title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Although Nazi paraphernalia was still listed on Amazon in the US and Canada in 2016, on March 9, 2017, the WJC announced Amazon's compliance with the requests it and other Jewish organizations had submitted by removing from sale the Holocaust denial works complained of in the requests. The WJC offered ongoing assistance in identifying Holocaust denial works among Amazon's offerings in the future.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In July 2019, the Central Council of Jews in Germany denounced Amazon for continuing to sell items that glorify the Nazis. In December 2019, Amazon was caught selling Auschwitz-themed Christmas tree ornaments on its platform, printed on demand with stock images of the concentration camp from a third-party seller; Amazon eventually removed the ornaments from all platforms. Auschwitz Memorial, the group responsible for maintaining the concentration camp for historical and educational purposes, then stated that it had found a "disturbing online product from another seller – a computer mouse-pad bearing the image of a freight train used for deporting people to the concentration camps." Louise Matsakis, a journalist for "Wired", called the Holocaust-themed products "the byproduct of an increasingly automated e-commerce landscape", noting that the items were print-on-demand and that Amazon only became aware of them after customers had reported the offending items.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In late 2020, Amazon removed all new and used print and digital copies of "The Turner Diaries", an antisemitic and racist dystopian fiction novel, from its bookselling platform, including all subsidiaries (AbeBooks, The Book Depository), effectively stopping sales of the title from the digital bookselling market. Amazon listed the title's connection with the QAnon movement as the reason behind this, having already purged a number of self-published and small-press titles connected with QAnon from its platform. Social cataloguing and book review website Goodreads, another subsidiary of Amazon, also purged the metadata from its record for all editions of "The Turner Diaries", replacing the author and title field with "NOT A BOOK" (capitalization intended), a designated moniker normally used by the platform to weed non-book items with ISBN numbers, as well as plagiarized titles, from its catalogue.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In 2022, Amazon faced controversy when it began offering access through its Prime streaming service to the contentious documentary film "Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America!", which had been endorsed by public figure Kyrie Irving. The film contains a number of debunked and disputed conspiracy theories, including Holocaust denial and the idea that European Jews were responsible for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. "Variety" defended Amazon on the matter, arguing, "the radio silence [of Amazon] shouldn’t be misinterpreted as indifference. To the contrary, insiders say how to properly handle “Hebrews” [the film] has been the subject of endless debates at numerous meetings, some of which have involved the top brass at Amazon... while the company has a long and arguably inconsistent track record when it comes to policing controversial content on its own platform, “Hebrews” has been particularly challenging given how high-profile the Irving saga became. Few execs from the company’s headquarters in Seattle or its studio business in Culver City have been spared an earful from those wondering why the company is selling such vile material on its website." CEO Andy Jassy argued, after Amazon's decision not to remove the film, that the film had to remain on Amazon even if the viewpoint was objectionable. Stephen A. Smith criticized Amazon's former CEO Jeff Bezos over the decision, stating, "Jeff Bezos, you’re supposed to be a better man than that. Get rid of that. Get that off your platform, please, since all of this noise is being made."


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: On November 10, 2010, a controversy arose over the sale by Amazon of an e-book by Phillip R. Greaves entitled "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-lover's Code of Conduct".


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Readers threatened to boycott Amazon over its selling of the book, which was described by critics as a "pedophile guide". Amazon initially defended the sale of the book, saying that the site "believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable" and that the site "supported the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions". However, the site later removed the book. The "San Francisco Chronicle" wrote that Amazon "defended the book, then removed it, then reinstated it, and then removed it "again"".


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Christopher Finan, the president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, argued that Amazon has the right to sell the book as it is not child pornography or legally obscene since it does not have pictures. On the other hand, Enough Is Enough, a child safety organization, issued a statement saying that the book should be removed and that it "lends the impression that child abuse is normal". People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), citing the removal of "The Pedophile's Guide" from Amazon, urged the website to also remove books on dog fighting from its catalogue.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Greaves was arrested on December 20, 2010, at his Pueblo, Colorado home on a felony warrant issued by the Polk County Sheriff's Office in Lakeland, Florida. Detectives from the county's Internet Crimes Division ordered a signed hard copy version of Greaves' book and had it shipped to the agency's jurisdiction, where it violated state obscenity laws. According to Sheriff Grady Judd, upon receipt of the book, Greaves violated local laws prohibiting the distribution of "obscene material depicting minors engaged in harmful conduct", a third-degree felony. Greaves pleaded no contest to the charges and was later released under probation with his previous jail time counting as time served.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: On October 16, 2016, Apple filed a trademark infringement case against Mobile Star LLC for selling counterfeit Apple products to Amazon. In the suit, Apple provided evidence that Amazon was selling these counterfeit Apple products and advertising them as genuine. Through purchasing, Apple found that it was able to identify counterfeit products with a success rate of 90%. Amazon was sourcing and selling items without properly determining if they are genuine. Mobile Star LLC settled with Apple for an undisclosed amount on April 27, 2017.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In the following years, the selling of counterfeit products by Amazon has attracted widespread notice, with both purchases marked as being fulfilled by third parties and those shipped directly from Amazon warehouses being found to be counterfeit. This has included some products sold directly by Amazon itself and marked as "ships from and sold by Amazon.com". Counterfeit charging cables sold on Amazon as purported Apple products have been found to be a fire hazard. Such counterfeits have included a wide array of products, from big ticket items to every day items such as tweezers, gloves, and umbrellas. More recently, this has spread to Amazon's newer grocery services. Counterfeiting was reported to be especially a problem for artists and small businesses whose products were being rapidly copied for sale on the site. As a result of these issues, companies such as Birkenstocks and Nike have pulled their products from the website.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: One Amazon business practice that encourages counterfeiting is that, by default, seller accounts on Amazon are set to use "commingled inventory". With this practice, the goods that a seller sends to Amazon are mixed with those of the producer of the product and with those of all other sellers that supply what is supposed to be the same product.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In June 2019, "BuzzFeed" reported that some products identified on the site as "Amazon's choice" were low quality, had a history of customer complaints, and exhibited evidence of product review manipulation.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In August 2019, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that they had found more than 4,000 items for sale on Amazon's site that had been declared unsafe by federal agencies, had misleading labels or had been banned by federal regulators.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In the wake of the "WSJ" investigation, three U.S. senators Richard Blumenthal, Ed Markey, and Bob Menendezsent an open letter to Jeff Bezos demanding him to take action about the selling of unsafe items on the site. The letter said that "Unquestionably, Amazon is falling short of its commitment to keeping safe those consumers who use its massive platform." The letter included several questions about the company's practices and gave Bezos a deadline to respond by September 29, 2019, saying "We call on you to immediately remove from the platform all the problematic products examined in the recent "WSJ" report; explain how you are going about this process; conduct a sweeping internal investigation of your enforcement and consumer safety policies; and institute changes that will continue to keep unsafe products off your platform." Earlier in the same month, senators Blumenthal and Menendez had sent Bezos a letter about the "BuzzFeed" report.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In December 2019, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that some people were literally retrieving trash out of dumpsters and selling it as new products on Amazon. The reporters ran an experiment and determined that it was easy for a seller to set up an account and sell cleaned up junk as new products. In addition to trash, sellers were obtaining inventory from clearance bins, thrift stores, and pawn shops.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In August 2020, an appeals court in California ruled that Amazon can be held liable for unsafe products sold on its website. A Californian had bought a replacement laptop battery that caught fire and caused her to sustain third-degree burns.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: American copyright lobbyists have accused Amazon of facilitating the sale of unlicensed CDs and DVDs particularly in the Chinese market. The Chinese government has responded by announcing plans to increase regulation of Amazon (along with Apple Inc. and Taobao.com) in relation to Internet copyright infringement issues. Amazon has already had to shut down third party distributors due to pressure from the NCAC (National Copyright Administration of China).


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Amazon has been caught selling counterfeit books, this being books that closely mimic an authentic edition of a published work, but that were not given permission for publication by the copyright holder. One prominent example is "The Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy", a non-fiction medical book. According to David Streitfeld of "The New York Times", "Amazon takes a hands-off approach to what goes on in its bookstore, never checking the authenticity, much less the quality, of what it sells. It does not oversee the sellers who have flocked to its site in any organized way. That has resulted in a kind of lawlessness. Publishers, writers and groups such as the Authors Guild said counterfeiting of books on Amazon had surged. The company has been reactive rather than proactive in dealing with the issue, often taking action only when a buyer complains. Many times, they added, there is nowhere to appeal and their only recourse is to integrate even more closely with Amazon." This was not the first instance of counterfeit books appearing on Amazon. According to "The New York Post", the problem of counterfeit books has in fact surged, merging into another controversy of Amazon selling plagiarized books, with Martin Kleppmann, an example author, complaining that Amazon was selling pirated copies of his textbook that had "pages overlapping" and ink bleeding issues, leading to the book being unreadable and receiving negative reviews. "Vox" argued in 2019 that Amazon directly benefits from the sale of counterfeit books, citing an example where a small-press publisher had to partner with Amazon in order to get legitimate books back on the market: "Bill Pollock, founder of the San Francisco-based programming and science guide publisher No Starch, told the "New York Times" that this solution was just putting even more onus on rights holders to protect themselves: “Why should we be responsible for policing Amazon for fakes? That’s their job.” No Starch has claimed they were spending “$3,000 a month and rising” to keep its search placement higher than the people who are copying it."


