• me_myself_and_I@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Crazy that anyone trusts anything from the CIA? I thought most people would not trust them especially nowadays.

    • village604@adultswim.fan
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      2 hours ago

      You’re greatly overestimating the awareness the general population has of the heinous shit the CIA has pulled.

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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      4 hours ago

      I also always thought it was crazy, but apparently it was highly accurate. Basically a compilation of data gathered by the different US government agencies, in a neatly organized document. Perhaps the only good thing the CIA ever did for the world lol

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    13 hours ago

    The White House has moved to cut staffing at the CIA and the National Security Agency early in Trump’s second term, forcing the agency to do more with less.

    Dammit, I liked using that.

    • GreenShimada@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      I seriously doubt that they’re saving all that much money.

      I also bet this is correct - if you look at how they collect the data, they don’t do any first-hand investigation of basic info that is clearly shared by other USG agencies. They’re editors. This probably puts like 4 people, 2 of which I bet are perpetually near retirement, out of editing jobs. And it’s not like they’re saving server or web hosting time when they also host huge amounts of declassified archives.

      • tal@lemmy.today
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        10 hours ago

        they don’t do any first-hand investigation of basic info that is clearly shared or copied from other USG agencies.

        Specifically the World Factbook people probably don’t, but I’m sure that least some of the estimates will come from the CIA, because they’re going to be the ones who are going to be responsible for same.

        But what I’m saying is that they aren’t going to be closing the analysis guys down, just the public publication of that information.

        • GreenShimada@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          I will stand corrected in that apparently some of the photos were taken by their people. But things like economic data or demographic data come from the State Department. State used to put out all these policy documents and reports which were all original sources of USG data. I’m seeing Archive.org is overloaded to look at the Factbook sources page, but IIRC, they give a lot of credit to other sources.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      13 hours ago

      The thing is that it’s a reference work; a major part of the value is that it’s current. Old versions are going to decline in usefulness.

      • celeste@kbin.earth
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        10 hours ago

        Yeah, definitely. Anyone want to buy a stack of old encyclopedias? It’s a shame that so many useful resources are being removed or destroyed.

        • tal@lemmy.today
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          10 hours ago

          Britannica’s print edition bit the dust in 2010:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopædia_Britannica

          The Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for ‘British Encyclopaedia’) is a general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published since 1768, and after several ownership changes is currently owned by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition.[1] Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia at the website Britannica.com.

          Printed for 245 years, the Britannica was the longest-running in-print encyclopaedia in the English language.

          …but the World Book Encyclopedia is still doing printed editions:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Book_Encyclopedia

          The World Book Encyclopedia is an American encyclopedia.[1] World Book was first published in 1917. Since 1925, a new edition of the encyclopedia has been published annually.[1] Although published online in digital form for a number of years, World Book is currently the only American encyclopedia which also still provides a print edition.[2] The encyclopedia is designed to cover major areas of knowledge uniformly, but it shows particular strength in scientific, technical, historical and medical subjects.[3]

          World Book, Inc. is based in Chicago, Illinois.[1] According to the company, the latest edition, World Book Encyclopedia 2024, contains more than 14,000 pages distributed along 22 volumes and also contains over 25,000 photographs.[4]

          I have to admit that I’ve never bought a print copy of the World Book myself, though I did grow up with one.

  • froh42@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    That all nice and good, but where’s the rest of the World Fuck Book, eeerm the Epstein Files?

  • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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    13 hours ago

    Maybe I missed something but why exactly was the World Factbook important now that we have Wikipedia and widespread access to other sources? And do we seriously consider the AmeriKKKan CIA a reliable source on literally anything?