Skimming works fine for lots of fiction reading but is much more risky with philosophy or anything that’s aiming at high precision, getting details right, communicating complex ideas, etc.
Audio reading will avoid skimming so maybe you should do more reading like that to get more used to hearing and trying to process every single word.
Maybe you should try reading some essays or forum posts with audio.
Haven’t posted in a couple of days cause I’ve been having some breathing issues. I think I have some undiagnosed asthma? Idk.
The first time this kind of thing happened was around December last year. Since it was cold and dry in my room I bought a heater and humidifier. I had my room fairly hot and the humidity set very high (around ~70%). First day was ok I think, but the proceeding days I would wake up in the middle of night having trouble breathing. I would have to leave my room to breathe comfortably. At the time I remember googling some stuff and it seemed like asthma fit? I just turned down the humidifier and heater and things were fine after that point so I didn’t bother getting checked out for it.
Most of this spring/summer has been fine but just a couple days ago was the first time I felt “hot” while going to sleep. I think my mom turned off the A/C but idk. I woke up a few times in the middle of the night having issues breathing and then finally woke up fully around 8 and has massive issues breathing all day.
Its been getting better over the past two days. Todays been more-or-less fine. No real breathing issues just some chest pain thats gotten much better since yesterday.
Just sharing some stuff. I’m wary of going to the doctor just because I have no insurance. I know healthcare costs are bad but I don’t have a clear reality of how much they are at times. I kinda have this vision that if I go and get it checked out I’ll end up with like a 2k medical bill (or more). I do plan to enroll in my Starbucks health insurance came this August and probably get it checked out soon.
If it is asthma I wonder if its because of my vaping? I don’t remember having breathing issues when younger but maybe I did. I’m not too confident here about my recollection.
Like reading along with audio? Not just listening to TTS right?
I recently started listening to the audiobook of Silent Spring. No particular reason. I just had the audiobook on audible and have been trying to go through the audiobooks I haven’t listened to yet. I did originally get the audiobook because of discussions on the forum.
I’ve just been kinda passively listening/ I just started chapter 6, but so far she doesn’t seem as crazy as I thought she would be. I had this notion she would be a crazy environmentalist or something, but everything seemed reasonable and level-headed. DDT has been talked about so far a few times and the book doesn’t seem to have a particular attack on it. It also seems fairly reasonable in how it talked about DDT and other chemicals.
You thought the book/author would be crazy when you started listening recently? Did you read my posts about Silent Spring or just see the book mentioned but not read what was said?
No. I’m not suggesting a new thing. Where is that coming from? I just meant the thing I thought you were already doing that was working well: reading using audio instead of visually looking at text.
Humidity over 50% enables mold growth. (Not an exact number; it depends on the type of mold and other details.) Breathing issues could be from dormant or less active mold becoming more active with more water and producing more spores.
Vaping can harm breathing, sometimes disproportionately to the amount of vaping done, but so can many other things like living in a moldy building.
I ddi think she would be some kind of crazy environmentalist, yes.
I did read your posts a while back, yes.
I think I still had it in my head that she would be some stereotypical crazy environmentalist. Though I guess out of fairness my idea of environmentalists comes from the same people who trashed on Silent Spring unfairly. So idk.
I don’t think I was shocked seeing how reasonable the book was after starting to listen to it because of your posts. I did, however, go into it with that expectation still somewhat.
You consider TTS reading? Are audiobooks reading? I treated them more as listening in my head.
I think the confusion is coming from stuff I’ve seen like, from Help Center Desktop :
Whispersync for Voice works by automatically syncing your audiobooks and Kindle ebooks, as long as you own both paired versions, and the feature allows you to read and listen at the same time.
I know some friends who take advantage of the feature of reading and listening at the same time. All my TTS “reading” is all listening. I either passively listen while going for a walk or something or more actively listen while on my computer but I’m not reading along or anything.
