A dedicated Ray Peat archive website in plain format?
-
Even though we have different archives in the community popping up, they're extensions of other projects, contain personalized elements, and the presentations are funny. While I don't mind characterization and playfulness (#toxicbileapocalypse), these are not ideal for an archive to be adopted as main.
Ray's work is read by people of various backgrounds, and the more neutral the archive can be, the better. For someone with controversial ideas, every oddity in approaching the material increases resistance.
It's preferable for the archive to be separate from other collections to prevent associations as well.
Any decorative element must be discreet and relate to Ray (as the hat in his website) rather than the archiver.
I had in mind something simple along the following lines, using as reference one of the existing archives:
- Dedicated website (raypeatarchive.org?)
- Plain appearance
- Theme resembles his newsletter
- Only his name on the screen
- No distractions or strange elements
-
@Amazoniac I vote yes. There are really good archives of his work, particularly https://wiki.chadnet.org/ray-peat and https://expulsia.com/health, but it's no harm to have more.
I'm working on a separate but related project where we're trying to collect all of his writings and interviews. I have 2,028 lines in a spreadsheet, each referring to an individual article, book, newsletter, or interview (I haven't deduplicated it yet). The main drawbacks at this point of existing archives are:
- There are extant works not yet brought online. Few categories for this -- some of the Townsend letters, a physical VHS tape we're trying to track down, probably some of his newsletters, at least two journal articles, and likely more I'm not aware of.
- We don't have access to his papers. Ideally, we'd need someone who has contact with his estate to digitize and release them. This is a subject that should be approached with extreme respect. Unfortunately, I and several others have contacted raypeatpublishing@gmail.com, the appointed archivist for his work, and received no response.
- His work is in mixed media. His Master's thesis and PhD thesis are in really janky .pdfs that don't OCR well. Many of his interviews remain untranscribed, or the automatic transcriptions by bioenergetic.life aren't fully checked. It would be great to have it all in plaintext with the original source preserved.
This would be a very large undertaking if done to a high standard but one I feel would be a great service to the community.
-
The volume of work is impressive.
I'm aware of both archives. The text to exemplify was from the first. I've contacted the creator of the second a while ago; it's a friendly fox, but it couldn't do much about a separate option at the time.
They're great archives, but are wasting their potential with fluff.
When automatic transcriptions are inconsistent, it's faster to transcribe manually than to fix error by error. We used to transcribe them on the Ray Peat Forum, but each person has a writing style that shows up in the result. Someone I know is transcribing and refining interviews (not from Ray) with artificial intelligence, the outcomes are consistent and decent. It's a kind of standardization that helps.
-
I would say yes.
With the passing of Peat there has been an unfortunate rise in fakers who misrepresent his work while profiting off of his name. Think what happened to the old ray peat forum.
With Peat gone, I think it's very important to preserve his thoughts in his own words, so there's always something we can go back to and reference.
Also sentimental reasons.
-
I'm not sure how long Peat's blog will be up, and have been slowly backing up his articles.
The thought of him gone still makes me sad.
-
@Amazoniac, I am in absolute agreement that this work is necessary, and would be massively beneficial. Often as you say, the presented format may not be to taste, or not in an easy digestible format. For instance, Ray's website formatting is inconsistent across articles, and almost unbearable on mobile, which for many is a great barrier to entry to his work.
It was for this reason that about a month ago, I spent an afternoon ripping the CSS from your prolactinia.com, and manually converted a couple of Ray's articles as a personal demo. I think your website would be the prime starting point. The font, font size, blockquotes, charts, margins, and line and paragraphs spacings are almost enjoyable in themselves. I see your example above is likely the same Wordpress theme? I think this is perfect. My crude copy:
The standardised approach to interview transcription is a great idea. The chaps over at bioenergetic.life have been doing good work in this department, using OpenAI Whisper and correcting as necessary to readable degrees of accuracy. See here: https://github.com/0x2447196/raypeatarchive
I think we could leverage the passion of the community to achieve this dream. No one wants to sit through tens of thousands of hours, but a collective with the common goal would be motivated to chip in, and I'm sure there would be tens if not hundreds. I can see this being possible with modern technologies, and some form of trusted user group performing transcription corrections and peer review type duties. Similar to a document management system, or Fisheye code reviews, the workflow might be (in brief): AI-generated transcription > a user corrects and submits for review > minimum 3 reviewers comment, correct, and sign off > transcription becomes a master record, published to raypeatarchive.org.
And finally, feeding these into bioenergetic.life to expand the database to the full works of Peat, I feel would make conversation much more valulable, allow for easy referencing and cross-checking perspectives. Not the likes of a PeatBot which perverts meaning, takes away human contextualisation of the ideas.
Curious to hear yours and others' thoughts.
-
Someone created a mirror of Ray Peat's site with what looks like the original formatting which can be used for now. Sorry, I can't remember who to credit but I put it in my bookmarks.
-
@C-Mex raypeat2.com is another one
-
You haven't suggested it, but I think that we can't create a copy of his website for an archive because it would lead to confusion. It has to be clear that it's a compilation of his work done by other people and a different appearance would reinforce this.
Ray's website formatting can be improved for the archive, but I would preserve the classic aspect of it. Fortunately, it's simple to arrive on a good result by borrowing settings from his own material, as shown in the improvised example above (screenshots of slides with nothing recycled from Prolactinia).
We can also go with:
It's indeed worth involving more people to refine the transcriptions to dilute the personal styles.
-
I know the newsletter are already in the public domain but are there any copyright infringement issues related to republishing Dr. Peat’s newsletters somewhere else? There is Ray Peat Publishing (as discussed @32mins into this interview). The newsletters can still be ordered through Katherine.
A successful depopulation agenda requires high excess death rates, lower birth rates and for the majority to vilify those that question it.
-
@Peatly, they're not public domain, permission would be needed, but it's a feasible to negotiate if the project is formalized and offers means for donation to keep the material open.
-
@Peatly Many people have contacted the Ray Peat Publishing email address without a response.
-
@Amazoniac said in A dedicated Ray Peat archive website in plain format?:
@Peatly, they're not public domain, permission would be needed, but it's a feasible to negotiate if the project is formalized and offers means for donation to keep the material open.
Sounds good
-
@brad said in A dedicated Ray Peat archive website in plain format?:
@Peatly Many people have contacted the Ray Peat Publishing email address without a response.
This has been my experience too
