It's Christmas Eve!

[conuly]

yay!

And it turns out that the clock starts ticking on loaned kindle books when they're lent, not when they're downloaded, so now I need to ask some people to send them again. Boo. Amazon, why? WHY?

************

WW2 mince pies found under Isle of Man hotel floorboards

Pato’s Game Theory Christmas

Stump-Grown Christmas Trees Are the Gift That Keeps on Giving

Charles Dickens Couldn’t Stop Tinkering With ‘A Christmas Carol’

Researchers make world's smallest tic-tac-toe game board with DNA

South Sudan's Universities Beat Odds of War to Build Nation's Future

A strange journey to the glitter factory.

We Should Replace Facebook With Personal Websites

China’s Bizarre Program to Keep Activists in Check

The Christmas present that could tear your family apart

When You're 'Too Functional' to Have Your Mental Illness Taken Seriously

There is No Dalit Cuisine

Comments

[nanslice]

That is such a silly way to handle lent books. Amazon, why do you not make sense?!

[alexseanchai]

Furthermore, once I have lent a Kindle book once, I cannot lend it ever again.

[bibliofile]

Well that's not how it should work. Bloody Amazon.

[conuly]

Actually, that one does make sense from a profit motive.

[workday_dreamer]

It, unfortunately, makes all the sense. You don't "buy" books from Amazon. You buy a license to view a book that they own. Meaning that you can't do what you wish with that book like you could with a paperback, once you've bought it.

Dammit, Amazon. You're trying to turn us all into pirates and commies out of sheer frustration!

[conuly]

Okay, but they don't have to deliberately be assholes about the lending policy.

[workday_dreamer]

I know. It's like the pettiest form of dickery you could possibly imagine.

[conuly]

And so counterproductive. It's like they want us to just break the DRM.

[workday_dreamer]

I wonder if they just don't care. Video game publishers do the same thing when it's been clearly proven that DRM does nothing to stop or slow piracy. It only makes life harder for people not pirating their product.

[wpadmirer]

The mince pies story is sort of sad.

The DNA story is fascinating.

[greghousesgf]

I wish the article about being "too functional" had had more to say that I would have actually found helpful. :(

[jesse_the_k]

...and when the loan expires, they continue to appear on (at least my) Kindle indefinitely: zombies I can't read.

[conuly]

You can't delete them from the Kindle? I delete books off my kindle all the time.

[jesse_the_k]

I delete it — and the next time I open my Kindle app on whatever device, it's back!

[loligo]

Thanks for the Christmas tree link - I had no idea it was possible to coppice evergreens!

[conuly]

Likewise

[conuly]

Me either!

[marahmarie]

We Should Replace Facebook With Personal Websites, says some website that probably thought we should replace personal websites with Facebook until they stopped making money from it once FB ripped the money-making Newsfeed algo up on them. Bah.

We (not I, but whomever: *clears throat* The Collective) should never have replaced personal websites with Facebook. They're not talking about that, I suppose. About how there was this beautiful and thriving and interpersonal ecosystem of websites, of how from rich to poor and well-known to unknown if you took the time to hang out you could get to know each other from spots clear across the web, of how if you hustled you could make a name for yourself without their insipid little blue wall to lean on, of how smaller social media sites like this one were all set to thrive and flourish at exactly the moment Facebook not only tore the entire web down but swallowed it into themselves losing our websites and potential in the process.

I'll read the article just on the off-chance they get into any of that. Facebook is going down. And may exactly nothing take its place.

[gale_storm]

Oh, Amazon, just because mince pies sat beneath some floorboards since World War 2, that doesn't mean that Kindle books kept for years are more valuable when the owner of a Kindle can't re-read one they wanted to talk about with a friend.

Those mince pies wouldn't even have been edible, let alone anything you'd want to serve at a book group reading!

WW2 mince pies found under Isle of Man hotel floorboards
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-46638212

[conuly]

Mince pies aren't like fruitcake in that respect?

[gale_storm]

In what respect do you mean? In that some people really like them, but most people don't, so the ones that don't just re-gift the fruitcakes they'd not at all wanted, so the fruitcakes merely get passed onwards until they make it back to the ones who'd given them in the beginning?

If mince pies are like fruitcakes in this way, then I'll have to admit to not much liking mince pies, although I do like many fruitcakes, so I'll need only to wait until someone with opposite tastes to mine can trade. Or I'll just orderr fruitcakes from Amazon! :-D

[conuly]

Fruitcakes are supposed to last forever, like dwarf bread but with more alcohol.

[gale_storm]

Dwarf bread? Is that one of the LotR things, similar to waybread, the sort made by Elves that would last for months, so it was good for eating while on your way to wherever?

[conuly]

I'm thinking of the Discworld version....

[gale_storm]

Ah, that's why I don't know dwarf bread: I think I read only the first of the Discworld books.

[gale_storm]

Oh, and love the Feathered Venn Diagram!

Er, um, maybe it was the Feathery Venn Diaphragm?

Nope, it was the first.

[conuly]

Ah, but when I linked to it it was yesterday's comic. Click back a day.

[gale_storm]

Ah, okay. Think I like this one better, though.

[flamingsword]

You always have such interesting links.

[conuly]

:D

Thanks!