johncarmichael3

When you combine stories like this along with the massively convoluted legal system and incredibly dense surveillance penetrating everything all the time, it makes me terrified to even visit the place. When traveling to Europe I route around instead of doing stopovers in UK.

What is more interesting and much less monetized is buy-outs, I would pay a premium monthly for an opt-out of Twitters tracking of my account for instance. I know many people who say the same thing about Facebook, if these places switched to a simple Netflix model and allowed us to pay our way out of their tracking services I would pay the same amount advertisers pay for my info to keep it out of their hands.

I think the reason why they don't offer this is because it would probably come off as sounding 'randsom-y' or something.

Other than adnauseum which people have already mentioned, you might like User-Agent Switcher[1]. Not sure how useful it really is, but it is fun to see the differences between how a website designed to be browser specific renders in a incorrect browser.

[1] https://useragentswitcher.org/

This is probably one of the weirdest sentiments I've read in my entire life. I use the public library constantly as the place I go for quiet work and just to hang out, read, or study. And just for fun, they have lots of great events there, you can rent out meeting space for local groups/clubs. I really can't imagine not seeing the value of such a resource.

First off, like the other person said, there are literally 3 scanned copies of this book you just referenced online.[1]

Everyone has already said a lot that needs to be said, but I feel the need to point out, that a big part of being a member in your local libraries 'community served' is participating, which you can do actively at most libraries. My library now has Haskell and Clojure books on the shelves, because I actively participate in the library process. You can do this also, the library you are referencing (if I guessed correctly) has an form where you can set suggest book purchases[2], at my local library unless you are asking for something really really weird they will buy reasonable library user requests. The libraries curation is a community effort, and it won't reflect your needs if you don't make them apparent.

Also, this local library in Iowa you were referencing and most local libraries have an interlibrary loan system for people just like you who need something they don't have there. I constantly use the service at my own local library to find anything I want and have it promptly sent right there to me. You could do this also for any books that you find rare or obscure that you need for a specific purpose. I've often used the service for books that are rare and prohibitively expensive. The Worldcat listings for the book you were looking for are numerous. Even shows the copy at the local historical society you mentioned.

Library workers often check catalogues like Worldcat to see if they have the only copy of something or if something isnt archived previously prior to them throwing it out, according to the listings there are 4 microfilm versions of your book, and several listed OCR scans similar to the archive.org scans I'll assume. It is really weird of you to assume that any library would toss out a book without checking their listing against the global database.

I hope that beats the horse til its quite dead enough to illustrate, that in the modern day there are very few books that can't be found if you understand the capabilities of our library infrastructure, and most of your other points are moot. I personally love it when the local library throws away great books, it gives me the opportunity to buy them, via a little store where they monetize their toss aways to fund the library instead of recycling them, maybe suggest this setup or a library book sale to your local library?

[1] https://archive.org/details/historyofjohnson00iowa [2] https://www.icpl.org/suggest