Well, when I was a kid my favorite things where always electronics, TV, radio, music, so if I had children I would never deprive my children of electronics, no matter what the “experts” say.

Not electronics, screens. My kid has lots of music and electronic toys, just not a tablet or smartphone to play with independently (yet). And it’s not about deprivation, it’s about moderation. The screen moratorium is mostly for children under age 3 or 4 as very young children are pure hedonists and they lack emotional regulation and impulse control.

Well, I have to disagree on this one, if I’m dealing with complicated texts where I need to quickly refer to multiple sections then nothing beats being able to crtl + f. Also scrolling is much faster than turning pages. But I guess it can be a personal thing.

I concede that this heavily determined by personal flow and I even noted that point in my original comment. I think both our perspectives on this are valid, but I just wanted to clarify that by “complicated texts,” I mean texts where you need to have immediate or quick access to jump back and forth between sections e.g. scholarly editions or books like House of Leaves that are literally “complex text.”

Yes you can lend a book from a library, but in my experience libraries never have anything worth reading…

This may be determined by the libraries that you have access to, but where I live I can get almost any in print book from my library. Granted, I can’t get it immediately, but through inter-library loan, I get a lot of books that aren’t in my local libraries’ collections that I would otherwise have to purchase. The main thing is to have a reading queue and place requests in advance which, I admit, is its own skill. My neighborhood is also full of the little free libraries that the original thread is in reference to, which have been a great source of free books (I also give away books to the free libraries, too).

I think you are also greatly exaggerating the technical skills needed to download a book, sometimes even just searching “book name pdf download” is enough to download a book, which can be done on a smartphone that most people already own.

I’m not exaggerating at all. Sure, it is easy at face value, but it really does assume a lot of preexisting digital literacy and technical knowledge. We might be reaching a point where enough people have these skills from youth, but older generations are still lacking a lot basic tech literacy.

…buying a physical book online or lending it from a library also means the book is registered to the reader’s name electronically, in this case tied to the user’s real name and payment details.

Okay, so two things here:

1. I’m not talking about privacy regarding purchasing goods online (good point, but that’s a different privacy concern), I’m talking about the privacy ecosystem on the device itself e.g. bloatware infested tablets, proprietary walled-garden e-readers, and apps that exist to collect data and serve ads.
2. All libraries in the United States, at least for now, are very protective of patron data. Some libraries even regularly purge the check-out history. Bullet three of the America Library Association’s code of professional ethics even states: “We protect each library user’s right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted.” It’s baked into the modern library profession to protect the patron’s privacy. I haven’t heard of any entity or group hacking (or subpoenaing) public libraries for check-out history other than the Federal government.

Now I actually favor reading on a screen…

You might be a monster. 😂

It’s widely accepted among pediatricians and psychologists that you should delay introducing your kids to screens as long as possible. We started reading to our kid when they were a newborn and there is no way in hell that I would be blasting them with a tablet screen (children’s ebooks tend to be pdfs because of all the graphics, which also rules out using e-ink readers). Reading to a child is also a pre-bedtime activity in low light where stimuli should be reduced; a tablet or e-reader is far from ideal here.

A lot of children’s books in the 0-4 range are also tactile, include lift-the-flaps, have mirrors or noisemakers, and are safe to chew on. The other thing is that in order to teach independence, the kid needs to be able to access and choose books on their own which is something a physical books and a shelf is really good at and an e-reader is really bad at.

One may argue that physical books are expensive, impractical, or whatever, but there are several organizations that send free books monthly to kids (we are subscribed to two of them). Public libraries are really good for exposing kids to books that don’t have to be purchased as well as teaching additional skills like:

• patience (can’t have a book another kid has, or have to wait until we can go to the library),
• spatial awareness (where the library is, where the children’s shelves are), and
• temporary possession of objects (the books have to be returned).

And to your earlier point about physical books being “a novelty of the past,” I would counter by saying that physical books and ebooks are not a binary pair and using them to read is not an exclusive or (the exception being children’s books).

