Not to defend the AI crowd, but ever go to a Goodwill Outlet store? They usually have at least 1 gaylord box (the giant box on a pallet watermelons come in) full of books. Not sure how often they cycle those out, but I’m guessing pretty regularly. Multiply that by every semi major city Goodwill has a presence in. Add in other thrift sores with a similar quantity of books. You’re talking ALOT of books. SO MANY books are thrown out everyday. Including by libraries. I don’t really have a problem if some of those get diverted for a bit to be scanned. Yes, it’s sad to see books getting destroyed. But there’s alot of stuff people just really don’t want. And, if you REALLY want a villain, maybe you can blame copyright law? That’s part of the reason AI companies destroy the books - it helps to make their scanning efforts more legal. Absent that, they could probably be convinced to spend just a little more for nondestructive scanning, assuming they could find a home for the books they scanned (the sellers of these things couldn’t, so good luck).

Some of us are quite well armed. There’s a saying: if you go far enough left, you get your guns back. There’s lots of gun clubs, all across the country, that are left wing. See Pink Pistols and the John Brown Gun Club.

I don’t see the problem here.

One thing I wonder is what if he’s not technically dead, just practically. As in, his heart still beats, he still has some minimal brain function, but he’s lost so much functionality that he either can’t speak at all or can’t in any way ever be effective as a senator ever again.