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In April 2009, it was publicized that some lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, feminist, and politically liberal books were being excluded from Amazon's sales rankings. Various books and media were flagged as "Adult content", including children's books, self-help books, non-fiction, and non-explicit fiction. As a result, works by established authors E. M. Forster, Gore Vidal, Jeanette Winterson and D. H. Lawrence were unranked. The change first received publicity on the blog of author Mark R. Probst, who reproduced an e-mail from Amazon describing a policy of de-ranking "adult" material. However, Amazon later said that there was no policy of de-ranking lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender material and blamed the change first on a "glitch" and then on "an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error" that had affected 57,310 books (a hacker also claimed to have been the cause of said metadata loss).


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In June 2022, Amazon complied with the UAE government’s demand under threat of unknown penalties, and put restrictions on LGBTQ products and their search results in the Emirates. Searches on keywords like “pride”, “lgbt”, “transgender flag” and “lgbt iphone cases” reflected “no results” in the country. Books including Nagata Kabi’s "My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness", Roxane Gay’s "Bad Feminist" and Maia Kobabe’s "" were also removed. Amazon said they had to “comply with the local laws and regulations of the countries in which we operate”, despite being committed to protect the rights of LGBTQ people.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Amazon has been caught selling various items, mostly self-published books, that convey misinformation and pseudoscience about autism spectrum disorder and Asperger's syndrome. In an experiment to test the lack of Amazon's quality control in the area of autism-themed books, "Wired" journalist Matthew "Matt" Reynolds penned a self-published Kindle eBook titled "How To Cure Autism: A guide to using chlorine dioxide to cure autism". As he explained, "to test the system, we uploaded a fake Kindle book titled "How To Cure Autism: A guide to using chlorine dioxide to cure autism". The listing was approved within two hours. When creating the book, Amazon's Kindle publishing service suggested a stock cover image that made it appear as though the book had been approved by the FDA." He pointed out that a number of other real Kindle titles promoting bleach cures and other misinformation were already prevalent on Amazon. Amazon later was made to pull various self-published titles promoting anti-vaccination theories related to autism from its sales platforms, which journalist Lindsey Bever of "The Washington Post" argued was bordering on censorship of legal reading material. Numerous news outlets reported that Amazon was removing the books, including NBC and CBS. It was reported later that year by "Science Alert" that Amazon was still selling autism misinformation books. More autism misinformation books in relation to COVID-19 began popping up for sale on Amazon in 2021, to the point where Senator Elizabeth Warren questioned Amazon CEO Andy Jassy about the search algorithms on Amazon promoting such misinformation. Jassy did not personally respond or comment on the situation.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Anti-vaccination and non-evidence-based cancer 'cures' have routinely appeared high in Amazon's books and videos. This may be due to positive reviews posted by supporters of untested methods, or gaming of the algorithms by truther communities, rather than any intent on the company's part. "Wired" magazine found that Amazon Prime Video was full of 'pseudoscientific documentaries laden with conspiracy theories and pointing viewers towards unproven treatments'.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) expressed concern that Amazon was "surfacing and recommending products and content that discourage parents from vaccinating their children." Amazon subsequently removed five anti-vaccination documentaries. Amazon also removed 12 books that unscientifically claimed bleach could cure conditions including malaria and childhood autism. This followed an NBC News report about parents who used it in a misguided attempt to reverse their children's autism.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In 2014, Amazon removed a book, described by critics as a "guide to rape", which claimed to reveal how women could be pressured into accepting sexual advances. Later, it removed a book by anti-Muslim activist Tommy Robinson.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In 2015, Amazon received backlash for publishing "A MAD World Order", a self-published eBook by Canadian serial killer and rapist Paul Bernardo, who had apparently gotten onto Amazon's self-publishing services through a computer in prison. Amazon quietly removed the eBook from sale on all of its platforms (no print version was ever released), although a metadata record for it still exists on subsidiary Goodreads. In 2019, Amazon removed the book "Is Greta Thunberg just a puppet? The truth about the the[sic] youngest ambientalist" by Markus Jorgenssen, a title which contained defamatory content about environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who was a minor child at the time of publication.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: It temporarily banned a book promoting nonmainstream claims about the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as books that promoted COVID-19 cures not sanctioned by US Government agencies. In 2021, Amazon removed listings for a 2018 book by conservative philosopher Ryan T. Anderson because it criticized legal protections for transgender people.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Amazon's self-publishing branch Kindle Direct Publishing, a print-on-demand and eBook company, has printed and sold plagiarized books by several authors, some of whom complained publicly against Amazon for this practice. Rebecca Maye Holiday, a French-Canadian author, revealed that Amazon's allowance of a pseudonymous party to publish her copyrighted material led to a "free ISBN" from the plagiarized material entering Ingram Content Group's databases, which led to the plagiarist's name appearing by automatic import as the primary author name of her book on Goodreads and Google Books. According to Holiday, ""Necromancy Cottage, Or, The Black Art of Gnawing On Bones" [her book] has been plagiarized in the past by some party, and Goodreads has the plagiarist’s name listed as the primary author on the book’s metadata records (even though I hold the lone registered copyright for the book and all the legal title to it), and it was a long battle to get Amazon to finally stop selling the plagiarized edition of the book. Hopefully writing a sequel will connect "Necromancy Cottage, Or, The Black Art of Gnawing On Bones" back to me, since the book does not appear on my Goodreads author profile." Goodreads refused to remove the plagiarist's name from the book's metadata, arguing that the plagiarized publication was still valid because some Goodreads users had posted ratings on its metadata page (volunteer Goodreads "Librarians" and fans of Holiday's books later aided her in adding her name back as the lone and primary author of her books in October 2022, after she presented a certified copyright on her books from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, establishing her as the owner and creator of her books). Nora Roberts, an American romance author who has had numerous titles of hers plagiarized and re-published through Kindle Direct Publishing, described Amazon's self-publishing branch with disdain, saying, "I’m getting one hell of an education on the sick, greedy, opportunistic culture that games Amazon’s absurdly weak system. And everything I learn enrages me... this culture, this ugly underbelly of legitimate self-publishing is all about content. More, more, more, fast, fast, fast!". Roberts vowed during an interview with "The Guardian" to sue her plagiarists, who had not been caught by name.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Amazon itself has maintained routinely that it checks for plagiarism by monitoring user accounts and running plagiarism checks on uploaded files, although critics have argued that Amazon's system is not robust enough to handle issues like identity theft, minors accessing the platform, or internet anonymity. "The Urban Writers" defended Amazon in this regard, arguing that "Amazon is extremely sensitive about plagiarized work and, if flagged, your account could be deactivated." Other writers and reports have been more critical of Amazon's response to plagiarism, noting multiple cases where Amazon itself did nothing to stop a plagiarist, or plagiarists, from uploading copyrighted files and claiming them as their own, claiming to be the author themselves, uploading stolen information from an author (such as tax numbers or a home address) in order to falsely claim their identity, claiming public domain works under their own name, and making up various anonymous names to avoid legal consequences. As early as 2011–2012, such cases were emerging on Amazon. Michelle Starr, a writer for "CNET", described a case in 2012 where "sci-fi authors C.H. Cherryh and John Scalzi issued Amazon with DMCA takedown notices for books of theirs that one Ibnul Jaif Farabi had uploaded, with titles slightly changed, under his own name. He had also done the same thing with works by deceased authors, such as Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, who, of course, are slightly too deceased to notice." In most of these cases, Amazon unpublishes the titles or stops selling new copies of them, but also retains metadata records for them on places like Goodreads. This may lead to issues such as the correct author not receiving notoriety or association with their own book, issues with disambiguation, and moral rights issues. The moral rights issues can be especially damaging to authors. Rachel Ann Nunes, a writer of Mormon genre fiction, pointed out in an interview for "The Atlantic" that, aside from the financial implications of her books being plagiarized, the emotional stress and reputation damage was even worse. "I felt like I was being attacked,” Nunes revealed, “and when I went on social media, I didn’t know what would be waiting for me.” Nunes shared that she had been unable to sleep, gained a lot of weight, found herself unable to enjoy writing anymore, and paid thousands of dollars in expensive legal fees in order to attempt to catch the plagiarist of her books, who had gone under multiple aliases and uploaded false information to Amazon's databases. Jonathan Bailey of "Plagiarism Today" pointed out, "Amazon doesn’t do much to vet the books it publishes. Plagiarism isn’t even mentioned in its KDP help files. What this means is that it’s trivial to publish almost anything you want regardless of the quality of the work or, in these cases, how original it is. In fact, many complain that Amazon fails to vet works for even simple issues such as formatting and layout. Though Amazon will, sometimes, remove works that violates their terms of service after they get complaints, they’re happy to sell the books and reap the profits until they get such a notice. And, from Amazon’s perspective, this is completely legal. They are protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as well as other laws, in particular Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, that basically mean they are under no obligation to vet or check the works they publish. They are legally free to produce and sell books, physical and digital, regardless of whether they are plagiarized, copyright infringing or otherwise illegal."


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In 2019, "Vox" journalist Kaitlyn Tiffany did an investigation into a bizarre subset of self-published "celebrity biographies" on Amazon, released under the pen name "Matt Green" through Kindle Direct Publishing, that contained plagiarized and unauthorized material, often with typos and grammatical errors. Tiffany defended Amazon's approach to content control, recalling, "Amazon has already quashed quite a few e-book scams. At first, users could download public domain books from sources like Project Gutenberg, upload them, and sell them to readers who didn’t know better. A policy change in 2011 put an end to that. In 2012, Gawker’s Max Read came across another good one: hundreds of thousands of books that were just compilations of Wikipedia articles with titles like “Celebrities With Big Dicks.” One author he found was just publishing random data sets like “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India.” She argued that while Amazon is known for rampant scams in its self-publishing subsidiaries, the company tries its best to put a stop to the scams when it becomes aware of them, but that outright plagiarism and other illegal content is hard to detect. She also pointed to the use of pen names as a problem, and agreed with Jonathan Bailey that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act shields Amazon too much from any liability in regards to plagiarism or illegal material in published books. Amazon CEOs Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy have never publicly commented on or apologized to Nora Roberts, Rebecca Maye Holiday or Rachel Ann Nunes for the plagiarism and counterfeit issues, but do feature policies in the Kindle Direct Publishing Terms & Conditions agreement regarding plagiarism and the release of illegal content.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Amazon has worked with the Chinese technology company Hikvision. According to "The Nation", "The United States has considered sanctioning against Hikvision, which has provided thousands of cameras that monitor mosques, schools, and concentration camps in Xinjiang."


