A number of SSC posts have gone viral on Reddit or elsewhere. I'm sure he's picked up a fair number of readers from the greater internet. Also, for what it's worth, I've turned two of my friends on to SSC who were never much interested in LW.

But I'll second it being among my favourite websites.

Tell us about your feed reader of choice.

I've been using Feedly since Google Reader went away, and has enough faults (buggy interface, terrible bookmarking, awkward phone app that needs to be online all the time) to motivate me towards a new one. Any recommendations?

I take it 'significant' here means more than half a year of regular income total. Half of that appears to be the recommended scratch money.

I believe they are only a UK and an AU/NZ thing.

Mr.Money Mustache on finance and positive psychology. Specialties are doing the math of everyday life, and understanding the concept of the hedonic treadmill.

Don't keep significant savings in accounts that don't bear interest for an extended amount of time.

80/20 tax law for your country. Unless your a tax lawyer you aren't going to have the need or ability to learn it in detail, but simple changes can often save several thousand dollars a year. In particular tax deductible savings accounts and charitable giving deductions are your friends.

Here.

In World War Two, it is a fact that only 15-20 percent of the soldiers fired at the enemy.

One of the originals is Men Against Fire by World War I Officer S. L. A Marshall.

You find this claim all over the place; the problem with it is that comrade "S.L.A.M" is not "one of the originals", he is the sole and only source for the claim - and he made it up. A cursory Wiki search shows:

[So-and-so demonstrated] that Marshall had not actually conducted the research upon which he based his ratio-of-fire theory. "The 'systematic collection of data' appears to have been an invention."

My emphasis.

The best evidence we have is that killing is in fact difficult for most people, most of the time, even in war.

Ok. So on the one hand we've got a single book, later shown to have been an invention, but taken up by a huge number of people so it looks like a consensus, in the best Dark-Arts, "you have to be smart to know this", counterintuitive-Deep-Wisdom style. And on the other hand we have a huge amount of dead people, mysteriously killed by bullets that, somehow, got fired in spite of the noted reluctance of men to do so. I propose that your accolade of "best evidence" is a bit misplaced.

This is an excellent example of the need to apply some skepticism to a counter-intuitive but neat-seeming claim, whose possession will put you inside the tribe of people who Know Neat And Counterintuitive Stuff. Sometimes the simple answer really is the right one; this is one of those times.

You might be interested in the earlier retirement community, particularly the Mustachian branch. They spend a decent bit of time on the concept of the hedonic treadmill in general, with a particular focus on how it causes people to waste money.

Although Mustachianism is built on the idea of embracing hardship, it becomes so automatic that it is soon the only way you could imagine living. Because of this amazing tendency, it is often easier to live on 25% of a professional income (and save the other 75%) than it is to try to scrape by on 90% and save 10.

-Mr.Money Mustache