{"slug": "behind-the-blog-the-complete-idiot-s-guide-to-flamin-hot-slop", "title": "Behind the Blog: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Flamin' Hot Slop", "summary": "404 Media's Behind the Blog discusses the destruction of rare books by Amazon to train AI, referencing a podcast episode and a Substack post by Sam. The post is paywalled for members.", "body_md": "*This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss cool old books, new toys for ICE, and Flamin' Hot Slop.*\n\n**SAM: **[ On the podcast last week](https://www.404media.co/podcast-amazon-is-destroying-rare-books-to-train-ai/), we had what I thought was a pretty nuanced and interesting conversation about the \"rare books\" discourse (although I'm biased; listen and let me know). I mentioned this in the episode but it all makes me think about all the rare books I've bought over the years — these are rare by any definition of the word in that they're usually limited or out of print and I got them through used book sellers online where only one copy was often available.\n\nWhen my book launched a few years ago, [I started a very short-lived Substack blog](https://comingonline.substack.com/p/reaping-sowing-books-edition) to write about some of the behind the scenes stuff happening around publication. [ One of those posts](https://comingonline.substack.com/p/reaping-sowing-books-edition) is a bibliography, including a lot of the books I sourced and references for my own.\n\n## This post is for paid members only\n\n[Subscribe](/membership/)\n\n## Sign up for free access to this post\n\n[Subscribe](/signup/)\n\n[Sign in](/signin/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/behind-the-blog-the-complete-idiot-s-guide-to-flamin-hot-slop", "canonical_source": "https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-the-complete-idiots-guide-to-flamin-hot-slop/", "published_at": "2026-08-28 15:16:39+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-28 15:18:57.408725+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["404 Media", "Amazon", "Sam"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/behind-the-blog-the-complete-idiot-s-guide-to-flamin-hot-slop", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/behind-the-blog-the-complete-idiot-s-guide-to-flamin-hot-slop.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/behind-the-blog-the-complete-idiot-s-guide-to-flamin-hot-slop.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/behind-the-blog-the-complete-idiot-s-guide-to-flamin-hot-slop.jsonld"}}