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I tend to prefer Ebook and Audiobooks to physical books, and these are some of the apps I use, and some of the sources I go to to find Ebooks or Audiobooks. These can be inexpensive, or in the case of Public Domain, free.



Ebooks and Audiobooks



I no longer wish to devote space to accumulating and storing physical books. As a former college professor I had more of them than most people, and tended to fill the house with bookcases and shelves. That made a certain sense in the pre-Internet years since I would often want to go back to them to look up things. But now I have more information at my fingertips than I ever had in those days, and I find it more convenient to just look up anything I need to know. And with Ebooks I can take my library with me anywhere I go. This means if I am sitting in a waiting room for a Doctor’s appointment (and at my age that happens often enough) I can just pull out my phone and open up a book. I always have at least one. Right now on my phone I have apps for
Kindle
,
Google Play
,
Barnes & Noble Nook
,
Kobo

Cantook
(successor to Aldiko),
Bookshop.org
, and
Calibre
. As for devices other than my phone, I own a kindle, I once owned a Nook, and I will buy a Kobo reader when Trump is gone. Kobo is Canadian, and last time I looked Trump had put on a tariff that was twice what the device costs. And finally I have the Bookshop.org app and Calibre.



I started collecting Ebooks some years back, and at first the only option seemed to be buying them from large corporations. That has changed now, but I still have collections On Kindle, Google Play, Nook, and Kobo. I have all four because it seemed prudent to not put all my eggs in one basket. But now there are other options. One I like to use when possible is Bookshop.org. It is group of independent bookstores and I would rather support them than some giant corporation. And they seem to have all of the popular titles. Another similar site is
Books-a-Million
, which lets you order online and pick up at a local store if you need a physical book. Cantook and Calibre are both good for holding any miscellaneous Ebooks you have, and you can give them your Ebooks from the other sellers, though I have found that the native apps tend to work better. These days I rarely purchase books on Kindle, etc. But sometimes they have a special deals.



If you want to build your library, there are some good places to try. One is
BookBub
which will send you emails with deals on books. On any one e-mail you may not see anything you want, but I found that once or twice a month I did see books I wanted and at good prices. And Books-a-Million has 99 cent deals to check out. But if you want to get free books, you have several options. If you want a chance to read a popular Ebook but don’t need to own it, see what your local Library offers. Mine offers
Hoopla
which is good for Ebooks, Audiobooks, and streaming music. What you can find depends on what your library has in its collection, but my wife uses it almost daily for audiobooks. Then there are the works that have become part of the Public Domain. This varies somewhat by your country, but you might be surprised to learn how much is available. For Ebooks one of the biggest sites is
Project Gutenberg
. They follow US Copyright law for their collection, and they are a non-profit that can always use some support, so if you use them, give them a few Dollars or Euros. They tend to be the source for many or most other sites for Public Domain Ebooks They have over 75,000 free Ebooks. A newer site is
Faded Page
which is much smaller but focused on Canadian works.
Standard Ebooks
is a site that pulls from Project Gutenberg but does some additional formatting and is very easy to read online in your browser. For Audiobooks a good source is
Open Culture
, which advertises it has 1,000 free Audiobooks. We should also mention
LibriVox
, which also pulls from Project Gutenberg for its texts, but then turns them into Public Domain Audiobooks. They are always looking for volunteers who have a microphone and a computer to record Public Domain audiobooks. And last but not least the
Internet Archive
has tons of Ebooks and Audiobooks that are free.



Links







https://www.amazon.com/kindle/






https://play.google.com/store/books?hl=en_US&pli=1






https://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/ebooks-nook/_/N-8qa






https://www.kobo.com/us/en?srsltid=AfmBOoquJmiNH_aVTUx22AIRlBH8CF4iir4H8qpTKjQ4dZ-fSMCDAaD7






https://market.cantook.com/






https://bookshop.org/ebooks






https://calibre-ebook.com/






https://www.booksamillion.com/






https://www.bookbub.com/






https://www.hoopladigital.com/






https://www.gutenberg.org/






https://www.fadedpage.com/






https://standardebooks.org/






https://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks






https://librivox.org/






https://archive.org/






https://www.palain.com/ebooks-and-audiobooks/








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MakeACopy



MakeACopy is an open-source document scanner app for Android that allows you to digitize paper documents with OCR functionality. The app is designed to be privacy-friendly, working completely offline without any cloud connection or tracking.







