R13Cerberus's recent activity
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Comment on The end of reading is here in ~books
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Comment on Looking for headphone recommendations in ~music
R13Cerberus LinkFor brands with generally good value to price, look at Soundcore (also named Anker Soundcore). JBL and Skullcandy have some solid models in their range for decent pricing, but you'll want to do...For brands with generally good value to price, look at Soundcore (also named Anker Soundcore). JBL and Skullcandy have some solid models in their range for decent pricing, but you'll want to do your research since they can be hit or miss on their quality. Sennheiser and Sony are probably most known now for their more expensive models, but they do have some more reasonably priced models that are below their "flagships." You may be able to find their older flagship models on sale (as NonoAdomo alluded to). Lastly, Audio Technica and Beyerdynamic are solid audio companies that have been expanding into adding wireless and ANC in models priced for standard consumers.
To help your search a bit:
- Toss away looking for 2.4 ghz dongle. They tend to be exclusive to gaming headphones which do not have a good price to value ratio or focus on features you won't want (like an attached mic or RGB lighting).
- For cat resistant cables, just avoid anything without a detachable cable. Being able to replace cables easily is is the best solution. Nowadays, some headphones will have a USB C port for wired audio instead of a 3.5 mm barrel jack. A 3.5 mm jack can spin; a USB C cable cannot. Some companies will have a 3.5 mm jack, but it'll be housed in a way that only OEM cables will properly fit.
- If you pick something with ANC, check that ANC can work while the headphones are wired. ANC requires headphones have their own power (battery) that is powered on. Some headphones are programmed to automatically turn off power if a 3.5 mm connection is detected and will disable any attempt to run wired with the power on for ANC. (Only a problem if you see yourself using them wired with ANC).
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Comment on The cost of safetyism - what we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard in ~life
R13Cerberus (edited )Link ParentThere's a leftover treehouse on our property from the previous owner that the neighborhood kids would stop by to play at. The kids were polite and asked first. After confirming if their parents...There's a leftover treehouse on our property from the previous owner that the neighborhood kids would stop by to play at. The kids were polite and asked first. After confirming if their parents were cool with it and if they knew who to contact in the event of an issue, we gave them blanket permission to come and go as they please.
Fast forward a few weeks later, somebody in the neighborhood called the police to report the kids. The officers were nice and explained the general concern of liability on our end if they hurt themselves. (The officers were miffed that they got called out to handle the crime of kids playing outside). But the neighborhood definitely doesn't see as many kids running or biking down it anymore.
Interesting article. I want to throw out there my own personal thoughts on how I've mourned my own personal loss of desire to read for fun. As a kid, reading was one of my main hobbies. The local library was a favorite spot of mine, and I'm grateful that I had parents who were willing to shuttle me there nearly every weekend. My imagination was (and still is, embarrassingly so) quite active, so books were a great outlet for that. It also put me well ahead of the curve at reading level compared to my peers all throughout primary school.
However, as with many other kids, my interest in reading for fun waned as a result of how the modern education system (and society in general) handles literacy. Although the process was gradual, my transition to high school was a pivotal time. The school sent a list of required summer reading for English class prior to starting 9th grade. I knocked out reading the novels early in the summer break and spent a bit of time refreshing on the main themes and plot points prior to the start of the year. The first day started off with a graded quiz where the majority of the questions focused on details like on the color of X's personal belonging or the exact time mentioned when X event occurred. Most people in the class completely bombed the quiz, and this was an English class for the highest performing kids from middle school. The teacher then "welcomed" us to high school and told us that this was only just the beginning.
From then on, how I read books changed. Fun was no longer a goal. Reading morphed into a refined process where I extracted what I needed to perform well. I started mentally tracking my reading speed and adjusted how much I read so that I didn't finish too quickly while pacing enough to prevent cramming. I actively suppressed the amount of imagining I did when I read because it might introduce false details in my memory. I focused on thinking what words, passages, or points were the highest candidates as material for teachers to lock onto.
Those skills carried me through the rest of high school, college, professional school, and my career. It's especially effective for reading textbooks, scientific articles, reference material, etc, which worked out since I work in STEM. But I lost the ability to pick up a novel and read for the sake of reading. I last tried to read a novel (Flowers for Algernon) about 15 years ago while I was at the courthouse for jury duty standby, and I couldn't stop myself from dissecting the book the way I would for school.
I don't blame that teacher or any other teacher from my primary school days; it's not as though I have any solutions to the problems educators face when combating the decline of literacy. That was the era of Sparknotes and Cliffnotes, so as an educator, he needed some way to "weed" out people who tried get away with not touching the novels at all. Outside of class, you can tell he was truly passionate about teaching, and he himself loved literature and media literacy as a whole. In fact, he was widely considered one of the best teachers at the school by the students for how his classes changed their perspective.
I have no problem reading when it's attached to other forms of entertainment. Video games, manga, shows/movies (subtitles are always on for me), forum posts/discussions, articles, etc. are all still enjoyable to me. But the moment I pick up a novel, my brain immediately starts counting the pages as if I'm back in school again. I still "love" books, and I've purchased plenty of books over the years to keep up the support for physical media. But they sit on a shelf as a backlog for if/when I'm able to overcome my hesitation.