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Maybe the default settings are too high

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Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#171

Post by delichon »

bee_rider wrote: post #63
delichon wrote: post #6

My dad was a busy construction contractor. One summer he tore himself away from work and took the family to a week long boat camp out next to a big beautiful lake. It turned out that our campsite was actually in the lake by a few inches at high water, but dad saw a way to dam it off and keep it dry, so he grabs the shovel and starts digging trenches and building walls and ordering us around. About an hour into that,…

Where’d you sleep? Going wit the flow and enjoying life is admirable but that sounds like a pretty terrible camp site tbh.

Arizona, Lake Havasu, triple digit temperatures. We spent more time in the water than out of it. Us kids loved the flooded camp because of the tiny fish that would swim up and nibble on our toes. It tickled. The camp was boat access only, and there were a few million acres of desert wilderness higher ground to move up to. The water rose gradually and the tents never got wet.

The bigger problem with that camp was the rattlesnakes. I killed one with the shovel and felt grown up.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#172

Post by lugoues »

fluoridation wrote: post #154
delichon wrote: post #6

My dad was a busy construction contractor. One summer he tore himself away from work and took the family to a week long boat camp out next to a big beautiful lake. It turned out that our campsite was actually in the lake by a few inches at high water, but dad saw a way to dam it off and keep it dry, so he grabs the shovel and starts digging trenches and building walls and ordering us around. About an hour into that,…

[flagged]

We can get stuck in our minds and lean too much on prior skills instead of fully assessing the problem at hand. More likely than not, given he was a contractor, building a trench and walls seemed like a simple solution to something he has probably dealt with many time and didn't think twice about it.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#173

Post by lesostep »

dsubburam wrote: post #18

Music is an interesting case. You can't slow down the consumption of music (you have to let it play at the speed the performer intended), but you can dial up the attention you give it. Listening with headphones, eyes closed, and phone+doorbell etc. switched off would be close to max. 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 a…

You actually can slow down music. A novel experience in itself. When you try to learn the song — once you get a grip – everything slows. That's why people play so much with metronome – once your brain "slows down", you will speed up naturally. Spent a few months learning how to get around it as a novice drummer. The only way around I found? It's to notice the slowing speed of time and slow the rhythm into it. Probably related: most drummers play with a click in their ears.

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

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#174

Post by teekert »

scott_w wrote: post #145
jibal wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the term campsite conjures up a place with tents already there You've never been camping. Ok.

I think you’re viewing this through your own cultural lens where camping can be totally solo (in the woods?) 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.

Yeah, this.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#175

Post by gste »

By coincidence I also finished The Fellowship of the Ring about two weeks ago.

I have always had the intuition about reading speed that it is very easy to be a speed reader if you skim over things. I've always questioned how much of speed reading is just skipping stuff and filtering for the most important word tokens.

You could skip all of Tolkien's scenery descriptions, you could skip Tom Bombadil and Lothlorien and still know basically what happened to Frodo and where he's going. But that's not really the point. When I read a book of that much importance, I've always read every word and understood every sentence. I get easily distracted and often have to reread passages. I am not a fast reader. Tolkien's descriptions are not always that easy. But this is what I find so rewarding about reading in the first place.

However, when I'm reading an article online, the difference is stark. When I read articles, I usually start from the bottom and read backwards. That's my way of finding out the results, and then piecing together how much context I actually need to understand it. Maybe I should slow that down sometimes.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#176

Post by stinkbeetle »

teekert wrote: post #122
jibal wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that were true (and it obviously isn't), what then would be the point of expending tremendous time and energy to "dam it off and keep it dry"? 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…

I guess the term "tent" is pretty broad, this is what I see: [0], the cotton does not take being in water very well. But I guess a synthetic ultra light tent will do better. I also assumed the tents were already there when he arrived (complete assumption, but the term campsite conjures up a place with tents already there), and so must be of the more heavy more stationary kind. Anyway, the point is, I also had this qu…

Natural fiber canvas tents take to water about the same as your tee shirt does. Which is to say perfectly fine. Soaking them for a few days or even weeks shouldn't really bother them if the water is not warm and stagnant (like a nice clean lake). The biggest killer is storing them still wet.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#177

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

I don’t know any specific name for it, but it is fairly common reading technique used in literary analysis. If you ready any kind of poetry more refined (say [1] or [2]) in its internal structure, it is an absolute necessity.

It is quite amazing how many people do not know that there is a multitude of reading techniques to be used with various kinds of texts. You need to use a right tool for the job. Tolkien’s passages describing the Middle Earths ecological landscape are particularly rich calling for careful reading and lingual analysis. I believe he uses almost sole old Celtic words in those passages, avoiding any newer latin-based words more familiar to a modern reader, which cannot be a coincidence.

[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46452/to-an-athlete-d... [2] https://poets.org/poem/having-coke-you

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#178

Post by amunozo »

ultratalk wrote: post #169

I feel like this advice could also somewhat apply to your manner of speaking. I'm a pretty fast speaker, and I've noticed that when I try my best to go slower, I understand what I'm trying to say better, I figure out gaps in logic and errors in the sentence while speaking, instead of after, and I get the message across better. And when I'm giving an impromptu speech of some sort, if I slow down and think about every…

I, too, speak ridiculously fast. People laugh at me and some (a lot of) people have problems understanding me. As much as I try, as soon as I am not paying attention I speak at the same pace again. Did you manage to slow down your speech consistently?

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#179

Post by sethammons »

xeonmc wrote: post #23
chilmers wrote: post #2

If you’re a fan of LOTR but don’t fancy reading it aloud yourself, I’d really recommend the new audio versions read by Andy Serkis. While I don’t vibe with every facet of his performance, overall it’s a tour-de-force, and really makes the prose come to life. Especially in those descriptive sections that it’s possible to glaze over when reading the text. Having an actor of the calibre of Serkis reading them to you bri…

Is the entire thing narrated in Gollum’s voice?

> "Fly-ses you foool-ses", exclaimed stupid, dry tricksy one

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#180

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

gste wrote: post #175

By coincidence I also finished The Fellowship of the Ring about two weeks ago. I have always had the intuition about reading speed that it is very easy to be a speed reader if you skim over things. I've always questioned how much of speed reading is just skipping stuff and filtering for the most important word tokens. You could skip all of Tolkien's scenery descriptions, you could skip Tom Bombadil and Lothlorien and…

Although people think LoTR as a novel meant for younger people, it certainly is not an Tolkien never meant it that way and it certainly is not an easy text. It is far more complex than any fantasy I have ever come across. Tolkien was a top language scholar who spoke several even dead languages, so there’s a lot more going on than just the surface plot of Frodo “returning” Bilbo’s ring. One would be mad to simply skim it through.
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