Are used book stores an option? Libraries are great, but most of my discoveries of new authors and genres has been by hanging out for hours in an old second-hand book store, preferably the kind with a cluttered shelves, narrow aisles, and a cat or two sleeping here and there. I hope you can experience that kind of book-exploration.

I've done the boring thing before and it has worked well. Eventually, the gossips treated me like a loser-nobody, which wasn't ideal but it was better than being constantly drawn into their negative dynamics. (edit (sorry, not sure i was clear) by "boring thing" i mean "me being very boring").

This happens to me pretty regularly (not for a thesis defense, but for presentations), but the rooms are locked and i don't get access until 5 minutes before my sign-in time. Then windows takes 10 minutes to go through its nonsense. Every week, same routine.

I once bought an antique coat (Russian military overcoat, c. 1950s) and it had a huge cloth label on the inside that would always flap around and get in the way of the buttons. Then a girl i know said: "Why don't you use a safety pin to pin it down." My jaw dropped and i stared for like ten seconds - oh, a pin!

Testing what they can get away with is my guess.

I just started using this one today: https://docs.searxng.org/ and it did a great job for what i needed. I never heard of it before, but found the link on an old Lemmy post.

I don't know how it would work for other people with other needs, but i needed to find graphic designers to help me with a project. DuckDuckGo kept giving me hundreds of results from a handful of big companies, but i wanted small companies and individuals. Found exactly what i needed on the first search using this engine.

The title is a little confusing. It's not the ebooks but the ebook readers - especially Kindle - that are able to gather and send data. Makes me wonder what the best hardware and software for private ebook reading is.

I did a quick search for "best ebook reader for privacy" and got the usual review sites, but "privacy" isn't mentioned in any of their reviews.

So what are the options? There's an add-on for Firefox called Epubreader ... I'll have to keep looking into it. Definitely getting off the kindle/amazon train though.

Just by coincidence i'm watching a gameranx video about the 10 worst AAA games, and Falcon says the same thing about games as a service (subscriptions, micro-transactions, etc.): "it seems like they're playing a game of chicken with the consumer to see what they can get away with".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8jDgkikylY

(start at 19:45)

Yeah i think we're in a golden age of indie games. When i want to find a new game, i search youtube for "best indie games of 2018" or 2017, 2021 or whatever. So much great stuff to play made in the last 5-10 years. And so much more affordable. And it feels great to give my money to these devs.

Me too. This video helped a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Df5_cojAs

If you don't use it for fucking, it will last longer. Less wear and tear. Yer welcome.

British panel (game) shows like Would I Lie to You and 8 out or 10 Cats Does Countdown. The game element is just an excuse for funny, interesting people to crack jokes and have a good time.

I got them on Firefox with Ublock Origin but only with my VPN on US or Canadian servers. Then a few days later, even on those servers they disappeared. Haven't seen one since those first few.

CBP = US Customs and Border Protection.

I know - it's pretty crazy to complain about it here. I'm ducking out before more fur flies ... haha

haha i'm ok with a lot of that stuff, but for some reason "doggo" is just fingernails on a chalkboard for me. Mom, ma, mama, - all of that is good.

Or canis familiarisooksie-pooksie?

After 911 a woman in my city (Portland Oregon) called the police because she saw powder on the hood of her parked car - parked under trees that were shedding pollen. She though fer sher that evildoers were targeting her with anthrax spores or something. The police are required to respond to those calls with full bio-emergency gear, so it was a huge scene, road blocked off, police vans everywhere, people in full body protective gear taking samples of the "anthrax" from her car. The end result was a public announcement from the police asking the public to please use common sense before calling. The drama going on in people's heads sometimes ... yikes.

This will probably get downvoted, too, but enough with the cringe-cutesy "doggo" thing.

More likely because researchers, professors, and even grad students are desperate to publish because their jobs require it in the new research-for-profit model of universities and colleges, so they work too quickly and take shortcuts to make their publishing quotas and deadlines.