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picklesman

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I basically replaced all forms of entertainment with reading. I find there is also less of a barrier to start since the audio part makes it feel slightly more passive.

I still watch movies / tv / YouTube occasionally but I’m much more selective.

As for pausing and rereading, I find a good pair of earbuds helps me do that pretty effortlessly, and I tend to do it often towards the beginning of a book.

What you’re describing sounds more like studying / reading textbooks and is totally valid, but not the type of reading I’m talking about, which is mostly for curiosity and entertainment.

Yes, it feels very similar. Except speeding up a movie seems absolutely insane to me, whereas with a book it just feels like matching my mental ingestion rate.

Indeed it keeps me on pace and paying attention.

Finding the right speed takes some experimentation. Too slow and my mind will wander, too fast and I can't absorb the material / don't have enough time to ponder.

I use Libby and I have a few library cards and an audible subscription.

There are also other less ethical ways that I use, though to compensate I buy the books I really like in physical form.

I'm the same way for fiction, but there's a certain class of non-fiction audiobooks (memoirs, (auto)biography, essays, etc) that works very well for me even when doing light chores.

It's made me much more selective about what podcasts I listen to, since I've realized just how information-poor most of them are.

I do still enjoy a good interview, or even just the para-social pleasure of "hanging out" with hosts I like, but I'm now doing so consciously and not by default.

Yeah I noticed when I'm reading in a place with a lot of other stuff going on I usually need to go more slowly due to ambient distractions.

As for screening I've never consciously asked myself what I wanted to get out of it but I like the idea.

Oh for sure. I listen with wireless buds with a huge button (Jabra Elite 4, sadly no longer made) so pausing/unpausing takes almost zero effort.

For particularly dense passages I'll just slow down the audio as needed as well.

Even for fiction I find myself starting more slowly as I get to know the characters, and then speeding up as I want to.

I read 189 books last year, mostly due an accidental discovery.

I have a lot of trouble reading in noisy places, since I get distracted easily. My habit would be to put on some very minimal / low-information ambient music like Stars of the Lid and it worked well.

Then one day I randomly decided to put the audiobook on while reading and it was a revelation. After adjusting the audio rate to match my reading speed (usually between 2-3x depending on narrator / subject) it allowed me to totally lock in. Both "inputs" seem to reinforce each other. I researched and apparently people call this "immersive reading".

I find I can (just) listen to (easy) non-fiction like biographies, memoirs etc since they don't usually require much deep thought. But for fiction or harder/denser non fiction I read and listen at the same time.

Yeah my current approach is to generate a plan with Gemini Pro, with plenty of back and forths, and then have it write the plan to a markdown file. Afterwards I get either it or another model to follow the plan step by step. Without doing this the results are questionable and often require going back and fixing a lot.

When I was studying music technology and using state of the art software synthesizers and sequencers, I got more and more into playing my acoustic guitar. There's a deep and direct connection and a pleasure that comes with it that computers (and now/eventually AI) will never be able to match.

(That being said, a realtime AI-based bandmate could be interesting...)

For me that is the appeal. I don’t listen regularly but do occasionally enjoy his interviews depending on the guest.

But yeah, if you don’t like long rambling discussions it’s safe to say it’s not for you.

Debatable. Seeds are very high in omega6 fatty acids which should be balanced with omega3. They also can go rancid more easily which is not healthy to eat.

I noticed this article also subscribes to the “saturated fat is bad” way of thinking which is also debatable.

Ha! Indeed!

In fact in informal Quebecois French, it's also used as a verb, with the same meaning as in English.

As in "J'ai Frenché ma blonde" --> "I Frenched my girlfriend"

Me too!

Btw, in the spirit of the title of this thread, in English you would say "as a French person". In the past, "Frenchman" was used but it's understandably out of favour these days.

"French" can be used as an adjective but not a noun in this context. It's a very common error, I suppose since "français" can be used as an adjective or a noun en français :)

I was gonna say, this is exactly what I recently used data studio to do. Using GA as a data source I was able to create custom charts more easily in data studio.

I feel like the charts in GA are much more constrained. For example I couldn't find how to do a stacked bar chart using different dimensions mapped to colors, which is very easy in DS.

Funny, I've found that enough time can heal the "overexposure" and I can listen again. Sometimes it takes years, as in 5 to 10. Speaking of the Beatles, I have pretty much all of their songs completely memorized so I need to take long breaks. For quite a while I would listen to them every couple of years and that was it.

I'm now conscious of when I'm overplaying something and lay off it for a while.

A similar thing happens for me when songs are used in commercials or movies and I subsequently have trouble listening to them without the visual association taking over. This has "ruined" many songs for me in the past, but after enough time away I can thankfully appreciate the song on its own.

I recently started infusing my own oils to then use sublingually for similar reasons and it's been a revelation!

You can know pretty much exactly how much THC you're getting and adjust / repeat as necessary. I haven't smoked in years but I've been vaping (with a Pax) for the past couple of years and attempted to "microdose" but it was very unpredictable and sometimes I would get higher than I wanted which is not good when using it for "work" purposes (programming, music, video editing, etc).

I've also recently come to the conclusion that for me, Cannabis definitely falls into the "less is more" category, and I limit regular doses (ie vaping to get high) to once a week. I can use the oils multiple times (at doses of roughly 5mg) to get into the zone without negative consequences.

When I overdo it with vaping I have the usual issues with forgetfulness (struggle to find words etc) and my motivation definitely takes a hit. Also I've found that tolerance grows very fast the more you use it and it becomes quite unpredictable.

Oh and for me it helps to mix it with a bit of caffeine as well. Slightly off topic but as someone sensitive to caffeine, the perfect "delivery mechanism" for me is a small shot of espresso in the morning and then a whole bunch of Sencha the rest of the day. Calm focus and good mood and still able to fall asleep :)

I was cringing during his discussion with Rogan because of this.

It’s a common pitfall for a certain type of nerd to think that expertise in one area allows them to make claims in completely unrelated fields.

That and he didn’t challenge Rogan’s mostly unfounded claims about the COVID vaccine among other things. I understand that it must be difficult I do so as a guest, but for someone who fancies himself “rational” it was disappointing to say the least.

While in theory this is true, in practice we have seen in recent years that misinformation has as much weight (if not more) as true information in our fragmented global media landscape.

I see it more as doing their part to reduce the noise rather than contribute to the problem. And it’s a big problem.

Yeh yep indeed. I didn’t make that connection, but for me what came to mind was Dustin Hoffman’s failed artist character in the Meyerowitz Stories. Not identical but he too laments “not playing the game”. The scene at the beginning where he simultaneously disdains his more successful colleague while also relishing being mentioned by him is just great.

And while I’m on the topic of Baumbach movies, there’s a scene in the Squid and the whale where the kid gets in trouble for performing a Pink Floyd song at a high school talent show and claiming it as his own. When he’s rightly brought to task for it, he says something like “I could have written it, it’s a simple song” to which he is told “but you didn’t” (paraphrasing, it’s been a while). There’s an echo of that here too.

My response: Maybe, but so what?

This was rambling and smelled of bitterness. I especially didn’t like his suggestion that he “could have been” Jef Raskin because their viewpoints were “essentially the same” or whatever. Really?