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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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You can phrase everything like this. Oh, can't imagine people spending hours at a time contracting their muscles presumably for fun, instead of enjoying gathering new knowledge or engaging in the debates with educated people from around the world. But I can imagine, it's quite easy to understand that people have different preferences.

Obese people aren't obese because they're minmaxing their knowledge.

The number of obese people doing that is what? 7?

Reading something on the Internet is quite popular activity indeed. As is reading books that is also today involves "staring at a screen".

Reading books is very possible to do while exercising, so...

???? Give me this secret!!!

Exercise bike/treadmill/stair machine.

also between sets instead of twitter

Hop on a treadmill and put your Kindle in front of you. Most modern treadmills have a lip on the screen for this exact purpose.

Alternatively, audiobooks.

I've gotten through some short books using the rest periods from weightlifting. It's not reading while literally exercising but it's close.

One of my coworkers claims to have read a ton of journal publications this way.

He was integrating a product in Afghanistan back in the early 00s. There was nothing to do on base and he was surrounded by combat-trained 20-year-olds. Peak motivation to stay in shape.

It's surprising how much reading you can get done if you corral all the spare minutes in your life. You can cover a fair bit in the doctors waiting room, the bus and the quiet times at work.

I mean, most centrally, you can totally ride an exercise bike and read things at the same time.

There are also a variety of things you can do while reading more normally that burn calories, although most of them are categorised as NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). To some degree, though, this should be taken as an independent variable; whether you have a brain that likes fidgeting is not really something you can control.

I guess you could also try AR? I'd stay the fuck away from Apple's version, though, since as Zvi noted its specs scream "brainwashing helmet".

I mean, most centrally, you can totally ride an exercise bike and read things at the same time.

Not during an HIIT workout. Or at least I can't. I stick to streaming for that.

That's not reading.

What? You're telling me you don't study Celestial Navigation while doing pull-ups hanging upside-down like a bat? And you call yourself a transhumanist?!