• Textbooks are great candidates for ebook versions because of their intended use and unintended bulk; there are also enhancements to ebooks that work really well for textbooks and manuals, like search/find.
• Fast-paced novels, especially those in a series, are great candidates for ebooks particularly when the reader knows they will consume multiple books quickly.
• Physical books are preferable when dealing with images or large formats. I can’t imagine reading a coffee-table book or art book is as effective on e-reader.
• Physical books are also better options for complicated texts, especially ones that the reader needs to quickly refer to multiple sections of text while reading e.g. indices, appendices, or that chapter where a character is first introduced. I know there’s digital analogues, but they don’t work for everyone.
• E-books make sense when you want to have hundreds or thousands of books immediately on hand, or don’t want to clutter a dwelling with bookshelves.
• Physical books are great for acquiring out-of-print titles. Sure, someone may have created a decent pdf or epub of it, but there are texts that are easier to find used physical copies than a digital version.
• In a complete reversal of what I just wrote, e-books are great for finding out-of-print titles that are prohibitively expensive to acquire. Thanks to that random internet user who created that spectacular pdf.
• Digital versions of manga or comics make a lot of sense, especially when considering the amount of space those collected items require.

At the end of the day, the medium you use to read is a preference and I am a strong advocate for audiobooks, ebooks, and physical books being simultaneously available. What I am not an advocate for, is the dismissal of the print on physical media as if it is not one of the most stable and easily accessible methods for communication. No matter how you argue it, at the end of the day, ebooks and audiobooks still require mediation and energy. Those formats also impose technical and financial barriers to access (you may be savvy enough to access thousands of books for free and maintain your own e-reader that respects your privacy, but the majority of people to whom e-books are marketed to cannot). I can lend or give away a physical book to anyone I meet and they can immediately read it; the same cannot be said for digitally reformatted texts.

I think hip-hop, specifically dirty south hip-hop, dominating mainstream pop charts around that time had something to do with it; e.g. Outkast, Lil Wayne, Lil Jon, Rick Ross, Ludacris, etc. I also remember about 10 years ago reading reddit posts as well as hearing people in grad school intentionally advocate for the usage of y’all (or the even more annoying folks) as better inclusive term as opposed to “you guys”.

But if y’all annoys you, let me tell all y’all about super plurals like all y’all…

In my experience it most efficiently explains lower and middle managers who were internal promotions from the ranks of non-supervisory or regular staff.

In some jobs, like academia, you will run out of regular promotions and will just end up plateauing, especially in salary. The only way out of this is to become a manager of some sorts: department head, assistant manager, section head, project manager, etc. or to do a lateral transfer to a different job where you can renegotiate salary, benefits, and job description. Or in the case of true academics, supplement income with book tours, speaking fees, consulting, etc.

Some of the worst managers I’ve encountered were people who had been doing their jobs for about a decade and needed that “promotion” to management to get a raise or move away from a job they physically or emotionally couldn’t do anymore.

But bad managers are a bell curve with MBAs and career management types on one end and “Bob, who finally got that promotion” on the other.

RiffTrax. Especially the Star Wars prequels and the Twilight trilogy.

You’ve got my bow…

Beyond the practical advice in this thread, I’ll add that there have been more times I’ve gone fishing to sit and think in the quiet outside than to actually catch fish. I find it just as fun to wander around the bank of a pond or paddle around a lake or river trying to fish as much as actually fishing.

I grew up with bait casters and cane poles and a family that loved fishing, but now I’m learning how to fly fish and I feel kinda stupid. I’ve always wanted to fly fish and never had access to it, so now I’m basically starting from scratch: new method, new species, new environments.

Here’s my strategy and thoughts on fishing and hobbies in general:

1. Learn how the equipment works. I’ve never used flies or a fly rod before, so I’m taking the time to learn how to use it and understand how it works. I like manuals and books, but others have pointed out that there are a lot of video series out there for fishing.
2. Learn about the fish in my area. I grew up primarily pond and lake fishing on either the bank or by boat for primarily panfish, catfish, crappie, and largemouth bass. While those fish are in my region, I also have access to trout and other species I’m not familiar with. New regions and species also mean new regulations and laws; don’t forget to learn about daily limits or mandatory catch and release. You don’t want to end up accidentally having a protected species in your creel or on your stringer when a game warden stops by.
3. Set reasonable expectations and achievable goals. This isn’t my primary hobby and I don’t have the time to disappear every weekend on fishing trips. It’s going to be a slow process and I’m going to make mistakes. I also don’t expect to catch a fish for a long time. My goal is to learn something new and practice doing it. What’s your reason for fishing?
4. Don’t over indulge on gear. You can drive yourself mad trying to get the best gear, especially the way it is marketed, but I’ve had just as much fun fishing for bream with a cane pole, a box of crickets, and a styrofoam bobber older than I am as I’ve had with a collection of tackle boxes, high-end bait casters and a bass boat. You can catch panfish with stale bread and catfish with hotdogs.
5. Be honest with yourself about your learning style. Some people can teach themselves a new skill, some people need lessons. How much can you teach yourself before you need help, or how much money (for you) is it worth spending to learn how to fish?

