Teleread

06/11/2025

“Zohran Mamdani’s election was not as surprising as his primary win in June, and since then, Republicans have had time to adjust to the idea of a young, charismatic idol espousing a new and exciting message for the Democratic Party. On Tuesday and Wednesday, though, instead of responding with new policy ideas to excite their own base, they mostly responded by returning to old territory: bald, ugly Islamophobia.”

Powerful Republicans are turning to old forms of bigotry.

29/05/2024

My hometown of Alexandria, Virginia, comes in 53rd on the list – worse than Akron, Ohio.

The cleanliness of your environment can impact your health. Find out which U.S. cities are the dirtiest in this LawnStarter ranking.

27/05/2024

By Paul StJohn MacKintosh

A few days ago, I was in Strasbourg, designated in April 2024 the UNESCO 2024 World Book Capital City (WBCC). And that’s a fitting award, because for lovers of books and the printed word, Strasbour…

20/05/2024

James O'Shea, former L.A. Times editor, has opened his mind up about bots. I feel the same, and here I give a few reasons why.

Could a reporter bot have been me in real life in the 1970s—or Jonathan Stone, the far more dashing investigative journalist in my novel The Solomon Scandals? And who would have made a better…

05/05/2024

“I’ve recently been head down over the keyboard filling in the endnotes and other citations for my upcoming historical work, The Liberation of Strasbourg. It’s my first brush in forever with academic citation, and I’m not relishing the experience. Aren’t those citation requirements a headache? Could blockchains rescue us?” By Paul StJohn Mackintosh

I’ve recently been head down over the keyboard filling in the endnotes and other citations for my upcoming historical work, The Liberation of Strasbourg. It’s my first brush in forev…

04/05/2024

By Paul St John Mackintosh

I can hardly pass a moment at home without an audiobook or an audio podcast playing. But I haven’t invested in a new Bluetooth speaker for a long time. So the Tribit XSound Go was a welcome generat…

26/04/2024

To help people explore my Washington corruption novel, I created ScandalsBot.com with a WordPress plug-in called AI Power.

The version I’m running isn’t free but is affordable. Indie authors and small publishers might find this of interest.

Yes, my bot page reminds visitors of the negatives of AI, including hallucinations and well-worn language. Still, the ScandalsBot is factual most of the time and is wonderful for calling attention to possibilities, even if a human should verify the information.

A useful discussion provoker (on issues such as ethics in media, government, business, and law)!

I don’t speak for the ScandalsBot, and it doesn’t necessarily speak for me. That’s not what the bot is about.

The Solomon Scandals, a Washington novel by David Rothman

06/01/2023

“On January 1, 2023, copyrighted works from 1927 will enter the US public domain. 1  They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. These include Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse…

06/01/2023

Could this be one reason why the Kindle Scribe has gone on sale? For $400, Lenovo later this year is to sell a Scribe rival able to record lectures with two built-in mikes and turn handwritten note…

06/01/2023

Still not a bargain E Ink device, but on sale it’s reasonable enough for me and my tired eyes. 

Eager to try out the Kindle Scribe’s handwritten-note capability, I gambled $419 on the 64GB version with the deluxe pen. Loser! I was up against such nuisances as a 50MB cap on PDF files transferr…

15/12/2022

"For now, the banners are targeting local libraries. But what if the United States has a single national digital library system, as some influentials on the library scene have hoped? Censorship risks are a major reason why I myself favor two national digital library systems—one public and one academic. A single system vs. two is an issue for librarians and others to decide. But as a gungho library advocate, going back to the early 1990s, here is my current personal vision."

The public library news out of League City, Texas, is grim. By 4-3, the city council voted to ban “obscene” books and let a new board decide which ones are right for minors. It’s …

17/11/2022

“The Russians, Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova, both of St. Petersburg, operated Z-Library, which offered more than 11 million books and 84 million articles for free, according to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn which charged the pair with criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud and money laundering.”

Z-Library bills itself as "the world's largest library" and offers e-book files in a variety of file formats, stripped of their copyright protections, and encourages users to upload and download titles.