SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The book publisher Penguin is printing more copies of George Orwell's dystopian classic "1984" in response to a sudden surge of demand.
On Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning the book was #1 on Amazon's computer-generated list of best-selling books.
[...] "We put through a 75,000 copy reprint this week. That is a substantial reprint and larger than our typical reprint for '1984,'" a Penguin spokesman told CNNMoney Tuesday evening.
[...] According to Nielsen BookScan, which measures most but not all book sales in the United States, "1984" sold 47,000 copies in print since Election Day in November. That is up from 36,000 copies over the same period the prior year.
When the submitter visited amazon.com, the book was ranked #3.
Additional coverage:
- Los Angeles Times
- The New York Times (may be pay-walled)
- 9News
- The Washington Post (owned by the founder of amazon.com)
- The Guardian
- The Man Who Invented the Science Fiction Paperback
Related stories:
Washington DC's Public Library Will Teach People How to Avoid the NSA
George Orwell's "1984" Telescreens are Here...
Traveling to Thailand? Don't Pack George Orwell's "1984"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday January 26 2017, @04:27PM
Dystopias are supposed to be absurd, extreme takes on reality, and never really happen. That said, until very recently, I felt like Fahrenheit 451 was so much better a model for how things were going: a populace so wrapped up in their infinite blankets of entertainment and modern conveniences that they lose sight of both the people around them and the state of the world at large. The book burning was really kinda ancillary to that.
But now, this "Even well demonstrated facts are free to be contested by the state" mode of the Trump administration starts to evoke minitru, and the explicit reathorization of torture by the head of state invokes miniluv. There aren't going to be thought police, but there's shades of 1984 I thought I'd never see for being too absurd.
(Score: 5, Funny) by quacking duck on Thursday January 26 2017, @04:47PM
Sane people: "The Onion's satire of Republican politicians is so outrageous, if they went any further they'd be sued for libel!"
2016 Republicans: "Hold my beer and watch this"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 26 2017, @07:54PM
Poe's Law at work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law [wikipedia.org]
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 26 2017, @04:52PM
That's been de rigeur for presidents since George W. Bush. Dick Cheney openly bragged on national television how he ordered torture. Obama blew smoke up our ass for 8 years about a recovery that never happened and police state surveillance that he not only didn't stop, but expanded. We've been in upside-down world since then, spiraling in in ever tighter gyres.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday January 26 2017, @05:06PM
And here we have the class of idiot that allows the situation.
One who cannot distinguish between "Selectively picks metrics to make themselves sound better, and taking subjectivity too far" and "Overtly willing to accept completely made up facts when presented by the right party, repeatedly, and without question."
What galls me is that republicans have strayed so far from reality-based perspectives that the former isn't enough to justify themselves anymore. Like... say what you want about the WMDs in Iraq being bullshit(I have plenty), they really did have sources they overtrusted. Now, it's "Make up a story. We're done"
It's fucking horrifying. What's wrong with your brain?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Ezber Bozmak on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:52PM
say what you want about the WMDs in Iraq being bullshit(I have plenty), they really did have sources they overtrusted.
I upvoted you. But that point is too generous. The Bush administration did more than overtrust, they willfully played games with the intelligence to support their predetermined conclusion. Much like trump seems to be doing with respect to the russian attacks on our electoral process. Choosing the low-confidence intelligence over the high-confidence intelligence just because the former supports his agenda.
Thirteen years ago, the intelligence community concluded in a 93-page classified document used to justify the invasion of Iraq that it lacked "specific information" on "many key aspects" of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.
But that's not what top Bush administration officials said during their campaign to sell the war to the American public. Those officials, citing the same classified document, asserted with no uncertainty that Iraq was actively pursuing nuclear weapons, concealing a vast chemical and biological weapons arsenal, and posing an immediate and grave threat to US national security.
Congress eventually concluded that the Bush administration had "overstated" its dire warnings about the Iraqi threat, and that the administration's claims about Iraq's WMD program were "not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting."
...
https://news.vice.com/article/the-cia-just-declassified-the-document-that-supposedly-justified-the-iraq-invasion [vice.com]
(there is a lot more worth reading at that link)
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday January 26 2017, @09:03PM
Yeah, well, they had one primary on-the-ground intelligence source and it was an exiled dissident.
They had some satellite imagery that showed construction they couldn't explain.
Divorced of all other context, that's a kind of very weak evidence. Were it the the only evidence of any kind, positive or negative, it'd raise questions.
What made it completely and utterly shitty was that this weak evidence was used to override a team of chemical weapons experts, on the ground in the country, under third party direction, with substantial inspection permissions(though not as much as the Bush administration demanded) saying that it wasn't possible. And so in that, you can see the kind of selectivity that makes the former category pretty damn shitty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @07:52PM
He literally forgot to shrooms.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 26 2017, @10:54PM
I'm not sure if you're directing that at me, or at Trump and those who take him at his word. For the sake of comity I'll assume it's the latter; if not you can clarify and we can revisit the subject of who's an idiot.
