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Holy shit, did you know the Internet Archive lets you check out their digitized books like a library with an easy button?
I did not know this.
I am going to be reading The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an age of Fragmentation by Robert Jay Lifton. For free.
For all you smartypants who are like duh, the local library does that too, well I didn't have any spare time to get over to the local library and get a card before the pandemic. It's out of my way on the bus system, too far to walk, and I believe it is still closed to the public now. People who are like "oh just take the bus" well that's a minimum 2 hours of my life and $4, when I can buy a used book off amazon for ~$6. And the bus system here is really good! So no, I have not been to the library in 3 years. My kid self would be horrified.
I was able to sign up for the Internet Archive and check out a book I wanted in like 2 minutes for $0. That's amazing! Is this what living in the future feels like?
Sometimes I wish we had a network of non profit local/online cheat sheets for stuff. Like craigslist, except for information, and moderated, with the best resources prominent. Where and when are the god damn farmer's markets. How to check out books for free. Here are all the local events. Here is an indexed list of local shops. Here are the local classes people are teaching. Here are the local craftspeople and what they make. And sure, yeah, normal people use facebook for that info but we all know facebook has untrustworthy ulterior motives and I'm not interested in being another free data point for the algorithm. Remember phone books used to exist? Yeah. Can't remember the last time I had one. 5 years ago maybe. And they gouged businesses for ad revenue to operate. Given the state of the current Internet, any sort of directory would be made useless in no time with bots posting things out of place deliberately just to get views or boost search engine results. It takes too much human labor to verify everything individually and moderate the inevitable squabbles or simple old people misunderstandings, and any sort of tech algorithm moderating solution brings us right back to the hole we're currently in, screaming into the void and being arbitrarily picked off while competing tech bamboozles the online po-po and ruins the whole system for everyone.
I want, like, a wikipedia for doing things locally instead of about things in general. How do ...? Who can help? Where to buy thing not from box store? Is there a fun thing happening this weekend within 5 miles?
This will never exist in any meaningful helpful way on the Internet under the rules it currently uses to operate.
Well I'm going to go read my book, that I checked out for FREE in seconds like I somehow warped it from a more sane parallel universe.