'critical to the success of the city'

Books bookstores Five Reasons to Leave the House and Go Explore a Used Bookstore The sights, the smells… the savings!!! By James Davis Nicoll | Published on November 17, 2025 Photo: Janko Ferlič [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Janko Ferlič [via Unsplash] Over the years, Reactor has published an assortment of essays praising the good old physical book, in particular the paperback. Each writer, including myself, talked about the unique virtues of physical books. However, to enjoy a book, you have to first acquire that book. Among the most valuable resources available to readers: the wonderful brick-and-mortar used bookstore. Why would I, notorious for being antisocial1, willingly venture into brick-and-mortar used bookstores? Why not stick to online booksellers such as Abe or Alibris? Starting with least persuasive to most, my own personal reasons are: Supporting local business: I’d much rather support local small businesses, rather than connecting indirectly to a stranger through a branch of Amazon, or some other online used book intermediary. Particularly now, given (gestures at the world). Sensorium: No online bookseller, no matter how well-stocked, can provide the sensory environment of a bookstore. As well, for all their virtues, new bookstores do not provide the full experience of stepping into a used bookstore to inhale the aroma of a hundred different grades of paper (some still pristine, others self-destructing) and inks long disused (almost entirely non-arsenical), with occasional delicate mycotoxin high notes. Each lungful of air reminds readers of the wonders that await. The thrill of the hunt: There’s nothing quite like discovering a copy of a book for which one has been searching for years. The (potentially) immediate gratification of online sources might be convenient, but it’s no fun. It just doesn’t feel sporting to rattle keys on a keyboard, whereas patiently searching shelf after shelf, in store after store, over months and years, does. It’s the difference between buying meat from Loblaws or heading out, flint-pointed spear in hand, to look for a tasty moose. Yeah, the grocery store will be faster, and might not involve as many broken bones2, but the survivors appreciate their meal more. A special case of the thrill of the hunt is the joy of serendipity, something used bookstores share with libraries and new bookstores. Online stores don’t offer the chance to discover items you would have wanted had you known they existed3. Cost: Used books are (usually) cheaper than new books4. As we do not yet live in a post-scarcity world, being able buy more books for the same price is useful. Now, some authors would rightfully point out that they don’t see any money from used bookstore sales. It’s not like there’s any used bookstore analog of the Public Lending Right Program. Granting that, there are two reasons why that’s not as bad as it sounds, one weak and one strong. The weak argument is that the author did get their money for that particular copy when it sold for the first time, which is what their contract promised them. It’s true they won’t get the money they would have received had the person bought a new copy, but there’s no guarantee that that reader would have bought a new copy had the used one not been available. A much stronger case for used books from the point of view of authors is that used books can hook readers who were previously unfamiliar with the author’s work. Sure, the second Poul Anderson novel I ever bought was a used copy of There Will Be Time. The next sixty or so were new. Variety: New bookstores are limited to the books that are in print. Used bookstores are not. Therefore, you can find in used bookstores works you could never find in your local Chapters/Indigo, Words Worth, or even Bakka-Phoenix (if you don’t check out their used books). Even special orders would avail you not, for books long out of print5. But as long as the paper hasn’t self-destructed, any book that was ever in print could turn up in a used bookstore. No doubt there are other, equally valid reasons for visiting used bookstores, assuming you are able to do so (I realize that may not be the case for everyone). These are mine, but please share your thoughts in the comments below.[end-mark] The last time I was indoors with people who were neither in my bubble or family, and for reasons not related to work, health, or food purchase, would have been February 20th, 2020. ︎Depending on how diligently the store salts its walk in winter, and how observant drivers in the parking lot are. See my children’s book Mommy and Daddy Are Never Coming Home Because They Thought Cybertrucks Brake for Pedestrians. ︎I was delighted to discover that the Dana Porter Library at the University of Waterloo does offer a shelf-scanning option. Their online catalogue allows users to see entries for books adjacent to the book the user originally wanted. O brave new world, that has such software embellishments in’t. However, that will only show you the books that are properly catalogued. I helped convert Dana Porter Library to a computerized system. This meant taking every book off its shelf to barcode and record. Unexpected discoveries abounded! Some delightful, some… less delightful (shudder). That was more than forty years ago. I am sure chaos has crept back in. ︎I’d argue this is often true (at least from a certain point of view) even for the high-priced rare books, because you generally cannot buy those new for any price. ︎Usually. I was bemused to find a copy of Glen Cook’s The Swordbearer in a newly opened Chapters back in 1999 or 2000. Not the Tor edition, but the 1982 Timescape paperback. Having poked through distributor warehouses, I can totally believe that a copy of The Swordbearer sat on an insufficiently lit warehouse shelf for almost twenty years. ︎The post Five Reasons to Leave the House and Go Explore a Used Bookstore appeared first on Reactor.

