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@m_ashcroft Yup, they have a different set of affordances. But once it passes roughly the equivalent of ~two A4 pages of information it gets tough, and a ten page paper I'm much more likely to read if I print it out than if I try to read on a screen.

@m_ashcroft That works. Although I don't currently have a printer at home and haven't quite reached the point where I'm willing to bite the bullet and purchase one given how much I hate maintaining and storing the damn things. Was relying on work for that. 😢 That's not your problem though.

@m_ashcroft @DRMacIver I think there are companies where you just send them the book files (covers & all the pages) and they'll take care of on-demand printing + delivery, you just have to price the printed version such that it covers all the costs

@m_ashcroft The ebook format is genuinely bad for trying to process information, especially anything that requires nonlinear reading, and I wasn't able to fix my reading habits until I acknowledged this and stopped trying to read nonfiction in ebook form.

@m_ashcroft That's the main reason, yeah. The other big one is that physical presence of a book helps you focus on it, remember its contents (genuinely, the book becomes a kind of mini associative memory through its physicality), and also to remember that it exists.

@m_ashcroft Even if you successfully read an ebook in nonfiction it will tend to pass out of memory. A physical personal library is almost infinitely better as a part of your external memory than an ebook collection is as a result of this.

@m_ashcroft (Fiction is usually OK in ebook form because it's intrinsically linear, you don't tend to want to refer back to it, and is usually much less difficult to read in the first place, so the badness of ebooks affects it less and it's at a different point in tradeoff space)

If you're wondering, I'm subtweeting https://t.co/2kFtV1jaVm after listening to a podcast with the author where specifically states that her goal is to make this book accessible to men. This isn't some niche textbook.

@DRMacIver Not quite as self-defeating, but there's something absurd about making your book available as a free ebook but telling ppl not to print it due to carbon footprint. …especially if the book has the potential to produce paradigm shifts… if it's worth reading, it's worth printing! https://t.co/Ka7cvUlDOI


@DRMacIver I am subtweeting Steven Wineman and his powerful book Power-Under: Trauma & Nonviolent Social Change https://t.co/SO94CN7nqn https://t.co/thiEl219gy


@QiaochuYuan For excellent source on: 1⃣ how being traumatized leads to abuse of power 2⃣ how people abusing often feel powerless while doing it 3⃣ how the patriarchy traumatizes men (well, boys) see this free online book Power-Under: Trauma & Nonviolent Social Change https://t.co/4htgEnKhCe