Features







Camera Scanning
: Capture documents using the device camera





Edge Detection
: Automatic document edge detection using OpenCV, enhanced with an ONNX model (DocAligner)





Perspective Correction
: Adjust and crop documents with manual or automatic perspective correction





Image Enhancement
: Apply filters (grayscale, contrast, sharpening)





OCR
: Offline text recognition with Tesseract





OCR Review
: Interactive review and correction of OCR results with word-level editing, dictionary-based suggestions, confidence highlighting, and re-OCR for individual words





PDF Export
: Save as searchable PDF with recognized text





JPEG Export
: Export scans as high-quality JPEG images (configurable quality, color/BW)





Multi-page Scanning
: Combine multiple pages into one document; reorder and manage pages before export





Last Scans
: Quickly access and reuse your most recent scans





Share & Save
: Export locally or share with other apps





Dark Mode
: Material 3 theme with day/night support





Privacy-Focused
: 100% offline functionality, no internet connection required

















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Overview:
Elroy sits down with Elsbeth to unpack her perspective on AI ethics — where the technology helps, where it risks harm, and what responsible use actually looks like in practice.





Topics covered (In no particular order, as the rabid squirrels of Elsbeth's AuDHD brain don't do "order"):






Elsbeth's path into AI evaluation and content moderation, and how that shaped her thinking on ethics in practice



What "ethical use" of AI means day-to-day, not just in the abstract



Respecting intellectual property — the case for protecting artists and creators as AI tools become more capable and widespread



Finding the balance: supporting AI's genuine benefits without letting them come at creators' expense



AI as an accessibility tool — its particular promise for neurodivergent people, and where it can lower barriers others don't face



Where the conversation is heading next, and what listeners should watch for







Closing thoughts:
Elsbeth's take is one of cautious optimism — a call to hold both truths at once: AI can do real good, and that good has to be built on respect for the people whose work made it possible.







Further Reading & Resources





On AI, Ethics, and Intellectual Property








AI and Intellectual Property in 2026: why transparency and court rulings will define the next phase of governance
— The AI Journal




https://aijourn.com/ai-and-intellectual-property-in-2026-why-transparency-and-court-rulings-will-define-the-next-phase-of-governance/






Global laws governing intellectual property rights for AI-generated works
— Discover Artificial Intelligence, Springer Nature Link




https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44163-026-01165-8






AI and IP laws 2026: Understanding Authorship and Ownership legalities
— AnalystIP




https://analystip.com/ai-and-ip-laws-2026-authorship-ownership-explained/






AI Art in 2026: The Ethics, Law, and What Artists Should Know
— UrduPure




https://www.urdupure.com/blog/ai-art-in-2026-the-ethics-law-and-what-artists-should-know








On AI and Neurodivergent Accessibility








Navigating Neurodivergence with AI Chatbots: Benefits, Tensions, and Implications for HCI
— CHI 2026 Conference Proceedings




https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3772318.3791334






Is AI making work more accessible for neurodiverse people?
— Everway




https://www.everway.com/en-gb/blog/is-ai-making-work-more-accessible-for-neurodiverse-people/






Autoethnographic Insights from Neurodivergent GAI "Power Users"
— NCBI/PMC




https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12645485/






A scoping review of inclusive and adaptive human–AI interaction design for neurodivergent users
— Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology




https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17483107.2025.2579822










Show rated *explicit* for possible course language and strong opinions.





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Heinlein wrote a series of books under contract to Scribners that were aumed at younger readers, pre-teen and teen. Today we would call them Young Adult, but back then they were called Juveniles. But even an adult reader can enjoy many of these books. Because they were aimed at younger readers, he could not always be as explicit as he might have liked, but if you pay attention you just might noticed he slipped in something subversive.

Heinlein: The Juveniles


As a boy I read voraciously. I remember my mother organizing weekly trips to the town library, where I would load up on books, and I quickly became focused on Science Fiction, along with the usual stuff kids read, like the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, and the Walter Farley horse books. But the idea of going into space grabbed me very early. And one of the first authors I read was Heinlein. He had taken a leave from publishing during World War II, when he was doing research at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. But when the war was over, he set out to move beyond the “pulps” and expand the market for his stories. And one big market for him was what were called “juveniles” at the time, and would today be called “Young Adult”. I was reading adult fiction by the time I was 11 or 12, but before that (and even after that, in fact) I read these Heinlein novels with great relish.

Heinlein’s target audience for these novels was teenage boys. He did a few stories aimed at girls, but mostly he wrote for boys. And these were mostly “coming of age” stories where the teenage protagonist has adventures, and as a result grows and develops. They are very loosely related via some internal references, but should really be thought of as stand-alone stories. They also in some cases have references to his other stories, including the Future history stories. He wrote 13 of these novels, one per year, from 1947 to 1959. The series was published by Scribners until the last one was rejected by them. Heinlein then published it with a different publisher, and stopped writing these novels altogether in favor of more adult fiction. The novels roughly form a progression telling the story of space exploration. It starts with a trip to the Moon, then Venus, Mars, Jupiter’s moon, and so on until we reach the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.

Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) – While readable, this initial effort was not up to Heinlein’s later standards. The plot concerns three teenagers who assist an uncle to build a rocket ship and go to the Moon. When they get there they discover Nazis have already arrived. The Nazis try to kill the group, but they succeed in turning the tables, stealing the Nazi ship, and returning to Earth as heroes. This novel became the basis (loosely) for the movie Destination Moon (1950), and I personally would consider the movie to be superior to the novel. It is also worth noting that the theory brought up in Blowups Happen reappears in this novel. They find evidence of an ancient Lunar civilization that was destroyed, and theorize that the craters on the moon were caused by the explosion of nuclear reactors that caused the extinction of the civilization.

Space Cadet (1948) – This was in part the inspiration for the Tom Corbett franchise, which licensed the name Space Cadet from Heinlein. It is about a young man who is accepted to the Academy for the Space Patrol. It follows him through his education in the Academy, and then into his first mission after graduating. This holds up better than the previous novel. And it is tied back to the story The Long Watch from the Future History. Part of the story takes place on an inhabited Venus that is cloudy and swampy.

Red Planet (1949) – This is set on Mars, as it is also portrayed in Stranger In A Strange Land (1961). Mars is inhabited by native Martians, but also by human colonists. It has the canals, and with seasonal changes the colonists migrate from north to south and back. A pair of teenage boys get caught up in a revolution when the evil corporation that controls the colony pushes the colonists too far. In the end you wish there really were canals and Martians.

Farmer In The Sky (1950) – This is one of the best, as seen by the Retro Hugo this novel won in 2000. Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is being terraformed because Earth is overcrowded and food is rationed. A teenage boy and his family emigrate to Ganymede and try to make a life there, which they eventually succeed in doing. The Green Hills of Earth is mentioned here, tying this into the future History. There are frequent references to the Boy Scouts, due to the fact that the story ran as a serial in Boy’s Life magazine.

Between Planets (1951) – A teenage boy is caught up in interplanetary intrigue. Venus and Mars have colonies, but Earth is trying to control them too much. So revolution is on the menu. This is clearly patterned in the colonial wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as the American Revolution against England. By this point the so-called “Juveniles” are really having more adult content, and reviewers re starting to rate them in comparison with adult science fiction. This novel was also first serialized in Boy’s Life magazine.

The Rolling Stones (1952) – Here we have teenage twin boys, Castor and Pollux, as the protagonists. They and their family live on the Moon, but decide to travel, so this novel is a kind of travelogue as they go to Mars, then to the Asteroid belt. The grandmother, Hazel Stone, appears in Heinlein’s later works as well. One interesting episode in this story involves “martian flat cats”, which are furry, lovable, and reproduce like mad with the right conditions. If this sound like Star Trek’s Tribbles, that is also what the Star Trek producers thought, so they got permission from Heinlein to use the idea.

Starman Jones (1953) – We are now further into the future, and the human race is exploring the stars. Unfortunately, very restrictive guilds closely control who can participate in this. A teenage boy named Max, who happens to have an eidetic memory, has memorized the Astrogation tables from his uncle’s books, and wants to join the Guild, but is turned down. He lies his way onboard a ship, and through a series of events becomes the only one who can guide the ship home.

The Star Beast (1954) – A teenage boy has an alien “pet” his great-grandfather had brought back that has grown very large, and is considered a nuisance. A court decides the beast must be killed, but that proves easier to say than to do. It appears that the beast isn’t even aware that people are trying to kill it. Meanwhile, a powerful and hitherto unknown alien species demand the return of one of their own, or they will destroy the Earth. Of course, it is this beast, who is actually royalty to the alien species. One interesting point is that government officials in this story are portrayed sympathetically as intelligent and dedicated.

Tunnel In The Sky (1955) – In the future humanity is colonizing other planets, and a group of teenagers are taking their final survival test. They are sent to a planet and told that they have to survive for 10 days, But more than 10 days go by with no pickup, and they know something went wrong. So they have to establish their own little society to keep surviving. An interesting note is that the protagonist, Rod Walker, is black. It was never explicitly stated in the text, but Heinlein was firm in stating this. The clue is when the others expect Rod to end up with Caroline, who is explicitly stated to be black. This was Heinlein being subtly subversive. To have a black protagonist for a boy’s story in 1955 in America would be impossible. but Heinlein was completely anti-racist, among other things.

Time For The Stars (1956) – This is a novel that takes Relativity seriously, which was not common in the 1950s. Researchers have discovered that some twins and triplets can communicate telepathically (and instantaneously), and so when a group of ships is sent out to explore other star systems, one twin is on the ship and the other remains on Earth to provide communication. The twin on Earth ages must faster than the one in space, of course, and eventually the Earth twin dies, But they discover that the connection sometimes passes down through the family, so the protagonist, Tom Bartlett, becomes connected first to his niece, then his grandniece, and finally his great-grandniece.

Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) – This book is about a future slave trade, which Heinlein strongly hated. The protagonist is a boy who is bought at a slave auction by an old beggar, but the beggar is more than he seems. He is actually spying and gathering data regarding the slave trade. When discovered, he commits suicide, but he had prepared the young boy, Thorby, who then contacts the Free Traders who spirit him away. He has to adapt to this new society, but then is delivered to the Hegemonic Guard. It turns out his “father” (i.e. the man who bought him) was an officer in this organization. And when they run the background checks, they discover that he is the heir to a large conglomerate, and that conglomerate may be implicated in the slave trade.

Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958) – Clifford “Kip” Russell dreams of going to the Moon, and enters a contest with that as the top prize. Unfortunately, he wins the somewhat lesser prize of a used spacesuit. The first few chapters focus on him doing repairs and maintenance to make it functional again, and this displays Heinlein’s engineering background. It is more engaging than you might think. Then while wearing the spacesuit he receives a radio message, and he is kidnapped along with an alien called “The Mother Thing” and a young girl who is a genius. The kidnappers are a group of aliens who consider anyone not of their race to be animals. The trio first try to escape on the Moon, but are recaptured, then taken to Pluto, where they succeed in killing the alien kidnappers. Then they are taken to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud to be put on trial to determine if the human race should be allowed to live.

Starship Troopers (1959) – This is the novel that Scribners rejected, and which brought the Juvenile series to an end. And it bears absolutely no resemblance at all to the movie, to the point that for Heinlein fans the word Verhoeven is considered an obscenity. A young man, Juan “Johnny” Rico joins the military, where he has to grow up and then take part in a war against an insectoid race, but that is all background really. The book is primarily a glorification of military service, which is not surprising given Heinlein’s background. And it focuses on a series of discussions under the heading of “History and Moral Philosophy”, which lets Heinlein expound on his values and beliefs. The novel won a Hugo, but it is an add one given that the plot is secondary to the philosophizing. One of the most controversial ideas is that in this society the right to vote is limited to people who have been in Federal Service. Heinlein said this didn’t have to be military, but the only ones we see are in fact military veterans.

So, these are the Heinlein Juveniles. In my opinion, many of them are quite good reading for adults. The thing that separates them from adult novels in Heinlein’s body of work is the lack of any sex element. That would become prominent in Heinlein’s later adult novels, but it was not something you could put in a book aimed at teenagers, certainly not in the 1950s, and arguably the case today as well.

Links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Ship_Galileo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destination_Moon_(film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Cadet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Corbett,_Space_Cadet_(TV_series)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Planet_(novel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmer_in_the_Sky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scout_Life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_Planets

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones_(novel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starman_Jones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Beast_(novel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_in_the_Sky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_for_the_Stars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_of_the_Galaxy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Space_Suit%E2%80%94Will_Travel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers

https://www.palain.com/science-fiction/the-golden-age/robert-a-heinlein/heinlein-the-juveniles/

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sunshine / xbox contlers / plex / steam / UWPHook / Bluetoothctl restart / HDMI dongle





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM4FbA4-W_c








UGREEN USB C Hub 5 in 1 Multiport Adapter Revodok 105 4K HDMI, 100W Power Delivery, 3 USB-A Data Ports, USB C Dongle for MacBook Pro/Air, iPad Pro, iMac, iPhone 16 Pro/Pro Max, XPS, Thinkpad





https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BR3M8XHK




Detached Command:



@ECHO OFF
cd "C:\backup\gamestream_launchpad"
c:\windows\System32\HdrSwitcher.exe disable
start /MIN gamestream_launchpad.exe 1920 1080 gamestream_playnite.ini







.bindkeys rc
cat .xbindkeysrc
/bin/bash /home/plex/.local/bin/Plex.sh
/bin/bash /home/plex/.local/bin/Steam.sh
/home/plex/.local/bin/kasa --host 192.168.1.239 --port 9999 --type dimmer on; /home/plex/.local/bin/kasa --host 192.168.1.239 --port 9999 --type dimmer brightness 100;xgamma -gamma 1.3
/home/plex/.local/bin/kasa --host 192.168.1.239 --port 9999 --type dimmer on; /home/plex/.local/bin/kasa --host 192.168.1.239 --port 9999 --type dimmer brightness 40;xgamma -gamma 1.3
/home/plex/.local/bin/kasa --host 192.168.1.239 --port 9999 --type dimmer on; /home/plex/.local/bin/kasa --host 192.168.1.239 --port 9999 --type dimmer brightness 12;xgamma -gamma 1.3
/home/plex/.local/bin/kasa --host 192.168.1.239 --port 9999 --type dimmer off;xgamma -gamma 1.3"







cat /home/plex/.local/bin/Steam.sh
# requires wmctrl -l and xbindkeys
#
# xdotool windowactivate ```xdotool search --name 'window name'```
# 0
StartSteamLink(){
echo "restarting bluetooth"
sudo systemctl restart bluetooth
echo "Waking Game PC"
sudo /usr/sbin/etherwake -i enp1s0 -D "d8:bb:c1:a2:2c:0b"
echo "Starting steamlink"
killall -9 steamlink
killall moonlight
sleep 20
# /snap/bin/moonlight
/home/plex/.local/bin/Moonlight-6.1.0-x86_64.AppImage
}
StartSteamLink





SUMMARY:





Speaker discusses technical challenges with Sun Shine, Moonlight, and Play Night setups.





IDEAS:





Sun Shine and Moonlight enable remote game streaming.



Play Night acts as a multimodal launcher for Steam.



Resolution changes cause display issues during gameplay.



Proper exit sequence is critical to revert settings.



Ultra-wide resolutions are unusable in some configurations.



Multiple launchers require separate logins for different games.



Environment variables can adjust client dimensions.



Background commands improve system stability.



Cat named Mojo is mentioned during the discussion.



5G networks support slower-paced gaming.



Technical glitches include frame drops and latency.



Steam accounts are tied to specific game libraries.



Detached commands run in the background without user interaction.



GameStream Launchpad manages resolution and launcher paths.



Magical system behavior simplifies remote gaming.



Star Wars and Baldur’s Gate are cited as example games.



22nd Millie thing refers to network latency.



Multiple Steam accounts complicate game access.



Task killing reverts system settings automatically.



Cross-platform streaming solutions are highlighted.









RECOMMENDATIONS:





Use environment variables for client resolution adjustments.



Exit applications properly to revert settings.



Set up detached background commands for stability.



Monitor ultra-wide resolution compatibility.



Utilize Play Night for Steam account management.



Avoid multiple logins for different game libraries.



Opt for cross-platform streaming solutions.



Check network latency for smooth gameplay.



Use bat files for automated task execution.



Configure GameStream Launchpad for resolution changes.



Prioritize proper task termination to prevent glitches.



Test 5G networks for slower-paced gaming.



Leverage environment variables for client settings.



Ensure all applications exit before shutting down.



Use detached commands for background processes.



Verify resolution compatibility with ultra-wide displays.



Combine Sun Shine and Moonlight for reliable streaming.



Log in once for multiple Steam accounts.



Address frame drops in low-latency networks.



Stream games universally across platforms.







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