We. Are. Doomed.

If you do a quick search, you'll find that there are a couple of hundred '100000 Whys' books on Amazon U.K. and over twice that many on Amazon U.S.A.; all under different authors. Most of the authors are as fake as the books.

@draNgNon found another, and its customer reviews have people reporting that the book sample has a different author to the Amazon listing, & what they actually received was a B&W photocopy of a book.

One bizarre factoid that I have noticed is that they all seem to try to answer the question of why space is dark. I've nowhere near read them all, but I've seen several that all give the same wrong answer that there is no atmosphere in space. I have seen exactly *one* of these titles that comes anywhere near the right answer to Olbers' Paradox, although still missing the mark, published by a Wunder Press.

https://amazon.co.uk/100-000-Whys-Questions-Amazing/dp/B0H2L5BJD1/

I chuckled when I read its answer to 'why does the Moon change the shape' on page 3 (q.v.).

@cstross @lcamtuf
#astronomy

ehay2k@mastodon.social

@HollieK72 @cstross

I think the other 99K or so Whys come from questions about the veracity of the content. e.g. "Why did they say the front and back of the cat were the same?"

jackpearse@nrw.social

@cstross

It’s urgently time to shut down this version of the Internet since ist is no „Inter“net anymore.

It is even worse than #Idiocracy
I truly expected sth. like idiocracy to come up over a long time.

But I never ever expected it to become so bad.

ariels@hachyderm.io

@cstross I stupidly looked at another #astronomy #fact from this book.
The diagram clearly shows that it is always summer in the northern hemisphere and always summer in the southern hemisphere. Also that sunlight does not arrive at the Earth in a straight line from the Sun.
(I assume angular momentum is preserved by something doing something to the moon. Or perhaps that's explained in the chapter about Venus.)
The economics are truly intriguing:
1. Violate copyrights to build a #slop_machine.
2. Pour everything possible into the blender.
3. Produce incorrect diagrams.
3a. You could literally steal a correct diagram!
3b. Or you could literally use a correct non-copyrighted diagram! NASA have a bunch.

ralph@hear-me.social

@cstross

#alttext

Four images:
One - AGES 6-13
THE BIG BOOK FOR CURIOUS KIDS
WHYS
100,000 Whys for Kids: A Full-Color Visual Encyclopedia of Big Questions, Clear Answers, Science Space, Animals, Nature, History, Inventions, and How the World Works for Ages 6-13
by Elliott Wonder (Author)
Format: Paperback
#1 Best Seller
Two - The Earth with the Arctic facing the camera.
Spin direction (counterclockwise)
Sun (below the south pole)
N (in the Atlantic ocean)
Arctic Circle
East (on the left )
(sunrise)
West (on the right)
(sunset)
Three - A cat falling and righting itself. The labels are:
Flexible spine. (pointing to the head)
Front half. (pointing to the head)
Back half. (pointing to the front feet)
Four - An owl's head with a cutaway left eye and labels:
Big eye. (pointing to right eye)
Tube shape. (pointing to elongated left eye)
Skull. (pointing to cutaway bone)
Forward gaze. (pointing to severely crossed left eye)

jdebp@mastodonapp.uk

@HollieK72 @draNgNon

Holy Whys Books, Batman!

I've just found one of them that mentions Olbers' Paradox and actually has the explanation pretty much right for primary school level.

https://amazon.co.uk/BIG-BOOK-100-000-WHYS/dp/B0H2GM3WMJ/

I do not believe that 'Prof. Alex Morgan' is real, though. One of xyr other publications listed seems to be just a riff on the old CIA World Factbook, for starters.

@cstross @lcamtuf
#astronomy #OlbersParadox