Cancellation Culture
Here. Nobody likes an overdog, right?
Amaz🤮n sent me an email recently that my Prime subscription was going to renew in September. I took the opportunity to ensure it wouldn't.
I remember when I was under the impression Amaz🤮n was an upstart site to get books for less. It's has now become an exploitative atrocity and I feel miserable any time I use it. There are a number of reasons for this, some of which are perfectly articulated in Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow.
There are other reasons too. Sending Bezos into the stratosphere to dick around pretending he's in space, my buying habits have changed, workers get treated worse than Terran SCVs from Starcraft. Dasharezone said it best:
I used to buy important (?) stuff from the site, now it's straight up cornershop convenience trash or mathoms - all because I can't be arsed walking to a fucking SHOP. Poop bags for cat litter, batteries for a smoke detector, extension cables for whatever electronsense. Nothing of consequence. Why give the bastards any of my hard earned credits?
I get my irl books from bookshop.org, where I can support local bookstores of my choosing (you can too). I get my audiobooks from libro.fm - Bookshop's sister site that offers them. Again, with money goes to a local spot. Libro is now global, so anybody (including you) can take advantage of it.
I intend to get my mathoms from places I hate slightly less. This gives me an opportunity to allow my principles to breathe rather than putting convenience before them and talking a better game than I play.
Why am I sharing this? Not sure really. Maybe just a reminder to review your subscriptions and see if they still are in line (if they ever were) with your ideals. Probably also just to tell people who don't know that Libro exists.
Not every audiobook gets on there - some authors are trapped inside Audible, which I'm sure seemed like a great idea at the time, but now their creative work is trapped in The Big Machine, never to escape.
/eof
Lore for Today
The Starcraft reference: In the early 2000s me and the chaps would play Starcraft against each other on LAN in our Glasgow flat. We had capital T The capital S Server in the hall that sounded like a jet engine and ethernet cables snaked from it into each room (including the kitchen) like something from Hackers. We'd go to the local Somerfields to stock up on "food" and booze, don our fingerless gloves and trenchcoats (not really) then lock ourselves in and play until sunrise and birdies.
None of us were particularly good, and there were occasions when we'd destroy an opponent only to find them passed out drunk on their keyboard.