Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Official U.S. Mint Image. 2026 Quarter Showing "July 4th" Privy Mark. |
I mentioned this coin yesterday but wanted to show a picture of the privy mark so you would easily recognize it if you see one.
The picture came from a good site that I haven't seen before. It covers a lot of general information on coin collecting and values.
Here is the link.
Complete Guide to Old Coins List & Values (Rare & Antique)
Check it out.
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I'm going to do something here that might not seem directly related to treasure hunting, but I'll bring it home in the end. I hope you'll be patient.
Yogi Berra the fame Yankee's catcher once said, "It's deja vu all over again." The phrase wasn't entirely his though. The expression had been used before, but Yogi's reputation, character and fame helped it catch on. Yogi made the phrase famous using it after, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris hit back to back home runs in a game when they were getting closer to Babe Ruth's record.
One thing about getting older is the frequent feeling of deja vu all over again. There is much about the current times that reminds one of the seventies with the social/political groups, for example. I once did a paper for a doctoral class showing h how protests against the "establishment" peaked periodically. I don't recall now how many years it was on average between peaks. Or when the handheld calculator as a classroom aid for students was criticized as a crutch that decreased the ability of many students to do math. Now AI is being criticized as a crutch that threatens certain cognitive abilities. Even though the details are different, there are many similarities to learn from. There are enough lessons to learn across time that you frequently get the feeling that you've seen it before even though there are also differences.
TV did something similar, but now AI is a tool that is changing things, perhaps faster or more completely than other technologies and, of course, the possible negative consequences are being assessed.
Below are excerpts from an article, that as something of a book collector and cognitive psychologist, I find very interesting.
... To those building large language models, books are nothing more than fodder to be devoured en masse before being spit out like fishbone. Often, they’re happy to use digital books — or even better, pirated digital books, as Meta has been accused of doing, and as Anthropic was fined for doing...
they can buy countless used copies of on the cheap. According to the settled lawsuit, Anthropic used a hydraulic powered cutting machine to neatly remove the pages from the books it procured from book resellers and then scanned them using industrial-grade imaging equipment. In other words, it was literally ripping off authors’ books to train its AI...
a legal concept known as first-sale doctrine, allows a buyer to do what they want
with a purchase without the original copyright holder’s say-so. And since Anthropic was turning the original physical texts into digital ones — rather than redistributing them as new copies — a judge found this to be “transformative,” and therefore protected by fair use...
ISBNdb, which boasts the “world’s largest book database,” extolls that the “world’s best AI training data is setting on a shelf,” upholding these physical texts as uncorrupted by shoddy AI writing that’s already polluted so much of the internet (and indeed, newer books)...
“Physical books published before this date [pre-2022] are structurally clean of modern poisoning tools.”...
ISBNdb now helps AI companies bulk-buy anywhere between 1,000 to one million books per order...
As an added bonus, it also promises AI companies that it’ll keep their purchases under wraps — nobody wants to end up in the spotlight like Anthropic and Meta, obviously — while clearly sounding aware about how incredibly shady the practice sounds.
One small book seller... added that his inventory is full with rare and out of print books, meaning that an AI company could be destroying some of the few remaining copies that can be found...
Here is the link for the entire article.
Even though I wanted to and tried, I couldn't leave a lot of that out.
I see other possible problems with digitizing all of these old and rare books. The destruction of these cultural, historic and aesthetic artifacts (books) is part of the movement to transform America and the rest of civilization. In digitizing the written record of mankind, the record becomes susceptible to control and distortion. That might or might not be the intent but it could be an effect.
Below is link to an article that addresses some of the potential negative effects of AI on human cognition and education.
Author Invited to Give Speech at OpenAI Headquarters, Uses Opportunity to Trash AI to Their Faces
There is such a trend to centralize everything in this era. I don't like it in airports. The hub system creates problems as well as efficiencies. I liked it better before. You could get more direct flights to smaller airports and before the hub system took over, a problem at a hub airport, like Atlanta, didn't affect the whole system so much.
In Iran you can see the advantages of a decentralized military and control structure. It seems a little reminiscent of Viet Nam. They hide under ground, pop up, and go back down to pop up again later. Some people learned from Nam, but most of those guys are now gone, and the youngsters that are always eager to make their place in the world, love their new technologies, and newness in general but haven't learned a lot from the past. Things, like beaches, are constantly changing, but some things don't change.
Every thing is the same and everything is different. That sounds contradictory, but here is an example of what I mean. You are the same person as you were when you were young, but you are older and have changed a lot. Your cells have been replaced. You look different and maybe have learned some things. You are the same and different. There is a common essence or element even if all the parts have changed. There is the enduring underlying core and at the same time there are the constantly changing specifics. The basic principles remain but the specifics change.
When you go metal detecting, you'll go to a particular beach you'll have a set of experiences. The sand might look different. You might find some things or not. The next time you might go to another beach or the same beach, you'll gain more experience. Over time you'll discover the basic principles that determine the changes that you see and what you find and how your metal detector responds, etc. etc. You'll learn to separate the enduring principles from the constant change.
There is a balance. You learn from the past to help you change and adapt to the future. You'll learn the enduring principles that can be applied in the future as you adapt to changing conditions. It is easy to be overly influenced by the past or too dazzled by the new. Take advantage of both.
A beach is a great example. It is a very dynamic environment. Every time you go things will have changed, either a lot or a little but there will still be the enduring principles that drive those changes. The physics remain the same.
Every visit and every success or failure offers lessons to be learned. You can learn from every visit.
Understand the underlying principles and you'll understand the changes, and that will help you make better decisions. You might come to value the experiences as much as the finds.
I think that is a good time to stop.
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Did I recommend DuckDuckGo. I like it and I know some of my readers use it as their browser. It promises privacy and doesn't overload you with ads and junk.
They also have Duckai, which I've only briefly tried and don't know much about it yet.
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There is no change on the NHC map and none is expected for a week or so.
The surf also remains small, with no immediate change expected.
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Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net