Honestly it's facile to lay out narrative like it comprises discrete strata, that are clearly defined, qualitatively, quantumly different. In terms of statecraft and politics, which is what we're talking about here, it's all narrative, and how successful you are at getting your narrative accepted by the most people. It's a conceit of so many who live within partisan realities that their narrative is based purely on fact, while their opponents dwell in a realm of fantasy. They're both mistaken. There is much myth-making going on on both sides.
I have liked to think that progressives are less credulous than others, but checking in on HuffingtonPost and other outlets since the election I am not so sure anymore. It's embarrassing to see them reduced to drooling mouthbreathers, too.
Where Trump has arrived seems to me to be a natural progression of the discursive shearing that has been going on for several decades. When the official narrative of how things are going differs too much from reality for too long, a critical loss of credibility occurs and the invisible social contract that keeps everybody going to work and paying their taxes and obeying the law begins to shear and shred. We have arrived at the moment in which the elites no longer pretend to care or play by the rules and feel completely empowered to say whatever they feel like without consequences. Trump is only bumping that up a notch. The only thing he has going for him at the moment is that enough people still believe that he's gonna go after the elites. When realization sinks in that he's only scamming them like every one of his predecessors, we're going to be in for one doozy of a time.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @01:29PM
Where Trump has arrived seems to me to be a natural progression of the discursive shearing that has been going on for several decades. When the official narrative of how things are going differs too much from reality for too long, a critical loss of credibility occurs and the invisible social contract that keeps everybody going to work and paying their taxes and obeying the law begins to shear and shred. We have arrived at the moment
Missing from your analysis is the collapse of conservative media into an orbit around foxnews and the limbaugh crew. Conservatives are demonstrably less omnivorous in their media consumption than liberals. [alternet.org] They've coalesced into an echo chamber that deliberately misrepresents reality because outrage makes money. [vox.com] Karl Rove himself said that solutions are no longer the result of studying reality. [wikipedia.org]
You think Trump is the result of people believing their own eyes over the lies of the elite. Trump is the result of them believing the lies of the elite over their own eyes.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:37PM
Obama blew smoke up our ass for 8 years about a recovery that never happened...On one hand we have statements that are supported by data. The Economy Is Better — Why Don’t Voters Believe It? [fivethirtyeight.com]
On the other hand, we have the Whitehouse Press Secretary lying about things for which there is photographic proof of falsehood. White House Press Secretary Defends False Statements About Inauguration Crowds [motherjones.com]
Enough with the false equivalency already!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 26 2017, @10:18PM
Ah yes. Data. Because there's no way to lie with data, is there? Let's not count labor force participation rates, let's only count people who have recently filed for unemployment. Let's not talk about real incomes, which have been on an uninterrupted slide for 40 years, let's talk about how great the Dow Jones is doing. Nah, you're right. You got me. Data never lies, and what the country's feeling is all in their heads, right? All you gotta do is convince them how delusional they are, and how it is really, truly wonderful to have the .0001% siphon off all the productivity gains of the last several decades, to, what, squirrel it away in secret accounts in the Caymans and wash it through lots of shell companies so they don't pay any taxes on it?
It is not false equivalency at all to point out that Obama did nothing to help out the middle class, and he did nothing to rein in the police state. If you still buy the story that Democrats and Republicans are different, you really need to step outside your bubble. The country is not tearing itself to pieces because everything's going GREAT!
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday January 26 2017, @05:24PM
I'm not so sure about that. We already have:
- The NSA monitoring all of the US communications networks for anything they deem suspicious past and present. This is the culmination of the Total Information Awareness project that started back in 2001 or so, and has been continuing in various levels of secrecy ever since (and TIA was also the result of some stuff that the Clinton administration was up to like Echelon).
- The FBI as well as local police forces can and do send in undercover cops to spy on political and religious organizations, including those with no intentions of criminal activity.
- A press that quite happily does the bidding of whoever is in political power at any given moment. Even the ones that are supposedly slanted towards the other party. And as of last Friday, journalists are being arrested and charged with crimes if they report something the administration doesn't like.
The only thing missing would be bounties to turn in your friends and neighbors if they start saying the wrong thing.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:02PM
You mean: See Something, Say Something
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by lgw on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:15PM
Not the same. But that's just the thing - we no longer need a network of informers turning in their neighbors and relatives. With every phone call being recorded and keyword-indexed, every email added to the DB, everyone's web browsing monitored, there's just no point in the informants.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:54PM
The informants are useful for 2 major reasons:
1. To keep people from speaking and organizing in person. Including in an unorganized fashion: Bob complains about government policy at the bar on Thursday night, Friday he no longer has a job and for some reason can't get another one in his field, that kind of thing.
2. To create an endless supply of enemies that have to be located, imprisoned, and tortured. Which justifies spending even more on surveillance, prisons, and torture. It is vitally important that the enemy never be completely defeated, and informants turning people in on false information that can never be disproven is a good way of keeping a good supply of enemies.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by lgw on Thursday January 26 2017, @07:57PM
Even China no longer needs informants to achieve these goals. Theoretically you can keep things voice-only and fly under the radar, but that's increasingly alien to young people.