[lokeshk]

I don’t have any personal objections with how Bezos decides to use his money, but to your point of books — how’s your local library? I recently realized I was spending some non-negligible amount of money on books every month and switched to the local library. It obviously depends on where you live but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. It’s a fantastic system of local libraries and they’ve all the titles I want to read. There’s a wait for new titles, like Snowden’s book will need me to wait a couple of months, but anything older than a year is almost always available. As the book loan is for 21 days, it also forces me to finish my reading within this time.

[service_bus]

For me it's not so much about how he uses his money, but how he gets it.

Raking in obscene amounts of money by working people to the bone and forcing them to pee in bottles and not be able to take proper breaks is unconscionable in my book, and can't bring myself to support such a morally repugnant business model.

[BurningFrog]

Here's actual Amazon worker with a different perspective:

https://quillette.com/2019/07/19/the-problem-with-tourist-jo...

[icebraining]

"Terrific race, the Romans. Terrific."

I don't doubt that much of the reporting on the working conditions at Amazon warehouses has been exaggerated, but someone who views taking a sick day in a year as a moral failure is not a good spokesperson to make that case. And it's interesting that he doesn't mention that the "Jeff Bezos's generosity" he benefit from came exactly because of those Amazon critics he's debunking (Bezos said so himself).

[wpietri]

That is not exactly a neutral source: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quillette

More than that, it's not what a great number of Amazon workers say. And have been saying since at least 2012: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-...

[BurningFrog]

Sure, but do you imagine the viral piss bottle stories come from a neutral source?

[verdverm]

I prefer to purchase. I like to go back and re-read sections that are relevant to the current thoughts I'm having. I read 99% non-fiction

I do super miss my college library

[52-6F-62]

I almost don’t want to share this because it might get picked over but Alibris has been great.

You do have to be careful as you could receive an unauthorized print from a less scrupulous dealers but I’m not sure how common that is. I don’t think I have personally. One copy I received had me question it because it was a bad printing but it appears to be a licensed print (C Programming Language, 2nd ed)

https://alibris.com/

You just have to be willing to wait for the shipment and be willing to keep your own private library.

Edit: looks like the beans had already been spilled on that one. Well my experience has been good

[im3w1l]

I like the ability to annotate books. Re-reading with annotations is much more interesting because often I will have realized things on first reading that I didn't the next one.

[revi]

For me, some new-ish books are available via Inter-Library Loans (https://w.wiki/9yP), and it is quite awesome for me. I have to pay for the postage but local government pays 70% of the bill for me so I pay ₩1500 (approx. $1.2).

[reaperducer]

As the book loan is for 21 days, it also forces me to finish my reading within this time.

If you're in Chicago, it's even longer than 21 days. It's just short of forever.

The Chicago Public Library recently abolished all late fees, forgave existing fines, and now if you check out a book, it automatically renews something like 99 times.

"a system that for years has locked out library users when they accrue $10 worth of fines — a penalty that disproportionately affects poor families who need free access to books and high-speed internet the most."

"one in five cards that are blocked in Chicago belong to kids under the age of 14"

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/9/30/20890138/chicago-publ...

[colejohnson66]

My counties libraries allow you to renew your rental online if no one has the book reserved which I found really nice growing up.