Most people assumed it was because I was wicked smaht.
It's because I had no friends and hated life and used books as escapism. And just learned a ton of trivia along the way.
I like to joke that my knowledge base is vast as an ocean, but deep as a puddle, and if you aren't careful you'll fall into a sinkhole like astronomy, geology, or lord of the rings lore.
i like the mental image of a huge body of water where most places are only a few inches below the surface but youll randomly find little lava tubes that go unexpectedly deep (evidence of temporary hyperfocus), several deep valleys (more enduring fixations), and a couple mariana trenches (special interests). reminds me of the train on the water in spirited away.
There are sections of space called "voids" where there's almost nothing. Like even LESS nothing than usual.
The largest one we know of is called the Böotes (super)Void. In 200,000,000 light-years, there are around 60 galaxies.
You could duplicate our galaxy around 2,300 times and still not reach from edge to edge.
If we were in the center of the void, we wouldn't have discovered other galaxies even exist until telescopes got sophisticated, large, and sensitive enough to see the faint and distant galaxies that were closest. Sometime in the late 1960s/early 70s, most likely.
That's a hella big Böotes; universe has serious cake
But actually on a real note do you think humans would have even invented telescopes that good by then if we were in the center void like that? How can you tell if a telescope is getting better if you don't have any stars to compare to, maybe just seeking out sharper images of planets we would have stumbled into it eventually? Also that would mean that the planets would be really incredibly noticable in the night sky
Astronomy history is fascinating to me. We used to think that other galaxies were just nebula in the milky way.
We would still have all the stars from our own galaxy to study, but I think that given how much we have improved telescopes with the intent on studying CLOSE stars, those improvements would have led to the discovery of galaxies 100 million LY+ away.
Fun fact: we don't know what's on the other side of the galactic disc from us. As we look toward Sag A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, there's too much dust and non-luminous matter in the way, and we can't really see what's past a certain point. There's also something pulling all the galaxies around us (and us) toward it, in that big patch of what we can't see. It's called the Great Attractor. We know it's pulling on us because of red/blue shift of surrounding galaxies, but we don't actually know what it is that's pulling. It COULD be a large cluster of galaxies whose gravity is just pulling us all together, but it might also be some cosmic eldritch horror that's literally consuming the universe. That last one is slightly less likely though...
a black hole's radius grows linear with its mass. but its volume grows with the third power of its radius. so, the more massive a black hole gets, the less dense it gets.
I can relate to this so hard. I've no idea how many books I read as a kid, but often several per week. I still love reading, obviously, it's just that I don't dedicate as much time to do it anymore. Been trying to pick the habit back up though.
One of the quirks I developed as a result of my reading habits, is that I'd use very dated terms when speaking my native tongue. I have so many early-1900s insults in my head, it's almost unfortunate I never get to use them.
Same, though I also think that the people testing me did not have the requisite reading comp to make a test...
I sure as hell did not get Ender's Game when I first read it, even though I passed the AR test
Oh I hated the accelerated reading tests. To prove a point in 5th grade, about how it's not actually making me want to read because of rewards, since I could read 20 kindergarten level books and get more points than the 2 500+ page books I was reading, and it would take less time.
Also pro tip for anyone who considers it, Battlefield Earth is NOT child appropriate. Or appropriate for anyone to read, honestly. Just skip anything by Hubbard...
I was always good at taking tests and a rather fast reader, so I didn't care at that point.
What sucked for me was a few years later when I had to write summaries of the "book I read that month" because I had to be writing about the same book for the whole month when I would finish the book like 5 days in, so I was remembering what happened like 6 books ago by the end of the month.
Also unfortunately I then, many years later, learned and realized that the books I was reading were written by a pedophile. one of the series ended with them making a pedo god, and the other one had far too many details and seperate instances of children sexually exploring for a 40+ year old man to be writing about... Now I'm terrified of recommending shit I read or watched as a child because what if I am just not remembering some horrific thing that happens in it.
I was there by 5th grade and read grade 5 in first grade. I never read a ton, but I gave cred to my grandma, who would read me "the pokey little puppy" when I was 2 and 3 and 4 years old like every night I was there (a lot).
I had the book memorized and was able to follow along to all the words without knowing how to actually read or anything about sounds. Apparently that was a big leg up in learning to read.
