ironiclibrary

[ironiclibrary]

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto by Aaron Swartz:

- On removing barriers and paywalls that may prohibit the general public from accessing scientific research publications.

[ironiclibrary]

Academic institutions shill out millions of private (and public tax) dollars every year to companies (like Elsevier) that publish information behind a paywall and then charge students and academics to access it.

Why is access to real science costly, but misinformation free? Scihub is a project trying to solve this problem, removing barriers in the way of international scientific and cultural progress by giving free access to academic articles.

The current system academia is tasked with suffering with withholds critical information from those who most need access to it. And what is all this for? Simply to make a few old, humanity-less men and women rich.

It is at the expense of the sheer miserable state of our world.

It is a disgrace to the hopeful legacy of humanity to profit off of making science inaccessible.

"We have the means and methods to make knowledge accessible to everyone, with no economic barrier to access and at a much lower cost to society..

..but closed access’s monopoly over academic publishing, its spectacular profits and its central role in the allocation of academic prestige trump the public interest. Commercial publishers effectively impede open access, criminalize us, prosecute our heroes and heroines, and destroy our libraries, again and again."

Please read and share this letter.

Excerpts from "Letter of Solidarity" on the struggle to fight scholarly information inaccessibility -

- by Library Genesis, (libgen.is) the largest free library in history: giving the world free access to 84 million scholarly journal articles, 6.6 million academic and general-interest books, 2.2 million comics, and 381 thousand magazines. Visit r/libgen

"There are many businessmen who own knowledge today. Consider Elsevier, the largest scholarly publisher, whose 37% profit margin(1) stands in sharp contrast to the rising fees, expanding student loan debt and poverty-level wages for adjunct faculty. Elsevier owns some of the largest databases of academic material, which are licensed at prices so scandalously high that even Harvard, the richest university of the global north, has complained that it cannot afford them any longer. Robert Darnton, the past director of Harvard Library, says "We faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all of it for free … and then we buy back the results of our labour at outrageous prices."(2) For all the work supported by public money benefiting scholarly publishers, particularly the peer review that grounds their legitimacy, journal articles are price d such that they prohibit access to science to many academics - and all non-academics - across the world, and render it a token of privilege.(3)

(...) The social media, mailing lists and IRC channels have been filled with their distress messages, desperately seeking articles and publications.

Ashgate5, a formerly independent humanities publisher that it acquired earlier in 2015 (...) is threatened to go the way of other small publishers that are being rolled over by the growing monopoly and concentration in the publishing market.

Again:

We have the means and methods to make knowledge accessible to everyone

- with no economic barrier to access and at a much lower cost to society. But closed access’s monopoly over academic publishing, its spectacular profits and its central role in the allocation of academic prestige trump the public interest. Commercial publishers effectively impede open access, criminalize us, prosecute our heroes and heroines, and destroy our libraries, again and again.

Before Science Hub and Library Genesis there was Library.nu or Gigapedia; before Gigapedia there was textz.com; before textz.com there was little; and before there was little there was nothing. That's what they want: to reduce most of us back to nothing. And they have the full support of the courts and law to do exactly that.7

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge."

We demonstrate daily, and on a massive scale, that the system is broken. We share our writing secretly behind the backs of our publishers, circumvent paywalls to access articles and publications, digitize and upload books to libraries. This is the other side of 37% profit margins: our knowledge commons grows in the fault lines of a broken system. We are all custodians of knowledge, custodians of the same infrastructures that we depend on for producing knowledge, custodians of our fertile but fragile commons.

To be a custodian is, de facto, to download, to share, to read, to write, to review, to edit, to digitize, to archive, to maintain libraries, to make them accessible.

It is to be of use to, not to make property of, our knowledge commons.

Please read and share this letter.

Share this letter - read it in public - leave it in the printer. Share your writing - digitize a book - upload your files. Don't let our knowledge be crushed. Care for the libraries - care for the metadata - care for the backup. Water the flowers - clean the volcanoes. Source(s): https://custodians.online/, https://www.libgen.is/

Science Hub (Sci-Hub) - https://sci-hub.se

[ironiclibrary]

The Amphitheater of Eternal Wisdom

"Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae" by Heinrich Khunrath

One of the most important works in theosophical alchemy and the occult sciences.

The works shown above are two of the four handgraved plates contained within the work, and are titled as The Hermaphrodite and The First Stage of the Great Work respectively. The etching prints were signed by Flemish printmaker Paullus von der Doort in 1595, but may have also been done or collaborated on by Dutch Renaissance architect Hans Vredeman de Vries.

The first work above depicts the Hermaphrodite, a strange figure holding an orb surrounded in flames. Many other esoteric patterns and symbols surround the figure.

The second work depicts the German alchemist and hermetic philosopher Heinrich Khunrath in his laboratory.

The pages are contained within the Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, the most popular of all of Khunrath's works.

Khunrath was a disciple of Paracelsus, a Swiss physician, alchemist, philosopher, and a pioneer in the medical revolution of the renaissance, being credited as the father of toxicology.

This mentorship lead him into being admitted into the University of Basel in Switzerland, where he received his Medicinæ Doctor in 1588.

