If you like a book, buy it. I do. I love physical books. But, my interests are varied enough that I need multiple sources - sometimes I’m only mildly curious. Libby/Overdrive has been a lifesaver in this regard.
I would love to have a digital library of my physical books though, and that’s where this is coming in handy because I don’t want to buy it twice, especially when the ebook almost costs the same as the physical one. It would be nice if there was a “for ${1..5} more, get the digital one too!” - but then there’s DRM to fight with also.
And you are absolutely sure that there is no causal relationship between publishers getting paid and authors getting paid?
Yes, the status quo is ridiculous, with libraries having to limit "copies" of ebooks and even simulating wear and tear of these on one side, and having to deal with DRM buying books on the other.
But according to at least one author that I‘d trust in the matter, publishers also provide valuable services to them, such as taking the financial risk of the first print run (including editing, marketing etc.) and paying authors upfront for it.
That said, I really hope that we‘ll see an "iTunes store for ebooks" (open format, no DRM) sooner rather than later.
Yes, immune systems all over the world have been weakened recently (you may or may not want to "speculate" as to the source of this), which is what explains what you perceive.
Why is that so obvious? Italics and the word “simply” do not actually make a convincing point. It seems like you’re implying that politicians never fail to anticipate the (un-)intended consequences of their rhetoric and policies.
Laws might have unintended concequences, but that verbiage " powers to censor anything deemed “legal, but harmful”" is a strict play at a wide-ranging authority on what that means.
Vague verbiage is the name of the game... Because it's their full time job as a politician... I
Britain? All major media outlets and social network platforms worldwide now have established censorship as "the new normal".
The only mainstream platform now setting itself up to become the exception to this is the one platform that since a few weeks gets consistently attacked by the establishment: Twitter.
A whole bunch of people including a few minor celebrities got banned after changing their username to "Elon Musk" and tweeting jokes in response to the self proclaimed "free speech absolutist" declaring that unlabelled parodies would be an automatic ban. Apparently even names like "Elon Musk (Parody)" lost posting privileges
Ah, gotcha. Though, I'm not sure impersonating someone else falls under free speech, right? I mean, if Weird Al did some parody songs and marketed them as the original artists, he'd get sued...unless he made it clear it was parody. Right?
I bet you'd get banned for impersonating anyone on twitter, not just Musk. Or was that not happening?
Lmao, no offense but holy damn the mental gymnastics going on there.
> Great to see free speech finally thriving on Twitter now that Musk has taken over!!
> See but Musk is banning people for making fun of him, even accounts clearly labeled as "parody".
> Hmm sure, but then again does parody really fall under free speech?
Dear god
--
Free speech is free speech. It's not "you're free to say things I like", especially as defined by some slightly-deranged billionaire CEO. Plus, parody is the bread and butter of comedians making fun of politicians since at least ancient rome.
For what's worth, Musk had already been notorious before for attempting to silence those critical of him. And let's not even get into the union-busting stuff (free speech to hurl abuse at trans people online, but not to organize collective action!).
Parody absolutely does fall under speech, not only being legal and considered valuable for political discourse even in places with strong restrictions on other types of speech but also having explicit case law protecting it under the First Amendment. (Copyright law is a different matter, but nobody is selling their "Elon Musk" accounts). Of course, private websites are perfectly entitled to ban it, just as they were entitled to ban other stuff (there are reasonable grounds for thinking some unlabelled parody may be problematic, but there's a school of thought that racial hatred might actually be worse!). But it's impossible for Elon to credibly masquerade as a "free speech absolutist" whilst simply changing the guidelines to focus bans on stuff that annoys him more than the stuff that used to be banned.
I'm sure some other people were banned for unlabelled parodying accounts under the new rule too, but they're busy stopping people using labels as obvious as "Elon Musk (Parody)" too...
But there was more notably a wave of people being permanently banned for changing their display name to Elon Musk, a previously accepted behavior on Twitter:
> The only mainstream platform now setting itself up to become the exception to this is the one platform that since a few weeks gets consistently attacked by the establishment: Twitter.
The platform where Nazis can say what they want but people mocking Our Lord Musk are suspended? No thanks, I prefer free speech.
For those of you who want to know what's currently going on, here are the names of the main publicly known contactees (people on Earth who publicly report that/how they maintain some form of contact to extra-terrestrials):
- Alex Collier
- Elena Danaan
- Marina Jacobi
- Dr. Michael Salla (no known direct contact, but excellent analyzing/reporting)
You'll want to check out their YT/rumble channels, websites, books (especially Elena Danaan's last 2-3).
I don't understand the relevance. All of the people you mention are the usual nutjobs/UFOlogist/new age scam artists. Nothing to do with the actual search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