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Amazon provides cloud web hosting services via Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Palantir. Palantir is a well-known data analysis company that has developed software used to gather data on undocumented immigrants. The software is hosted on Amazon's AWS cloud.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In June 2018, Amazon employees signed a letter demanding Amazon to drop Palantir, a data collection company, as an AWS customer. According to "Forbes", Palantir "has come under scrutiny because its software has been used by ICE agents to identify and start deportation proceedings against undocumented migrants."


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: On July 7, 2019, local Jewish leaders connected with the organization Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, along with Make the Road New York, led a protest of more than 1,000 Jews and others in response to Amazon's financial ties to Palantir, and its $150 million in contracts the U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE). The direct action shut down Amazon's midtown Manhattan location of Amazon Books. The protest was held on the Jewish day of mourning and fasting, Tisha B'Av, which commemorates the destruction of the ancient temples in Jerusalem.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In late May 2020, ahead of its May 27 shareholders' meeting, at least eleven local news stations aired identically worded segments which commented positively on Amazon's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Zach Rael, an anchor for the Oklahoma City station KOCO-TV, posted that Amazon had tried to send him the same prepared package. Senator and Amazon critic Bernie Sanders condemned the coverage and called it propaganda. The majority of the video provided was narrated by Amazon's public relations manager Todd Walker. Of the eleven identified channels, WTVG in Toledo, Ohio, was the only one that attributed the statements to him.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In 1999, the Amazon Bookstore Cooperative of Minneapolis, Minnesota sued amazon.com for trademark infringement. The cooperative had been using the name "Amazon" since 1970, but reached an out-of-court agreement to share the name with the on-line retailer.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In 2014, UK courts declared that Amazon had infringed the trademark of Lush soap. The soap manufacturer, Lush, had previously made its products unavailable on Amazon. Despite this, Amazon advertised alternative products via Google searches for Lush soap.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In September 2009, it emerged that Amazon was selling MP3 music downloads falsely suggesting a well-known Premier League football manager was a child sex offender. Despite a campaign urging the retailer to withdraw the item, they refused to do so, citing freedom of speech. The company eventually decided to withdraw the item from their UK website when legal action was threatened. However, they continued to sell the item on their American, German and French websites.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In October 2011, actress Junie Hoang filed "Hoang v. Amazon.com", a $1 million lawsuit against Amazon in the Western District Court of Washington, for allegedly revealing her age on IMDb, which Amazon owns, by using personal details from her credit card. The lawsuit, which alleges fraud, breach of contract and violation of her private life and consumer rights, states that after joining IMDbPro in 2008 to increase her chance of getting roles, the actress claims that her legal date of birth had been added to her public profile, revealing that she is older than she looks, causing her to suffer a substantial decrease in acting work and earnings. The actress also stated that the site refused her request to remove the information in question. All claims against Amazon, and most claims against IMDb, were dismissed by Judge Marsha J. Pechman; the jury found for IMDb on the sole remaining claim. , the case against IMDb remains under appeal.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In response to Nova Scotian actor Elliot Page and American actress Laverne Cox coming out as transgender in 2020, IMDb changed its legal policies surrounding proper names on actor/actress biographies, making exceptions for people who had changed their names so that their birth name would not appear on IMDb profiles. This occurred after an outcry from various LGBTQ+ support groups and organizations, including GLAAD, which stated, "to reveal a transgender person’s birth name without their explicit permission is an invasion of privacy that only serves to undermine the trans person’s true authentic identity, and can put them at risk for discrimination, even violence." GLAAD agreed to back an actors’ guild legal challenge seeking to restrict what personal information the database can reveal. Other Amazon metadata subsidiaries, such as Goodreads, have not updated any policy on deadnaming, and generally display items under the name they were originally published under.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: As the customer review process has become more integral to Amazon marketing, reviews have been increasingly challenged for accuracy and ethics.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In 2004, "The New York Times" reported that a glitch in the Amazon Canada website revealed that a number of book reviews had been written by authors of their own books or of competing books. In response, Amazon changed its policy of allowing anonymous reviews to one that gave an online credential marker to those reviewers registered with Amazon, though it still allowed them to remain anonymous through the use of pen names. In April 2010, the British historian Orlando Figes was found to have posted negative reviews of other author's books. In June 2010, a Cincinnati news blog uncovered a group of 75 Amazon book reviews that had been written and posted by a public relations company on behalf of its clients. A study at Cornell University in that year asserted that 85% of Amazon's high-status consumer reviewers "had received free products from publishers, agents, authors and manufacturers." By June 2011, Amazon itself had moved into the publishing business and begun to solicit positive reviews from established authors in exchange for increased promotion of their own books and upcoming projects.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Amazon.com's customer reviews are monitored for indecency but do permit negative comments. Robert Spector, author of the book "amazon.com", describes how "when publishers and authors asked Bezos why amazon.com would publish negative reviews, he defended the practice by claiming that amazon.com was 'taking a different approach...we want to make every book available – the good, the bad, and the ugly...to let truth loose'" (Spector 132). Allegations have been made that Amazon has selectively deleted negative reviews of Scientology-related items despite compliance with comments guidelines.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In November 2012, it was reported that Amazon.co.uk deleted "a wave of reviews by authors of their fellow writers' books in what is believed to be a response to [a] 'sock puppet' scandal."


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Following listing for sale of "Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson", a disparaging biography of Michael Jackson by Randall Sullivan, his fans, organized via social media as "Michael Jackson's Rapid Response Team to Media Attacks", bombarded Amazon with negative reviews and negative ratings of positive reviews.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In 2017, Amazon removed an inordinate number of 1-star reviews from the listing of former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's book, "What Happened".


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In 2018 and 2020, it was reported that Amazon had for some time allowed sellers to perform a bait-and-switch confidence trick: after reviewers had heaped praise on a particular product, the product would be replaced with a different product altogether while retaining the earlier positive reviews.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In 2022, researchers at UCLA documented that millions of products purchase fake positive reviews in private Facebook groups. They showed widespread use of fake positive reviews by products across many categories, and that fake reviews substantially boost ratings and sales. Amazon claims that in 2019 alone, the company spent more than $500 million and employed more than 8,000 people to stop fake reviews.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In July and August 2022, Amazon launched lawsuits against administrators of 10,000 Facebook groups used to coordinate fake product reviews, and several companies involved in faking seller feedback and bypassing sales bans.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: It has been argued that Amazon's buying up of subsidiaries has led to stagnation and a lack of development or innovation in these subsidiaries. This is especially strong in regards to Goodreads; "Input Magazine" called the book metadata platform "ancient and terrible" and argued that it functions too much like an early 2000s digital library with no developments to suit the evolving nature of book metadata acquisition or reader activity online. "New Statesman" also criticized Goodreads, calling the platform "stagnated" and a "monopoly on the discussion of new books", "bad for books" and "what should be a cozy, pleasant corner of the internet has become a monster."


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In November 2018, a community action group opposed the construction permit delivered to Goodman Group for the construction of a logistics platform Amazon will operate at Lyon–Saint-Exupéry Airport. In February 2019, filed a request on behalf of a second regional community action group asking the administrative court to decide whether the platform served a sufficiently important public interest to justify its environmental impact. Construction has been suspended while these matters are decided.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In September 2019, Amazon workers organized a walk-out as part of the Global Climate Strike. An internal group called Amazon Employees for Climate Justice said over 1,800 employees in 25 cities and 14 countries committed to participating in the action to protest Amazon's environmental impact and inaction to climate change. This group of workers petitioned Jeff Bezos and Amazon with three specific demands: to stop donating to politicians and lobbyists that deny climate change, to stop working with fossil fuel companies to accelerate oil and gas extraction, and to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2030.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Amazon has introduced the Shipment Zero program, however, Shipment Zero has only committed to reducing 50% of its shipments to net-zero by 2030. Also, even that 50% does not necessarily mean a decrease in emissions compared to current levels given Amazon's rate of growth in orders.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: That said, Amazon's CEO has also signed the Climate Pledge, in which Amazon would meet the Paris climate agreement goals 10 years ahead of schedule, and would be carbon-neutral by 2040. Besides this pledge, it also ordered 100,000 electric delivery trucks from Rivian. In September 2021, signatories of Amazon Environmental Pledge reached 200. According to the report, signatories of pledge are from 16 countries, 25 industries.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Amazon funds both climate denial groups including the Competitive Enterprise Institute and politicians denying climate change including Jim Inhofe.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Amazon considered making an option for Prime customers to have packages delivered at the most efficient and environmentally-friendly time (allowing the company to combine shipments with the same destination) but decided against it out of fear customers might reduce purchases. Since 2019, the company has instead offered customers an "Amazon Day" option, where all orders are delivered on the same day, emphasizing customer convenience, and it occasionally offers Prime customers credits in return for selecting slower and less expensive shipping options.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In May 2022, Amazon announced a $10.6 million commitment to help build and renovate 130 affordable homes with Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA) and support the social work of the local nonprofit CrossBridge in Nashville. Since 2020, amazon has committed more than $94 million to affordable housing projects in Nashville. The commitment is part of the Amazon Housing Equity Fund, a $2 billion commitment to create and preserve 20,000 affordable homes.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Amazon has sold various climate change denial books, argued by some critics to be disinformation that should be censored. The activism group Advance Democracy, in an interview for "South China Morning Post" and "USA Today", stated that "no information panels popped up on video searches for 10 key phrases associated with climate change denial but did turn up an ad from Amazon linking to books that deny the existence of climate change." Erotica fiction author Chuck Tingle wrote and published a comedic satire novel poking fun at such books, which was titled "Pounded In The Butt By The Sentient Manifestation Of My Own Ignorant Climate Change Denial" (which he chose to publish through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing). Amazon has not responded at length to any allegations that it promotes or endorses books supporting climate change denial. Alastair McIntosh, a professor from Scotland's University of Glasgow speaking for "RealClimate" argued that it was odd that Amazon would sell books that feature non-peer-reviewed science, saying, ""Chill" [a climate change skepticism book] ranked as number one in Amazon UK’s bestselling league for ‘global warming’. Invariably I have found myself asking of such figures, who have no credibly peer-reviewed publications in climate science: what makes them think that they know better than experts with a reputation worth not losing?". Amazon has no official policy against climate change denial books, although it does routinely weed books from sale that fall into what it considers "offensive".


