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.

I'd put it another way: the "you have to pay to even GET IN THE DOOR" keeps out the rifraff.

"...describes the stores as spaces of "cooperation, courtesy, and grown-ups mostly acting like grown-ups." Shoppers follow unwritten rules: move along, don't block the way, step aside to check your phone. Checkout lines form orderly queues. ..."

Note the entire article is about how civilized an experience it is, and how "weird" that is; that Atlantic tries to paint it as "cult like" shows how utterly fucked up our Intelligentsia has become.

I'm sorry that Sad Oregonian Cunt is bad at the google. I understand. It's hard to fight deep-seated quasi-religious beliefs.

I apologize that my use of the word 'healthier' confused you. I know that enraged leftists routinely forget concepts like vernacular and idiom, retreating to semantic hairsplitting but I'm assuming here in good faith that you're LEGITIMATELY confused by my broadly using the term 'health' to include 'reproductive success'. I am, of course, talking more precisely about eggshell thinning and impact on bird reproductive health, which was flogged around by Silent Spring, the just-born EPA, and used as a reason for the global ban on DDT despite the ruling of a judge to the contrary.

Here's a much-footnoted paper that maybe helps you understand what you're trying to talk about.
https://nationalcenter.org/ncp...

To your specific accusation "This is a lie. It is not supported by your link or any literature." Well, it's literally what happened, something you could find if you bothered to, y'know, check something other than your back-library of Mother Jones magazines.

When carefully reviewed, Dr. Bitmanâ(TM)s study revealed that the quail in the study were fed a diet with a calcium content of only 0.56 percent (a normal quail diet consists of 2.7 percent calcium). Calcium deficiency is a known cause of thin eggshells.21-23 After much criticism, Bitman repeated the test, this time with sufficient calcium levels. The birds produced eggs without thinned shells.24
After many years of carefully controlled feeding experiments, Dr. M. L. Scott and associates of the Department of Poultry Science at Cornell University âoefound no tremors, no mortality, no thinning of eggshells and no interference with reproduction caused by levels of DDT which were as high as those reported to be present in most of the wild birds where âcatastrophicâ(TM) decreases in shell quality and reproduction have been claimed.â23 In fact, thinning eggshells can have many causes, including season of the year, nutrition (in particular insufficient calcium, phosphorus, vitamin D, and manganese), temperature rise, type of soil, and breeding conditions (e.g., sunlight and crowding).25

And in case that's still too hard for stupid fucks to follow, let me help you:
21 Greely F. Effects of Calcium Deficiency. J Wildlife Management. 1960; 70:149-153.
22 Romanoff AL, Romanoff AJ. The Avian Egg. New York: Wiley & Sons; 1949:154.
23 Scott ML, Zimmermann JR, Marinsky S, Mullenhoff PA. Effects of PCBs, DDT, and Mercury Compounds Upon Egg Production, Hatchability and Shell Quality in Chickens and Japanese Quail. Poultry Science. 1975; 54:350-368.
24 Cecil HC, Bitman J, Harris SJ. No Effects on Eggshells, If Adequate Calcium is in DDT Diet. Poultry Science. 1971; 50:656-659.
25 The Avian Egg:152-156, 266.

My actual point, against which a very narrow facet made you so incensed, was that if malaria is an issue, we should go back to using DDT, which was banned based on lies. The fact is that Carson was a deep, deep liar, misrepresenting and mispresenting facts throughout her moronic screed. (Since you love sources and details, here's a nearly page-by-page refutation (up to around p125) of the tidal wave of bullshit in Silent Spring: https://21sci-tech.com/article...)

So, please: go fuck yourself and have a great New Year while you're at it!

Somehow this is still Trump's fault.

Slashdot: +1, insightful, obviously.

When you have Republicans saying they want things to be like their were in the 50s, then put an anti-vaxxer in charge of the nation's top health agency, what would you expect?

Whooping cough cases are also seeing a similar increase as well as deaths.

Maybe do your research, midwit.

Notice I said that the researchers realized that they'd underfed the birds calcium.
You think that might have something to do with the resulting strength of their EGGS.
Here, let me help since you're stupid: https://letmegooglethat.com/?q...

When they re-ran the experiment, feeding the birds the CORRECT amount of calcium they get in the wild, the eggs were - SURPRISE! - just fine.

SOME species do indeed show minor eggshell thinning; then again, others seem to benefit.
Certainly it's nothing like the case made to justify banning DDT.

https://www.thenewatlantis.com...

"Responding to (environmentalists') pressure, in 1971 the newly-formed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched an investigation of the pesticide. Lasting seven months, the investigative hearings led by Judge Edmund Sweeney gathered testimony from 125 expert witnesses with 365 exhibits. The conclusion of the inquest, however, was exactly the opposite of what the environmentalists had hoped for. After assessing all the evidence, Judge Sweeney found: âoeThe uses of DDT under the registration involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlifeâ¦. DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to manâ¦. DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man.â[20] Accordingly, Judge Sweeney ruled that DDT should remain available for use.
Unfortunately, however, the administrator of the EPA was William D. Ruckelshaus, who reportedly did not attend a single hour of the investigative hearings, and according to his chief of staff, did not even read Judge Sweeneyâ(TM)s report.[21] Instead, he apparently chose to ignore the science: overruling Sweeney, in 1972 Ruckelshaus banned the use of DDT in the United States except under conditions of medical emergencies.[22]"

Need data, sources, proof? How about from the California Environmental Protection agency? Is that progressive enough?
https://www.calepa.ca.gov/wp-c...

Sometimes apparently even scientists believe dogmatic bullshit with the blind faith of a drooling Evangelical Christian.