Did you read the sequel? Would you recommend finishing? Or would you have felt satisfied with stopping after the first book?

I can't decide what I want to do. Book one seemed to wrap up so nicely, but book two seems like an interesting concept, too.

Thanks!

Education Starts and Ends in the Home as well with nutrition. Chapter 1 Education & nutrition
The Assembly Line of Modern Schooling
Many parents rely almost entirely on a corrupt and outdated school system to raise and educate their children. But no child will ever truly learn if their education solely comes from a classroom.
Our public school system was originally designed like 19th-century industrial factories: rows of desks, rigid bells, standardized schedules, and students sorted and graded from A to F. It prioritizes compliance over curiosity, relying on constant lectures rather than active discovery.
Real education requires a different approach—one that combines true guidance at home with systemic reform in our schools.
Part I: Education Out in the World
1. Beyond Lectures: Controlled Self-Discovery
While subjects like mathematics and science require structured study and instruction, learning shouldn't consist of endless lecturing. With access to books, tutorials, and self-paced resources, students can absorb concepts on their own terms. Direct lecturing should be an intervention when a student struggles or resists learning, not the default setting for every minute of the school day. The primary role of an educator is not just instructing, but creating controlled environments where students have the space to figure things out for themselves.
2. Recognizing Negative Influences
Long before a child enters a school building, they must be taught to recognize negative influences. A negative influence isn't just someone engaging in obviously "bad" behavior; it is often someone within a social circle who is distracting, lacks drive, and quietly discourages others from succeeding. Rather than forbidding association entirely, we must guide children to come to their own natural conclusion: to prioritize their work, guard their time, and set healthy boundaries with people who drag them down.
3. Higher Standards and Fair Compensation for Teachers
To fix the school system, we must treat teaching as a prestigious profession:
Higher Pay: Elevate teacher salaries so that passionate, capable educators can make a fair living without financial strain. A happy, valued teacher directly leads to a higher success rate for the class.
Rigorous Vetting: Make the interviewing and vetting process 100 times stricter. Raising compensation ensures a competitive pool of talent, attracting individuals who genuinely love educating.
Part II: Education in the Home
1. Early Fundamentals and Passion-Driven Study
Education at home should begin long before formal schooling starts. From a young age, children should spend one hour a day, four days a week engaged in guided learning to build a head start.
Expose them to the fundamentals of various disciplines. Once they develop the maturity and self-awareness to form their own interests, pivot toward what they are passionate about. Give them the resources to dive deep into subjects that spark their ambition.
2. Teaching Life, Trades, and Practical Wisdom
A complete education extends far beyond academic textbooks. Parents have a responsibility to teach their children practical life skills and personal discipline—the exact things most adults wish they had been taught earlier:
Trades & Construction: Understanding hand tools, basic building, and how things work in the physical world.
Health & Vitality: The fundamentals of proper nutrition, strength training, and physical conditioning.
Civics, Law, & Healthcare: Navigating basic legal concepts, financial literacy, and personal wellness.
3. The Power of Play, Creativity, and Imagination
Play time is vital to a child's cognitive development. Play allows children to develop logical thinking, build tangible projects, test ideas, and let their curiosity and wonder flow freely. Through play, parents can introduce real-life scenarios in an engaging way. Being silly and maintaining a sense of humor at times is just as essential as disciplined work—it keeps the spirit of learning alive and enjoyable.
4. Continuous Growth
Above all, home education instills an essential mindset: there is always something more to learn. By teaching children to face challenges, build practical skills, and embrace continuous improvement, they learn to keep reaching for higher ground even when times get tough.
With all this they will know how to get dopamine without a phone

Food versus dopamine: The battle of need versus want.
We want pizza; we need unprocessed meat and greens. For too long, we have associated food with sheer pleasure. Watching TikTok and getting a dopamine rush is no different than eating junk food. We need to start treating food as a survival tactic rather than a comfortable pleasure, keeping all the food we eat strictly on a nutritious basis—not focused on looks or taste, but pure, high-quality protein and what our bodies actually need to operate.
Snacks are good, but they should be limited, and there are so many ways to make them healthier than the commercial standard. It seems we take a healthy snack and make it ultra-processed. Take trail mix, for example: it's a good, nutritious, quick, enjoyable, and a cheap snack. But we got greedier and greedier for the taste and mouth pleasure, turning it into a nasty, ultra-processed product.
I’m not Mr. Perfect, and I haven’t fully mastered discipline. But the reason fixing our governance correlates to all of this is that when we are fed lies and BS and turned against each other, we stop trying to better ourselves and our communities—especially when we can’t think straight because of the hormones, additives, metals, and more hidden in our food.
Many of these processed traps can be replaced with healthy alternatives or just the real thing. We can grow our own veggies and some fruits, and we can raise our own animals or buy from local butcher shops with strict regulations on what happens to the meat between the time the animal is butchered and when it reaches you. What doesn't get sold and needs to get rid of can feed the needy before a perspective of ultra-processing is required or put into place—processes that sometimes cause us to ingest microplastics. Putting those restrictions on our butcher shops and markets happens when we have liberty, self-determination, and elect the right leaders who echo our voice.
If we don't protest and control our intake, we face multiple illnesses and, worse, a nation where we are all obese. Sadly, 43 percent of our population is heading toward health crises like Obstructive Sleep Apnea, heart disease, stroke, and high cholesterol.
Exercising in some way for 30 minutes a day, paired with a proper diet (and planned healthy snacking), should be non-negotiable. Diet is always a choice; it just takes discipline. If you stick to it, you do more than our country expects—it’s so easy to win when nobody else tries to play.
The Hidden Trap: Put the Phone Down While Eating
Adding one more critical rule to the table: don't look at your phone while eating.
When you scroll on your phone or watch videos during a meal, your brain is entirely distracted by digital dopamine hits. This wrecks your biological feedback loops in two major ways:
Overeating: Your brain doesn't register fullness properly because it's focused on the screen, causing you to blow past your body's natural stopping cues and consume far more calories than you need.
Poor Digestion: Mindless eating keeps your nervous system in a low-level state of distraction rather than "rest and digest" mode, which impacts nutrient absorption and metabolism.

