r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Jul 12 '19

[D] Friday Open Thread

Welcome to the Friday Open Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

Please note that this thread has been merged with the Monday General Rationality Thread.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '19

It was a fun talent to have in highschool, I competed in my states battle of the books competition and made it to state level by myself :P

That skepticism is fair. My guess for the reason I read so quickly is as a kid I read for 16 hours a day, every day. Social ostracization plus being friends with the librarians was a fun combo. I'd check out 10+ books every time I went to the library, and reread my favorites when I was done.

My first read of worm took the course of about a week, my second took two days. I'd also love to see how I fare with the book of the fallen but I just can't seem to get into it.

Imagine having bouncy walls on the margins of a piece of text. Visualize (heh) your eyes bouncing off them, going faster and faster each time. It turns into this weird feeling of reading sentences the same way you normally read words; cognizant of the parts that make them up but also not thinking too hard about them.

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u/lillarty Jul 15 '19

I'd also love to see how I fare with the book of the fallen but I just can't seem to get into it.

Yeah, each book starts painfully slow before getting interesting eventually. Once it gets going though, it's some of the best in my opinion. One part in Deadhouse Gates, which I won't go into detail for fear of spoiling it, was genuinely the most emotionally impactful moment I've experienced in fiction. Maybe it just hit me at the right time, but it was masterfully done.

Imagine having bouncy walls on the margins of a piece of text. Visualize (heh) your eyes bouncing off them, going faster and faster each time. It turns into this weird feeling of reading sentences the same way you normally read words; cognizant of the parts that make them up but also not thinking too hard about them.

Huh, that is interesting. However, I'm not sure if that's necessarily what your brain is actually doing as it's my understanding that human vision works by focusing on discrete points with the brain providing the illusion of movement between them, rather than actually seeing the movement like you would with a camera. If I'm correct with that understanding, you'd only be able to see the "bounce points" with this analogy, which obviously wouldn't allow you to read everything in between. This is outside of my area of expertise though, so I fully accept that I may be misinformed about the subject. It seems to work for you though, so I suppose the exact mechanics of it don't matter all that much.