We. Are. Doomed.

[lritter@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@cstross "we educated him wrong. as a joke."

[jdebp@mastodonapp.uk]

@HollieK72

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

[lazarou@mastodon.social]

@cstross as a child way back in the 80s I used to love the books of facts that were published for children back then.
Watching this mindless AI slop be forced on Kids, another part of their childhood's ruined by Late Stage Capitalism, not even the simple joy of Knowledge is allowed us....

[raulmatias@mstdn.social]

@megalodonnelly @drgoon @cstross Because it's a fraud scheme. I'm pretty sure all of this is automated and there is not even a single person involved in publishing this shit to marketplaces and delivering it.

[raulmatias@mstdn.social]

@cstross Can I download a PDF of this? Just for giggles.

[holliek72@mastodonapp.uk]

@cstross @kaito02 100,000 Whys is not a book, it's a book-shaped thing with words and images slopped into it. It has as little to do with actual reading as it does with actual art.

[jdebp@mastodonapp.uk]

@raulmatias @megalodonnelly @drgoon

I just had a similar scout around two Amazons, which have a lot more than B&N lists. The really dumbfounding part is that there are a few actually fairly accurate '100000 Whys' books, sans illustrations, buried in the mix.

But those aren't 'bestsellers'. They're the people with the format, who are being copied by the #AIslop mongers. Even then, though, they appear to be pseudonyms, and regurgitating things like the old CIA World Factbook.

https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116788436560592117

@cstross
#astronomy

[holliek72@mastodonapp.uk]

@Ehay2k @cstross I suppose it doesn't claim to answer all 100,000 Whys, just 100 of them - the rest are to be answered by parents, teachers, etc.

[datenwolf@chaos.social]

@internetsdairy @ariels @cstross

Arrows, too. Looking along the axis from the Earth's north to south (which is roughly pointing in the same direction as the normal of the Moon's orbital plane), the Moon moves eastward, i.e. in the counterclock wise direction.

[ehay2k@mastodon.social]

@HollieK72 @cstross

And all of them will ask this question:

Why did we buy this book?

[jam123@mstdn.ca]

@cstross Behold my children, the sloppening is upon us.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@raulmatias Not without giving the slopmonger money. Which I am morally opposed to doing, on principle (they're thieves, recycling stolen content via an LLM that mangles it in transit).

[mainec@fromm.social]

@Lazarou @cstross and that is after those books were cut down in content already at least in Germany. The fact books I read as a child were a lot more detailed.

[nolsen311@infosec.exchange]

@Lazarou

Can I just jump in here with everyone freaking out about the moon diagram: that's probably the same diagram they've used since the 80s. Yes, there's several things wrong with it. Yes, it drops a 3D structure into 2D.

Does it capture the basics for children who aren't great at visualizing in 3D yet? Absolutely.

C'mon.
Not everything is AI slop.

@cstross @cstross

[glc@mastodon.online]

@Lazarou @cstross

"Giraffes control over 90 pecent of what we see in mirrors. "

Reference: https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/giraffes-giraffes