61–70 of 198 posts
Now, in contrast to other comments on here, I find the best time to listen is just before bed on my evening walk. If I really want to get through quickly, I listen on my commute also.
The "research" on how our brains are affected by media has historically been incredibly speculative and shoddy. Is it any different this time?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not for me, when I read I get lost in the book and it gets dark outside, the cats come and sleep on me, the street lights go on and I look up at 10pm and I've read half a novel. It's a sense of peace I get from few other things in life.
This, or even watching a slow paced movie (the kind more common before 1990) is incredibly refreshing break from the modern distraction filled world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 15 years ago, I read a dozen of C++ books cover-to-cover. Can someone today get similar levels of knowledge jumping around quality blog posts and watching youtube videos? Not saying it's better or worse, but I'm willing to say that the understanding you'll get from blogs is going to be be different than from a long-form book. Books get the benefit of knowing where they left off one chapter, and picking it up on the…
Every single programming book in the world after you've read the first one: Chapter 1: Simple types (um, could have done this in a page) Chapter 2: Complex types (this too) Chapter 3: How you can compile from the command line (even though no-one in their sane mind does this in this language) Chapter 4: Inheritance (oh god, please stop) Chapter 5: Conditional statements (no, for the love of god stop) Chapter 6: Loops…
I'm honestly a little surprised at some of the comments here. I thought most people on here would agree that many of us do suffer from this. I mean, how many of you actually read through the entire article, WITHOUT checking your email, or flipping to twitter/fb to tell the world about this good article you just found? I had to really force myself to read the entire article first, and not give in to that urge to get a…
Most of them are poorly written or written in a way to make money.
That is
* clickbait titles when the bulk of the information in the article could be summarized in the title instead
* lack of introduction / thesis / abstract at the beginning summarizing or outlining the actual content
* meandering content with no clear overarching goal
* content padding – lots of words addling little information
So why should I feel bad about not finishing things I think aren't worth finishing?
This is a terrible article of the variety "I do something therefore everybody does something": typical mind fallacy on crack, nary an actual numerical statistic to be seen. I mean, I could play anecdote wars (I read ridiculous numbers of books now I have FBReader on my phone) but that would be feeding the foolishness.
I read a great excerpt from something published in the 1800s complaining about the same thing... I'll have to dig it up.
This is a terrible article of the variety "I do something therefore everybody does something": typical mind fallacy on crack, nary an actual numerical statistic to be seen. I mean, I could play anecdote wars (I read ridiculous numbers of books now I have FBReader on my phone) but that would be feeding the foolishness.
That is my take as well. Vague allusions to current research but no hard cites. Seems like recycled trope of "modern life is too busy and our brains are rotting". I read a great excerpt from something published in the 1800s complaining about the same thing... I'll have to dig it up.
There they are... see 1894 and 1895 in particular.
I've read over 500 fiction books and 2000+ non-fiction. I've read many of the big thick classics like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Infinite Jest. I've kept a spreadsheet of all the books I've read somewhat like Art Garfunkel[1] (of Simon & Garfunkel music duo). I've also read Nick Carr's "The Shallows"[2] and other authors about about the web's effect on attention span, distractions, etc. With all that said, I'm not convi…