Amid growing tensions, President Donald Trump says Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “would like to talk,” and the U.S. might agree.   “I’d talk to anybody. We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters Sunday night.   Trump made the comments only hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the U.S. is designating a prominent Venezuelan criminal cartel as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Maduro, according to Rubio, is the head of Cartel de los Soles, which translates to Cartel of the Suns.   “Headed by the illegitimate Nicolás Maduro, the group has corrupted the institutions of government in Venezuela and is responsible for terrorist violence conducted by and with other designated [Foreign Terrorist Organizations] as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe,” Rubio wrote on X Sunday.   .@StateDept intends to designate Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Headed by the illegitimate Nicolás Maduro, the group has corrupted the institutions of government in Venezuela and is responsible for terrorist violence conducted by and with other…— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) November 16, 2025 The designation provides the U.S. with additional means to curtail support and operations of a terrorist organization, in this case, Cartel de los Soles.   Tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela have been growing in recent months, largely over drug smuggling out of the South American country. Now, the U.S. has moved the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest and most advanced aircraft carrier, into the Caribbean Sea.   Meanwhile, over the weekend, Maduro addressed a crowd at a political rally in Venezuela and spoke of “peace” with the U.S. before breaking into John Lennon’s “Imagine.”   U.S. has not carried out any direct strikes on Venezuela, but in October, Trump said the U.S. would consider such a strike. The Trump administration has given the CIA permission to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, the president confirmed last month.   The U.S. has carried out about 20 strikes on drug boards in the Eastern Pacific or Caribbean Sea in recent months. U.S. Southern Command announced the most recent strike in the Eastern Pacific on Sunday.   “Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” U.S. Southern Command wrote on X, adding that three male narco-terrorists were killed in the strike that took place in international waters.   On Nov. 15, at the direction of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization. Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling,… pic.twitter.com/iM1PhIsroj— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) November 16, 2025 Last week, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced Operation Southern Spear, writing on X, “This mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people. The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood—and we will protect it.”   The post Trump Open to Talks With Venezuela’s Maduro appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Republican National Committee is suing New Jersey for failing to provide public records on the state’s voter roll maintenance practices, according to Chairman Joe Gruters. “New Jerseyans deserve to know whether their voter rolls are accurate,” Gruters told The Daily Signal. “Clean and transparent voter lists are essential for trust in our elections. The RNC is suing to obtain these records and ensure the state follows the law.” The RNC is filing an election integrity lawsuit against New Jersey Secretary of State Tahesha Way.  Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires states to remove ineligible voters—such as those who have died or moved out of the jurisdiction—from the voter rolls. Under the act, states must permit the public to inspect records showing how voter rolls are maintained. The RNC has sent 18 separate records requests to New Jersey asking for information about the garden state’s list-maintenance efforts, including information about voters who asked to be removed from the rolls. Way has repeatedly denied these requests, which the RNC says violates federal law and prevents New Jerseyans from knowing whether their voter rolls are accurate and being regularly cleaned. The RNC is focused on using litigation to help President Donald Trump achieve his goals around election security, an RNC official told The Daily Signal. In March, the GOP sent records requests to election officials in 48 states and the District of Columbia, seeking information on how states maintain their voter rolls. Trump signed an executive order in March requiring states to use proof of U.S. citizenship for federal voter registration, setting Election Day as the uniform deadline for receiving ballots in federal elections, and conditioning federal election funding on compliance with those and other election-integrity rules.  The RNC is working to defend Trump’s executive order in states where practices prohibited by the directive continue. While the president is taking the national approach to election integrity, the RNC is coming alongside him with a state-by-state approach.  