"The more educated people read a lot as they grew up and throughout their studies, and it is a habit they have maintained. Those who struggled thru high school barely read then, and don't read now."

I was an avid reader in my teens, and per the WAIS-R was of a "significantly above average" (but nowhere near MENSA level) IQ, for whatever that may be worth. I also struggled in many aspects of school (mostly social, etc. I was one of the early ones getting the diagnosis of ADD and later ADHD) while being that avid reader. As soon as I became an adult, that stopped. The last book I read was probably 7 or 8 years ago. I either don't have or don't make the time.

"The children who grew up with phones and tablets in hand, they DEMAND that their parents buy them real physical books."

Upshot here is that while you've seen this first hand, it sounds like you're treating an outlier as more than that. I'm an outlier to the former assertion, and the children you speak of are on outlier to the latter.

"For example, book sales were higher in 2025 than they were in 2019, and only a bit below their high point in the pandemic. Independent bookstores are booming, not busting; at least 422 new indie shops opened in the United States last year alone. Even Barnes & Noble is cool again."

My roommate is a person who is constantly on TikTok and such. All they do is watch and reshare short form. They buy lots of books, but they don't read. They don't have the ability to because it cannot hold their attention. They buy the books because they appreciate the craft, especially the cover design, and as a matter of preservation given the current climate and revisionist censorship that has been going on. I feel like the person in this article hasn't been very thorough in investigating everything.

only Capitalism could muster. Always looking for a way to make a claim and profit from something they have no right to.

large cities create undue stress on the water systems...

...people can learn to put their damn phones down for a while. Understand that it's not good to constantly be attached to devices consuming metric tons of short form, stop chasing the constant dopa hit. If you're going to watch a movie or something, then actually watch it.

Appears as a lowercase o with a tilde over it to me. Why can't they just use a regular uppercase X and be done with it?

Eh, it's the "I don't want to see this" thing which makes the bar go away, but eventually they turn it back on requiring you to once again tell them you don't want to see it. IMO it should simply stay gone unless/until I go manually enable it.

Never re-enable them after I specifically turn them off in my feed. Pretty simple, eh?

Interesting that instead of responding to their points, you move to attack the person. Makes it seem like maybe your points are weak and you have nothing left.

FWIW, I started using Graphene a while back and have found it largely perfectly usable as well. Nothing they said is wrong, nearly everything I could use on an "accepted" android version works. Banking apps, games that used play protect (and whatever Google uses now) still work. Wallet works though cries about the OS but I don't use NFC, so for me, it doesn't matter. If it matters for others, then I guess Graphene isn't for them. You know, choice. Imagine that. Graphene isn't a super easy to use walled garden like Samsung and others try to build, so it may not be palatable for the masses, but that can change over time too. Maybe whatever the FSF comes up with in their Librephone thing will manage it. Definitely interested in seeing how that works out because we need more choices that don't give root level access to paying corporations and refuse to let people do things on/with their phone that they own and should be able to do.

Links to MSN. *headscratch*

So what? The .gov shouldn't be a shareholder of anything.

Is this the new idiot trend like eWhatever and iWhatever were in the early 2000's? Everything is going to be "vibe" this and "vibe" that?

"They have lots of competition already."

It's not real competition. These "providers" are just middlemen reselling electricity at a heavy markup. They don't do any work or maintenance on the lines or generate any electricity. All these "providers" do is buy low, and sell high. Even when you get a "cheap" plan, you're overpaying for the electricity. Fitting that Enron, who did exactly this in California, is going to show up in Texas, which is doing the same "deregulated" schtick that caused so many problems for Californians.

Has acknowledged what all of us have known for decades.

Cool. Can we sue them for all the lies they've peddled all this time?

This was my take. Like, I get some rules for attire, like no crotchless or excessively tight pants, no super low cut/revealing tops, basically no wearing things that legitimately could be used for advantage by providing a distraction. Players shouldn't have to worry about anything except the game in front of them. Wearing jeans doesn't hit on that so it shouldn't be a problem.