Arrgle Books

Arrgle Books Home of Uncommon Scents and other timeless works of fine literature

Bruce Berls has been writing about computers and technology at bruceb.com for more than 20 years. Jim Rowson is a former Google software engineer with more than two million lines of code to his name.

The giant AI companies are buying and destroying huge numbers of books, as many as 50 million books in the last two year...
09/01/2026

The giant AI companies are buying and destroying huge numbers of books, as many as 50 million books in the last two years. The books are loaded into industrial slicers to cut off the bindings and spines; the pages are fed to high speed scanners; then the paper is pulped. We live in a weird timeline.
Bruceb News - AI Is Chomping Books - https://mailchi.mp/d0f5280ca6b4/bruceb-news-ai-companies-are-chomping-books

AI-powered systems can increasingly use what they know about you to decide how much you’ll pay, how little you’ll work f...
08/25/2026

AI-powered systems can increasingly use what they know about you to decide how much you’ll pay, how little you’ll work for, and which opportunities you’ll be offered. Welcome to a world where you are the thing being priced.
Bruceb News - The Death Of The Price Tag - https://mailchi.mp/31adde9295b0/bruceb-news-the-death-of-the-price-tag

For a brief period in the 1940s and 1950s, mass market editions of classic literary books had covers with sultry women, ...
08/18/2026

For a brief period in the 1940s and 1950s, mass market editions of classic literary books had covers with sultry women, shadowy detectives, and thrilling action. Here's the story about how lurid pulp covers democratized literacy, sparked a federal moral panic, and permanently altered the course of modern book design.

Bruceb News - Pulping The Classics - https://mailchi.mp/d83284756193/bruceb-news-pulping-the-classics

Three different types of glasses are arriving soon. One turns the world in front of you into a computer desktop; one put...
08/11/2026

Three different types of glasses are arriving soon. One turns the world in front of you into a computer desktop; one puts an IMAX sized screen in your backpack; the third wants to be an AI companion whispering in your ear. We’ve spent twenty years staring down at our phones. Smart glasses are betting we’re ready to look up again.
Bruceb News - Not All Smart Glasses Dream The Same Dreams - https://mailchi.mp/809221c25939/bruceb-news-not-all-smart-glasses-dream-the-same-dreams

Mark Twain's stories about silver mining in the 1860s are entertaining, of course. Cynics might say my article has a hid...
08/04/2026

Mark Twain's stories about silver mining in the 1860s are entertaining, of course. Cynics might say my article has a hidden moral about the AI investment bubble but I utterly reject that calumny.
Bruceb News - Mark Twain & AI - https://mailchi.mp/82d8eee0756e/bruceb-news-mark-twain-ai

The CEOs of the giant AI companies are smiling and selling tickets to an array of AI products and telling us earnestly t...
08/03/2026

The CEOs of the giant AI companies are smiling and selling tickets to an array of AI products and telling us earnestly that AI could destroy society but their companies will be extremely valuable until the collapse. They bear the moral responsibility for the destabilization of society and fracturing of public trust. Sounds depressing but it will make you hate billionaires and that's fun, right?

Bruceb News - The Rhetoric Of Ruin, https://www.bruceb.com/2026/07/the-rhetoric-of-ruin/

People really don’t like AI. They don’t trust it and they don’t think it will be good for themselves or the world. This ...
07/28/2026

People really don’t like AI. They don’t trust it and they don’t think it will be good for themselves or the world. This article lists some of the reasons that people have soured on AI - fear, resentment, opposition to data centers, and more.

Bruceb News - AI Is The New Supervillain, https://www.bruceb.com/2026/07/ai-is-the-new-supervillain/

Paris-based Olympia Press mostly released erotica in the 1950s but occasionally published real literature like Lo**ta an...
07/28/2026

Paris-based Olympia Press mostly released erotica in the 1950s but occasionally published real literature like Lo**ta and William Burroughs' Naked Lunch. The Ginger Man by J P Donleavy started life as a green Olympia paperback designed to be hidden from customs inspectors, then went on to become a bestseller and much loved literary novel. Donleavy was so unhappy about being published alongside p**n that he pursued a decades-long legal blood feud with Maurice Girondias, owner of Olympia Press. The story has a great ending. The details about Donleavy and other well known authors published by Olympia are in my article.

Bruceb News - The Revenge Of The Ginger Man, https://www.bruceb.com/2026/06/the-revenge-of-the-ginger-man/

I am inordinately proud of the Bruceb Favorites page, a lovingly curated directory of websites you already know how to r...
07/28/2026

I am inordinately proud of the Bruceb Favorites page, a lovingly curated directory of websites you already know how to reach. I've been maintaining it for nearly 30 years. The precision-engineered next-generation Bruceb Favorites is live now.
Bruceb News - Bruceb Favorites Gets A Glow-Up - https://mailchi.mp/5075e28028cf/bruceb-news-bruceb-favorites-gets-a-glow-up

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