The post EXCLUSIVE: RNC Sues New Jersey for Election Obfuscation appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. You’d think that when a police force storms into a family home, arrests two parents in front of their child because of WhatsApp messages, and later admits they had no legal grounds to do so, the next logical step would be to apologize. A basic human gesture. “Sorry we got it wrong. Sorry we embarrassed you. Sorry we scared your kid.” That sort of thing. But Hertfordshire Constabulary in the UK, having now paid out £20,000 ($26,000) to Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine after unlawfully arresting them, appears to have skipped that part. Not a word of apology. Not even one of those sterile, press-release apologies full of vague regret and zero responsibility. Just a quiet settlement and the hope, presumably, that everyone will move on. This is the second payout the couple has received for the same incident. The arrests took place in January after a private WhatsApp message about their daughter’s school was treated as a police matter. There were no threats; just a personal comment, in a closed conversation, that someone at the school didn’t like. Apparently, that was enough. Allen, a Times Radio producer, described the moment the settlement came through. “It would be an exaggeration to say I burst into tears, but I did weep,” he said. “They have admitted wrongful arrest, admitted unlawful arrest, and they’ve agreed to pay us damages. We’re really pleased that they’ve recognized that this was the wrong thing to do.” All of that is important. But it’s not an apology. Levine, a television producer, said she was glad the ordeal had concluded and hoped the case might stop this from happening to others. “However, I fear that we won’t be the last,” she added. And who could blame her. The money helps, yes, but it doesn’t change the fact that the police showed up like it was a crime scene when in reality it was a frustrated parent tapping on a phone. And this wasn’t a safeguarding emergency. It was a disagreement over support for their disabled daughter with epilepsy. The parents had been in regular contact with Cowley Primary School, questioning what they saw as inadequate care. In return, the school took issue with the volume and tone of those concerns, flagged a private message as malicious, and brought in the police. Allen put it bluntly. “The police should not be a tool for public authorities to close down legitimate comment and scrutiny.” But right now, that is precisely how they are being used. Schools and local authorities are increasingly passing awkward conversations to the police, hoping for quick, intimidating solutions. And far too often, the police go along with it. There is a wider problem here. In the UK, speech, even in private, is being treated with suspicion. Disagreements are being classified as threats. A WhatsApp message from a parent becomes a police matter, not because it poses danger, but because someone finds it inconvenient. It is not just about the money. It is about the message this sends. If authorities can quietly pay out for arrests that should never have happened, without acknowledging the damage they caused, the system learns nothing. The people affected are left with compensation, yes, but also with the knowledge that the institutions that wronged them still believe they owe no explanation. This story was never about one couple and a WhatsApp message. It is about the line between ordinary speech and police power, and how fragile that line has become. It should not be this easy to cross it. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post UK: Hertfordshire Police Pay £20,000 for Unlawful Arrests Over Parents’ WhatsApp Message appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Chile Breaks Right

In low biomass years, one-fifth of African penguins are foraging alongside fishing vessels.

It sounds like science fiction, but some insects have it down to a fine art.

It's a good time to find 1,444 tonnes of gold.

Wikimedia CommonsThe Bellamy Salute, the salute of the U.S. flag until 1942. The photograph seen above wasn’t taken at an American school that supported the Nazis, though you’d certainly be forgiven for mistaking it as such. Actually, the children in the photo are saluting the American flag with what was known as the “Bellamy Salute” — a hand gesture used by generations of young Americans while pledging allegiance to the flag. The gesture was named after Francis J. Bellamy, the man who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance. For 50 years, the Bellamy Salute was standard in U.S. schools and obediently performed by school children across the nation. But as the Nazis began to rise in Europe in the 1930s, many Americans became uncomfortable with the optics of American school children saluting the flag with a Nazi-like gesture. In 1942, Congress amended the Flag Code to get rid of the Bellamy Salute entirely. This is the surprising story of the rise and fall of the Bellamy Salute. Francis J. Bellamy Writes The Pledge Of Allegiance The story of the Bellamy Salute begins with Francis Julius Bellamy, the author of the Pledge of Allegiance. Born on May 18, 1855 in Mount Morris, New York, he spent his young adulthood as a Baptist minister, and later came to work for a magazine called Youth’s Companion. Wikimeda CommonsFrancis J. Bellamy pictured in 1894. The magazine was run by a man named Daniel Sharp Ford who, in the years following the Civil War, was looking for ways to unify the country. He fully embraced the schoolhouse flag movement, which aimed to