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: An uncover report from ITV News in June 2021 found that the company, at one of its 24 "fulfilment centres" in the UK, a warehouse in Dunfermline, Scotland, was destroying 130,000 items of unsold stock a week, often completely unused items such as Smart TVs, laptops, hairdryers, computer drives, and books. A representative of Greenpeace, Sam Chetan Welsh, told ITV News: "It's an unimaginable amount of unnecessary waste, and just shocking to see a multi-billion pound company getting rid of stock in this way." Responding, Amazon itself said: "We are working towards a goal of zero product disposal" and rejected assertions that it sent unsold goods to landfill, although ITV journalists had followed lorries containing Amazon's discarded goods to such sites.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: The issue is not restricted to the UK. Legislation in France and Germany has been enacted to discourage retailers from destroying new goods after Amazon's policies were challenged.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In response to the discovery of various toxic chemicals found in product packaging from third-party sellers, Amazon banned toxic chemicals from product packaging in 2021.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: Multiple complaints have been filed by customers who reported that the cardboard boxes their Amazon orders arrived in had a "poop-like" smell, which is thought to be caused by the chemicals (4-methylphenol and 4-ethylphenol) used in the process of manufacturing the boxes from recycled materials. These chemicals are not harmful to humans, and Amazon has never publicly responded to the issue.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: One of the first books critical of Amazon was a Canadian book of essays titled "Against Amazon: Seven Arguments"; the little book was originally hand-bound and printed in a limited run by author Jorge Carrión, before being picked up by indie Canadian publisher Biblioasis, where it went viral and began appearing in university bookstores. Another such book was "How to Resist Amazon and Why" by Danny Caine, which was published by Raven Books and widely distributed throughout North America. The book referred to Amazon as "Scamazon" (a portmanteau of "Amazon" and "scam") and featured information about shopping locally and avoiding buying items from Amazon.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In 2022, the animated adult sitcom "Family Guy" featured a Season 21 episode titled "Bend or Blockbuster", in which the Griffin Family is attacked by the last two remaining employees of Blockbuster and then saved by a group of Amazon drones. When Peter Griffin remarks that Amazon isn't such a bad company after all, the drone carrying him replies, "Amazon agrees - workers shouldn't unionize!", to which Peter is disturbed and argues that this isn't what he said at all. Lois Griffin is annoyed to learn that the family's Amazon Alexa was spying on them to find their location, and had tracked their recent purchases. The Amazon drones then distract the family from the subject matter by playing cheerful Christmas music.


title: Criticism of Amazon

text: In 2011, the Virginia-based Alliance for Main Street Fairness ran a variety of television ads themed around an anti-Amazon ideology, with the encouragement of customers to shop responsibly. This was in part due to a bill at the time being proposed that would have forced Amazon to be more diligent in paying taxes.


title: Golden Hour (Kacey Musgraves album)

text: Golden Hour is the fourth studio album by American country music singer and songwriter Kacey Musgraves, released on March 30, 2018, through MCA Nashville. Musgraves co-wrote all 13 tracks and co-produced the album with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk. A country pop record, "Golden Hour" also contains elements of disco, electropop, electronica, and yacht rock.


title: Golden Hour (Kacey Musgraves album)

text: "Golden Hour" debuted at number four on the US "Billboard" 200. Receiving widespread critical acclaim, the album and its songs won in all four of their nominated categories at the 61st Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Best Country Album. The album's first two singles also won awards: "Butterflies" for Best Country Solo Performance and "Space Cowboy" for Best Country Song. "Golden Hour" also won Album of the Year at the 52nd Annual Country Music Association Awards. In 2020, "Golden Hour" was ranked at 270 on "Rolling Stone"'s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.


title: Golden Hour (Kacey Musgraves album)

text: Musgraves wrote and recorded most of the songs from the album throughout 2017. When asked about the writing process, she said, "I have a lot more love songs this time around, and I've never been one to write a love song and really feel it." She continued: "That probably sounds like the most depressing thing ever. [But] I'm coming off getting married and being in this golden hour of my personal life, where all these things are finally coming to fruition. I found myself inspired to write about this person and all these things he brought out in me that weren’t there before." Pieces of the album were recorded in a studio above a horse stable owned by musician Sheryl Crow.


title: Golden Hour (Kacey Musgraves album)

text: In a 2019 interview with "Rolling Stone", Musgraves discussed being under the influence of LSD when composing the songs "Mother" and "Slow Burn" and how it helped her creative process; "I’m not going to tell anybody to run out and do anything that wouldn’t be suitable for their mind or their lifestyle, but it did have positive effects for me."


title: Golden Hour (Kacey Musgraves album)

text: On March 10, 2018, Musgraves announced the Oh, What a World: Tour in support of the album while performing at the in London. The first twelve dates of the tour were announced on March 12, through Musgraves stating on social media that tour dates in other countries would eventually be added. The tour began on October 13 in Oslo, Norway. Musgraves announced a second leg of the tour, titled the "Oh, What a World: Tour II", in February 2019.


title: Golden Hour (Kacey Musgraves album)

text: Musgraves' sister Kelly Christine Sutton took the cover photo for "Golden Hour" over a two-day photo shoot in and around their hometown of Golden, Texas. Sutton, who also is credited with designing the album's packaging, has previously worked with Musgraves for all of her albums' artwork. When considering the cover photo, Sutton recalls Kacey "wanted to use this paper fan, and we are usually on the same page with ideas, but I couldn’t picture it. We went out into this wide open field. We needed one with no trees, so there was sky only. Almost immediately after we reviewed the photos, we just knew we had it."


title: Golden Hour (Kacey Musgraves album)

text: "Golden Hour" received widespread acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 89, based on 18 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic rated the album four and a half out of five stars and called it "warm and enveloping, pitched halfway between heartbreak and healing—but (it) lingers in the mind because the songs are so sharp, buttressed by long, loping melodies and Musgraves' affectless soul baring." Writing for "The Independent" and rating the album a perfect 5 out of 5, Roisin O'Connor states the album is "a reminder that sometimes – often, if you're looking in the right places – life is beautiful." Additionally, it was a "Spin" "Essential" and of the genre-bending songs on the album, reviewer Katherine St. Asaph calls it "not classicist, but perhaps it might be classic." The album was rated number one by the BBC poll of polls, a compilation of best-of-the-year lists across 35 music reviewers, on a list of the best albums of 2018. The album also placed number one in "The Village Voice"s Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 2018.


title: Golden Hour (Kacey Musgraves album)

text: At the 61st Annual Grammy Awards in 2019, "Golden Hour" won Album of the Year and Best Country Album. Its songs, "Space Cowboy" and "Butterflies", won Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance, respectively.


title: Golden Hour (Kacey Musgraves album)

text: "Golden Hour" debuted at number four on the US "Billboard" 200 and at number one on the Top Country Albums chart with 49,000 album-equivalent units, with 39,000 of that figure being pure album sales in its first week. It marks Musgraves’ third number one on the US Top Country Albums chart. It also debuted at number one on the Americana/Folk Albums chart. In the chart week following the 61st Grammy Awards, where "Golden Hour" won Album of the Year, the album returned to the top ten, climbing to number nine on the chart, selling 35,000 copies. In February 2019, the album has reached 310,000 in album-equivalent units sold. On June 28, 2019, the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for combined sales and album-equivalent units of over 500,000 units. As of February 2020, the album has sold 735,000 units in the United States .


title: Golden Hour (Kacey Musgraves album)

text: In the United Kingdom, "Golden Hour" debuted at number six on the official UK Albums Chart and at number one on the UK Country Albums chart. It marks Musgraves' first top ten album in the UK.


title: Yamaha RX 100

text: The Yamaha RX 100 was a two-stroke motorcycle made by Yamaha from 1985 to 1996 with technical collaboration and distributed in India by the Escorts Group. At the initial stage, Yamaha Japan was exporting all bikes from Japan to India. After 1990, Escorts started production in India, with some parts being imported from Japan.