Same for me was told I was super smart but if it ain't history, evolutionary biology, geography, cartography, or mechanical technology it's basically all just a puddle. Knowing how to read maps good and which way is north instinctually is fucken useless nine times out of ten nowadays.
Systemic failure weâre all dealing with. You did all you were told to do, you went to school, you sat down, you listened and you got the degree. Then maybe you got the job, maybe you just now lost the job, and the wages didnât keep up with inflation, so you canât get the house and you canât get the family, too expensive.
Everything got expensive, then the world complains why you arenât having any children, why youâre not consuming. You turn on the tv or your podcasts and you see illiterate people get platformed spouting nonsense about conspiracy theories and to do your research.
Then you see this comic and you see the connection. You see that a promise was broken. You did your part but the system ripped you off. Youâre angry or depressed. Itâs time to take action. Vote for Count Binface.
I just couldn't disagree more, as the millennial you're describing and the parent to an 8 year old. There's nothing at all wrong with a participation trophy, in fact, it boosts kids' interest and it helps them feel like they belong. Don't think they're not also acutely aware of losing a game, or who on the team are the most and least skilled.
At the same time, I'm of the mind that sports should be fun. Cutthroat competition sucks for kids, there's no reason for it
I never thought of it that way, but now that I look back at it, it's true. It was all way more for the parents. The kid was an essential asset for their ego. They were competing for who had the most successful child.
What can kids do? Read, and books=smart, so they were competing with each other at how good their kid was at... reading. So they came up with bullshit metrics like, "my child is in 4th grade but just finished a book at a 9th grade level... isn't your child in 8th grade? Wow, my child is reading books he can't even understand yet."
My parents, and dozens of others, got a hard sell to plop my useless-ass name into the book "Who's Who of American High School Students." As if it mattered at all. It was an ad for kids with dickbag parents that wanted to spend $150 to be in an asshole phonebook. And many did. And their parents were proud and bought the hard copy book for that year, and none of us gave two shits. It had no value, no bearing on anything. A complete waste of money for a fleeting ego boost to the parents.
Yeah, i think we were raised in similar narcissistic households and maybe others didn't share that experience as much. My parents got a scent of the gifted child effect and tried to do everything to nurture it.
For so long they made me feel like I was super special but as an adult I can see how unhealthy it all was, and how much they fed off that attention.
Maybe for some children it was a normal gauge of how well the child is doing, but for myself every little achievement felt like, "oh so you felt okay with x? let's see how well you can do x+1. You know there's a kid who took college classes at 16? I think we should sign you up. What about astronomy? Have you heard of space camp?"
I felt like failure was terrible because of how disappointed they'd look if i didn't take well to some new assignment. Completely fucked way to grow up.
Mine wasn't narcissistic, but my parents didn't mind a little free classicism. Then, after years of "your child is so smart!" in high school I didn't want to do work because I was a teenager. So years of "just apply yourself!" lectures. Y'all, I can only do so much calc homework before I lose the will to live.
That you're equating your parents signing you up for inclusion in "Who's Who" with being assigned to gifted classes as kid is perhaps a testament to the failures of the American education system
Ironic you would make this comment as a slam on the American education system without having understood I only said my parents got a hard sell. I never said they went for it. The sales people filled the library with students in more than one AP course, and a few of the wealthier families with kids on sports teams.
Anyway, my point is that parents were pulled in and sold this, not a single student even knew what these books were, especially since the "Who's Who" other titles are all about adults paying to be in a national registry of self-important people.
Lol doing everything right and taking the advice of people that never actually did anything all that exciting without someone else to hand them that opportunity is pretty funny. Hereâs an alternate translation of this: âI did the exact same thing everyone else did and expected that to lead to anything but what everyone else got, which considering everyone did it already, was very little â.
The answer is always to break the mold and disrupt shit.
I think we have to separate achievement in this capitalist society from the skills we were told to acquire.
Being a good reader has a million benefits. If let's you think about ideas that you might not encounter in real life. It allows you to live inside someone else's mind. It makes you more empathetic. It makes you capable of thinking more creatively. It makes you consider things that you might not have been able to otherwise. Being a good reader makes you a more well rounded, intelligent and creative person.
