Exactly. And thats not even the full extent of the sadness. Even though i despise existing in modern academia, the broader idea of scientific curiosity as in the human trait is possibly my favorite attribute humankind has to offer. Its such an embodiment of what makes us what we are and i feel drawn to it ever since being a kid and watching space documentaries on tv with my dad.

It makes me genuinely sad that myself and pretty much everyone i know has to make use of scihub and library genesis to access the majority of our greatest achievement and culmination of unthinkable multiples of a human lifespan that went into systematically poking our enviroment and writing down its reaction.

And for what exactly? Do our contributions actually reach the ones furthering our (previously) collective knowledge, a way of financing the needed work without compromising its method? Nah. The exact opposite.

The money exclusively pays middlemen, rich enough to buy their way into a market chokehold in the first place, that contribute nothing beyond their self-made reputation mill called "prestigious journals". They gleefully allocate themselves 100% of the cake without any care in the world, consequences be damned.

Do you know what the final layer of insult looks like? After creating the very perverted system, purpose built to extract every last point of profit, after reaping the benefits available to the ones ruthless enough to be okay with making H1B slave labor their modus operandi, they come back crying to us that china stole their intellectual property.

How dare the chinese researcher, the one you forced to work themselves into burnout for half pay, treated like an indentured servant with their Visa held over their head by their mast- i mean sponsor, how dare he to head back to their home country without any feeling of loyalty towards you? Screw them. They would do and did the same and worse to us in a heartbeat.

i fortunately never have to endure this situation, but i grew up to afghan immigrant parents, so the thought of being trapped like this in a foreign country, after your entire family had to work themselves sick for your chance at a better life, all the hope and dreams you embody for your loved ones, the shame that comes with that and being confronted with loosing at all again, just because you refuse to be held as a modern day slave, jeez man.. i have tears in my eyes just thinking about it and i feel like i wanna puke. screw them.