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2026-08-17 15:21:34 UTC
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John Carlos Baez on Nostr: - It's not clear how "rare" these books are. "Pieter de Vries of antiquarian ...

- It's not clear how "rare" these books are.

"Pieter de Vries of antiquarian bookstore De Vries & De Vries in Haarlem recently received an email from a person identifying herself as Nataly from Singapore-based company 2077AI. In the message, seen by BNR, she wrote that the company was participating in “a new project focused on collecting books in multiple languages, currently mainly in English.”

“We have compiled a very extensive list of editions that we are currently trying to acquire, and we plan to place a fairly large order. The list is attached,” the email said.

The attachment contained 3,000 English-language titles organized by ISBN number, including books such as Distinct Element Modelling in Geomechanics by K.R. Saxena (1999); Barrett's Traditional Fairy Tales (2021), an academic study of Irish folklore; and Laser Shock Peening of Advanced Ceramics by Pratik Shukla (2018)."

Though De Vries & De Vries is described as an "antiquarian book seller", these three titles from ≥ 2018 are not antique and probably not very rare.

However, like most academics, I instinctively despise anyone who would rip up a book.