Maybe the Default Settings Are Too High
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The debate rages on about whether default settings, particularly for reading and listening, are too high, with a recent article sparking discussion on the benefits of slowing down. Commenters weighed in on the author's suggestion to limit oneself to "mouth-speed" reading, with some pointing out that audiobooks, like Andy Serkis's LOTR narration, are already at this pace. While some users argued that audiobooks can't be slowed down further without becoming tedious, others countered that playback speed settings can be adjusted to accommodate a more leisurely pace. The conversation revealed a mix of opinions, with some embracing the idea of slowing down and others poking fun at the notion, highlighting the diverse perspectives on what constitutes an ideal reading or listening experience.
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Second of all, I took TFA advice and read that article with the slowness and deliberate attention it recommended and found it to be trite and difficult to distinguish from AI slop… but if that’s what brings this person joy, good for them.
Who cares if the GP eats their cookies in one bite and listens to their audiobooks at 2.25x speed? Because one self help guru turned blogger said it’s a bad idea?
> limiting myself to mouth-speed
Audiobooks are mouth-speed.
The article suggests this is the right slow speed, at least for the author.
Maybe you yourself want even slower, but that's not what the article is suggesting.
You can’t pause your audiobooks?
>So I tried slowing down even more, and discovered something. I slowed to a pace that felt almost absurd, treating each sentence as though it might be a particularly important one. I gave each one maybe triple the usual time and attention, ignoring the fact that there are hundreds of pages to go.
And I too, often watch youtube at 1.5x or 2x speed, and dislike audiobooks because I read so much faster that I can possibly listen to them, and there's always an ever growing list/pile of books I want to read after this one. I wonder if that's why a certain type of movie works so well for me - I think of them as "movies made from short stories, not novels", and now I'm wondering if it's something similar to the OP's idea - and that spending 2 hours watching a short story I'd expect to read in 15/20mins is what I'm enjoying, in a different way to, say, the new Dune movies - which so far have been 4-5 hours watching a couple of big novel's worth of story that'd take me a week or so to read? Just writing that out now, I realised theres a two orders of magnitude difference in speed there going from 1/10th of reading speed to 10x reading speed - from a 15 minute read to 2 hour watch, to a week long read to 4-5 hour watch. Hardly surprising they hit my brain differently.
I think this often sounds unsettling (like the reader is drunk or otherwise impaired), and anyway the listener doesn't need more time to recognise each individual word -- they want time to take in sentences and paragraphs.
To borrow the same analogy from the article, image trying to savor a meal where someone else was deciding when you take each bite. Even at a slow pace, the rigidness of the pace and your lack of fine control would still pose a problem with giving each bite it's rightful consideration.
That being said I love audio books and think I would struggle to apply this article's advice in my own life. Slowing down your audiobook is still a step in that direction, though I sometimes find that slowing it down can cause my mind to wander and my comprehension goes down and not up.
and audiobooks with really good narrators? the miles will melt away.
(I like Wil Wheaton)
(don't know about lotr oudiobooks)
Though now that everybody has a device, we have to intentionally opt for a shared experience, rather than 1:1 devices.
State of nature isn't inherently good. It's bloody, smelly, dirty, and only incidentally nice, by virtue of evolutionary path dependence.
Having said that yes I do indeed pause if I need to take a moment to think, and I roll back 15 seconds if I want to hear it again. Not a big deal, just part of the experience. -signed ex-hater of audiobooks
The article advocates not rushing. In general, that's a good fit for audiobooks.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/100n0y/maybe_t...
(Would elaborate, but, y'know. Opportunity cost)
I pictured it spoken with a heavy Californian surfer accent. He wanted elaborate but a huge wave was breaking and he really didn’t want to miss the next one. Was in far too much of a rush to even leave punctuation behind.
So long, dude, I hope the waves keep coming for you.
