>Why are you involving the government in your love and sex life? Why complicate your financial situation so?
For same-sex couples, the legal ability to complicate their financial situation was hard won. Recall: Only 10 years ago it took an executive order by the President of the United States to prevent hospitals that receive government funding from denying a same-sex partner visitation.
Legal marriage is a cultural legitimizer that has value to some.
I argue that instead of pushing for marriage equality it might have been better to push for marriage to become a private contract matter, with expiration dates, extensions, remedies, and such built in. There is zero reason for the government to treat a couple as a couple rather than as two individuals. In the past it might have made sense, when the expectation was that the man worked and the woman didn’t and gay people didn’t exist. That is not reality. Why are we pretending like there is some kind of virtue in throwing a $30k party and then falling out of love five years later but staying together because divorce is expensive?
>...Instead of pushing for marriage equality it might have been better to push for marriage to become a private contract matter, with expiration dates, extensions, remedies, and such built in.
No, it would not have been better. We were concerned about whether we'd be able to visit our loved ones in the hospital, or make decisions about their critical care when they were incapacitated, or whether we'd be able to legally pass on property. We did not have equal dignity before the law, those of us whose relationships were considered illegitimate. We weren't really concerned, and still aren't concerned, with creating the most libertarian expression of legal coupling. We are still fighting to be treated like everyone else.
To everyone confused by this announcement: previous to this feature, on the most recent Kobos you had to do some pretty advanced stuff (for average users) to avoid having to log-in with an account. This eliminates that. As well, it may have been obvious to you, long-term user of these kinds of devices, that you could add your own books without going through their store. But, to those familiar with Kindle, where the store experience is front and center, that might not have been obvious. Kobo coming right out and saying you can do this is a win for consumers.
Side note: The writing on Goodereader.com is terrible. I wish the link were to the-ebook-reader.com, which has a better summary:
With each update the UI moved piece by piece from library mgmt focus, to shop focus. Personally I wasn't that much annoyed, because I mostly go by filesystem folders, but there are probably some that got shafted.
About the openness of Kobo: my device can dualboot to debian or android in contrast to the Kobo Linux. I was able to change the main storage easily, it was only a microsd card in a slot internally, which after a dd copy to a bigger card was accepted and even recognised as bigger in the UI free space screen. (I'm not talking about the external microsd reader that this device also has.) The battery is a typical lipo flat pack, which should be replacable from some arduino parts online shop.
Personally i dont kind the shop-focus too intrusive on my Aura HD. I do say, it's fairly impressive that an almost 9 year old device is still getting updates, features, & optimization. There were some really quiet years for updates but the Kobo team has been very active making updates, and many of them are real QoL wins.
Ill try the arduino shops for batteries. My battery died two months ago. I have a new motherboard/battery coming, but I'd love to figure out how to source variously sized lipos.
I havent yet done much futzing in Linux, but definitely interested. Also a shout out to the integrated Pocket reader, which has been a major major win for me, makes the device much more useful to me.
The Pocket reader seems unnecessarily hobbled to me. It appears that it won't sync anything you save to Pocket unless it is detected as an "Article" category.
News site, fine, my blog, fine but a doc-site type thing, nope.
I use my Kobo Forma mostly for technical books and technical manuals, for example the Kubernetes reference docs, but I couldn't save the doc-sites to Pocket and have the Kobo sync it, and had to use a computer to save and convert it.
For same-sex couples, the legal ability to complicate their financial situation was hard won. Recall: Only 10 years ago it took an executive order by the President of the United States to prevent hospitals that receive government funding from denying a same-sex partner visitation.
Legal marriage is a cultural legitimizer that has value to some.