I wish I could still upvote you.

What if they find Charlie Kirk persuasive? What if they like the Art of the Deal?

Does that change your opinion?

Katherine Maher - the head of NPR.
Shall we recall her Ted talk?
https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/...
"Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done"
Think about that statement.

It doesn't hurt when an ideologically captured judiciary refuses to punish people they agree with politically. Suddenly a spiteful little act is not only normalized, but protected - as long as it's directed the right way.

https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top...

$20k in damage GOVERNMENT employee - no charges at all.
https://www.fox9.com/news/tesl...

Funny that my above comment about thinking that it's envy not actual poverty was downvoted to troll.

They should have thought that whole "we will become the propaganda arm of the left" through more carefully?

Katherine Maher - the head of NPR - is an example of the privileged leftist elite.

Shall we recall her Ted talk?
https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/...
âoeOur reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done.â

Think about that statement.

Or from her own wiki bio:
"In April 2024, Uri Berliner, NPR senior business editor, published an essay in The Free Press[33] critiquing, among other things, alleged liberal bias at NPR both in management and content, leading to an erosion of trust with the public and with internal staff. Following Berliner's critique, conservative journalists and activists, including Christopher Rufo, criticized Maher for tweets she had made supporting progressive policies and about Donald Trump in 2018,[33] as well as comments Maher made about the First Amendment as "the number one challenge" in the fight against disinformation in a 2021 interview.[34] Berliner was suspended without pay for five days, ostensibly for failing to secure approval for "outside work".[35] On April 17, he resigned after 25 years at NPR and criticized Maher's appointment as CEO. In response to the criticisms, Maher defended NPR's record, stating that her comments regarding the First Amendment had been misrepresented and that she has a "robust belief in the First Amendment".[36]"

Or the trans'ing of Sesame Street? https://www.toughpigs.com/sesa...

I know a lot of leftist "progressives" are angry. They thought they'd won the fight. The first Trump was neutralized by (what turned out to be entirely nothingburger Russiagate). Then they had a dessicated marionette that happily auto-penned whatever came along.

You know what? HALF the country disagrees with you. (Given the last election, thanks to your overreach, more than half, but I'll concede it's basically even-up)

In a SANE society we could talk about things and find compromise. But "the resistance" doesn't want compromise, it never has.
So finally, you got Trump, a conservative (he's still basically a NY liberal, but opportunistically put on an elephant suit) willing to actually fight over this shit rather than allow the left's agenda to progress unchallenged. I know it's uncomfortable.

"no local weather alerts"

Right, because there's literally no other radio, tv, internet, or other source of information where, precisely again?

Poverty by itself doesn't make you sad.
That's abundantly true. There are plenty of people that are poor and happy.

ENVY is what makes you sad.
Your neighbor having more wealth than you think they deserve, makes you angry.
We also have reasonably abundant historical examples of people of wealth, power, even kings driven to irrational acts over their envy about someone with more than they have.

So no, I don't think the money itself (or lack) makes a person unhappy, it's about their judgement of the people around them & their worth that fuels unhappiness, justified or not.

I used to read a fair amount of books when I was younger. Wide variety of subjects from fiction, science fiction, history and a few biography types. I still have boxes of books I've read in storage. Many others I've redonated to a library for them to sell.

However, within the last decade I haven't bought many books compared to the past. The ones I have bought are mostly history related with only a handful of fiction/science-fiction. When I pick up a new book (new to me) I go to page 100 and start reading. If the story at that point doesn't interest me I put it back. I just can't get into what people consider good sci-fi such as The Expanse series. And forget about the Three Body Problem.

The last books of such type I remember purchasing were Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children by Greg Baer. At the same time, I can't get into his other works.

I'm sure this has to do with my tastes changing, but considering the number of books out there and how often I'm looking, one would think I would be able to find more.

