Division was manufactured when Trump became president? So what do you propose as the reason for why he became president in the first place? Who is responsible for that?

This is a collection of interesting old websites: https://peelopaalu.neocities.org/

Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume 2, On Reading and Books, 295 -

"Because people always read only the latest, instead of the best of all times, writers stay within a narrow circle of circulating ideas, and the age silts up ever more deeply in its own muck.

Therefore with respect to our reading the art of not reading is extremely important. It consists in our not picking up whatever happens to be occupying the greater public at any given time, such as for instance political or literary pamphlets, novels, poems and so on, which currently make a lot of noise and even reach several editions in the first and last years of their run. On the contrary, we should consider that whoever writes for fools always finds a large public, and we should devote the always precious and carefully measured time set aside for reading exclusively to the works of the great minds of all times and peoples, who tower over the rest of humanity, and who are distinguished as such by the voice of fame. Only they really shape and instruct us.

Of the inferior we can never read too little and the good never too often. Bad books are intellectual poison: they ruin the mind.

In order to read the good it is a condition that we do not read the bad; for life is short, and our time and our powers are limited."

Just moving my lamp around (i.e., making my face whiter, I'm guessing?) could add 2-3 points. Putting on glasses could do the same. Not sure what to make of this.

Of course the methods listed should be effective regardless of the language as they simulate immersion, but it will not be so "painless" the further away you move from the European language families which share many similarities.

What kind of work do you do? I've heard nice things about working for the government (in terms of QOL, anyway), though of course the work is nothing sexy.

Every job I've had was like that person describes. I never, ever handle work matters outside of work hours. I won't even know about it until next day.

I always said that I'd rather get fired than take work home, but I was never even asked.

'If anyone should think he has solved the problem of life & feels like telling himself everything is quite easy now, he need only tell himself, in order to see that he is wrong, that there was a time when this "solution" had not been discovered; but it must have been possible to live then too & the solution which has now been discovered appears in relation to how things were then like an accident. And it is the same for us in logic too. If there were a "solution to the problems of logic (philosophy)" we should only have to caution ourselves that there was a time when they had not been solved (and then too it must have been possible to live and think).' - Wittgenstein

That's fascinating but I don't understand his argument. Wouldn't it mean that no problem can be solved? There was a time before Wiles proved Fermat, for example.

I think the central thesis of his argument is closer to, "No matter how big of a problem you've solved, life went on without that solution previously, so don't get too big of a head about it"

"The cemeteries are full of indispensable men."

Private schools can be and are as unfair as they want, only it's upsetting when they still maintain pretenses suggesting they are not.

It's nice that this sort of due diligence and review is even possible with public institutions.

Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest discusses this, only it's a film.

Other commenters here seem to say that the culture, if not the modern phenomenon, of children moving out of their parents' homes early is more characteristic of the West (U.S., Western Europe), and not so much places like China, Japan, India (continuation of tradition, less modern stigmatization). This aligns with my experience and what little I learned in school as well. (Yes, N = 1.)

It so happens that this pattern is economically inefficient, and only in our inability to support it does its discontinuation serve as a negative economic indicator. American culture makes it an effective metric in the U.S. Where it's already common for children to live with their parents longer though, such as in India, the original choice could very likely be to stay, which makes the metric less useful.