title: Yamaha RX 100

text: The RX100 designation was originally used in certain markets for the five-speed, short-stroke 97cc Yamaha RS100DX produced from 1977. This was an RS100 (itself a 1976 improvement upon the design of the original reed-valved 96cc RS100 that was introduced to the United Kingdom in September, 1974, and to the USA in November, 1974) with a front disc brake and a tachometer, and was replaced in 1983 with the square-stroke, 98cc RX-S (with part numbers coded 31J), a major update on the RS design (with substantial changes particularly to the cylinder, head, and induction, and the points ignition replaced by Yamaha Capacitor Discharge Ignition) which was to form the basis of the Escort-distributed variants including the EY-100 Escort Yamaha 100. The Escort variants of the RX-S had heavier gauge steel tubing and other changes specific to the Indian market, including slotted screws instead of the original Phillips. Names of older variants of the RS line were re-used for Escort variants of the RX-S, including RX100 and RX-Z (a designation first used for a version of the first-generation RS100 updated with Capacitor Discharge Ignition)


title: Yamaha RX 100

text: Following the poor sales of the Rajdoot 350, Yamaha needed to make a new product, and the recent success of Suzuki's AX 100 demonstrated the potential of small-capacity motorbikes in India.


title: Yamaha RX 100

text: In India in November 1985, Yamaha released the RX 100 (a variant of the RX-S, not the original RX100 or RS100DX) to widespread acclaim. The appeal came largely from the high output of its 100 cc (6.1 cu in) engine. With its lightweight body and high power output, the resulting power to weight ratio of the bike made it the best 100 cc bike ever built for mass production, and as a result there is still a high demand for it many years after it ceased production.


title: Yamaha RX 100

text: The RX 100 was quickly adopted by racers who recognized its potential for drag racing. Various modifications such as expansion chambers, head porting, engine tuning, sprocket changes and wheel size changes became fairly common. A large number of customization options include larger carburetors, air filters, quicker throttle, disc brakes, an additional 5th gear, race pistons, racing CDI systems, upgraded tires and suspension damping. Tuned RX 100's have completed a standing start quarter-mile in about 14 seconds – a respectable figure, considering the much larger BMW-S1000RR 4-Cylinder 1,000 cc (61 cu in) bike can cover one-quarter mile (0.4 km) in 10.2 seconds. The bikes were knock-down kits, produced in Japan and assembled in India. An easy differentiation between the Japanese and Indian market models was that the model produced in Japan had disc brakes, while the Indian market version had drum brakes front and rear.


title: Yamaha RX 100

text: Factory stock colours for the bikes were Peacock Blue, Cherry Red and Metallic Black. The only major change that the bike underwent was upgrading from a 6-volt electrical system to a 12-volt system in order to support a CDI (capacitor discharge ignition) system for improved ignition and timing. The RX 100 production lasted from November 1985 to March 1996. The tightening of emissions laws and regulations in India demanded lower emissions from these motorcycles, and as a result the RX 100 was replaced by the Yamaha RXG


title: Yamaha RX 100

text: The RXG had a primary and secondary reduction. It had the same lightened flywheel from the RX 100 which caused unpleasantly abrupt acceleration. Yamaha replaced it with a heavier flywheel the following year. Then came the Yamaha RX-Z in 1997, with a new chassis and shorter wheelbase, with the same primary reduction ratio as the RX100 but with a taller final reduction. The RX-Z was launched with sportier bodywork and produced at 6,500rpm. Following the RX-Z, the RX135 was launched in 1998 with the same engine as the RXZ but using the same chassis as the RX 100 or RXG. The RX135 saw a moderate success due to its refined power output and better fuel economy. In 2000 Yamaha launched the RX135 5 speed with a large catalytic converter muffler (silencer). It's had a higher compression ratio and different port dimensions. It fared poorly in the India market due to its lower fuel economy, lack of marketing and quieter exhaust note which is departure from original rx series. It was discontinued after two years. The RX 135 5 speed was later recognized as the quickest RX-series bike and has a continued cult status due to its rarity. A 5-speed variant of the RX-Z with front disc brakes also had a limited release in 2001.


title: Yamaha RX 100

text: The final variant was a 4-speed RX 135 with a smaller catalytic converter silencer, classic rx100 like tank stripes and twin pod speedometer with white dials which was sold very briefly from 2003 to 2005.