Khunrath travelled frequently, and learned much from those he met along his travels, including two alchemists by the names of John Dee and Johann Thölde, who heavily inspired him to develop a Christianized natural magic.

He also held that experience and observation were essential to practical alchemical research, as would a natural philosopher.

He sought out "prima materia," the primitive formless base of all matter similar to chaos, the quintessence or aether.

"The work consists of four engraved, hand-colored plates, plus a letterpress title page, 24 pages of letterpress text, plus a final unnumbered page (entitled, in Greek, Epilogos)."

An original copy of the work has been digitized, and can be viewed by anyone who wishes to study and admire it here.

[ironiclibrary]

“I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.” ― Benjamin Alire Sáenz

[ironiclibrary]

"We have the means and methods to make knowledge accessible to everyone, with no economic barrier to access and at a much lower cost to society..

..but closed access’s monopoly over academic publishing, its spectacular profits and its central role in the allocation of academic prestige trump the public interest. Commercial publishers effectively impede open access, criminalize us, prosecute our heroes and heroines, and destroy our libraries, again and again."

Please read and share this letter.

Excerpts from "Letter of Solidarity" on the struggle to fight scholarly information inaccessibility -

- by Library Genesis, (libgen.is) the largest free library in history: giving the world free access to 84 million scholarly journal articles, 6.6 million academic and general-interest books, 2.2 million comics, and 381 thousand magazines. Visit r/libgen

"There are many businessmen who own knowledge today. Consider Elsevier, the largest scholarly publisher, whose 37% profit margin(1) stands in sharp contrast to the rising fees, expanding student loan debt and poverty-level wages for adjunct faculty. Elsevier owns some of the largest databases of academic material, which are licensed at prices so scandalously high that even Harvard, the richest university of the global north, has complained that it cannot afford them any longer. Robert Darnton, the past director of Harvard Library, says "We faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all of it for free … and then we buy back the results of our labour at outrageous prices."(2) For all the work supported by public money benefiting scholarly publishers, particularly the peer review that grounds their legitimacy, journal articles are price d such that they prohibit access to science to many academics - and all non-academics - across the world, and render it a token of privilege.(3)

(...) The social media, mailing lists and IRC channels have been filled with their distress messages, desperately seeking articles and publications.

Ashgate5, a formerly independent humanities publisher that it acquired earlier in 2015 (...) is threatened to go the way of other small publishers that are being rolled over by the growing monopoly and concentration in the publishing market.

Again:

We have the means and methods to make knowledge accessible to everyone

- with no economic barrier to access and at a much lower cost to society. But closed access’s monopoly over academic publishing, its spectacular profits and its central role in the allocation of academic prestige trump the public interest. Commercial publishers effectively impede open access, criminalize us, prosecute our heroes and heroines, and destroy our libraries, again and again.

Before Science Hub and Library Genesis there was Library.nu or Gigapedia; before Gigapedia there was textz.com; before textz.com there was little; and before there was little there was nothing. That's what they want: to reduce most of us back to nothing. And they have the full support of the courts and law to do exactly that.7

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge."

We demonstrate daily, and on a massive scale, that the system is broken. We share our writing secretly behind the backs of our publishers, circumvent paywalls to access articles and publications, digitize and upload books to libraries. This is the other side of 37% profit margins: our knowledge commons grows in the fault lines of a broken system. We are all custodians of knowledge, custodians of the same infrastructures that we depend on for producing knowledge, custodians of our fertile but fragile commons.

To be a custodian is, de facto, to download, to share, to read, to write, to review, to edit, to digitize, to archive, to maintain libraries, to make them accessible.

It is to be of use to, not to make property of, our knowledge commons.

Please read and share this letter.

Share this letter - read it in public - leave it in the printer. Share your writing - digitize a book - upload your files. Don't let our knowledge be crushed. Care for the libraries - care for the metadata - care for the backup. Water the flowers - clean the volcanoes. Source(s): https://custodians.online/, https://www.libgen.is/

Science Hub (Sci-Hub) - https://sci-hub.se

[ironiclibrary]

It can be hard to find sustainable and non-exploitative brands in an exploitative global economy. So where do you even begin? Simply, become informed. Companies like Nestle, Apple, Nike, Amazon, and even EA are infamous for their poor treatment of workers.  Fast Fashion, Planned Obsolescence, Monopolization, E-waste, Passport Confiscation, Exploitation, Environmental Destruction, Animal Agriculture, Child Labor, Sweatshops, Modern Day Slavery and even Price Gouging are all problems that can’t simply be ignored. When a corporation’s only motive is profit, people suffer, animals suffer, and the environment suffers. When the only incentive for progress is greed, it falls on us to work together and show solidarity with the world.  Even with fair trade certification, foreign factory owners can use shady tactics under the company's radar.  It's always best to support local artisans and businesses. Even if you have to pay a little more for a product, it means that for workers abroad, they are one step closer to fair labor rights. Buying things second-hand is one of the best ways to stop directly supporting bad industry.  According to the Fair Labor Association, these following brands are just some of the larger brands that are certified. Even this, however, should not be held as the absolute standard of excellence. We as people of this world must protest and reclaim the wealth held by those in power to be shared by all.  We can’t give up or stay silent. The more people who are informed, the better chances we all have for change.