Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals (opens in new tab)

(iapsop.com)

52 pointsandrii8mo ago7 comments

7 comments

Oh wow, I've been downloading magazines for the last few months, always good to find more. luminist.org has been kicking my ass the last few weeks, but almost done and I can move on to these.

TheAceOfHearts8mo ago

Any interesting highlights you would suggest checking out? I feel like most occult texts are a bit of a mixed bag in terms of what you can get out of them, and it's sometimes difficult to figure out if I should just go read the primary source directly or someone's analysis. For example, I tried to read the Corpus Hermeticum but a lot of the stories felt like they had already mixed into the drinking water, so to speak.

So far, out of every spiritual text I've read, I think the Tao Te Ching remains the most important.

NoMoreNicksLeft8mo ago

I'm fairly ignorant of the subject. I doubt I'd read most of them, other than to glance. If you go into expecting any special insight from people who believe, without evidence, supernatural phenomenon, you're just going to be disappointed.

1 more reply

kmeisthax8mo ago

> The main IAPSOP server is being overrun by unknown crawlers running on IP addresses controlled by Amazon Web Services (AWS), crawlers with IP addresses in the People's Republic of China, and other miscreants, all of which are almost certainly collecting materials to train large language models (LLMs) -- so-called "artificial intelligence." To ensure equitable access, the speed of any one connection to the IAPSOP archive is currently throttled, and the total bandwidth available is also limited. We apologize for the inconvenience. Service will be restored to normal when the pigs leave the trough... which is likely never. Free "AI" costs IAPSOP, and many other organizations, quite a bit.

I'm glad to know AI companies are ensuring that their AI models perform well on occult summoning ritual benchmarks.

palmfacehn8mo ago

It is a digression, but I imagine many others are facing similar issues.

I've blocked most of Amazon, Alibaba Cloud and other cloud ASNs. Facebook's page preview crawler API was another abuser. There are also several problematic Chinese ISPs. You'll identify those networks from the outdated and impossible generated user agents. As I have no customers in those regions, it seems obvious to block the entire ASN.

In addition, the common User-Agent filters should be employed. You can drop ASNs when they hit an excessive number of 403s, are from a cloud provider or are in a problematic region.

fodkodrasz8mo ago

They should provide torrents maybe? Rate limit access (also for seed), but that way the crawlers would also be incentivized to seed while they are finishing their fetch.

Monthly snapshots of the complete library maybe, and monthly diffs could work.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

7 comments

NoMoreNicksLeft8mo ago

Oh wow, I've been downloading magazines for the last few months, always good to find more. luminist.org has been kicking my ass the last few weeks, but almost done and I can move on to these.

TheAceOfHearts8mo ago

So far, out of every spiritual text I've read, I think the Tao Te Ching remains the most important.

NoMoreNicksLeft8mo ago

1 more reply

kmeisthax8mo ago

I'm glad to know AI companies are ensuring that their AI models perform well on occult summoning ritual benchmarks.

palmfacehn8mo ago

It is a digression, but I imagine many others are facing similar issues.

In addition, the common User-Agent filters should be employed. You can drop ASNs when they hit an excessive number of 403s, are from a cloud provider or are in a problematic region.

fodkodrasz8mo ago

They should provide torrents maybe? Rate limit access (also for seed), but that way the crawlers would also be incentivized to seed while they are finishing their fetch.

Monthly snapshots of the complete library maybe, and monthly diffs could work.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse