Universities all have programs that let you rent out computers.

Hah. What the hell would upscaling a sedan even get me. My car car play CDs!!

… I think I am good.

I feel you misread. I mean what I spelled, county, the collection of cities that define the specific region I live in.

My library card gives me access to many libraries in that county, which yes, has works from people across the globe.

I know. It is not great. I ended up using FFMPEG to upscale to 4k using lanzcos filter.

Not the crispest, but vastly more watchable.

I will try AI upscaling when I can.

I have been rekindling my patronage to my county’s libraries and archive.org.

Sure, these are DVDs, but they can be upscaled and are easily backed up.

I buy a crap load of books like I have a spending problem, but I get them used from bookstores and thriftstores. Libraries will always have something I can’t find, with the added glory of browsing serendipity.

Sure, I like to pirate, but there is more treasure at your ports than you think.

That is what I am starting to realize. Every paid program that I used to desire is now subscription based.

Also, I am coming to terms with how truly powerful FOSS programs are. People seem to pay for the workflow, the user interface, more than the capabilities. At least I feel that way with DAWs. Ardour does everything. Vital makes every sound. I can be happy with that. I need to focus on making music.

My family pays for all the major services… but honestly I stopped watching. It is just waaaayyy to much stuff to care about.

I decided that I will only subscribe to things that are unique and have yearly subscriptions. So, that means Criterion Channel, Shudder, Dropout, and Nebula. As a student I get a discount for some of these, and I am paying Youtube Premium because as much Google sucks, YouTube is like UNESCO world heritage sight. Infinite value and priceless.

If you find it please link it. I would love to read it. I think I am happy with my setup, and Flatpaks make it possible.

It certainly has simplified things for me! To get anything so up to date, I would need to use something like Arch or the AUR, which is fine but I find unappealing (using Arch).