Assuming you have a public library that offers these things, of course. Much like people talking about how great Libby is; you can get it through my library, but the selection is extremely limited. And very few libraries offer a good set of options, even for a substantial fee, to non-locals.
I can’t promise I would pay $300/yr to access a great public library, but I would like the option to try it.
My in-laws have a decent (not great, but decent) one in their city, and for sure they will never use it, but they aren’t going to drag the documentation up there and get cards just for me.
if (and a BIG if) you are california, you can get a library card to any in state library, regardless of where in the state you live. Between San Francisco, LA, and San Diego, I think I have pretty much the full suite of anything I can borrow from the eLibrary system.
Holy fucking shit. I am -11 contacts, -13 glasses, and you are the first person I have ever heard of that is more than one diopter stronger than me.
Ophthalmologists will bring their newer assistants in to look at my eyes to see what a severe myope looks like. I got contacts at age eight, so they also use me to show off what a scrupulous contact user’s eyes look like after >40 years. I’m a physician myself, so I’m happy to oblige - some things you can’t understand until you see them.
Yeah, the only people I've heard of with worse vision than me are those with some sort of associated eye condition (e.g. kerataconus).
For the most part, it's...fine. Insurance has no idea what to do with me and that's frustrating, though. Somehow, I have eyes this bad without any associated pathology, and companies don't understand that the needs that such severe myopia presents on its own. I wear custom made RGPs; they can custom make softs but they're horrific (or at least they were 13 years ago when I gave up on them).
Isn't it hilarious every time you go to a new eye doctor? It's actually really cute: I like watching them get all giddy. They get so excited when they can't use the machines (a lot of them will only go up to a -15) and have to measure my RX manually. You can just see how they're like 'oh my God, I learned about this in school!'
I did have to do a lot of advocating/educating back when I was younger and too poor for insurance. It was good practice for when I was diagnosed with MS, though.
Now I usually look for practices that work with keratoconus patients. They usually have practice with strange prescriptions and unusual contact fittings.
Letter to MP: one letter to MP, nothing to show for it.
Complain on blog: several letters to MPs of different districts, all of whom can now say that their constituents are writing to them and complaining about the same thing.
I don’t know the inner workings of Parliament but this is pretty basic for any remotely democratic government system. One person who cares a lot is less valuable than a lot of people who only care a little.
> even with my giant sasquatch hands, it's hard to reach all the buttons
Did you find the OG Xbox "Duke" controller comfortable? I did. The Deck doesn't have the best layout IMO, but I don't have trouble reaching the buttons.
> readable text on the tiny screen
Definitely an issue, especially those over 40 - which, really, is sort of a major part of the expected market.
I've never touched an Xbox controller—or really any console controller since the early Nintendo days.
What I find to require contortion is maintaining a grip on the Deck while operating the front controls without simultaneously squeezing the paddles on the back or having such a loose grip that I risk dropping the thing. The paddles on the back are one of my biggest problems with the grip ergonomics in general.
> or really any console controller since the early Nintendo days
Well, that alone could explain it. Lots more buttons and you have to find a comfortable grip that doesn’t hit them.
I always have trouble with controllers that have push-to-click-and-it’s-a-different-input joysticks. Too easy to do accidentally. But with the Deck you can reassign pretty much anything, so set them to do nothing.
Note that it doesn’t dry out; it polymerizes, and the reaction is catalyzed by water, which is why cyanoacrylate glues will stick your fingertips together instantly but will not as rapidly stick plastics or metals together.
Water but it's a bit of hit and miss that can turn soggy, better is bicarbonate that triggers are more or less instant reaction (often in baking powder in a pinch, but that's mostly a waste compared to just bicarb).
Often if one wants to make something "larger", dropping superglue, adding bicarb with a silt, blowing away and dropping another layer works fairly well (it's a bit of a brittle but still quite hard mass that is created quickly).
I think Polyolefin Primer (Permabond POP) is magical in what it can superglue. Beautiful chemistry allowing something like Teflon or steel to be glued. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9yz8OqThJk
They're made out of extremely cheap materials, so you're paying several times more for packaging and distribution than for the product. Then again, people pay to have water packaged and distributed, often when they have it on tap.
The Roman Catholic Church has a lot of things wrong with it, now and in the past, but it’s a human institution older than almost any other, and it’s composed of a lot of very intelligent people. Agree or disagree with them, but a papal encyclical is almost always worth reading and understanding.