The compliment to the quote above should be “misery loves company.”

There’s a variation of this that I like better: “It’s not your fault but it is your responsibility.”

Framing it this way shifts the tone from passive to active; you have a problem, but you take responsibility. It also helps the responsible party set themself up for correcting the behavior in the future. Saying you’re late because of traffic and accepting the consequences is fine, but recognizing that you need to leave earlier to accommodate traffic is better.

I had a teacher who would ask for an explanation, not an excuse. If the explanation started to place blame on someone or something else, he’d just shake his head and say “no excuses.”

Amazing! Thanks for taking the time to share. I figured there was an aesthetic interest in addition to the morbid curiosity.

I went through a phase where I wanted to build a library of weird, bizarre, cult, occult, and outlandish books (which I why I had a copy of Dianetics among other religious texts). I abandoned the idea mostly because I didn’t want to dedicate space to books that I never wanted to read or felt repulsed by reading.

If you like kitschy and bizarre books, I recommend checking out the following (if you haven’t already encountered them before):

• Telecult Power by R. Durbin
• Apocalypse Culture by A. Parfrey

Telecult Power makes me laugh since it’s a how-to for developing telepathy and telekinesis. Apocalypse Culture creeps me out and reading essays from that book is like dropping into a conversation midway while no one cares to explain what’s going on.

Bibleman and A History of Christian Hymnody are wildly different theological materials; what’s the criteria for your collection?

Do you study religions or is the there something else, like an aesthetic thing, that drives your collection?

Also, how much of this have you read and is there any of it that you believe?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, but I find the notion of collecting cult and religious media to be fascinating, especially if it’s for reasons other than faith.

Wow, you might be serious.

I used to keep tabs on the weird religious stuff for fun, but most of it turns my stomach these days to the point that I can’t even laugh at it.

Definitely got super drunk and riffed on Kirk Cameron videos back when he had that Way of the Master series (e.g. the banana video).

I used to have a copy of Dianetics that you would have thoroughly enjoyed.

You should try to acquire a copy of a Mormon seminary textbooks. There should be a series of four of them: Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants/Church History (this is one is a gold mine). The Mormons apparently make them available as PDFs for the current versions, but the older ones are sure to be better.

I’ve got you tagged now as “collects weird religious stuff”. Congrats.

You want me to send you free copies of the Book of Mormon and the Watchtower, too?

I consider it a civic duty to collect these whenever I find them and throw them in the trash.

The honest answer is this: Salami (sliced salami), pepperoni (sliced spicy salami), and sausage (pre-cooked fennel-flavored uncased/crumbled pork sausage).

In the US, “sausage” tends to generically refer to uncured, fresh, or raw sausages, often really meaning “ground meat mixed with herbs and spices sometimes in a tube or casing (but not always).”

Ten years ago two-day shipping meant two days from order to delivery. It now means two-day delivery once shipped in one to five business days. Most prime eligible purchases now just mean “free shipping.”

I got attached to Prime as a student where two-day shipping and a $50 annual student subscription made it a useful service. There are Prime features on parts of the Amazon website I couldn’t find my way back to the same way twice. The site is riddled with dark patterns from customer service to Prime video.

I haven’t been able to transition my household fully off Amazon, but I have switched to alibris.com as an alternative storefront for books and other media. Used sellers like thriftbooks, half-price books, and goodwill are all Amazon booksellers on alibris for the same price. They’re all shipping via media mail anyway, so Prime is useless on both sites.

You just need an algal symbiote.

It’s like a fuchikoma/tachikoma from Ghost in the Shell.

Yep. Apollo shutting down is why I created an account, deleted all my content and my Reddit account once things started getting really fucky.