Romans and coups. An Austrian Hapsburg and another Austrian Hapsburg. Russia and taking massive casualties.

Yeah, I take several random samples of the prose from throughout the book, just to get a good sense of the overall style. Though I do always begin with the first paragraph, and on at least one case, that was enough to immediately close and buy the book.

That being the over-the-top, sorta Victorian prose of Jacqueline Carey:

Lest anyone should suppose that I am a cuckoo’s child, got on the wrong side of the blanket by lusty peasant stock and sold into indenture in a shortfallen season, I may say that I am House-born and reared in the Night Court proper, for all the good it did me. It is hard for me to resent my parents, although I envy them their naïveté...

She then keeps going just like that for three large books, probably totaling something like 2k pages. I loved every page of it.

Yeah that's more of a hotel thing. I'm guessing this is that influencer trick of intentionally lying about a detail so people will make comments to correct you, giving you free engagement.

The main difference I see is that when a professional wants to read something very thoroughly, they employ techniques of what's called slow reading. That's usually when the highlighter comes out along with note-taking materials.

This is possible with print information because of how much of it is put in front of your eyes at once. Rereading a paragraph, even a half dozen times to guarantee you fully understood it, is very easy with print. It is not with audio. Flipping back to page xxx to check something, also very easy with print and less so with audio. Smoothly speeding up/slowing down your rate of consumption to match the complexity of the current topic, also easier with text than audio. Etc etc.

So, for casual consumption, they're fairly equivalent and both fine. But if you wanted to claim mastery of a complex topic after putting years of intensive effort in, I'd say that probably required some reading that could not have been replaced by listening, and if you did no reading, I'm going to be a little doubtful of your mastery of the knowledge. It's possible to still understand what you need to, of course, but you definitely neglected what is usually the most efficient, reliable method by far.

This is more of a system issue than bad behavior of an individual charity.

Charities can underpay a little bit, because working for a charity has its own appeal. But if you want a talented, experienced person to run your org, you have to consider what they could make if they worked for someone else. San Diego is not a cheap city, and has its fair share of CEO positions.

If you really want to stretch your dollar though, local food banks are probably a better bet.

No, they've been getting progressively crazier since 2016.

2000 was fairly divisive, it went to the Supreme Court after all. But it wasn't even a fraction this dramatic, people mostly shrugged and figured GWB would be like his father, which was unfortunate, but sane at any rate. Nobody was really predicting 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

2004 was pretty dull. John Kerry challenged GWB but felt sort of like an empty suit.

2008 was nice, Obama was a strong and exciting candidate vs the very known quantity of McCain, who was a moderate repub known for bipartisanship. Sarah Palin provided for hours of entertaining impersonations by people like Tina Fey, but since she was the VP candidate nobody really cared.

2012 was dull. Romney was a strong candidate, another moderate repub. But Obama was fine, he hadn't broken the country or anything. Brought us out of a recession, even if people were upset about bank bailouts and stuff. Lot of people got health insurance.

Then it starts getting spicy.

I mean, tbf that was admittedly last millennium.

"If I have to create stories so that ~~the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people~~ we win, then that's what I'm going to do."

Yea, we already knew that JD, thanks.

Eh, there's one additional way we can stop them. A landslide victory that puts her massively over the electoral college threshold would make a handful of compromised counties completely irrelevant.

lol This is almost as good as getting him to say out loud that he's never had sexual relations with any living room furniture.

Ah, LinkedIn, exactly where I want to get nuanced answers to weird questions from.

Have to admit, Extinction Rebellion is a pretty good name for an activist group.