American Civil War 1861-1865

American Civil War 1861-1865

What the actual hell.

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Hitch
3 years ago

I’m particularly fond of the reflected delivery truck, in that pane of glass on the right-hand side. After all, Amazon and the Postal Service trucks fersure were there during the Civil War, amirite?

Kregger
3 years ago
Reply to  Hitch

Let alone plastic pots.

Johno McMoose
Johno McMoose
3 years ago

Na, this is a touch of actual madness mystery. “Dolly Poppy” (also, check out their other book about AK-47) hardly sounds like a serious historian. I’m getting an impression the author might have never existed at all; what if this “booque” – a whooping 11 pages for $11 – has been stitched together from random components by a rogue AI like the ones sending out poorly translated spam emails or making up color names like “snowbonk” or “horble gray”?

WarGoat
WarGoat
3 years ago
Reply to  Johno McMoose

Horble Gray sounds like a character in Dickens novel.

Hitch
3 years ago
Reply to  WarGoat

Johno, m’lad, I think you’re right. I actually tried to read the first page of this masterpiece and yup, it sounds like that’s precisely what it is. AI cruft. WOW.

Johno McMoose
Johno McMoose
3 years ago
Reply to  Hitch

There’s more of that stuff over there, such as “The Battle Of Cars-Prussian War-1870”, where “cars” obviously stands for “Sedan”. Or “Battle of Yorktown”, supposedly written by someone named “Harry D. Monster”. I don’t know the ways of Amazon very well, but does the “Customers who bought this item also bought…” feature mean someone actually purchases those “disasterpieces”? Maybe it’s all AIs designing books and selling them to each other?

PhilO
PhilO
3 years ago
Reply to  Johno McMoose

That sounds very subversive.

I think there’s a story in there somewhere (see what I did there?). AI’s selling each other stories in order to improve their performance and maybe pass the Turing test someday. Obviously they’re playing the long game.

Johno McMoose
Johno McMoose
3 years ago
Reply to  PhilO

The “authors” have names like Vader Kimblood, Fluffy Jacks, Damon Doopbot or L.M. Paperweight, and the blurps & text samples carry a general vibe of poor translation from Chinese. My fav is the snippet from the pseudobook about the battle of Austerlitz, saying “The battle took place in Mozambique (Czechoslovakia)”. As for the covers, I like the stock photo of two sheep on “Hawaiian Lifestyle” and how the same pic of a butterfly on a flower serves as a cover for two different books: “Samoyed” and “What Is Needed For A Good Remote Control Car Kit” (by Johnson Laublood, no less).

Zsuzsa
Zsuzsa
3 years ago
Reply to  Johno McMoose

On all of the ones I’ve looked at, the phrase was “Customers who viewed this item also viewed…” I wouldn’t count on there being purchases of any of these unless it’s part of a money laundering scheme.

If “The Battle of Cars” was less expensive, I might be tempted to buy it. The first line of the blurb, “On September 1, 1870, the Prussian and French armies decided to fight on cars,” suggests that this could be one of the great comedies of all time. However, $9.99 for “1-11 pages” means that I will have to make do with imagining the hilarity inside.

Krij
Krij
3 years ago
Reply to  Johno McMoose

Harry D. Monster should be writing in a… very different genre, A.I. or not