In fantasy / sci-fi, I'd unreservedly recommend:
- Ursula K LeGuin - Steven Erickson - Gene Wolfe
With reservations, I'd recommend:
- Patrick Rothfuss (unfinished) - George RR Martin (unfinished; sometimes dodgy prose, but occasionally transcendent character and theme) - Dune (just know it goes downhill fast after the first book)
Elsewhere, but still genre (ie: meant to be entertaining, not uber-serious, self-conscious "literature"):
- Patrick O'Brian - Arthur Conan Doyle - Dorothy Dunnet
I recommend Rudyard Kipling's short stories, but they're hit and miss, and sometimes out of step with modern mores. Maybe stick with the Jungle Book, and Just So Stories, and if you like those make sure you read Without Benefit of Clergy, They, (short stories), and Kim (a masterpiece of a novel).
Once you've got through those, Hemingway is approachable, and the true modernist master. Fiesta / The Sun Also Rises (same book, known by different names in different parts of the world) is ironic and beautiful; A Farewell to Arms is beautiful and almost unbearably sad; his short stories are impeccable.
- Herman Hesse
There is so much to unpack, which requires very slow treatment.
One of the things is savour so much is the time I read Idiot, we were on a cruise completely disconnected from the rest of the world. No distractions and just the sound on waves.
About an hour into that, pouring sweat, he stops cold and says "what the hell am I doing?" The flooded camp was actually nice on a hot day and all we really had to do was move a couple of tents. He dropped the shovel and spent the rest of the week sunbathing, fishing, snorkeling and water skiing as God intended. He flipped a switch and went from Hyde to Jekyll on vacation. I've had to emulate that a few times.
Day two we looked at each other, had an adult beverage with breakfast, and relaxed for the rest of the trip.
My firm rule is - have a loose plan, aim for one activity per day, an emergency option, or two, if the weather plays up, and that's it.
It's the type of plan that has worked for every holiday that I have taken that involves a different city to the one I live in.
One or two core activities for the day.
If it works out for more that's great but it's not expected or necessary.
I've traveled with some people who seem focused on just getting pictures in front of as many things as possible which seems a poor way to really take in a place.
there are parks everywhere!
I've found myself in this mode before, too. A couple of years ago I was preparing for weeklong wilderness backpacking trip with some friends. I'd recently quit my high-stress job to take some time off, and I had a few new pieces of gear I wanted to test before relying on them on a longer trip. When I looked at the calendar, though, every weekend before we were to leave was already spoken for.
I was worrying about it to my wife, trying to decide whether I'd just have to use the old worn out gear or risk it with the new stuff, when she stopped me: "why don't you just... go on Monday?" It took me a second to even get what she was saying—I was still so much in work-all-the-time-mode that my brain didn't even consider whatsoever the possibility that I could just... go off and go camping on a weekday. I was really baffled for a moment, and I've reflected on that a bit since, it's funny how you can be trapped in your own default operating mode and not even realize it.
After having kids, my habit changed. Now we enjoy going to local parks and walking around with no goals during vacation. This wonderful attraction? Nah we don't need to see it. If we can walk there, then maybe.
Some of the most enjoyable parts of those trips were hanging out with my family in a local park.
For me the story was also a bit weird. “Just take the tents out of the water”. Ok…
These are alternative ways to keep the tents dry ... which entails that they were never soaked in the first place.
> A tent that’s been in a lake
The tents were never in the lake. A few inches of the campsite was in the lake at high water.
> sounds like a throwaway to me
Do you have any experience with this? I've been on trips where tents and even sleeping bags ended up in a river. They don't dissolve ...they can be dried in the sun.
But I guess a synthetic ultra light tent will do better.
I also assumed the tents were already there when he arrived (complete assumption), and so must be of the more heavy more stationary kind.
Anyway, the point is, I also had this question: Where do you go when you mess up your tent like that? How can a dam in a layer of water make it dry? Don't you need a dam and then pump it dry.
This is going too far, I just wanted to defend the question.
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=de+waard+tent&ia=images&iax...
You've never been camping. Ok.
In England, we can’t just pitch up a tent in the woods, we need to pay for a campsite where there’s other tents.
I suspect, from their description, this person is from a different country again, where camping may happen in large open steppe with lots of other yurts.
Also, this is about a campsite a few inches of which is in a lake, and people moving their tents. But apparently paying attention to the actual context is optional for some people.
Tents are generally made of a very wuick-drying, thin synthetic.