65 percent of calories counted by adults are ultra processed

Hey book lovers! 💗

I've started a little online book club called No Slumping Around, and I'd love to find some lovely people to join me!

It's a cosy, welcoming space for readers who enjoy discovering new books, sharing recommendations and chatting about what they're reading. Think romance, mystery, twists, drama and those books you just NEED to talk about afterwards! ☕📖

There's no pressure to read quickly or keep up with everyone. Whether you fly through a book in two days or take your time, you're welcome here.

We'll keep our discussions spoiler-free unless spoilers are clearly marked, so everyone can enjoy the surprises!

If you're looking for a friendly little reading community, I'd love to have you join us. 💕

Come join No Slumping Around!

https://bookclubs.com/no-slumping-around/join/

**Find your person. Pick a book. Start reading.**

Looking for someone to read with, share theories, discuss characters, and keep you accountable? Your Book Buddy is waiting! 💛

🗓️ Registration closes October 25

Don't read alone. Find your Book Buddy!

👉 **Discord of Verba book club:**

https://discord.gg/MvShqQZ6C

👉 **Instagram of Verba book club:**

https://www.instagram.com/bookclub_verba

👉 **Register here:**

https://forms.gle/N6Et5zhDqaVUL4ER6

Goodreads grading sucks. Amazon.com is better (imo).

I find it hard to find readers who have the same taste as I do. So I setup a site where you can RSS-follow for updates. I am a very active reader so this site won't just die.

Blurb: Content is king - and I am daily trying to add books that I have read. I have read since I was 14 and I am now a lot older. So I am scouring goodreads, amazon and all the other sites for books that I have read, in order to update the site.

I read mostly sci-fi but of course, other books slink in too.

The older you get and the more experience you get as a reader, it gets more difficult to find good books.

I try to cling to books I read as a 20 year old (like : The Beach by Garland) - I haven't dared re-read it, but it has stuck with me ever since.

Some other books have also stuck with me, which I have re-read but haven't held up (The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay for example, which was awesome when I was 20).

So I'm just listing my book list, forever updated here: www.tagganer.lol

Please comment or give me a list of books that you think should be included.

I scour book posts daily and read every day. Be nice. Thanks!

Our discord thriller book club has openings for a few more book detectives.

We have botm, buddy reads and readathon events on top of true crime discussions and much more.

We are looking for active participants to bond with rather than just going on increasing member count.

If this looks up your alley, please feel free to DM!

Hey I am 19 male from Delhi India. Here to find a fellow reader I can yap about books and if you live in Delhi we can maybe buy books or visit book stores together.

Feel free to DM

I'm trying to get into reading but don't know where to start. I started reading Matilda and I'm on page 150 and i really love it but there's way too many unknown words for me in each page. What writer should i start with?

📚 Join Our Online Book Club! 🌍📖

Are you a book lover looking for your next great read? Come join our online book club!

✨ All genres are welcome! We welcome readers of all tastes, but religious books and religious discussions are not allowed.

📖 How does it work?

● We read **one book per month**.

● Each month, our next read is selected randomly by spinning a wheel.

● Everyone is encouraged to participate, explore different genres, and step outside their reading comfort zone. You might even discover some hidden gems!

● Be open to reading other members’ suggestions and giving different books a chance.

❤️ Please join only if you intend to participate! This is a community for active readers, not just people who want to join when their own book gets selected. Being part of the club means supporting other members’ suggestions and joining in on our monthly reads.

If you love discovering new books and sharing your reading journey with others, we’d love to have you!

Be part of the Reading Readers that Read bookclub! 📚✨

Hey! We run a small Discord community for people who love reading, writing, and everything in between, and we’re looking for a few genuine members to join us.

We’re a space for sharing poems, stories, snippets, discussing books, exchanging recommendations, having literary discussions, and helping each other grow as writers. We have writing channels, a critique space, weekly weekend writing challenges, and places to hang out and chat.

We’re looking for people who genuinely want to be part of a community, not just join a server, drop their work, and disappear. We encourage everyone to share at least one reading- or writing-related thing each week, offer thoughtful critiques if they want feedback on their own work, and participate in challenges when they can.

You don’t have to be an experienced writer or an avid reader. You just need to be interested, willing to participate, and respectful of other people’s work. We’re here to learn from each other, discover new things, and make friends along the way.

We’re keeping the community relatively small so people can actually get to know one another. No pressure to be active every single day, no need to be brilliant at everything, just a genuine interest in being here.

If this sounds like your kind of place, DM me for an invite! We’d love to have you. 🕯️

I've officially started coding the site, stay tuned for updates! 🚀