My recommended read for this weekend is an interview with Natasha Dow Schüll, an MIT cultural antropologist, about slot machines (and casinos more generally). The interview was conducted by Brad Plummer of Vox.

As is often Vox‘s style, both the interview and a written-up story based on it are on the same page. I’ve linked directly to the interview itself, as I found that more interesting – but, of course, your mileage may vary.

As an aside: the article says that manufactures often ‘smooth’ the gameplay by making payouts less volatile, while maintaining the payout rate. Apparently, this is legal, as it doesn’t count as changing the ‘odds’. This seems to imply that, in the States at least, odds are regulated in terms of pay-out rate. This seems an intriguingly dumb interpretation of statistics, which has no regard to the player’s own experience. Can it possibly be true?

Amazon has just launched Kindle Unlimited in the UK. I read a lot of books – but won’t be subscribing. Here’s why.

Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited in the UK a few hours ago. Kindle Unlimited, which has been available in the States since July, allows subscribers to pay a monthly fee (£7.99) to access 650,000 eBooks and an unspecified number of audiobooks without further payment.

I read a lot of books, mainly on a Kindle. I dread to think how much I spend each month on books, but it is most certainly more than £7.99. So, when Kindle Unlimited launched in the US, I was pining for a UK launch. This came up in a conversation over a drink with a non-techy friend: “What, like a library?” she asked, as I described the service.

The question was as barbed as it was sarcastic, and it struck a nerve. Some sliver of my Council Tax already funds the ability for me to borrow from an enormous collection of physical books, eBooks and audiobooks via my local library. It is vaguely absurd to pay a second time to access a more limited library.

So I set myself a challenge: ditch the Kindle and start using the library.

The first barrier was to discover that I don’t own an eReader compatible with the formats available from my library. But this wasn’t really a problem: I chose to read eBooks mainly because they are cheap, available ‘over the air’, and take up no space in my house. Library books are almost as good: they’re free, take up no space in my house, and are available to collect from the library.

My local library, in common with others, has a great click-and-collect service: I request a book online; they dig it out from whichever library branch or store it is in, whack it on a ‘collection’ shelf near the door in the most convenient branch for me, and notify me that it’s ready to collect. I can then pop into the library during my commute and swap books using a self-service machine. It takes less than sixty seconds from entering the library to exiting.

Of course, not all books feature in the library’s stock. Rather than have the library source these from elsewhere, I’ve bought my own copies; the joy of reading physical books from the library has convinced me to buy paperbacks. So much for saving shelf-space.

The last ten books I’ve read would have cost, in total, £66.89 in Kindle format. Only two of them appear to be among the 650,000-book Kindle Unlimited selection. All but two were within my library’s selection: I paid £9.09 for one of these two in paperback, and borrowed the other by post from the BMA library. Hence, I saved £57.80: an 86% discount.

And so (tl;dr): Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited package made me re-evaluate how much I spent on books. It made me realise the value of my local library, and has lead to me using Amazon far less, and saving myself a small fortune in the process.

Headline of the day so far, if you ask me… #indyref

I don't often go for medical publications for my weekend recommended read, but this is worth it – Tania Glyde's piece on being normal, published this week in The Lancet Psychiatry.

If you were expecting something Scottish… There's been a lot of good stuff written, but I've read so much about it this week (and will no doubt read more in the week to come following the "no" vote) that I wanted to pick something different. I'm not at all bitter at having lost a long-standing bet…! 

Yesterday was the 13th anniversary of the ‘9/11’ terrorist attacks on the United States. It is a day which I remember well. I recently found myself re-watching Jon Stewart’s extraordinary monologue on the first Daily Show after 9/11, and felt those same chills as I did thirteen years ago.

Earlier this year, the 9/11 Memorial Museum opened in New York. Steve Kandell, whose sister was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, had pre-opening admission to the Museum. His thoughtful BuzzFeed article reflecting on the content of the museum, and his reaction to it, seems a fitting article to post for this weekend.

Help me be less ignorant: Why do tech journos always talk negatively handling different mobile screen sizes for apps (as though devs hate doing it), while simultaneously giving very positive portrayal of responsive web design (as though devs love doing it)? Aren't they basically the same problem in different formats? Do app building tools make it more difficult to be responsive than it is on the web?

My recommend read for this weekend is – horror of horrors – a Gawker article. Caity Weaver's article documenting her "feat" of eating 32 mozzarella sticks in the course of a little more than 12 hours is a great bit of funny writing. The level of tension and disgust may be out of all proportion to the action being described, but that only serves to heighten the humour.

This is a brilliant compilation of Ice Bucket Challenge fails…