And like the other person said, this does make it seem like you’ve potentially never been camping but i don’t want to gatekeep the definition of “camping”. My version is carrying everything I need on my back for two weeks and walking 10-15 miles each day to the next campsite (read: “patch of dirt”, preferably near fresh water). Other people “camp” in RV’s though, so.
"A campsite is a designated area where individuals can set up bedding, sleeping bags, or cooking equipment, such as stoves or fires. This definition encompasses any location that allows for sleeping or cooking, regardless of whether it includes a tent, lean-to, shack, or other structures."
I would note that camping also involves sitting in campchairs talking, reading, singing, etc.
It appears that you are confused with West European camping, which is where you drive two days to the south of France (most of which stuck in traffic), pay large amounts of money for a patch of perfectly flat grass where you are allowed to park your car and set up your tent. In a grid pattern with hundreds of other tents. Where there is a building nearby for toilets and showers. And a swimming pool plus live entertainment for the children.
OP appears to be talking about camping in nature.
I think some people are interpreting “campsite” as the literal space occupied by the tent’s ground sheet while you are interpreting it as the broader area - which in an organised institutional arrangement might be called the “campground”
It makes sense that someone with the former interpretation - the tent ground sheet submerged by a few inches of water - would understand that the tent got soaked.
"A campsite is a designated area where individuals can set up bedding, sleeping bags, or cooking equipment, such as stoves or fires. This definition encompasses any location that allows for sleeping or cooking, regardless of whether it includes a tent, lean-to, shack, or other structures."
> would understand that the tent got soaked
I already refuted this nonsense ... the tent didn't get soaked.
The bigger problem with that camp was the rattlesnakes. I killed one with the shovel and felt grown up.
Uh... No shit? How did it get to an hour of such a laborious effort without anyone suggesting the obvious solution? I assumed there was some reason why you absolutely had to camp at that precise location.
>slow down and pounder, be curious, maybe you would have gotten the right take away
That I expressed these thoughts and not others doesn't mean I didn't have any others, it just means I didn't have any others I felt compelled to express.
>instead of being antagonizing towards someone's fond memory
But, you see, the particular manner of expression of my thoughts is simply a reflection of my internal state at the time, which was caused by what I responded to. I see it as only fair to respond to someone by putting into my language whatever emotion that person has caused.
It wasn't just a quib. It contained some sarcasm, but it was also an honest question.
>If the only value your comment has is to yourself, you could write it without pressing the submit button.
I could also just have the thought and not write it down. Neither option would count as having expressed it. I need to have it intrude upon someone else's psyche.
The comment actually does a great job of accentuating the point of the story. Everyone offended is too caught up in their achiever mode mindset to truly appreciate the absurdity.
However now he has started to write stories about dragons and things, and that's a pretty interesting development.
I don't know how long they'll let me keep doing it for, but I don't see any reason to stop
The Wind in the Willows is good beginning around that age too.
Love both Pooh, and Wind in the Willows, and will enjoy seeing how they take him.
As promising as Fellowship was, the films just kept going down hill—one after the other.
I've recently started the Letters too, and can thoroughly recommend it. It's fascinating and oddly cosy to get a direct tap into a mind you know so well at second hand, through its fiction.
As always, there are tradeoffs, and you can't walk everywhere or always have these types of mindful experiences. On the other hand, life is short and perhaps paradoxically, slower experiences can yield richer days.
No to doing books via audiobook because I see the words in my head and it’s massively distracting. Cool if it works for others I guess but like the mechanic excerpt above… not for me.
The first time I did this was the breath of the wild zelda game, I got to the point in the tutorial where they teach you to fast travel and said, "no I don't want to" so I spent the whole game slow traveling around, planing my trips enjoying the scenery finding new routes , Just bumming back and forth across the map enjoying the game and all it's corners in small slices each night, it took me a couple months to get complete and it was great.
My current phase of this madness is Valheim with no portals and no map. and wow it is an experience. With no map you get this hyper distorted view of the landscape the other way around, it is still based on what you can navigate easily but stuff like shorelines and terrain features are over represented and forests are these scary black boxes. Fog is very very scary, more than once fog has rolled in and I got so lost that I have had to say "well I guess I am living here now." I am currently having fun trying to figure out how to use the in game tools as surveying instruments to make my own hand drawn maps.
