I had to look at the date because this has happened before.

https://www.casino.org/news/pennsylvania-woman-charged-leaving-children-in-car/

https://www.mcall.com/2022/10/21/paul-muschick-no-excuse-for-parents-who-gamble-with-their-kids-lives-by-leaving-them-alone-in-cars-at-pa-casinos-2/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cops-pennsylvania-mom-left-boy-9-alone-in-car-to-play-casino-slots/

https://www.thereporteronline.com/2013/07/10/police-toddler-left-in-car-outside-pa-casino/amp/

https://6abc.com/parx-casino-philadelphia-bucks-county-pennsylvania/553111/

https://patch.com/pennsylvania/te/woman-banned-valley-forge-casino-leaving-infant-car

etc.

I would want to know the author's educational background, what other books they had written, what awards they garnered. I'd Google them, read the wiki, see if their works had been covered in important book review publications. I would do that to at least sort of determine their legitimacy and if they looked ok and the topic interested me I would then buy the book.

I do not discount Amazon reviews in making that assessment as they can often be quite informative, especially regarding non-fiction.

The thing is, so much of what I learned in college and grad school fifty years ago has now been deemed bullshit. Plate tectonics was heresy. Genes never changed. Animals were Pavlovian mechanisms. And so on and on and on. You can only do the best with info available at the time and know that nothing is written in stone. Education never stops.

Kind of bottom level but the Fakespot browser extension analyses Amazon reviews. Just because a book has lots if positive reviews does not in any way add to the veracity. As a matter of fact, if I see a non-fiction book with thousands of reviews and five stars I immediately think it is probably bs along the lines of Dr. Oz or Oprah.

Your assessment jives from what I have read as far as professional reviews but hey, if her books take people away from their worries or just get them reading then plusses have been plussed.

What specifically are you doing to advance this goal of yours?

Used to live at 5th and Delancey. Having a nostalgia moment here.

Will be interesting to see if the signs are picked up after the election.

I cannot understand how he could spot it for what it was when it was so far in the distance. The man has good eyes.

My neighbor was working down the Navy Yard and got pix of AF1 and the helicopters. The audio is him saying 'look, Air Force 1' and his co-workers saying now way and then Way.

Here's an even better bit - cashews are closely related to poison ivy and, if improperly cleaned cashews are consumed, you can come down with what is essentially an internal poison ivy-like condition.

Source - been there, done that.

"While working as an accounting department employee for the Allegheny Controller's office, 25-year-old Cam Zmenkowski, sent "sexually explicit messages and sexual assaults occurred over the past several months..."

He's 25????????????

If you go back to the golden age of editing and look at Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins and take a look at the manuscript pages, the relationship is obviously collaborative. Both those authors are noted for their brevity - that is not an accident!

The self-publishing that has blossomed with Amazon is terrific but man, there is no substitute at all for a good editor.

All Stephen King's book are too long. I assume he is such a valuable asset that no editor feels comfortable sitting down and blue penciling 10 to 20% of his tomes. I have truly enjoyed most of the books I have read by him but he does tend to go on and on.

If yes, sure, I'd give it a shot.

Depends. Can you leave?

Classy.

Yes.

Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox

At least you woke up.

That train left sometime in the Eisenhower admin. It's been nothing but veiled racism and protecting the rich and wannabe rich since then.

Same here. If they don't know what went wrong, there is no hope for the PA Republican party and I find that gratifying.

"The state party is conducting research and paying a big D.C. firm to help gather insights"

LOL. Here, I'll tell you for free. One candidate was an obvious extremist with no appeal to the middle grounders and the other candidate was an asshole who didn't live here and everyone knew he didn't live here. Not only did he not live here, he lived in fucking New Jersey!

Yes. We got emails in Montco saying it was on the way and one saying it was received, a very well organized endeavor.

Here in the burbs, we get an email saying our ballot was received.

I live next door to one (lowest level) and he does not show up on the maps. His uncle was a cop and he is registered as living at his father's address out in the boonies even though he lives here. There is a middle school, a high school and a grammar school within a few blocks from here and another Catholic grammar school on the next block.