put an American flag in every U.S. school as a way to bring people together. In pursuit of this goal, Ford gave Bellamy an assignment: to write a “pledge” to the flag that Americans could easily recite. Bellamy accepted the assignment, and wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, which originally read: “I pledge Allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” The pledge, meant to coincide with the 400 year anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World, was published in the Sept. 8, 1892 edition of Youth’s Companion. And on Oct. 12, 1892, an estimated 12 million U.S. school children recited Bellamy’s pledge. But Ford and Bellamy had not just come up with a pledge. They also came up with a salute, which soon became known as the Bellamy Salute. The Rise And Fall Of The Bellamy Salute Alongside the Pledge of Allegiance, Youth’s Companion instructed students on how they should salute the flag while reciting the pledge. “At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag,” Youth’s Companion stated. “Another signal is given; every pupil gives the flag the military salute — right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it.” Students were instructed to remain with their hands raised, palm downward, until the line “my Flag,” at which point they were instructed to turn their palms up toward the flag until the pledge was complete. Wikimedia CommonsIn the 20th century, fascists started using a similar salute. The Pledge of Allegiance, and its accompanying gesture, the Bellamy Salute, became a mainstay of schools across the United States. But just a few decades later, things began to change. In the early 20th century, fascism began to rise in Europe. In the 1920s, Italian fascists lead by Benito Mussolini adopted what they called the “Roman salute” (though according to History Extra, its origins lay more in 18th-century French art than the Roman Empire itself). A similar salute was soon adopted by Adolf Hitler’s Nazis, who began gaining power in Germany in the 1930s. Both bore a striking similarity to the Bellamy Salute. Americans began to notice the parallels between their salute and the fascist salute starting in the 1930s, according to To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance by Richard J. Ellis. What’s more, some worried that photos and videos of the Bellamy Salute could be used as propaganda. German Federal ArchivesHitler Youth giving the Nazi salute in Berlin. 1933. Some Americans wanted to change the Bellamy Salute immediately; others argued that they shouldn’t have to change an American gesture, just because Germans and Italians were using a similar one. But after the beginning of World War II, Congress stepped in. Congress Amends The U.S. Flag Code In 1942 In June 1942, Congress passed Public Law 77-623, which codified a number of rules about the American flag, including the appropriate gesture during the Pledge of Allegiance. The pledge, the law explained, should “be rendered by standing with the right hand over the heart; extending the right hand, palm upward, toward the flag at the words ‘to the flag’ and holding this position until the end, when the hand drops to the side.” In other words, it kept the Bellamy Salute intact. Wikimedia CommonsSchool children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. But that December, Congress amended the the U.S. Flag Code and dispensed of the Bellamy Salute entirely. It instructed Americans to recite the Pledge of Allegiance “by standing with the right hand over the heart.” That said, the removal of the Bellamy Salute is hardly the only way that the Pledge of Allegiance has changed since Francis Bellamy first wrote it in 1892. In the 1920s, the wording of the pledge was slightly changed, from “I pledge allegiance to my flag” to “I pledge allegiance to the flag” (italics added). And in the 1950s, during the Cold War, President Dwight D. Eisenhower oversaw the inclusion of “under God” to the pledge. Since then, the pledge has remained unchanged: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” ClassicStockAmerican school children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, with their hands over their hearts, in the 1960s. But not everyone is happy about it. In 2002, the granddaughter of Francis Bellamy, Sally Wright, even wrote an op-ed in The New York Times to speak out against the inclusion of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. “By adding the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, Congress was attempting to distinguish the politics of the United States from godless Communism,” she wrote. “Like other actions taken by Congress at that time, this change divided our nation further rather than uniting its citizens.” However, the Pledge of Allegiance has not been amended since the Eisenhower years. Thus, to this day, American children still pledge allegiance to one nation, and no other, under God. But they’re no longer using the Bellamy Salute as they do so. After reading about the rise and fall of the Bellamy Salute, go inside the fascinating story of who made the American flag. Then, learn about the flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II that became one of the United States’ most iconic images. The post The Rise And Fall Of The Bellamy Salute, The Nazi-Like Gesture That Americans Once Used To Pledge Allegiance To The Flag appeared first on All That's Interesting.