Hmm. That makes sense. I should look into this stuff myself at some point, but are there invisible(?) kinds of mold? As far as I can tell my room has no visible mold. I’ve never painted over mold or anything like that in my bedroom.
Why did you think I would be wrong about what a book says that I’ve read but you haven’t?
I don’t know if mold can be invisible like transparent, but it can certainly be hidden behind stuff like walls so you don’t see it.
Yes I consider it a type of reading. It’s a tool-assisted way to find out what a book says word by word. People do debate the terminology.
I wouldn’t tell a blind person that they didn’t “read” a book if they used TTS instead of getting a braille copy.
Hmm. I guess I came off like I thought you were wrong? I think my thought process in this matter was less explicit. I read your posts a while back. The only real thing I took away at the time was that Rachel Carson wasn’t as bad as many people make her out to be and that I should read her stuff before having an opinion.
I think also I still encountered stuff from places like ARI being hostile to Silent Spring since I read your posts.
Hmm. I guess thats the other thing: I still kinda have the feeling that people who are hostile to Silent Spring have read it or something like that. Or something like I think they know what they’re talking about. Going off my memory of your posts, thats wrong of me but yeah.
Hmm. That makes sense. When we were doing the renovations and stuff there was a bunch of mold behind walls we didn’t see. It does make sense there could be mold behind the walls in my room or something.
I’m sure some of them have read it. How can they read it and then say really wrong, hostile things about it? Bias and tribalism (with some incompetence mixed in as usual with everything).
It sounds like you were biased in their favor and this could be a learning experience where you learn to trust those information sources less. It was for me.
I don’t know the range on how far mold spores can travel or how far away mold can be for humidity in your room to reach and affect it. You seem to be assuming a pretty short range. I don’t think that’s a safe assumption.
Been busy with work + restarting school. Since I picked school back up that kind of became what I spent my time on fully (well kinda fully).
Recently read some Korean web comics and it got me thinking of cultural influences on media and stuff.
I haven’t done much research into it but I’ve heard some stuff about Korean culture being very hierarchical. The elites viewing themselves as fundamentally different from others. I think the korean movie Parasite portrayed some of this stuff? Idk I didn’t watch it, but I heard part of the theme is how the rich are bad.
Also the show Squid Game. Never watched it but I also heard it had themes of the elite doing bad stuff. I believe the games done in the show are done by/for rich peoples entertainment.
Reason I bring this up is because apparently a popular trope in Korean comics is tower climbing/doing challenges for entertaining. I didn’t do any research into what the trope is called, but the trope more or less goes like this: towers (or whatever) show up in a world, because of these towers (and other influences) monsters are destroying the human world or something, the only way to stop this is to beat the tower, except after you beat the tower it turns out that the tower was part of a bigger show. Typically the towers are a way to find the best of humanity to participate in further events and shows.
I say shows because you end up learning that your tower fight and other events are being watched by higher level entities for their entertainment.
Two of the most popular Korean webcomics (at least on the western side) are based, in part, around this: The World After the Fall and Omniscient Reader.
After noticing this and learning that this kind of gimmick is popular, I wondered if this represents a part of Korean culture where they may feel that they are in a game for the entertainment of the rich.
Similarly, something I’m more familiar with, Japanese media has a lot of stories either in high school or in other worlds (like transported to a fantasy world). That’s because, in general, Japanese adult life is so crap that they can’t imagine, in a sense, an adult world that is enjoyable. So they either go back to high school or go to another world.
Online, I think on youtube, I heard an anecdote from Korea (it could’ve been Japan, I don’t remember too well) where an older child took a toy from a younger child, the younger child complained but then the older child said “I’m older” and the younger child acquiesced to give away the toy.
You could research the education system there (also how normal after school tutoring/private teaching is), Chaebols, company culture and general collectivism/conformity/seniority. I also heard on youtube that Korean media was the way it is because of those things.
Hmm. Just from the bits and pieces of cultural knowledge I’ve picked up that sounds closer to Korea than Japan.
Did you list that off from memory? Are you familiar with Korean culture/media by chance?