I just came back home from a conference hosted by my alma mater.
My bachelor thesis advisor (academic dad) was there. At the end of my presentation, he took a q&a turn to not only congratulate me but to tell everyone how much of an inspiration I was.
I've had both undergrad and masters students tell me they're my fans. It's so surreal.
But something about someone telling you they start doing stuff because of YOU...
in guarani there's a standard greeting that literally translates to "are you happy" (ndevy'apa) and the natural reply is "i'm happy" (avy'a) and as americans learning the language we were so distressed like "but what if we're not happy....." and our teachers were like "that's so not the fucking point"
we kept trying to think of any other way to reply but our teachers kept trying to get it into our brains that it's an idiomatic greeting, it literally is not the time or place to traumadump, and as usamerican english speakers we are not some special exception for saying "what's up" with the reply being "not much" instead of "the ceiling"
but anyway while i was working in paraguay -- the country with the largest population of guarani speakers -- i got sent an article by some friends back home like "look! they're saying that paraguay is the happiest country in the world!"
and the methodology was "we went around and asked paraguayans if they're happy and recorded their responses" and i was like. oh. of course you did. and of course you got a 100% positive response rate.
Things change so much in the blink of an eye. I was going through this blog and the posts that I wrote when it started. Now I find myself in a different country, one year into my Masters degree.
Promise I'll try to keep on posting. And promise I'll try to keep up with working on myself.
So z-library is down, which is an absolute tragedy, but for those looking here's a list of alternatives under the cut.
Books
Open Library: this works like an actual library, where there's a waiting list and you can borrow books for x time.
Library Genesis: my personal favourite of the ones in this list, both for entertainment or academic books. Here you can download epubs or other formats, and there's a great ISBN search function.
The Pirate Bay: it doesn't have that many book options, and it has pop up ads, but still a good option.
Sci-Hub: this is for research papers, but you have to type the exact title of what you're looking for.
IT eBooks: books on IT and programming.
Ubooquity: has to be installed to use.
Simon & Schuster: I haven't actually tried this one, but it has a mailing list which you have to sign up to in order to get the books.
eBooks 3000: this doesn't have that many options and there are some pop up ads.
PDF Drive: there's no limits or ads, but it only has PDF formats.
Read Any Book: here you can read books online or download them.
The Eye: sort of an archive with pretty much everything, but you can't search things here, and it's tough to navigate. I think they have audiobooks too.
Audiobooks
Audiobook Bay: here you can download audiobooks.
Booksonic: this is for audiobook streaming, and you have to download the app or install the software on your computer.
Tokybook: this one has many options, and it's easy to navigate.
I know none of these are as good as z-library was, but hopefully they'll do the trick. This could really help people, so pass it on and add if you have more!
being a humanities major who’s friends with stem majors is so funny because you’ll ask your friends what they’re doing today and they’re like “UGH it’s so stressful i have to stabilize the reactor core for my nuclear power midterm and then i have to build the supercomputer from i have no mouth yet i must scream for my electrical engineering homework :/ what about you” and you’re like “oh well i have to read a fun little book and write an essay about gender.” and they still think you have it worse
Being a stem major who's friends with humanities majors is ALSO funny bc you ask what's goin on with them and they're like "oh yeah my day's pretty good! I only have to read 50 pages for this one class today and half a book for another one. It's much better than last week where I read three books and wrote a 10 page paper about their overlapping motifs for one class while also researching a niche period of time that our library doesn't have any resources on. How's it been for you?" and you're like "oh I have a lil packet of fun math puzzles due tomorrow." and they look at you like you're carrying the weight of the universe on your back
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