PROG, Turn TI into TIP. Triple word score.

Could put PEDO there too and keep with the theme.

• Yeasayer : Love Me Girl
• Volbeat : Hallelujah Goat
• Stick Figure : Breathe
• Sia : Chandelier
• 2Pac, Big Skye : All Eyez On Me
• Kill The Noise : Dolphin On Wheels
• Isreal Kamakawiwo'ole: Pahini Pukea
• Jonsí : Go Do
• Orishas : Muevelo
• Ryan Bingham : The Weary Kind

Also, there are many ways that things in our biology are interconnected and entantangled for no discernable reason. There are a lot of adaptations that have some good and some bad impacts. As long as the good outweighs the bad, it tends to stay.

For example, there is a drug that suppresses a man's body's ability to produce a particular protein. While that protein is suppressed, the man produces very little sperm. A near perfect male contaceptive. The thing is, in addition to enabling sperm production that protein also contributes to alcohol metabolism. So, alcohol makes the user very ill. There's no rhyme or reason that these two operations would be using the same darn protein, but they are. There are thousands of these overlaps that have developed over the millenia.

This is because there's no plan behind evolution. It's too complex to draw straight lines. It's a random mess.

That makes sense. Good explanation.

Is Spanish a "foreign language" in the US, or does it just mean, "foreign to the student"?

Better to say:...a Ukrainian, self-taught mathematican...

The title reads like he taught himself to be a Ukranian

Went to college right out of High School in early eighties.

Went back to school college to get my degree in late 90s.

I saw my friend's son's reading list for a college lirerature class last year

You would think it would have changed a bunch in 40 years, but nope. You don't become an English lit professor because you like novelty. I'll bet it's the same syllabus as the one in 1950.

English lit: something by Dickens, Twain, Shakespeare, London, Hemingway and maybe a Bronte sister. All good reads.

Don't miss Green River Overlook in Canyonlands.

I've seen that view a hundred times. It never gets old.

Yours is a very common take on Rand's stuff. I don't think you're wrong about capitalism. It's a tool, neither good nor bad, but what people make it.

There's a book you should read. "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London. It is an excellent contrast of philosophies, one based on aggressive selfishness, another based on idealizing selflessness. Jack London is also 100x the writer Ayn Rand could dream of being.

Humans are not simply selfish. That would be a model for a lone predator, like a tiger. Humans aren't that self sufficient. Humans are, by necessity, co-dependant, even more than wolves. A lone human is very soon, a dead human.

We are cooperative and this is what Rand misses. Capitalism requires trust. Trust requires cooperation and rules. Rules require sometimes not pressing your advantage and showing restraint. Rules are not synonymous with communism.

I read this book when I was a teen as well. It has always struck me as shallow thinking passing as profound truths for people who had not thought about this stuff before.

True.

So, my ELI5 answer is, many reincarnation religions hold that you won't always be reborn as a hunan. So the explanation could be that the increase in human population is an indicator of the continual improvement of the souls as they become humans.

It could also be an indicator of fewer and fewer people reaching Nirvana and ending the reincarnation cycle.

It just comes down to what do you want to believe? In truth, if you want to belive in reincarnation, in one form of another, just make up whatever explanation satisfies your intellectuals needs.

Why in the world would you try to apply reason to a religious belief?

There are no religions that stand up to even the most cursory application of reason.

I have a friend with OCD and while I'm no clinician, it seems to me that the most relevant factor, for her, is that she can't consciously (or subconsciously) decide what is relevant and what is not. Her mind can snap onto something and it just can't let it go. When she comes to visit, I hide the dogs' treat jar because it's clear and has lots of treats in it and her mind gets caught on the idea of "how many dog treats are in there?" She MUST count them. She's learned skills to be cope with it, but that's her world. In some ways, she's playing the video game of life on a harder mode than I am.

I'm lucky because I can be aware of the question, but also say, "that's irrelevant."

The vastness of the universe, the short span of my life, the massive multiplicity of human minds on earth at the same time. It's all cool and interesting, but is irrelevant to me. I can meditate on those things, and get lost in them, but then put them in back on the shelf with the full jar of dog treats. I don't need to count the dog treats. I don't need to do anything with the vastness of the universe. What is relevant to my short span of life is what I try to improve as much as I can, within the limits of my ability. Relevancy is different for everyone. It's pretty much up to you to decide for you, right?

How can you be dissatisfied with the best universe you can think of?

So, you don't like what it is, but you don't know why it's bad because you can't describe what is better?

What would be the alternative?

What would you prefer?

As opposed to the slavery like conditions in American prisons? She absolutely doesn't deserve to be there, but that's the story of a lot of "drug" convictions in the US too.

Ugly, ugly mirror nobody wants to look into.

Good thought. IDK. I wonder how much the periodical was? You'd get a lot more than one story,

I know that all of Alexandre Dumas's books were published in periodicals. "The Count of Monte Christo" was published in 18 instalments, from August 1844 to January 1846.

That's what I read too. Crime and Punishment was published in installments in 1866. That first edition in found on-line was published in 1867.

My understanding was that Dickens made more money reading short stories at in-person events than from the publishing novels. I'll bet those events were pretty much only aristocracy.

It's nothing new, though. I read Larry Niven's "The Ringworld Engineers" as it was serialized in Galileo Magazine. I grew up in a small town and I'd go to City Market (grocery store) every week looking for the next edition. This would have been late 1970s.

It's not "the same" because it's not "considered" the same. It's not given the same reverence as it is once was. There are excellent, impactful novels written today, they're just not given the same reverence.

For one thing, those novels you cite were the property of the upper class. Of course they were held in higher esteem, they marked the difference between class and crass. Common folk couldn't afford books. A first edition Crime and Punishment from 1867, was marked with a price of $1.50. That's equivalent to about $200 today (the lowest corrected price I could find)

My grandfather's generation was probably the first generation of middle class Americans who could afford to buy and own books. They were proudly displayed.

There are still many books that are every bit as good as "Crime and Punishment", but they are drowned out by lots of noise from other entertainment media.

"Cutting for Stone" by Abraham Verghese deserves to be in the conversation (published 2009) IMO, but it was one of thousands of books published in 2009.

How many books were published in 1866? How many copies of Crime and Punishment were sold? More importantly, who could afford them? That's why they're considered better. Not because they're better, but because they were owned and promoted by people who were "better" than most.

Always the downfall of socialism or communism: unsuccessful people being jealous and spiteful towards successful people.

What does the band do with all the money? I don't know, but AFAIK, they earned it and didn't start with any privilege, did they? Are they a band of people from inherited wealth?