of Shakespeare, two books about strange London, The Mythic Journey, The Complete Essays of Montaigne]

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 21d

Rex Stout called her the greatest novelist of all time.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 21d

It’s adorable when guys dismiss Jane Austen as saccharine romantic fluff because I suspect none of her critics will write novels of such sharp comedy and keen understanding of human nature that they’re still being read by millions of people 250 years in the future.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 21d

If you’ve never read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, do yourself a favor and read it during the holidays. It’s one of the greatest books ever written, it takes less than two hours to read and once you finish, you can say you’ve read one book by Charles Dickens.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 26d

Whatever its merits, the internet has become a psychologically destructive force. You will be happier and healthier if you don’t spend excess amounts of time online. Stop scrolling. Water your garden. Read a book to your kids. You will not regret a life spent in this world.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 26d

Social media amplifies our worst tendencies: bloodlust, baseless speculation, the hunger for vengeance. We were not made to see people repeatedly murdered on camera. We were not meant to read every person's unfiltered opinions. It is corrosive to the soul.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 27d

amazingly, when I posted this on the other site, someone immediately tagged you

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 28d

It’s feared that if bees are not kept abreast of the news, they’ll get offended and cease making honey. According to A Dictionary of English Folklore, “In some Yorkshire villages bees were formally invited to funerals.” Queen Elizabeth’s hives were informed of her death in 2022.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 28d

There’s a tradition in some European countries called “telling the bees,” in which bees are informed of notable events in the human world. In Oxford, when a hive’s owner dies, a member of the family will tap on the hive with a housekey and say, “Bees, bees, your master is dead.”

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 28d

I grabbed it for a dollar in 2006 - insane how much higher the prices have risen since then

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 28d

yes. in fact it will make them extremely cool

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 28d

This is one of the best single-volume collections of weird folklore ever written, and awakened my love of bogies, feasts, festivals, drowned cities and haunted castles at a young age. An essential book for any lover of legends and old tales.

[images of Folklore Myths & Legends of Britain by Reader’s Digest]

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · Sep 6

I know it sounds mad but if you had regular exposure to trees and sunlight and started reading again for pleasure, it would heal you.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · Aug 30

it's all anyone's talking about on twitter

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · Aug 28

The most alarming thing about the internet is how it kills our capacity for delight. People spend hours scrolling glass-eyed through content that brings only crumbs of amusement. Real joy is found in the real world: in reading, in starlight, in birdsong, in service to others.

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Reposted by Boze the Library Owl

Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · Aug 22

If you’re someone who still reads for pleasure, you are a marvel. If you’re able to unplug from all the chaos of our entertainment culture and disappear into the warmth and solace of a book, that is a rare gift and I’m very glad to know you.

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Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · Aug 22

not reading books is what got us into this mess

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