> … smartphone reading produced overactivity in the prefrontal cortex, suppressed sigh generation, and led to general lower comprehension scores; the authors argued that the sigh inhibition and prefrontal overload were causally linked to the comprehension decline.
Does anyone know what’s the importance of sighing in this context? I notice one of my work colleagues sighs a lot when reading but I assume that’s due to the nature of the work he’s doing – or emails he reads.
On a related note, I recently read an article¹ by an Irish fiction writer who teaches her craft to others. While her article focusses on the stages to achieving mastery, the teacher found that even students who want to be writers don’t want to read. I found that to be a bizarre concept and hard to believe; it’d be like wanting to be a musician without listening to music or a film-maker not watching Hitchcock, Welles, Bergman, Capra, Truffaut, Kubrick, Scorsese, Lee, Spielberg, etc.
I noticed that in myself. I’d read a chapter and be convinced that I’d absorbed the information. It wasn’t until I learned networking from a second-hand college text-book that I realised that wasn’t really the case. Each chapter concluded with questions to verify that the reader had understood the concepts. When I tested myself, I found that I could only answer around half of the questions and had to go back and re-read sections in order to answer the others. I had completely over-estimated how much I had learned while reading.
On Stack Exchange sites, I used to see questions and think “Oh! I know the answer. It’ll only take a few minutes to answer”. Invariably, I discovered that I didn’t have all the knowledge to provide a complete answer. While typing, I’d realise that there were gaps in my knowledge (e.g., is what I’m writing true for BSDs as well as Linux OSs?) or there’d be edge cases that I hadn’t previously considered (differences between program versions, how software behaves in different locales, etc.). A good, comprehensive answer ended up taking around half an hour but I found the effort was worth it: writing Stack Overflow answers was a great way to learn.
Speaking of “forcing functions”, I’m currently learning guitar and my goal for this year is to learn a song in full and record myself to objectively see how well I’m actually playing.
It would be good to hear examples of this effect, alright. I’d like to hear how something sounds with 1) no reverb, 2) with reverb applied and 3) with the reverb gated.
The Wikipedia article goes deeper into the history; the featured article has no mention of Steve Lillywhite and others who were using similar techniques before Hugh Padgham worked on Peter Gabriel’s third album. It also has a good explanation of the three different ways of creating this effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gated_reverb
For those with Apple TV+ subscriptions, I’d recommend Watch the Sound with Mark Ronson, a six-episode series which explores different technologies used in music production.
Episode 3 covers reverb and delves into its history and how it’s implemented using modern digital technology. The presenter gets to visit the famous reverb chambers in Capitol studios – and then a room that was designed and built to have no reverberation whatsoever. He also visits the disused underground oil storage tanks at Inchindown, Scotland which holds the record for having the longest reverberation time for a man-made structure¹.
The episode also features Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” which was cited in the featured article as an example of a gated reverb drum sound (I don’t think Ronson mentioned that this effect was created by combining reverb with a noise gate).
The episode title itself is also a literary reference. I’m sure there are many cultural references that went over my head while watching the show; I really should watch it again.
Great advice but that may not always work in Ireland. The expected answer is “grand” or something similarly neutral and succinct. The asker may not even stop to listen to your answer so you won’t have enough time to provide a decent response.
Your suggestion would work when both people are in the same place for some time, e.g., waiting in line for a coffee, or for a meeting to start or for a lift (elevator) to arrive, etc.
I sometimes go to concerts by myself and like to arrive early to catch the support act. There’s usually a gap of at least half an hour before the main act comes on stage and I make a point of looking around for other people who aren’t on their phone so I can start a conversation. In that situation, I already know we have something in common.
I have to disagree with this. Having talked to heroin addicts in the past, I was told that the heroin addiction destroyed their relationship with their families and their friends, causing heart-break in the process (particularly for mothers). They use everyone around them so that they could get their next fix: borrowing, constant cajoling and stealing results in alienating them from everyone in their social circle – other than fellow junkies.
When cut off from family and friends, junkies resort to begging, stealing, street prostitution, shop-lifting and other petty crimes, all of which have a negative effect on their community. Some junkies end up committing violent crimes which has a more destructive effect on society. They often end up in debt to their dealers and commit other crimes at their behest.
All these things are much worse when the junkie is a parent or has others depending on them for a safe and secure family life.
Also, in my country (Ireland), heroin junkies also place a huge burden on the health service. Their chaotic lives result in multiple health issues and they take up a significant portion of hospital beds.
This sounds like good advice so upvoted. I’m a big fan of Raymond Hill¹’s products so I am curious about how much benefit Adguard provides if uBlock Origin is already blocking online trackers, ads and other annoyances.
¹ In this case, the developer – not the musician. I really liked the user interface of uMatrix.
It’s really nice to have ad and tracker domains blocked systemwide though I think you need to be more careful and set your device up as supervised to have more robust blocking (real always-on VPN functionality vs. best effort?).
And even then when I read about defects in Apple software that means a firewall like Little Snitch isn’t perfect (macOS) I think an external device (mobile VPN router?) is going to be essential for some threat models.
I can see how system-wide blocking would be useful. I’m personally very conservative and wary about apps that I install on my iPhone (I don’t use any ad-supported apps) so the browser is the “attack surface” that I’m most concerned about.
I already use uBlock Origin and iCloud Private Relay (as advised in your original post). I also use Private Browser tabs and regularly remove all “Website Data” from Safari (minor inconvenience in that I have to re-login to sites that I have an account on).
I’ve just installed AdGuard on my iPhone to try it out but see that the DNS protection requires a Premium subscription (it now occurs to me that I could possibly install Wireguard to connect to my VPS where I’m already running my own DNS server). I’ve also `never looked into supervised mode; I always assumed it wasn’t relevant for personal devices.
Does anyone know what’s the importance of sighing in this context? I notice one of my work colleagues sighs a lot when reading but I assume that’s due to the nature of the work he’s doing – or emails he reads.
On a related note, I recently read an article¹ by an Irish fiction writer who teaches her craft to others. While her article focusses on the stages to achieving mastery, the teacher found that even students who want to be writers don’t want to read. I found that to be a bizarre concept and hard to believe; it’d be like wanting to be a musician without listening to music or a film-maker not watching Hitchcock, Welles, Bergman, Capra, Truffaut, Kubrick, Scorsese, Lee, Spielberg, etc.
¹ https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2026/05/04/some...
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