title: Yamaha RX 100

text: The Yamaha RX 100 production run lasted from November 1985 to March 1996. The model was followed by the 132 cc RX G. The RX G had an economy-minded engine configuration with the ports tuned to increase fuel-efficiency and decrease exhaust gas. This model was the reply to the stricter emissions controls, which were to continue affecting Yamaha's designs. The Japanese manufacturers responded in late 1997 with the Yamaha RX-135 and the RX-Z which had a tachometer and a sportier headlamp and body. Both were mechanically the same and the RX-135 received a lukewarm response. The market also saw five-speed versions of the RX-135s and RX-Z. The final variant was a four-speed RX 135 with a small type catalytic converter, sporting a fuel gauge and a speedometer with white dials which was sold very briefly in 2003–2005.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: The Alexander Mosaic," also known as the Battle of Issus Mosaic", is a Roman floor mosaic originally from the House of the Faun in Pompeii (an alleged imitation of a Philoxenus of Eretria or Apelles' painting, 4th century BC) that dates from . It is typically dated in the second half of the century between 120 and 100 B.C. It depicts a battle between the armies of Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia and measures . This work of art is a combination of different artistic traditions such as Italic, Hellenistic, and Roman. The mosaic is considered "Roman" based on the broader context of its time and location in relation to the later Roman Republic. The original is preserved in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. The mosaic is believed to be a copy of an early 3rd-century BC Hellenistic painting.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: To take Turkey for the Greeks, Alexander the Great struggled with Darius III, the commander-in-chief of the Persian army, as he moved west across the Mediterranean.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: The mosaic illustrates a battle in which Alexander charges the Persian king Darius. On the left side of the picture, Alexander the Great can be seen with his hair flowing around and a serious expression on his face. The military successes of Alexander the Great are legendary. When the soldier in front of him falls from his horse and to the ground, he can stab him with his spear and kill him. The painting's protagonist, Darius III, is afraid as the fight rages around him and turns his chariot to flee. The battle scene comprises over 50 men.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: It depicts a battle between Darius III of Persia's armies and those of Alexander the Great's, and it has dimensions of 2.72 meters by 5.13 meters. This mosaic, which dates back to the late 2nd or early 1st century AD and is typical of Pompeian pavements, is created out of tesserae rather than opus signinum or other forms of stone chips put in mortar. This picture stands out among ancient works of art due to the fact that it depicts a large group of soldiers, depicts each figure with meticulous attention to detail, expertly captures the expressions that appear on the warriors' faces, and uses muted colors. Alexander defeated him at the Battle of Issus and again two years later at the Battle of Gaugamela. The work is traditionally believed to show the Battle of Issus.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: In addition, the mosaic shows the exact moment that the Persian king turns to leave after hearing the Greek general Alexander's order to do so. At this precise moment, Darius is making the order because the Persian spears are still pointed in the direction of the Greeks, and the king is riding in a chariot being wheeled around. In the third century B.C., an anonymous artist produced the Alexander Mosaic. Despite its location in the fabled "Casa del Fauno," this holds. Philoxenos of Eretrea, who lived in the 4th century B.C., is a possible author of the original version of the poem.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: The mosaic features many figures in a very large space. The two most distinguished and recognizable figures are Alexander the Great and King Darius III of Persia. Alexander is depicted in a profile view facing the left side of the mosaic. He is posed in action with his lance in his right arm being warded off by the hand of an enemy cavalryman gripping it on the shaft below its sharp head as his mount tumbles to the ground. Alexander features a Roman nose and a stoic look in combat. Alexander wears a breastplate with the head of Medusa, a famous Gorgon. This can be seen as a reference to the gorgon's magical head. The head of Medusa's power to turn people to stone was used as a protection in Greek mythology. One other interpretation of the head of the Medusa is its use as a reference to divine birth. Both of these theories contribute to the power presented in the mosaic of Alexander the Great.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: Alexander rides his horse Bucephalus. He is shown with a lot of curly soft-textured hair. His hair is typical of Greek royal portraiture that was established in the 4th century BC. Alexander's gaze is trained on the Persian King Darius. Note that Alexander does not wear a battle helmet in the mosaic so that he could be recognized as the great conqueror. After Alexander the Great was declared king of Asia around 330 BC, he adopted a new royal court style. His costume was rethought and redesigned with a new royal insignia and an emphasis on decadence. Scholars believe Alexander had a specific notion of what it was to be a king in Asia and to be the Great King, therefore he required his dress to be magnificent to command his new conquered people. Alexander intended to replace Darius as king of Persia with a highly expanded autocracy while commanding respect and authority.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: Darius can be recognized as the other large figure in the mosaic. Darius and his charioteer takes up a large portion of the mosaic in the right half of the depiction. There are various precarious elements surrounding him. In the background Darius' charioteer whips the horses to flee from the battle scene. There is visible fear and anxiety in the Persian king's face, seen especially in his furrowed brows and deep frown. Darius is positioned holding a bow in his left hand while his right arm is outstretched towards Alexander. Directly in front of the king's chariot is a soldier holding the reins to his horse. The horse is a large figure that draws much attention because of its backward facing positioning. The horse's hindquarters are facing the audience with a raised tail. This may be seen as a reference to the Persian defeat and weak leadership displayed. Or, more simply, a reference to Darius being "a horse's ass," a turn of phrase that may have been around since ancient days.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: Radical foreshortening – as in the central horse, seen from behind – and the use of shading to convey a sense of mass and volume enhance the naturalistic effect of the scene. Repeated diagonal spears, clashing metal, and the crowding of men and horses evoke the din of battle. At the same time, action is arrested by dramatic details such as the fallen horse and the Persian soldier in the foreground who watches his own death throes reflected in a shield.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: The mosaic is made of about one and a half million tiny colored tiles called tesserae, arranged in gradual curves called "opus vermiculatum," (also known as "worm work," because they seem to replicate the slow motion of a crawling worm). These tesserae were about 0.08 inches wide, and it is estimated that over four million pieces were used in the mosaic. The color scale of Roman mosaics are extremely rich in gradation. The process of gathering materials for mosaics was a complex undertaking since the color scale was based solely on the pieces of marble that could be found in nature. Following the style of many other Hellenistic artists, the entire mosaic is composed of reds, yellows, black, and white. The mosaic is an unusually detailed work for a private residence and was likely commissioned by a wealthy person or family. There is evidence that the mosaic was imported from the East, as there are places where some details are distorted and changed. Some scholars argue that this is evidence that the mosaic was created in pieces and reassembled in Pompeii. The fact that this scene was made to be viewed in the house of a Roman civilian reveals that Alexander the Great was more than just a heroic image to the Romans. Because Roman leaders followed after Alexander's image, Roman civilians also aspired to emulate the power he represented. Since the mosaic was arranged on the floor where the patron could receive guests, it was the first decorative object a visitor would see upon entering that room. Modern research indicates that there may have been multiple columns removed from the colonnade to improve lighting and viewing of the mosaic.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: Similar to Greek paintings, the mosaic of Alexander the Great lacks rich iconography towards the top, which, on a vertical surface, would have been considerably higher above the viewer's line of sight and garnered less creative attention. This is one way in which the two forms of art are comparable to one another. As a bonus, the mosaic displays the realism and naturalism typical of Greek portrayals of humans, especially regarding facial expression, emotional tone, and anatomical structure.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: The Alexander Mosaic is believed to be a copy of a Hellenistic Greek painting made during the 4th century BC. The style of the mosaic is distinctly Greek in that it depicts close up portraits of the main heroes of the battle. Typically within Greek battle scenes the heroes are difficult to define within the commotion. The mosaic contains very specific details that scholars believe would have been lost if the mosaic was created any later than a couple hundred years after the battle. It is a commonly accepted belief concerning the Alexander mosaic that one must use the Greek original to interpret the meaning of the Roman copy. The debate among scholars over the significance of the Roman copy is that it cannot and should not be interpreted in the same cultural and historical context as the Greek original. Some believe that in doing so, it takes away both context and achievement from Roman artists. The mosaic is held to be a copy either of a painting by Aristides of Thebes, or of a lost late 4th-century BC fresco by the painter Philoxenus of Eretria. The latter is mentioned by Pliny the Elder (XXXV, 110) as a commission for the Macedonian king Cassander.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: There is limited evidence in existence today to contextualize many, if not most, rediscovered Roman artworks. The Alexander Mosaic depicts a rich subject narrative of two historical figures engaged in a defining battle. This imagery was most likely placed in the House of the Faun to incorporate and evoke the power of Alexander the Great into Roman canonical depictions. This mosaic is fully capable of communicating a broader message due to its find date and location site, conveying a rich Greek and Roman historical context and background, particularly through its commemoration of a decisive Greek victory over the Persians.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: Since the mosaic associates the figures of Alexander and Darius with untraditional symbols, Alexander with the gorgon and Darius with the cross, some scholars have argued that it depicts the Persians in a sympathetic manner.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: The Alexander Mosaic was preserved due to the volcanic ash that collected over the mosaic during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the city of Pompeii in 79 AD. This Roman artwork was found inlaid into the ground of the House of the Faun in between two open peristyles. The mosaic was used to decorate the exedra which is an open room or area that contains seating that is used for conversing. The House of the Faun was a large estate comprising one whole block in Pompeii; this is an area of about 3,000 square meters.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: As a significant artwork and piece of history, the scene of the Mosaic remained in the social and cultural sphere. The mosaic was rediscovered in 1831 in Pompeii, Italy, and was later transported to Naples in September 1843. The Alexander Mosaic is now displayed on a wall and preserved in Naples. Until recently it has been on display at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, although currently its site is covered with a facsimile banner and it appears to have been removed for restoration or display elsewhere. In 1956, the Alexander Mosaic was featured on the ₯1,000 banknote.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: In 2003, the International Center for the Study and Teaching of Mosaic (CISIM) in Ravenna, Italy, proposed creating a copy of the mosaic. After CISIM received approval for the project, the mosaic master Severo Bignami and his eight-person team took a large photograph of the mosaic, made a tracing of the image with a dark marker and created a negative impression of it.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: The team composed the mosaic in sections in 44 clay frames, trying to preserve the pieces of the mosaic in the exact positions they are in the original mosaic. They had to keep the plates wet at all times. Then they pressed a tissue on the clay to create an image of the outlines of the mosaic in the clay. The team recreated the mosaic with about 2 million pieces of various marble types. When they had placed all the pieces, they covered the result with a layer of glue and gauze and pulled it out of the clay. They placed each section on synthetic concrete and then united the sections with the compound of glass, wool and plastic.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: The project took 22 months and cost the equivalent of $216,000. The copy was installed in the House of the Faun in 2005.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: In 2015, IPERION CH, the Integrated Platform for the European Research Infrastructure ON Cultural Heritage, researched the mosaic and used various non-invasive analysis techniques to discover the physical composition of the mosaic, in addition to learning which parts were original and which were added after rediscovery. In 2018, a photogrammetric model was created of the mosaic, revealing flaws and cracks invisible to the human eye.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: In January 2021 the National Archaeological Museum of Naples began a major restoration project to attempt to conserve the mosaic. In the initial assessment of the mosaic, multiple issues were discovered, including detached tesserae, cracks, bulges and surface depressions. Some areas had been already treated, such as multiple cracks that had been covered by thin paper bandages in a “velinatura” technique, in prior restoration efforts.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: The House of the Faun at Pompeii was immediately recognized by its size and decoration as one of the town’s most important houses. Adolf Hoffmann argues that the House of the Faun was constructed in two principal phases.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: The first phase was distinctive from the second that Hoffmann refers to it as the "first House of the Faun" and has recently attempted a reconstruction. In the first half-or at latest by the middle of the second century B.C., the two atria (from image: 27 and 7) and the first peristyle (from image: 36, originally in the Doric order) were constructed. Another distinctive feature of this first phase was the absence, from the north side of the first peristyle, of the Alexander Mosaic and its exedra (37). A large room, underlying the later rooms to the east of the Alexander exedra (from image: 42, 38, and 43), served the first peristyle as its principal exedra during this first phase. Overall, the first incarnation of the House of the Faun dated back to ca. 180 B.C.E., occupied two-thirds of the insula and consisted of two atria, one small house and one peristyle.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: According to Hoffmann, the Alexander exedra was not originally part of the layout of the first peristyle. Hoffmann has observed that the first peristyle, originally built in the Doric order, belongs to the earliest phase of the house. The layout of the first peristyle is the key to the house's design, in both practice and theory. The first peristyle dominates the house not only visually and functionally, but it also commands the design, determining the locations and the dimensions of the other major parts. The room is so strategically placed that it would not be an exaggeration to say that the rest of the house had been designed and built around the site with the great treasure of mosaic art set in its floor.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: Next, Hoffmann argues, the second phase of the house-the second House of the Faun-commenced through an extensive rebuilding and renovating of the first house. The first peristyle (36) was "refashioned in the Ionic order and was reconstructed into a new peristyle. The Alexander exedra (37) was constructed, facing south, onto the first peristyle. A major renovation phase beginning ca. 110 B.C.E. and ending ca. 75 B.C.E., comprised a new decoration in the so-called First Style (including all the well-known mosaic pavements), as well as the insertion of a second entrance into the tetrastyle atrium, a switch from Doric to Ionic in the portico of the small peristyle, and the construction of the large north peristyle.


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: In addition to the Alexander Mosaic, several other floor mosaics representing Nilotic events and theatrical masks surround the Alexander Mosaic. This piece of art draws from various artistic periods and movements, including Roman, Hellenistic, and Italic. The name of this mosaic comes from the fact that it was found in a period of the Roman Empire known as the "late Roman Republic."


title: Alexander Mosaic

text: Eight pictorial mosaics were laid in the House of the Faun as part of a major renovation program of the early 1st c. BCE Many of them have iconography linking them to Ptolemaic Egypt like a mosaic triptych depicting Egyptian animals in a Nilotic landscape, fish emblema, a emblema depicting a cat attacking a bird that represents statues with the same theme from Ptolemaic Egypt and emblemas of other animals with Ptolemaic Egypt themes. It has traditionally been held that these compositions were laid at different times, the Alexander Mosaic in ca. 110 BCE and the Nilotic triptych in ca. 80 BCE. This view rests on the observation that the bases of the threshold columns were cut back to accommodate the panels of the triptych, and on a perception that the triptych is technically less accomplished than the Alexander Mosaic.


title: Indra's net

text: Indra's net (also called Indra's jewels or Indra's pearls, Sanskrit "Indrajāla", Chinese: 因陀羅網) is a metaphor used to illustrate the concepts of Śūnyatā (emptiness), pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination), and interpenetration in Buddhist philosophy.


title: Indra's net

text: The metaphor's earliest known reference is found in the Atharva Veda. It was further developed by the Mahayana school in the 3rd century "Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra" and later by the Huayan school between the 6th and 8th centuries.


title: Indra's net

text: "Indra's net" is an infinitely large net owned by the Vedic deva Indra, which hangs over his palace on Mount Meru, the axis mundi of Buddhist and Hindu cosmology. In East Asian Buddhism, Indra's net is considered as having a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, with each jewel being reflected in all of the other jewels. In the Huayan school of Chinese Buddhism, which follows the "Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra", the image of "Indra's net" is used to describe the interconnectedness or "perfect interfusion" ("yuanrong", 圓融) of all phenomena in the universe.


title: Indra's net

text: Book 30 of the "Buddhāvataṃsaka" is named "The Incalculable" because it focuses on the idea of the infinitude of the universe and as Thomas Cleary notes, concludes that "the cosmos is unutterably infinite, and hence so is the total scope and detail of knowledge and activity of enlightenment."


