> reading is partly for edification

Not necessarily. Is Harry Potter for edification? Trashy romance novels?

In any case, the article specifically notes that reading for pleasure, a subset of all reading, has declined.

> One conflated a time-consuming activity with a quick one, and the other conflated time periods of comparison.

There was no conflation by the article.

You presented a selective quotation that omitted the yearly book reading stats and attempted to argue misleadingly that the article was comparing a daily time scale to a yearly time scale.

I think you missed the point of the reading vs. gambling comparison. From the article: "Gambling has become [emphasis mine] a more common leisure activity than reading a book." In other words, the change is the point. Gambling was not always more popular than reading.

Nit picking around the edges doesn't undermine the general point. The comparisons were bad. You have succeeded in pointing out that they were not as bad as they possibly could have been, which I guess makes you feel good? Anyway, I'll leave it here since I don't enjoy engaging with people like you on HN.