About 20 years ago, I sought an alternative to Amazon.
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About 20 years ago, I sought an alternative to Amazon. A friend recommended Kennys.ie. A physical bookshop with the oldest book webshop in the world. A family-owned, family-run, tax-paying bookshop. New and used books. An independent bookshop in Galway, beloved for supporting authors and the local arts. The first books I ordered arrived with a bookmark and a handwritten note signed by one of the Kennys. I swear I could smell the Atlantic Ocean waft out of the parcel. The opposite of Amazon.
@CiaraNi I'm a very satisfied user of Kennys.ie.
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These miserable fuckers who work for these miserable AI companies, doing this miserable work. Miserable human fuckers, clocking into work to plan worldwide book-destroying raids, placing these veiled orders with bookshops, watering their office plant, picking collection points, signing a Happy Birthday! card for Brad, picking up the books, stopping for coffee, posting the books to the US, scanning them, signing up for office bowling night, ripping off the covers, destroying the books. Fuck them.
@CiaraNi and fuck Brad.
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@CiaraNi I'm a very satisfied user of Kennys.ie.
@j_g_fitzgerald They're great
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@CiaraNi If I had magic powers, I would take them and make them very small, like tiny little humans and then I would flick them away with my finger and they would fly through the air into the ocean where they would drown or perhaps just swim in panic with their tiny little bodies and eventually get to land where I would come again and flick them out into the ocean again. They would be helpful and beg for mercy and I would be big and powerful! That's my hatred fuelled fantasy
@malte Very small, tiny little humans - sounds right to me, that's them. These small tiny tiny-minded mediocrities of humans doing this work as their job.
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About 20 years ago, I sought an alternative to Amazon. A friend recommended Kennys.ie. A physical bookshop with the oldest book webshop in the world. A family-owned, family-run, tax-paying bookshop. New and used books. An independent bookshop in Galway, beloved for supporting authors and the local arts. The first books I ordered arrived with a bookmark and a handwritten note signed by one of the Kennys. I swear I could smell the Atlantic Ocean waft out of the parcel. The opposite of Amazon.
@CiaraNi There is bound to be an independent bookseller who also does mail order in your area. Go find it. I know I found mine.
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About 20 years ago, I sought an alternative to Amazon. A friend recommended Kennys.ie. A physical bookshop with the oldest book webshop in the world. A family-owned, family-run, tax-paying bookshop. New and used books. An independent bookshop in Galway, beloved for supporting authors and the local arts. The first books I ordered arrived with a bookmark and a handwritten note signed by one of the Kennys. I swear I could smell the Atlantic Ocean waft out of the parcel. The opposite of Amazon.
@CiaraNi @quixoticgeek Other Irish booksellers who have done excellent service for my present shoppings are https://www.thebookresort.ie/pages/about-us for books with chocolate and Chapters for their genre themed mystery boxes.
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Absolutely on your side, this is so cynical!
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These miserable fuckers who work for these miserable AI companies, doing this miserable work. Miserable human fuckers, clocking into work to plan worldwide book-destroying raids, placing these veiled orders with bookshops, watering their office plant, picking collection points, signing a Happy Birthday! card for Brad, picking up the books, stopping for coffee, posting the books to the US, scanning them, signing up for office bowling night, ripping off the covers, destroying the books. Fuck them.
@CiaraNi so upsetting.
and i know this isn't exactly the same point. but i've felt compelled lately to buy (partly and mostly "older") books that i loved, or that i've been wanting to get, as physical copies. it's a bit absurd maybe, but it has somehow been comforting to return my attention to non-recent publications in particular. -
@CiaraNi can't believe he asked for moustache wax as a birthday present
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@CiaraNi There is bound to be an independent bookseller who also does mail order in your area. Go find it. I know I found mine.
@studiolo_rb I don't need to 'go find' it, I don't need mail order from my local independent bookseller. I just walk in and buy the books myself in the shop while chatting to the nice people who run it.
If by this, you meant to direct me to buy locally, not shop online: I get English-language books that I can't get on the shelf in Denmark from Kennys. I buy Danish-language and other on-the-shelf books from my (equally excellent) independent family-run bookshop around the corner where I live.
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@CiaraNi so upsetting.
and i know this isn't exactly the same point. but i've felt compelled lately to buy (partly and mostly "older") books that i loved, or that i've been wanting to get, as physical copies. it's a bit absurd maybe, but it has somehow been comforting to return my attention to non-recent publications in particular.@venetiana That doesn't sound at all absurd - that resonates! You and me and others I've talked with recently are all saying things like this - that the AI mess has made us more aware of non-digital pleasures - of our CDs, our hard-copy books etc. The older ones especially, as you say.
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@studiolo_rb I don't need to 'go find' it, I don't need mail order from my local independent bookseller. I just walk in and buy the books myself in the shop while chatting to the nice people who run it.
If by this, you meant to direct me to buy locally, not shop online: I get English-language books that I can't get on the shelf in Denmark from Kennys. I buy Danish-language and other on-the-shelf books from my (equally excellent) independent family-run bookshop around the corner where I live.
@CiaraNi Oh, my comment wasn't directed at you - but at everyone to find a good source that isn't a mega-corporation
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@CiaraNi can't believe he asked for moustache wax as a birthday present
@rgarner Hahaha - now I'm imagining Brad twirling his moustache as he destroys books, except that would make him interesting which he is not.
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”Galway bookseller suspects 'scattergun' order is for AI”
"There was everything from History of the Caribbean to Rules of the Road to Internet Explorer for Dummies to books on health & medicine, just no particular genre and very strange."
'They believe they may be getting picked up at collection points in Europe & shipped to the US where so-called "fair use" policies make it legal to slice the spines. The books are scanned using the text to train AI, then destroyed.'
https://www.rte.ie/news/connacht/2026/0810/1587288-galway-books-ai/
@CiaraNi almost exactly the same story in NZ — it seems unlikely that these are unique cases, doesn’t it? https://mastodon.social/@JulianOliver/117074557530668185
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@CiaraNi Oh, my comment wasn't directed at you - but at everyone to find a good source that isn't a mega-corporation
@studiolo_rb Ah I see! Yes, there are surely other good, non-mega-corporation Kennys'es in different countries and we should support them all.
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@CiaraNi almost exactly the same story in NZ — it seems unlikely that these are unique cases, doesn’t it? https://mastodon.social/@JulianOliver/117074557530668185
@nic These stories seem to be coming quick and fast from all over the place. Not rare cases, it seems. In the story about the Kennys case, Tomás Kenny talks about booksellers he knows in Sweden and Germany who are experiencing this too.
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@venetiana That doesn't sound at all absurd - that resonates! You and me and others I've talked with recently are all saying things like this - that the AI mess has made us more aware of non-digital pleasures - of our CDs, our hard-copy books etc. The older ones especially, as you say.
@CiaraNi @venetiana I’ve been reading more of the classics. I have meant to do so for a while now and I do not have to wonder if they were written with the help of AI.
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About 20 years ago, I sought an alternative to Amazon. A friend recommended Kennys.ie. A physical bookshop with the oldest book webshop in the world. A family-owned, family-run, tax-paying bookshop. New and used books. An independent bookshop in Galway, beloved for supporting authors and the local arts. The first books I ordered arrived with a bookmark and a handwritten note signed by one of the Kennys. I swear I could smell the Atlantic Ocean waft out of the parcel. The opposite of Amazon.
@CiaraNi Now try Charlie Byrne’s. A staffer there took a book I needed fast out on her lunch break to post it to me
