Exploring Ridiculous Book Prices on Amazon | May 31 2025, 01:45

On Amazon, Clete Kushida offers books like “Sleep” for $1,895 and “Sleep for Dummies” for $22.99. It seems to me that it should be the other way around. He also has “Encyclopedia of Sleep and Circadian Rhythms” for $2,247.

If you search for all the books on Amazon and sort them from the most expensive to the cheapest, the top entries are books around $200. However, if you slightly hack the system by appending &low-price=…&high-price=… to the URL, sorting by descending price can reveal much more.

I decided to see what else is sold for big money on Amazon. For example, in the listing, Topps has a set of 1952 baseball cards “1952 Topps Baseball Almost Complete Set – Premier (Baseball Set) EX+” priced at $354,530. The single comment says “Damn I could take a picture and print those for free”.

Typically, such prices are seen for diamonds, Hermes bags, and pre-fabricated houses. It’s interesting to look into what’s in the books. Naturally, the top includes antiques, various mistakenly set prices, and jokes.

But among these, there are real books for some unreasonable money. For instance, the Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research by Filomena Maggino is sold at Harvard Book Store for $5,999. Or the Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance 2nd ed. 2022 Edition by Ali Farazmand for $7,999.99. It’s interesting whether selling for just under $8K is justifiable? On the Springer website, the electronic version of this book sells for $3500. And you can even rent it on Kindle for a couple of months for $2000.

Or there is also the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics in 14 volumes. On Amazon, this encyclopedia is priced just under $100K, yet it’s quite easy to find other sites online selling its electronic versions. What do you think, how much could the electronic version of this encyclopedia cost? The price is around $11,000 everywhere.

Among the rarities is RECOVERY: THE HOSPITAL DRAWINGS OF ALFONSO OSSORIO. Interestingly, this is just a book printed relatively recently, in 1995, in a limited run of 100 copies, each individually numbered. Now these books are selling for $4-5 thousand dollars. Well, that makes sense, it’s collectible.

The Role of Ancient Civilizations in Modern Identity Formation | May 30 2025, 12:16

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Edible Dormice: A Delicacy in Europe | May 29 2025, 20:44

Interestingly, it turns out there’s a species of mouse called the edible dormouse. The second word, edible, indicates that they were commonly eaten for a long time and were considered a delicacy, and they are still consumed today — in Slovenia and Croatia, though mainly during festivals. For example, in the suburbs of Rijeka (mostly in Kastav) as well as on the islands of Brač and Hvar.

Poor little mice.

Sailing Through History on the Kruzenshtern: A Unique Maritime Adventure | May 28 2025, 16:26

Dug up some pics from our 2012 trip on the “Kruzenshtern”, Warnemünde(Rostock) – Flensburg (12-17.08.12). It was a mixture of budget and premium vacation “in one bottle.” Five days on board cost 650 euros per person, but the price included accommodations and four meals a day, total freedom on the ship, all kinds of fun like heading out to sea in a dinghy and climbing the masts. Besides us, there were three other tourists like us, and a hundred crew members, mostly cadets. The barque isn’t stretchy, it fits only as many tourists as there are guest cabins (berths).

The Kruzenshtern was built in 1926 in Germany at the “Geestemünder Werft AG” shipyard and was originally named Padua — in honor of the Italian city of Padua. It was one of the legendary series of barques known as the “Flying P-Liners operated by the shipping company F. Laeisz. After World War II, in 1946, the barque was handed over to the USSR as reparations and renamed in honor of the Russian navigator Ivan Fedorovich Kruzenshtern — a participant in the first Russian circumnavigation (1803–1806). For decades, the Kruzenshtern remained the largest actively-sailed sailing ship in the world.

According to Vesselfinder, it’s somewhere around Cape Town nowadays, still alive and kicking.

Innovative iPad Case Design and a Treasure Trove of Lost Photos | May 28 2025, 00:57

Back in 2010, I devised the design for a leather case with a shoulder strap for the first iPad and had it custom-made from my sketches by a craftsman (Evgeny Lunin). The idea was simple—use it, then just toss it over your shoulder, hanging there, open or closed. It was insanely convenient. I’ve never seen such a thing on sale ever again.

(I found an old hard drive in the garage with lost photos on it. Just from the US, there are 82 gigabytes of photos from 2015, in Raw format, including several videos. And along with them, all sorts of other photos have surfaced too.)

Supercharging Adventures: A Tale of Fast and Odd Tesla Charging | May 27 2025, 14:42

Yesterday, we arrived to refuel at the Tesla supercharger v4 325kW, which is the fastest one. We plugged the hose into the car, and a loud gurgling sound began to come from the stand. “The current is flowing,” says Nadya. It seems to be some sort of liquid cooling. Inside the car, the battery is also intensely cooling during charging, because 48 amps is quite a lot.

But while we were charging, we saw a very strange scene. Next to us, there was a Tesla being charged from an outdoor outlet of a nearby building with a very long cable. I mean, it’s certainly possible, but it takes an hour to charge the battery by 1% (which is about 5km). Well, at least it’s free. People do the oddest things;-) and the funny thing is, they could have parked right next to the outlet, but no, they park at the supercharger and charge from an outlet across the street;)