>>12748352a few thoughts:
1) i really only ever have one use case where articles aren’t free on arxiv: old articles on historical shit. arrived has had everything in my field for over 20 years. and whenever you go down this rabbit hole of finding old articles it either means you were too lazy to read the textbook or you are digging for some historical crap that is probably irrelevant if it didn’t make its way into any textbook over 20 years
2) i usually try to use my university’s library website instead of going to sci-hub, even though it is much less efficient and more annoying. i somehow feel this is more in keeping with academic standards
3) if i can’t find it via my university library then i feel justified using sci-hub. but then you can’t send the article to your friends without looking sketchy because most sci-hub copies have some watermark that shows it was downloaded years ago through some other university access. and then you are admitting to anyone you send it to that you were down a historical rabbit hole and needed to go to piracy to find some irrelevant historical article. and what kind of weirdo does that?