title: Indra's net

text: In another part of the "Buddhāvataṃsaka" sutra, the actual metaphor of "Indra's Net" is used to refer to the all phenomena in the dharmadhātu ("dharma realm", ultimate reality, the ultimate principle, Chinese: 法界中):They [Buddhas] know all phenomena come from interdependent origination.


title: Indra's net

text: They know all world systems exhaustively. They know all the different phenomena in all worlds, interrelated in Indra's net.


title: Indra's net

text: The metaphor of Indra's net of jewels plays an essential role in the Chinese Huayan school, where it is used to describe the interpenetration or perfect interfusion ("yuanrong", 圓融) of microcosmos and macrocosmos, as well as the interfusion of all dharmas (phenomena) in the entire universe. According to Bryan Van Norden, in the Huayan tradition, Indra's net is "adopted as a metaphor for the manner in which each thing that exists is dependent for both its existence and its identity upon every other thing that exists."


title: Indra's net

text: The Huayan text entitled ""Calming and Contemplation in the Five Teachings of Huayan"" ("Huayan wujiao zhiguan" 華嚴五教止觀, T1867) attributed to the first Huayan patriarch Dushun (557–640) gives an extended overview of this concept:


title: Indra's net

text: The manner in which all dharmas interpenetrate is like an imperial net of celestial jewels extending in all directions infinitely, without limit. … As for the imperial net of heavenly jewels, it is known as Indra’s Net, a net which is made entirely of jewels. Because of the clarity of the jewels, they are all reflected in and enter into each other, ad infinitum. Within each jewel, simultaneously, is reflected the whole net. Ultimately, nothing comes or goes. If we now turn to the southwest, we can pick one particular jewel and


title: Indra's net

text: As is the case with this jewel, this is furthermore the case with all the rest of the jewels–each and every jewel simultaneously and immediately reflects each and every other jewel, ad infinitum. The image of each of these limitless jewels is within one jewel, appearing brilliantly. None of the other jewels interfere with this. When one sits within one jewel, one is simultaneously sitting in all the infinite jewels in all ten directions. How is this so? Because within each jewel are present all jewels. If all jewels are present within each jewel, it is also the case that if you sit in one jewel you sit in all jewels at the same time. The inverse is also understood in the same way. Just as one goes into one jewel and thus enters every other jewel while never leaving this one jewel, so too one enters any jewel while never leaving this particular jewel.


title: Indra's net

text: The Huayan Patriarch Fazang (643–712) used the golden statue of a lion to demonstrate the Huayan vision of interpenetration to empress Wu:


title: Indra's net

text: According to Rajiv Malhotra, the earliest reference to a net belonging to Indra is in the Atharva Veda (c. 1000 BCE). Verse 8.8.6. says:


title: Indra's net

text: The net was one of the weapons of the sky-god Indra, used to snare and entangle enemies. The net also signifies magic or illusion. According to Teun Goudriaan, Indra is conceived in the Rig Veda as a great magician, tricking his enemies with their own weapons, thereby continuing human life and prosperity on earth. Indra became associated with earthly magic, as reflected in the term "indrajal", "Indra's Net", the name given to the occult practices magicians. According to Goudriaan, the term "indrajalam" seems to originate in verse 8.8.8 from the Atharva Veda, of which Goudriaan gives a different translation:


title: Indra's net

text: According to Goudriaan, the speaker pretends to use a weapon of cosmical size. The net being referred to here


title: Indra's net

text: In "Gödel, Escher, Bach" (1979), Douglas Hofstadter uses Indra's net as a metaphor for the complex interconnected networks formed by relationships between objects in a system—including social networks, the interactions of particles, and the "symbols" that stand for ideas in a brain or intelligent computer.


title: Indra's net

text: In the 2020 TV Series Brave New World inspired by the homonymous book by Aldous Huxley, a new element is introduced in the original story: everyone in New London is always connected to an artificial intelligence called Indra, that observes, monitors and analyzes all citizens 24/7. Writer Grant Morrison named this network after the Vedic deity, since Huxley was notoriously fascinated by Indian mysticism and named another element of the story, Soma, after a Hindu ritual drink which shares its name with another Vedic deity.


title: Indra's net

text: In the TV Series Midnight Gospel 2020, Indra's Net is discussed in the episode Annihilation of Joy where prisoners die over and over.


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: Jean Michaël Seri (born 19 July 1991) is an Ivorian professional footballer who plays as a central midfielder for EFL Championship club Hull City and the Ivory Coast national team.


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: In his native Ivory Coast, the young Seri was nicknamed "Galla", because he tried to emulate the former Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Marcelo Gallardo, whose technical skills he admired. Seri joined the Ivorian football academy that was opened in 2001 by the Ivorian footballer Cyril Domoraud. "Jean is gifted, intelligent and respectful," Domoraud said in retrospect. "In his young days, he was one step ahead of the others, thanks to his ball control."


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: Born in the south-western city of Grand-Béréby, Seri began his career as a youth player with Abidjan club Africa Sports d'Abidjan in July 2007. The best clubs in Ivory Coast fought for his services. In January 2010, Seri started his career as a senior player by joining ASEC Mimosas, the most successful club in Ivorian football, where he needed just one season to prove himself and become one of the best players in the country. "He is a great listener, and his state of mind is impeccable," raved Sébastien Desabre, ASEC Mimosas's head coach from October 2010 to October 2012 when Seri was a senior player there, and that quality enabled Seri to make steady progress.


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: On 2 November 2012, Seri joined Primeira Liga club Porto on loan, after impressing their scouts. However, there was no place for Seri in the club's first team. He was thus forced to play for the club's reserve team, scoring once in 19 Segunda Liga matches in the first five months of 2013.


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: On 31 August 2013, two months after finishing his loan spell at Porto (the "Dragões"), Seri joined another Primeira Liga club Paços de Ferreira on a permanent basis and on a free transfer by signing a three-year deal. He debuted for the "Pacenses" on 14 September 2013 against Benfica in a Primeira Liga 3–1 away loss. On 2 March 2014, he scored a goal in the 54th minute to register his first competitive goal for Paços de Ferreira in a 3–1 Primeira Liga home win over Marítimo to send his side away from the relegation zone. It was at Paços de Ferreira where Seri's magnificent range of passing and ability to dictate the tempo of the game made him a fans' favourite. The club finished in eighth place in the 2014–15 Primeira Liga, and Ligue 1 club Nice were quick to sign Seri before bigger clubs took notice.


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: On 11 June 2015, Seri officially joined Ligue 1 club Nice for a transfer fee of €1 million. On 27 May 2015, prior to the opening of the transfer window, the club had announced the "very likely" arrival of Seri. On 8 August 2015, Seri made his competitive debut for Nice in their opening match of the 2015–16 Ligue 1 season, playing the entire match in the 2–1 home loss to Monaco. On 27 September 2015, he scored in the 53rd minute to register his first competitive goal for Nice in a 4–1 Ligue 1 away win over Saint-Étienne.


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: In July 2018, Seri joined Fulham on a four-year deal until 2022 with an option for Fulham to extend the contract by a further year.


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: Seri scored his first goal for his new club on 26 August, opening the scoring against Burnley with a spectacular strike from outside the area. Seri picked the ball up and took one touch around an oncoming defender before curling in a long-range effort into the top corner of Joe Hart's net and the goal was awarded with the Premier League Goal of the Month for August.


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: On 18 July 2019, Seri joined Galatasaray on a season-long loan deal, with an option to buy. Eventually, he would leave Galatasaray and return to Fulham at the end of the season.


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: Following his return from his loan spell at Bordeaux, Seri began playing again for Fulham starting his first match for the club for the season against Huddersfield Town, which saw Fulham win 5–1 in the Championship on 14 August 2021. On 2 May 2022, Seri both featured and scored in a 7–0 victory over Luton Town, this victory securing the Championship title for Fulham. Despite promotion back to the Premier League, it was announced that Seri would be leaving the club at the end of his contract in June 2022.


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: On 8 July 2022, Seri returned to the Championship to join Hull City on a three-year contract. Seri made his debut on 30 July 2022 in the home match against Bristol City and scored the winning goal in extra time.


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: Seri made a total of three appearances for the Ivory Coast under-23 team, all of them at the 2011 CAF U-23 Championship held in Morocco, playing every minute of all their three Group B matches against South Africa, Egypt and Gabon. Ivory Coast finished third in Group B and thus did not qualify for the semifinals.


title: Jean Michaël Seri

text: On 27 February 2014, Seri received his first senior international call up for the Ivory Coast in an upcoming friendly match against Belgium; he was an unused substitute in "The Elephants"' 2–2 away draw (held on 5 March 2014) against Belgium. On 6 September 2015, Seri made his senior international debut in a 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualification match against Sierra Leone, playing the entire match in the 0–0 away draw. Seri played two of Ivory Coast's three 2017 Africa Cup of Nations Group C matches. They finished third in Group C and thus did not qualify for the quarterfinals. On 17 November 2015, Seri scored a goal in the 64th minute of the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification second round second leg 3–0 home win over Liberia to register his first senior international goal.


title: Krishna (Kannada actor)

text: Nagappa Sunil Kumar (born 12 June 1985), popularly known with stage name Darling Krishna, is an actor who primarily acts in Kannada films. He played titular role in soap-opera "Krishna Rukmini". Krishna's major breakthrough as an actor came with superhit film "Madarangi". Krishna acted in, directed and also produced "Love Mocktail" movie along with his wife Milana Nagaraj.


title: Krishna (Kannada actor)

text: In February 2021, Krishna married his long-time girlfriend Milana Nagaraj, at a private ceremony in the outskirts of Bengaluru.


