I have a Kobo Aura 2, and I love it. That’s my first ebook reader, and I haven’t had any other one since.
Personally I avoid Amazon because I definitely don’t wanna get tied to them. I’m not sure if this is still true, but when I got my ebook reader, these were my choices:
get a non-Amazon device, and I can read anything except books from Amazon
get an Amazon device, and I can only read books from Amazon
So it was a no-brainer for me. One of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
You can get ebooks from any source (well, not considering the AI generated crap that Amazon is getting flooded with; if you want that, you need to get a Kindle), and your computer/smartphone will handle it as a standard USB storage device, so you can simply copy over your ebooks.
Kindle is annoying if you want to move your books around and the author didn’t release them without DRM like the awesome Brandon Sanderson does. There used to be a crack using Calibre, but that didn’t work last time I tried it, because Amazon keeps changing the format to prevent people from being able to control their own content. It sucks.
I have the Oasis and the form factor is pretty good. Not as good as the older Nook was, but okay. The old Nook had a really good form factor, tactile rubber, and was very lightweight. They released a new Nook a couple of years ago that was pretty close, but it’s gone again last time I checked. I had the Kindle Voyager before the Oasis and it’s okay. The Paper White is pretty good, but I want physical buttons, and a large edge to hang onto so that I don’t accidentally change pages by touching the screen.
The Kindle store is nice because they have pretty much everything, but it’s kind of expensive. Recently my Kindle started updating the store every single time I open it, which is very annoying. There doesn’t seem to be an option to disable the automatically update.
Text selection on the Kindle is great! I play around with the Nook whenever I go to Barnes and Noble and it’s not as good. On the Kindle you can hold one word, then tap another word somewhere else, and it’ll highlight everything in-between and the two words you touch.
I’ve looked into Kobo a couple of times when frustrated that I couldn’t move a book to a non-kindle device, but they’re pretty expensive. My Oasis was also expensive, but it still works, so I’ll probably stick with that until it stops working.
Best of luck! eBooks are awesome and I greatly prefer them to real books now.
I’ve had an Oasis since 2017 and I generally like it. I am not crazy about all my e-books being hosted in the Amazon cloud. But I made that bed over a decade ago, and will have to lie in it. I do love the convenience of e-books, too.
One thing that annoys me about Kindle is that if it can’t connect to the Amazon cloud for some reason, it will burn through the battery pretty quickly as it desperately tries to connect over and over again. This is an issue in my house, because my WiFi is filtered by a Pi Hole. So I end up leaving my Oasis in Airplane Mode most of the time. The battery lasts a lot longer that way. When I want to sync or download a new e-book, I just take it out of Airplane Mode for a couple of minutes.
I guess it is trying to connect to sync your read progress. That’s another benefit that I forgot to mention. You can read on your Kindle, and then if you’re on the bus or something, you can read on your Kindle app on your phone and pick up right where you left off.
I am thinking about getting dad an Airspy stick and a Raspberry pi, we both love Flightradar24, and he has spoken about setting up a node in the network for them.
That’s a really interesting idea; my kid wants to be a pilot and just discovered flight tracker… I’m going to check out Airspy’s “how to” stuff and see about this as a gift idea too!
Colouring books! The wife, mother, and mother-in-law all find it therapeutic so they get that. Father and father-IL get booze. Brother gets a happy Xmas text as we stopped exchanging gifts years ago.
Sorry. The Council of Nicea didn’t decide what the Bible is. It was a Bishop who went to the conference. Right after the conference he received a letter asking him which books which were good to use and which weren’t. He made a list and sent it out. The letter got popular and they called a new conference right away, then voted on his list. The Council of Nicea dealt with an issue of the Trinity, declared that there was one church of the Christian people and it was Catholic, and a procedural issue about rules governing Bishops.
Grew up Lutheran, with a mom who is very strong in her faith. Felt a connction my self for a while but always struggled with skepticism. Always dealt with self-image issues growing up, and the idea of sin turned much of that to into self-hatred. Sure, sins are forgiven, but you are still supposed to try and avoid them, but I always felt at odds with what I felt was just part of who I was (don’t really want to go into it, but not anything gender/orientation related).
Eventually, learned to love myself more, but this started the rift for me. The other thing is something I’ve always been unable to shake: of all the religions in this world, who is to say one is the “real” one? Everyone has their own image of what “God” is.
Much further reflection and family conflict later, that got expanded to the understanding that religion in general is just one of many ways we try to frame or understand things that are otherwise difficult to. Things like Purpose, Creation, our place in the grand vastness and chaos of the universe.
Nowadays, when it comes to spiritualism I align more to a sort of naturalistic pantheism. Instead of prayer, I meditate, and focus on celebrating life and wondering at the beauty of it all.
This got long and I’m not sure it makes much sense, but I tried. Not great at translating concepts/ideas into words.
I found plantable paper stars/snowflakes that can be used as gift tags or tree ornaments. The paper contains wildflower seeds so you can plant this paper star into the ground in spring and it will sprout flowers.
My in-laws are in Arizona where there are scorpions. I’m giving them a powerful blacklight flashlight so we can go look for them when it gets dark out.
Be aware that powerful UV flashlights (especially the no-name Chinese ones) can also damage your eyes quickly without you noticing. Better ones will come with protective glasses.
To be clear UV flashlights are NOT the same as blacklight flashlights. However I totally agree if you are getting a UV light source for some reason, eye and possibly skin protection is a fantastic idea
Nope, as per my username I live in a place where infrastructure was developed before the car.
Update: you don’t need to purchase groceries daily. That would be more expensive, you put the money aside for later. The trick is that you don’t spend money that should cover expenses next week, that way you can more closely monitor your spending.
I didn’t mean it as a critique of what you were saying, and certainly not as an insult to you, but rather as a disappointed critique of American city layouts.
I once met some hippie-like people who fed themselves exclusively by dumpster diving. Not sure where they got their stuff, but they had a lot of high-end foods (cheese wheels, expensive meats, not-so-fresh produce, etc). They lived in busses, vans, RVs and stuff like that. They didn’t have jobs; not sure how they got money for things like clothes; odd-jobs I guess.
Less extreme “hacks”: Goodwill, or Ross/Marshalls if you’re feeling fancy. Ebay/Craigslist/Offer-up (need to be careful about getting ripped-off, and Ebay isn’t as cheap as it used to be). Buy, cook, and eat mostly cheap staples (rice, beans, pasta, etc). If eating meat, you can use it sparingly by cooking recipes that comprise mostly of cheap staples. Budget Bytes has decent recipes. Unfortunately, most people’s biggest expense is housing, and there aren’t many “hacks” for that. Maybe, get a work-from-home job and move to Wyoming or something
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