allturtles

> Using a 1960s book as a benchmark feels weird to me. I'd expect books to be more expensive when they come out and less expensive when they're the fiftieth low-cost reprint 60 years later.

Well it doesn't matter. Even if you compare to books that are newly published, new hardcover fiction is not $43-54. Typical is about $30.

I see this kind of take a lot, and I don't think it's convincing. To me it's similar to saying that the water frame and the power loom won't change anything, because people have been able to make thread and cloth for millenia.

You described a want, not a need. How often does this actually come up? If your friends are frequently having "emergencies" that prevent them from meeting you, they may not be good friends.

Yeah there are quite a few exceptions to this. I've been (re-)reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and two of the four people directly involved in the discovery and explanation of nuclear fission were 60 (Hahn and Meitner) the other two (Frisch and Strassman) were in their mid-to-late 30s. Shortly after, Bohr (53) figured out that the oddities of uranium's fission behavior were due to the different activation energies of U-235 and U-238.

I think the best place to look for major works late in life is probably historical writing, which calls for accumulated knowledge and wisdom. Looking at the four most recent winners of the Pulitzer Prize in history from 2023-2025 [0], all appear to be north of 50 based on their Wikipedia pages (which give dates of education if not dates of birth), and one is in her 70s [1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_History [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Jones

The industrial revolution is coming for white collar work. I'm finding Marx more and more relevant these days:

"So soon as the handling of this tool becomes the work of a machine, then, with the use-value, the exchange-value too, of the workman’s labour-power vanishes; the workman becomes unsaleable, like paper money thrown out of currency by legal enactment. That portion of the working-class, thus by machinery rendered superfluous, i.e., no longer immediately necessary for the self-expansion of capital, either goes to the wall in the unequal contest of the old handicrafts and manufactures with machinery, or else floods all the more easily accessible branches of industry, swamps the labour-market, and sinks the price of labour-power below its value."[0]

[0]: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm

> You might be able to argue he was a bigger star than any of them.

I think that's a hard argument to make.

Candace Bergen's career was just as long. Her first movie role was 1966, she was nominated for an Oscar in 1979, and she was on a popular sitcom from 1988 to 1998 that won her five Emmies and attracted national commentary after criticism from the Vice President.

I was a kid in the 80s and 90s and to me even then Chuck Norris was a B-movie self-parody joke character. He was not an A-list "action star" in the sense that Schwarzenegger, Stallone, or even Van Damme were.

I can't speak for jn6118, but for me the reason I tend to avoid used books unless there is no other option is the lack of reliable quality standards. Used book listings rarely come with pictures of the actual item being sold, and the same used book listed as "very good" may be nearly brand-new from one seller with minor wear to the dust jacket, and from another have a broken spine, writing inside, discolored pages and an unpleasant odor.

I hadn't considered that. I can see how without modern conveniences the tradeoff would make sense.

Fascinating. I'm not sure what would drive someone to do this, since until the child can actually go to the toilet on their own, you haven't achieved the actual point (IMO) of the training.

> My mom toilet trained me at 3 months.

Is this a typo? I don't see how it could be physically possible for a three-month-old to be toilet trained. Among other things, they can't sit up on a toilet seat or walk to the bathroom.

Because they are irrelevant victim-blaming.

Well we are getting some "real change" now, so I guess the monkey's paw works.

AFAICT this is the actual bill: https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2025/11/eng/in...

Your selective quoting is extremely misleading. The first section about publishing a name/photograph only applies in the context of "for purposes of advertising products, events, political activities, merchandise, goods, or services or for purposes of fundraising, solicitation of donations, purchases of products, merchandise, goods, or services or to influence elections or referenda." i.e. it's illegal to pretend someone is endorsing something they are not.

> woman in the Missouri-plated Honda.

Why this fixation among conservatives on the out-of-state plates? Desire to pin unrest on "outside agitators" a la Ghorman? [1] In fact the woman lived in Minneapolis, if that matters to you for some reason. [2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_(Andor) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ren%C3%A9e_Good#Ren...

True, but I think it's rather beside the point. Administrators shouldn't be censoring materials from professors' syllabi.

Inciting someone else to criminal activity has been a crime since forever. This is not a 'post-modern' concept.

> At no point in human history have humans not worked

This is a non sequitur. The discussion is about the point of life. At no point in history have humans not pooped, but I would imagine that few consider pooping the point of life.

> Carefully consider the lifestyle of someone living several decades ago. Would you honestly want to live such a lifestyle yourself?

Sure, I lived it, and it was very pleasant at the time and in many ways better than now in retrospect. e.g. always-on access to infinite content engines like YouTube, TikTok, X, Facebook, etc. is probably a net negative, both for individuals and society. I wouldn't want to go back a century or more and give up air conditioning, dishwashers, washing machines, air travel, electric lights. But a few decades, sure, in a heartbeat.

> That was the principle many years ago, you had to leave the world exactly in the state you found it in.

This is not true as a generality. e.g. soap operas had long-running stories long before DVRs. Many prime-time dramas and comedies had major event episodes that changed things dramatically (character deaths, weddings, break-ups, etc.), e.g. the whole "Who shot J.R." event on *Dallas*. Almost all shows that I watched as a kid in the 80s had gradual shifts in character relationships over time (e.g. the on-again/off-again relationship between Sam and Diane on Cheers). Child actors on long-running shows would grow up and the situations on the show changed to account for that as they move from grade school, to high school, to college or jobs.

> The point is that someone who chose to work for Google recently could not actually believe that building datacenters is “raping the planet”.

Of course they could. (1) People are capable of changing their minds. His opinion of data centers may have been changed recently by the rapid growth of data centers to support AI or for who knows what other reasons. (2) People are capable of cognitive dissonance. They can work for an organization that they believe to be bad or even evil.

Yes, absolutely. How else would you define it? The whole point of happiness is that is a subjective, internal state. If you just want to know if people live in a cold, dark climate you don't need to ask them.

So you believe students don't use AI to cheat, and you are calling the OP naive?

I would look at the secondary consequences of the totaling of white collar labor in the same way. Without the upper-middle-class spending their disposable income, consumer spending shrivels, advertising dollars dry up, and investment in growth no longer makes sense in most industries. It looks like a path to total economic destruction to me.

I agree with all this, except there is no plan B. What could plan B possibly be when white collar work collapses? You can go into a trade, but who will be hiring the tradespeople?

I think in the context of the GP's comment, 'never' means it never (or hardly ever) happened on the products it was expected to happen on (home computers, as understood circa late 70s/early 80s). Yes, it has happened on very different devices decades later.

Why does a fan app need to find the WiFi networks? The OS does this, and then serves an internet connection to the app. It doesn't need to know what the available networks are.

My interpretation: the mirror is a symbol of vanity.

This is a brilliant piece of satire. "A Modest Proposal" for the AI age.

The leader bios are particularly priceless. "While working for 12 years as the Director of HR for a multinational, Faith realized that firing people gave her an almost-spiritual high. Out of the office, Faith coaches a little league softball team and looks after her sick mother - obligations she looks forward to being free of!"

As someone totally ignorant of British airports, a Google maps search for "airports northern england" shows Teesside, Carlisle, and Newcastle all significantly closer to Edinburgh than Manchester. Are these not places where a 737 under emergency could land? Or was the weather also bad there?

It's a 55-year-old book about a businessman who was modestly famous in his lifetime and now is pretty much unknown. Was it some mega-hit at the time? If not, then <10K were ever printed. How many do you expect to still be floating around vs. being in landfill? How many people do you think are clamoring for a copy at their local library? FWIW, you can buy one on eBay right now for ~$15.