Clive Thompson
@clive@saturation.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 years ago

I built this tool a year ago but I feel like Mastodon folks would like it

The "Weird Old Book Finder"

Type in a search query, and it'll find one randomly-chosen public-domain book that matches the query -- and present it for immediate reading: weirdoldbookfinder.net/

Why only one book? To prevent the paradox of choice! Just *start readin'*

Can't promise every book will be weird, but most are

A longer essay on how/why I developed it: debugger.medium.com/a-search-e

This was a search for "mastodon"
Emma
@emmajuettner@mastodon.art  ·  activity timestamp 3 years ago
@clive oooh this is excellent!! I found an interesting book of "Housekeepers' Recipes", which includes food recipes, but also instructions on gardening, what to do when your skirt catches fire, how to care for a bird with epilepsy... and of course, how to build a volcano in your yard
Housekeepers' Recipes, page 159. To Make Artificial Volcanoes — For this curious experiment, which enables us to assign a very probable cause for volcanoes, we are indebted to Lemery. Mix equal parts of pounded sulfur and iron filings; and, having formed the whole into a paste with water, bury a quantity of it, forty or fifty pounds for example, at about the depth of a foot below the surface of the earth. In ten or twelve hours afterwards, if the weather be warm, the earth will swell up and burst, and Flames will issue out, which will enlarge the aperture, scattering around a yellow and blackish dust. It is not impossible that what is here seen in miniature takes place on a grand scale in volcanoes, as it is well known that they furnish abundance of sulphur and also metallic substances
Housekeepers' Recipes, page 159. To Make Artificial Volcanoes — For this curious experiment, which enables us to assign a very probable cause for volcanoes, we are indebted to Lemery. Mix equal parts of pounded sulfur and iron filings; and, having formed the whole into a paste with water, bury a quantity of it, forty or fifty pounds for example, at about the depth of a foot below the surface of the earth. In ten or twelve hours afterwards, if the weather be warm, the earth will swell up and burst, and Flames will issue out, which will enlarge the aperture, scattering around a yellow and blackish dust. It is not impossible that what is here seen in miniature takes place on a grand scale in volcanoes, as it is well known that they furnish abundance of sulphur and also metallic substances
Housekeepers' Recipes, page 159. To Make Artificial Volcanoes — For this curious experiment, which enables us to assign a very probable cause for volcanoes, we are indebted to Lemery. Mix equal parts of pounded sulfur and iron filings; and, having formed the whole into a paste with water, bury a quantity of it, forty or fifty pounds for example, at about the depth of a foot below the surface of the earth. In ten or twelve hours afterwards, if the weather be warm, the earth will swell up and burst, and Flames will issue out, which will enlarge the aperture, scattering around a yellow and blackish dust. It is not impossible that what is here seen in miniature takes place on a grand scale in volcanoes, as it is well known that they furnish abundance of sulphur and also metallic substances
llewelly
@llewelly@sauropods.win  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago
@clive

I searched for "Stegosaurus" and got _Osteology of the Armored Dinosauria_ by Charles Whitney Gilmore , 1914

A link to the internet archive copy, bc reasons:
https://archive.org/details/osteologyofarmor00gilm/page/n6/mode/2up

I think this volume is still referenced by paleontologists working on stegosaurs today; see for example the description of Miragaia

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2674496/pdf/rspb20081909.pdf

and search for Gilmore

#dinosaurs
#stegosaurs
#fossils
#armoredDinosaurs
nellie-m
@nellie_m@autisticpri.de  ·  activity timestamp 2 years ago
@clive this is utterly delightful. Thank you so much! My first query came up with this book, which I don’t find weird at all, but that is due to the fact that I’m a weird poultry person. I could relate the fascinating story of the Dorking breed in the former GDR, or how, when I came to Dorking, the local museum that exhibits a pair of stuffed birds was closed for the day… but I’m on a 500 characters limit 😉 #chickensofmastodon