Go on go on go on go on go on
At least they still exist somewhere, albeit hidden. In the early days of television, the BBC routinely taped over episodes, even of really popular shows, because the tapes were expensive.
Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes
Every now and then a box of old VHS recordings turns up in someone’s shed or attic, and can be added back in to the archive. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-67218634
I grew up in NZ - we used to spray fake snow on the windows at Christmas and send cards with winter scenes, reindeer, robins, all that. On the day we’d have a big meal topped off with plum pudding. Bloody ridiculous.
Same in Dunedin!
I feel like I must be the only person in the world still still using Piratebay! I switch between that and Kickass Torrents and have done for years. They’ve been through a variety of guises but seem to have settled down now. I use Tixati to leech and seed, never used a VPN and never had any trouble from my ISPs. It’s been interesting reading the comments though, might look at some of the suggestions.
Yes, Kindle does now support epub. Annoyingly, it no longer supports mobi. I mean, I can still read all the mobi files on my ancient Kindle Keyboard and on the Kindle phone app, but any new book files have to be in epub format. I have a massive amount of mobi files, now have to convert them with Caliber if I want to add them to my Kindle.
I mostly use the ReadEra app on my phone, it does pretty much everything. My favourite feature is that you can control screen brightness by touch while reading, without ferreting around in settings.