The successor game added an in-game compass/radar which detracted from the immersion, made the world feel small and boring.
Without fast travel you’d be forced to plan your trips more and bundle all the tasks in an area which would be cool. But it’s probably too much to ask for the general public who will see it as annoying.
Valheim without a map would be a bit too much for me. No way to quickly escape to some safe green pastures sounds too stressful :).
Reading the Reddit for the game, filled with people complaining that the portal system is too restrictive and forces them to make upwards of three long boat trips over the course of the game is a bit sad. It’s as though they expect the fun to happen when they finish everything, but the fun all happens while you’re actually playing the game.
I was playing Wing Commander, Privateer way back when (mid-1990's) and didn't realize that there were ways to travel faster. So I did the obvious: I pretended I was a trader on a long haul route, dug out some books and notebooks, and just did whatever until I arrived at my destination or was attacked by pirates. I loved the passive game play in the moment, but I didn't realize how much until about a decade later. That kinda ruined gaming for me in general since games tend to keep the player busy (even if they aren't action games).
In some respects, I think that slow travel offers a sense of authenticity to the game. Well, I should say to some games. Many games set out goals for players. It's obvious why. If there is nothing to accomplish, there is little sense of accomplishment. Yet goals also ruin things in my mind since there is an urgency to get things done to see what the outcome is. Of course, games also reward following up on that urgency. That's contrary to real life where you may be rewarded or you may have to wait upon the rewards.
Something to break the teleportation is obviously to make breaks and enjoy where you are (a lake not too far on the road, any viewpoint...). Plan in advance, have a tent, be ready to not reach your target in one day and you will enjoy a much better a road trip than a train, a plane or even the highway.
I used to fly fairly regularly between Germany and Italy. I'd get on a plane in Munich and get off in Florence, going from a very "German" place to a very "Italian" place. A few years ago I started driving the route, and I was surprised just how much gradation there is between the cultures.
As an American, I always thought of "Italians" and "Germans" as very distinct cultures, but then you drive through Südtirol (or Alto Adige, if you're feeling Italian, the northern most province of Italy) and it feels quite Germanic. Then gradually, as you continue south, you hear more Italian, see more Italianate architecture and place names. Similar story for Alsace between France and Germany.
Of course none of this is all that surprising knowing the history of these areas, but it is very interesting to experience in-person.
I'm sure most places and cultures are like this, even when we think of of them as quite distinct. When you only fly between major cities, you lose so much of the wonderful overlap.
And similar to the point OP made, you get more out of it when you attend more closely. And similarly, most music does not withstand this level of scrutiny.
I have some excellent garage band CDs that probably have two or three copies still in the wild at most. Unfortunately sometimes the 25 year old burned CDs are missing the TOC data, but even the recovery process is satisfying.
(Same with the DVD collections.)
I listen to a lot of music on the side, but Chris Boltendahl of Grave Digger said something that stuck with me. Btw, Grave Digger are not making Heavy Metal inspired by Heavy Metal, they were there making Heavy Metal in the 80s :)
Paraphrasing: With all of the streaming, and easy access to music, music has turned into a fast food. Eaten on the side, but rarely really fully appreciated this day.
And for new albums of bands I follow (or if I want to have a good time), I do exactly that: If the weather permits, get a hammock, a good drink, the good headphones (yes, I have several levels of quality of headphones), and just look at the sun, the trees and the magpies while listening to the music. Improving my own guitar skills has only deepened this appreciation.
> Sitting at a live concert (I am thinking classical) is up there too, because you've given yourself permission to not think of/work on anything else in that time
At least in Metal and to me, concerts are a different beast than the record. The record is usually the best and most perfect take of a song, often with additional effects, better mix. If you want to hear to the best version of a song, it's usually from the record.
Concerts are a party. It's always amusing how different concert cultures are there -- I know of some people who complain that they "can't hear the singer over someone next to them shouting". That's kind of the point of a live celebration of the band at the music in my world.
I noticed similar effects when "locking in" in games or sports. Time gets slower.
So when you slow down, you start to pay more attention. But if you pay more attention, the world itself will slow down. And the music would be slowed
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