There are so many encyclicals, apostolic letters, etc. One could spend years reading just a fraction of them, depending on reading and comprehension speed, of course, which varies by person.
Two I recommend, from the last 40 years:
Veritatis splendor, John Paul II, 1993
Argues that Christian freedom is fulfilled, not limited, by objective moral truth: some acts are intrinsically evil regardless of intention or circumstance, conscience must be formed by divine law rather than self-authorization, and the Church must faithfully teach this moral truth as the path to authentic human flourishing in Christ.
Argues that faith and reason are complementary paths to truth: reason needs faith to avoid skepticism, relativism, and reductionism, while faith needs reason to express, defend, and deepen its understanding of divine revelation and the human search for meaning.
Note that, as anybody, the Catholic Church may have is bias.
For example. Their dualist view of the world makes them see AI as something very different from human intelligence. So, without having read it, the church may negate that it could be at human level. A few years ago that would negate that computers could be creative because they do not have a soul.
Anyway, kudos for focussing on the important issues and the impact on human.(And less on sex)
I have yet to read the whole thing - but I agree that the Church's view of intelligence is not to the level of sophistication needed to counter the Valley's pantheistic view of intelligence. I think that is because of how Aquinas was utilized to counter the Reformation. That being said, I don't believe that such a view cannot be elaborated, it will just take time. The key is embodiment, wherein how we view sex ends up being incredibly important because it necessarily relates to how we take on flesh to begin with. Once sex is divorced from procreation (and vice-versa), intelligence is divorced from humanity. It's very relevant - but the culture of dehumanization is so deeply rooted today that it's difficult to be productive when tackling that dehumanization via sex.
Fwiw the teaching of the church is that (today's) AI isn't at a human level because human intelligence is something that we experience whereas artificial intelligence seems to be merely a sophistication in performing tasks.
It's also quite possible that the enlightenment and industrial revolution would've happened anyways, that the world wars would never have happened, that humanity would be living in a fairer society: without the doom and gloom of climate changes and nuclear war; without the blurring of truth that promote hate narratives and nihilism; without the reduction of man to it's economical value. But neither of us have crystall balls.
What you ignore is that the Church historically was a patron of Arts and Science, a preserver of history, works, documents and even pagan mythology. How many scientists has the Roman Church executed? One, Giordano Bruno, and it was not even due to his scientific views but rather his heretical views. Just as comparison, how many scientists has the Chinese Cultural Revolution executed?
It is also possible that the enlightenment only happened because of protestant reformation, which only happened because of the power and abuses of the Catholic Church. So in a way, we have the Catholic Church to thank for modern society.
The reformation was highly religious of course, but it was also about reading original sources, devolving power from a central authority, and allowing individuals to discover the truth.
Sometimes I think that the catholic church is like Leto II in Dune - ruling people so that they will rebel in a way that there can never again be a central power structure.
The device isn’t locked, and you can continue to read anything on it. You just can’t put new things on it directly from Amazon via its built-in interface.
An original-model Kindle has more of its original functionality than an original-model iPad.
Yes, the OS is locked. I misunderstood the point of your statement.
But all you are losing is the ability to use the Amazon store and borrowing that requires DRM. It still works fine as an e-Ink reader.
Anecdotally, the OSes on the really old ones are easily jailbroken. They have never updated them to an unbreakable one that I am aware of.
More than I can say for my first-gen iPads, which would still be wonderful devices for reading books today. I have a Kindle because it is, and long has been, the cheapest e-Ink device. It’s my reading-outdoors device; I don’t use it except at the beach/pool.
They aren’t bricking the devices, they are making them not work with the Amazon store and library features anymore. My Kindle Keyboard (3rd generation device) still works perfectly well with sideloaded books. It’s jailbroken and runs KOReader, which lets you read ePub directly.
It’s easier to read things on my Kindle Keyboard than on my original iPad.
It wasn’t a horrible OS. It just broke XP’s “it runs on practically anything” before the hardware was really there. And 7 was, as we all know, the most perfect Windows has ever been. Windows 7 Media Center was a magnificent DVR and a great movie-playing box.
I can’t promise I would pay $300/yr to access a great public library, but I would like the option to try it.
My in-laws have a decent (not great, but decent) one in their city, and for sure they will never use it, but they aren’t going to drag the documentation up there and get cards just for me.
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