I didn’t truly enjoy reading until my early adulthood. Now I love it, even though I read for a living (working in fintech). My rules that lead to being a book lover:

1. Read 20 min a night before bed. It’s relaxing and makes me tired. I leverage that.
2. Read what you like. Read the first third of as many different genres as possible. Libraries help with this, but used books are also dirt cheap. I prefer “hard sci fi”, where physics is obeyed. Also, I love a good “dude with amnesia” story because it puts you in the same place as the narrator.
3. Don’t guilt yourself for not completing a book. Who cares? Learn to enjoy the process, not the payoff. Bored of the book? Put it down. Move on.
4. There’s no test at the end. Don’t read like you need to know everything. Just try to absorb the story.

These work for me. I finish about 3-7 books a year but start many more.

Benefits I’ve noticed:

• Better attention span. As others have said here, books demand more commitment than other media.
• Extensive vocabulary.
• Gets me away from screens. Working in tech means I use a screen 8-12hrs/day. Going home to use screens for entertainment is a bummer to me.
• I connect with wisdom imparted by books. IMO, “The Daily Stoic” wouldn’t connect as deeply for me if it wasn’t presented in that packaging.
• The social aspect. I promise sharing the books you love with others will kindle relationships, and sometimes life long. That benefit exists whether or not you like the same genres as them.
  • Related: books are never lent; they’re given, and ideally have a long lineage of owners.

These are my opinions, not statements of fact.

Like most things in life, there’s no “right” answer. It just needs to be right for you at that time. Be patient and try to not judge yourself harshly for the things you do or don’t like, but do try as much as you have appetite for.

I recommend Andy Wier (The Martian, Project Hail Mary) and Blake Crouch (Dark Matter, Recursion) to anyone looking to read more engaging fiction.

There’s another way. Adaptive headlights can fix this: https://youtube.com/shorts/AgxVuXC0T44

You’re not wrong though. Even crappy headlights on taller vehicles seem much brighter to observers. My buddy’s 2005 RAM is proof. When we’re in it, I’d have better luck seeing with a flashlight, but when he’s driving behind my car, it’s like someone’s shining the bat signal into my rear window.

Also, don’t get me started on people who replace their bulbs with HID or LED bulbs but don’t spend the money on projector headlights. It’s infuriating.

Enterprise Architect here.

This is the answer. All the way.

At my job, employees haven’t written code since the asp classic days and it was garbage back then. This meant almost all new code is written by contractors, which is often garbage. And slow, expensive garbage at that.

Now, AI can at least make better code than the contractors at a fraction of the price.

It also tightens the feedback loop between getting half-assed requirements and getting the deliverables back to those who requested them so they can say how it’s not what they asked for. That process used to take months, now it takes like a day between iterations.

I honestly don’t know where people are working where they say they have tight control of first party deliverables and clear requirements with a cogent SDLC. All companies I’ve worked for have been about 1-2k employees. Are these people working in 10k large organizations where people can afford to be an expert in only one thing and camp on it their whole career?

Also, remember those debugger skills because we’ll all need it.

Best “car guy” trope I’ve ever heard is that BMW signals work fine and the drivers use them. They just emit a spectrum of light that the poors can’t see.

As a BMW driver myself, I’m on the opposite end of that spectrum. I signal my intent to an obnoxious degree. If I get into an accident, the other motorist can’t claim they didn’t know where I was going.

Literally reading it now. I hit that section last night. I put the book down immediately and started reading about the Chinese Room.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

Worth a read for anyone who thinks AI may be sentient, or for those trying to pop the psychosis bubble of an buddy.

I agree with this. I have an openclaw setup since I want to own my own data and services. A few months ago Sonnet was the clear leader for general use task for me. Now Gemma 4 performs nearly as well hosted off my gaming PC. Based on resource utilization, I actually think I can run it from the same nuc that openclaw is hosted from.

Oh man that’s the dream right there. #lifegoals

Only problem is that it’s all I want to drink. That and coffee (and occasional wine/cocktail)

It’s a pricey one, but a kegerator converted to corny kegs. Infinite seltzer water.

Plus room for another carbonated beverage of your choice.

Agreed, but his bit about scrubber wire coming off and getting swallowed has made me strongly consider buying one of these.

Destin from the YouTube channel Smarter Every Day had a hand in the creation of this. Is a great video highlighting the dire situation of US manufacturing.

https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY

I think you’re missing my point. It’s not that “people don’t buy American, even though it’s more expensive.” I’m saying that when done in a heads-up way, Americans will nearly unanimously choose the lower cost option instead of buying American; not because it’s American, but because it’s cheaper. Out of the examples of Redwing boots and Lodge cookware, how much cheap, disposable trash is purchased instead of the highly durable, more expensive goods?

I understand this is “hand-wavy” and I do not intend it with snark: my sources are literally every big-box and online retailer inventory sheet in the US, especially at America’s largest retailers; Walmart and Amazon to name a few.

Also, I would say that companies in nearly all cases benefit financially by offshoring of production. Their sales may take a short term hit, but any decrease in sales is vastly outweighed by hysterically larger profit margins.

My point is that cost is the driver, not moral stance. I’m also not judging. Looking at the average income in the US vs GDP, it’s entirely understandable behavior.

I also don’t want to piss you off, but you seem upset. Is it fair to say that you prefer to buy American? If so, good for you. We should pay all workers what they’re worth, Americans included. This comment is on a cartoon, brother. I’m just saying “yes, and…”

Certain companies have tried this in a heads-up fashion: offer both the USA made option and one made overseas. The catch is the one made in the USA is 3x more expensive.

0% of people bought the USA-made one.

Source

Travel. Ignore him. I’ve had the pleasure visiting 7 countries, 5 non English native. Top of the list are Italy, Sweden, Czech Republic, England, Ireland, Canada (Montreal). I’d travel more if I had more money and time to. It’s been one of the most impactful things on me as a human.

The US has no national language by design. We’re a melting pot; a country of immigrants. That is our greatest strength. Taking the often humble, mixing it, mutating it, and making it our own.

I don’t speak any other languages, but I try. Only on very rare occasions was language a barrier. I understand I’m a guest in other people’s countries so I mind my p’s & q’s. You’re representing your country, so be kind. Approach other cultures with genuine curiosity. At least learn basic phrases like hello, goodbye, please, thank you, and anything else you can manage, but you don’t need to fluent.

IMO, US born tourist are the worst. Loud, entitled, obnoxious, ignorant. They expect everywhere to be just perfect for them and how they like to live, like it’s Disney World. Those people won’t get a whole lot out of travel and just make us look worse than we already do on the international stage. Oh and the “influencers”… In Venice, they were like locusts.

I’ve also traveled all over the US and it can be beautiful, but you live here; you’ll get much more of a perspective shift going somewhere completely different. Also, by comparison of other countries, the US is pretty mid. Traveling help you see the US for what it is, not for what we’re told it is.

Definitely go with your instinct here. Foster that curiosity. I promise it will pay dividends you can’t imagine now.

I’m curious how energy costs affect public transit. Of course they have very good bargaining power and are well set up to augment energy prices.

To Google DuckDuckGo!