title: Krishna (Kannada actor)

text: He started his career as an assistant director for Duniya Soori in the movie "Jackie" and later in "Hudugaru". He played titular role in soap-opera "Krishna Rukmini". Serial was so popular that people started calling by his on-screen name Krishna, which eventually became his official screen name.


title: Krishna (Kannada actor)

text: After acting in a few films with varying degrees of success, including Krishna in "Doddmane Hudga", Krishna ventured into direction and production with "Love Mocktail", in which he also acted. His co-star and later wife, Milana Nagaraj, also co-produced the film. "Love Mocktail" was critically acclaimed. Krishna is currently working on its sequel, "Love Mocktail 2".


title: Boleskine House

text: The Boleskine House () is a manor on the south-east side of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is notable for having been the home of author and occultist Aleister Crowley, and Led Zeppelin guitarist and producer Jimmy Page. It suffered significant fire damage in December 2015 and again in July 2019. The house is now being restored and construction work has started as of December 2019. The Boleskine House Foundation SCIO took over ownership of one part of the estate in 2019 in order to manage restoration efforts on the house.


title: Boleskine House

text: Boleskine House is south of Inverness, on the opposite side of Loch Ness from the Meall Fuar-mhonaidh, and halfway between the villages of Foyers and Inverfarigaig.


title: Boleskine House

text: The area has a history of strange happenings long before Aleister Crowley moved in. The parish of Boleskine was formed in the 13th Century. A Kirk and graveyard were built in the parish around this time. A succession of Ministers ran Boleskine Parish and would travel the area on horseback or on foot in all weather conditions. Minister Thomas Houston (1648–1705) was said to have had the task of hastily laying animated corpses back in their graves after a devious local wizard had raised the dead in Boleskine graveyard.


title: Boleskine House

text: Boleskine House was built on the site of the kirk, which, according to legend, caught fire during congregation and killed everyone inside. The house was constructed in the 1760s by Colonel Archibald Fraser as a hunting lodge. Colonel Archibald Fraser apparently chose the site specifically to irritate Simon Fraser of Lovat in retribution for his support of the Hanoverian side during the Jacobite rising of 1745 as Lord Lovat's land surrounded the site of Boleskine.


title: Boleskine House

text: The original hunting lodge was expanded continuously by the Fraser family until c. 1830. All the rooms were situated on one floor, with 4 bedrooms, a kitchen, servant's "attic bedroom" (above kitchen), lounge, drawing room, and a library. There is even a tunnel linking the house to the graveyard.


title: Boleskine House

text: Crowley purchased Boleskine House from the Fraser family in 1899. The House at that time was known as the Manor of Boleskine and Abertarff after the name of the local parish. Crowley believed the location was ideal to sequester himself to perform a series of operations known as the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, taken from a grimoire called "The Book of Abramelin".


title: Boleskine House

text: According to Crowley, in his book "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley", in order to perform the operations "the first essential is a house in a more or less secluded situation. There should be a door opening to the north from the room of which you make your oratory. Outside this door, you construct a terrace covered with fine river sand. This ends in a 'lodge' where the spirits may congregate."


title: Boleskine House

text: It requires at least 6 months of preparation, celibacy and abstinence from alcohol. However, it also includes the summoning of the 12 Kings and Dukes of Hell, to bind them and remove their negative influences from the magician's life. Whilst Crowley was in the process of performing the lengthy ritual, he was called to Paris by the leader of the Golden Dawn. According to legend, he never banished the demons he had summoned, leading to strange happenings occurring in and around Boleskine House.


title: Boleskine House

text: Crowley became infamous for stories of conducting black magic and various other rituals while residing at the house; one of his pseudonyms was "Lord Boleskine". His lodge keeper, Hugh Gillies, suffered a number of personal tragedies, including the loss of two children. Crowley later claimed that his experiments with black magic had simply got out of hand.


title: Boleskine House

text: Crowley described the house as a "long low building. I set apart the south-western half for my work. The largest room has a bow window and here I made my door and constructed the terrace and lodge. Inside the room I set up my oratory proper. This was a wooden structure, lined in part with the big mirrors which I brought from London."


title: Boleskine House

text: After the First World War, Hollywood actor George Raft was involved in a scandal selling shares for a pig farm supposedly built on the grounds of Boleskine—except the farm did not exist. After the Second World War the house was owned by a Major Edward Grant. In 1965, Grant committed suicide in Crowley's bedroom with a shotgun.


title: Boleskine House

text: After this a newly married couple moved into the house. The wife was blind, and after a month the man walked out, leaving the woman wandering around unable to see. In 1969 Kenneth Anger, an experimental filmmaker with an interest in the occult, learned that the house was on the market and rented it for a few months. When Jimmy Page heard about this, he bought the house in 1970.


title: Boleskine House

text: Jimmy Page was a collector of Crowley memorabilia who "had read a lot of Crowley and ... was fascinated by his ideas". At the time Page bought the house it was in a state of decay, but he felt it would be a good atmosphere in which to write songs. However, after arranging for the house to be restored he spent little time at Boleskine, leaving things in the care of his friend Malcolm Dent (1944-2011).


title: Boleskine House

text: When asked why he was chosen, Dent explained "Jimmy Page caught me at a time in my life when I wasn't doing a great deal and asked me to come up and run the place. I never did establish why he fixed on me." When Dent moved into the house "it was a wreck ... It had been more or less abandoned. There'd been at least one fire there, parts of the building were missing and it had been badly patched up. The grounds, which at one time had been very nicely laid out were gone to hell".


title: Boleskine House

text: Although Dent was a sceptic of the paranormal he soon started to experience strange occurrences. After a few weeks, he heard strange rumblings from the hallway which stopped when he investigated, but resumed after he closed the bedroom door. After researching the house he discovered the rumbling in the hall was supposedly the head of Lord Lovat, even though he was executed in London. Dent explains "above Boleskine there's a place called Errogie which is supposed to be the geographical centre of the Highlands. Boleskine was then the nearest consecrated ground to Errogie and it's thought his soul, or part of it, ended here."


title: Boleskine House

text: Dent also experienced the "most terrifying night of my life" at Boleskine. He awoke one night to hear what sounded like a wild animal snorting and banging outside his bedroom door. It went on for some time and it was not until morning that Dent dared open the door, and there was nothing there. Dent added "whatever was there was pure evil." Another friend who stayed at Boleskine awoke one night claiming she had been attacked by "some kind of devil". Other occurrences, such as chairs switching places, doors slamming open and closed for no reason and carpets and rugs rolling up inexplicably, failed to deter Dent from staying. Dent met his wife at Boleskine and raised his family there.


title: Boleskine House

text: Although Jimmy Page never spent a great length of time there, he did everything he could to return the house to how it would have looked during Crowley's ownership. For example, he commissioned an artist, Charles Pace, to paint some Crowley-esque murals on the walls. These were based on the murals in Crowley's Abbey of Thelema in Sicily discovered by Kenneth Anger in 1955.


title: Boleskine House

text: The house was put on the market for £250,000 in 1991. It was purchased by Ronald and Annette MacGillivray in 1992. According to Mrs. MacGillivray, when they bought the house it was in a very bad state. The MacGillivrays "spent a lot of money stripping it back to the bare walls and re-roofing it. It had four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a huge drawing room, dining room, library and various smaller rooms". The house was then converted into a hotel.


title: Boleskine House

text: Ronald MacGillivray died in 2002. He was said to hate any reference to the house's dark past when it was home to Crowley.


title: Boleskine House

text: When asked whether she had experienced any mysterious occurrences at Boleskine House, his wife states that she experienced "absolutely none. I am a non-believer and didn't listen to all that rubbish. We had a great time there."


title: Boleskine House

text: Following Ronald MacGillivray's death, Boleskine House was put up for sale again. The new Dutch owners, who have remained anonymous, converted the house back into a private residence and used it as a holiday home.


title: Boleskine House

text: In 2009, a plot on the former estate was put on the market for £176,000 with plans to build a three-bedroom log house. The sale also included of foreshore on Loch Ness.


title: Boleskine House

text: At approximately 1:40 pm on 23 December 2015, a motorist on the A82 road reported flames and smoke coming from Boleskine House. When fire crews attended, it is estimated up to 60 per cent of the building had already been incinerated, with flames rising up to high. The firefighters concentrated on the west wing of the house, as the rest of the building had been severely damaged.


title: Boleskine House

text: The owner's partner and daughter had gone shopping and returned to find the house ablaze. The fire was thought to have started in the kitchen, however nobody was believed to be in the house at the time of the fire and there were no casualties.


title: Boleskine House

text: The interior of the house was almost totally destroyed by the fires. Part of the roof and the outer walls survive, but the former owner, Mrs. MacGillivray, has said that since the extent of the damage is so bad it "is unlikely it will ever be rebuilt unless there is someone out there with an interest in the occult wanting to spend a lot of money." The ruins and 22 acres of land were put on the market for £500,000 in April 2019. They are now owned by the Boleskine House Foundation SCIO which will restore the house and gardens to their original form and then open the estate to the public. The website with plans for the project is here - https://www.boleskinehouse.org.


title: Boleskine House

text: A further fire was started on 31 July 2019 in two buildings on the estate at the same time in a suspected arson. The police are currently appealing to the public for any information on those involved. The fire destroyed the remainder of what was left inside Boleskine House and as of December 2019 work is underway to clear the fire damaged material and prepare the building for a new roof.


title: Boleskine House

text: Boleskine House is described and recognisable in W. Somerset Maugham's "The Magician" where it is called "Skene". Crowley considered Maugham's book to be plagiarism and wrote an article under the name of Oliver Haddo (the name of a character taken from Maugham's book) for "Vanity Fair" as a witty riposte. (For details, see Crowley's autobiography, "Confessions", listed above.)