"Kirsch says to stop treating reading as civic medicine. "It would be better to describe reading not as a public duty but as a private pleasure, sometimes even a vice,""
Well, I guess I'd start with telling him to stop trying to "trick" people - even kids - into doing what he wants?

It's a routine fault of progressives AND evangelical conservatives: this inherent sense of moral certainty, and the instinctive justification that "pretty much anything goes because I'm doing it to HELP you".

Reading (or more specifically, the desire to read, as there are tons of people with impairments that get in the way of literally reading a book) I'd say is symptomatic of intelligence. So what we really want are people who value intelligence, who value reason. Reading will more or less automatically follow.

I'll be honest, I don't think 'reading' alone is inherently magical. Reading the sports page, or some fantasy smut about milking male minotaurs - they may both be enjoyable, but neither is going to make someone the kind of constructive, reasoning citizen we NEED in our Republic.
Well, that any democracy needs, not just ours.

Of course, then we get back to the 'certainty'. Reasoning adults need to be able to hold in their heads a fundamental RESPECT for the other person's ideas. Even if they don't agree.

So here's the funny bit for me. Kirsch suggests that we trick kids into thinking reading is scandalous, a vice. Is that really what he wants? What if they read actually-scandalous texts (according to Kirsch's orthodoxy) like something by Charlie Kirk? The Art of the Deal? Would he be as intrinsically delighted with "people reading" then?

That makes apparently 1 person in earth that believes the BBC is "too slanted to the right" lol .
Then again, as we've seen over the past 5 years, to the new rage-addled Left Marx himself would have come off as far too right wing.

As James Randy showed, make a vague enough pronouncement and it can fit whatever you want. The best illustration was when he handed out horoscopes to a bunch of people and asked them how well the description fit them. Almost all of them said it was a good fit.

Problem was, he gave the same "horoscope" to all of them. It was the wording which led these people to believe it fit them even though it was the same for all of them.

The same is probably what's happening here. Someone made a vague enough "prophecy" that when something happened that "prophecy" could claim to have come true.

Meaning the people were devotees of all things AI. They'd taken the pill.

Which is funny to hear coming from the guy who headed the AI program at Meta. Did he think they should hire people who didin't care about AI?

As more and more information is moved to the digital realm, vast quantities of that information will be lost over time. Not the big stuff such as political or international news, or the passing of some well known person, but the middling every day things such as notices for events or local interest stories.

Without a physical paper product, time capsules become mmore difficult to create. Not that they can't be created, but it's always been a part of the process to include a newspaper with the capsule so in 100 years, people can read what took long ago.

With digital, how do you do that? People on here always talk about data degradation coupled with something to read the data. Stories are regularly posted on here about media with data on it in a format no longer used and the trials and tribulations to try and read the information.

With a newspaper, there is no such issue. You never need a fancy piece of equipment to read the information (aside from maybe glasses).

On top of which, while a newspaper does cost money to buy, it is easily transferrable to someone else. Finished reading? Here you go, stranger. Have at it. Find one in a bin? It's yours at no cost.

As always, paper information cannot be changed. Once it's on paper, it's set. Not so with digitial. Changing digital information is one of the easiest things to do and as we all know, is done on a regular basis. How do we know a year from now, when looking for an article you remember reading, it's the same article? Are you certain its wording hasn't been altered?

And finally, what about all the conspiracy wackos? Where will they get their newspapers to tear out articles, pin to the wall and run strings to each story to weave their delusions? Sure, they can print the article, but it's not the same effect as having torn sraps of newspaper to show off. Won't someone think of the conspiracy theorists!

Any licensed CPA would know to reduce the amount of the claimed deduction by the value of whatever was received as a result of the donation.

Or, crazy idea I know, maybe wealthy people aren't universally - or even mostly - stuck up self obsessed narcissists, and that's just your own seething envy and sense of self justification?

If I had to choose between Walmart vs a store that literally filters out the poorest at the door, I know where I'd rather work or shop.