Just because it didn't get you a high paying job in this grifters economy doesn't mean it was useless. Keep reading. Keep dreaming of a better world. Keep striving to be a real human in a world full of grifting capitalist drones.
One only need look at Donald Trump. Guy is the dumbest ass and would be working the drive thru at a Burger King (not even a McDonaldâs) if his dad wasnât a wealthy, uninhibited ghoul of a human being.
it only provided the opportunity to wreck the smug sense of superiority of my teacher, whom berated me daily for being "difficult" and "undisciplined".
guess I was unchallenged by your lackluster curriculum you dumb bitch.
I'll never forget the look on her face when she saw my reading comprehension score came back a few points higher than her own. she even attempted to identify if I was cheating.
I used to read one level above my grade always. Then when I would get into the grade, the English teacher was always impressed that Iâd read everything already and I was always impressed at the extremely stupid questions they would ask about the âauthorâs intentâ in writing this poem.
Itâs a fucking poem, Linda. Chill your beans at trying to be an amateur psychologist for a man dead 300 years already.
Itâs a fucking poem, Linda. Chill your beans at trying to be an amateur psychologist for a man dead 300 years already.
There was a massive crime perpetrated against high school students. Somehow, the teachers took the good idea of teaching a book and pointing out its underlying themes and historical context (that scene in great expectations where the girl plays the card game against the protagonist, as an example) to gain a greater understanding... and drove it into the ground by needlessly making everything (the infamous blue curtains) this massive deal that you absolutely had to contemplate and tear apart and put together with everything else, waaaaah!
At some point years ago I did some online test and it turned out my English language vocabulary was somewhere in the top 0.01% or something like that.
Which is kinda ridiculous because I'm not a native English speaker.
I think it's the result of years of lots and lots of reading things in English: books, newspapers, magazines, even online.
Then on top of that I moved to Britain, which did wonders for learning the local slang of at least the part of it were I lived and even meant some words I learned I only really know them in English (for example, terms used in professional Finance) because I learned them in English, not in my native language.
Also, a lot of the most supposedly sophisticated words are basically the Latin or Greek words barelly changed (sometimes not at all) or technical terms that originated in the dominant language at the time that tech was invented, so they're pretty much the same in all languages I know (so, say, the word "heliocentric" is pretty much the same in my native Portuguese, in Spanish, French, English and so on) so for things like scientific and technical terms having a good vocabulary is mostly language agnostic.
I have to constantly rein in my impractically large vocabulary to minimize the degree to which I sound like a pretentious prick, but just recalling how the crisp on the outer edge of those pepperonis was surpassed only by the crisp on the top of crust makes the world feel balanced again, if only for a moment.
think of the internet cred though. you may make 500k less a year but you can come up with a thousand zingers to reply with instead of calling someone 'a re**ard' like a barbarian.
I mean, it unlocked big ideas earlier than most people, and I got a head start on serious critical thinking, which has shaped my life in many positive ways. But it didn't, like, directly lead to financial prosperity. Honestly it probably hampered it because I had too much context to exploit others with a clear conscience way before I had the means to do so at scale.
"Reading level" is more about literary comprehension than technical understanding. And embracing baser modes of expression has only made it easier to effectively communicate.
Above-average reading level is only really helpful long-term if you specialize in literature.
I've realized the most efficient way to succeed in life (hours spent studying vs perceived achievement) is to be able to talk to people and talk to them well. If you're born with a golden mouth, you're set.
I would be willing to bet that if you take a random survey of people who read above vs below grade level, the former group enjoys life more, has more options, and winds up living longer
Yeah. If anything, admitting that youâre an avid reader will have people saying âYou think youâre better than me because you read?â Or some other dismissive comment regarding people who enjoy books.
So Iâve personally chosen to absolutely agree to that question: people who read are better than people who donât.
And it doesnât even need to be boring books. Yes, I will even count comic readers amongst our reading brethren. Anyone who reads with actual intent is alright in my book đ
All that reading at a uni level in grade school did for me was make me utterly surprised when we had to peer review papers my second year of uni and I'm gazing down 5 pages with no complete sentences, the only punctuation used is in the complete wrong way, and misspellings of words that I know are on every office program's spell checker. Fast forward a few years and POTUS has the oratory skills of a fifth grader and I might lose my programming job because marketing and sales haven't managed to sell the product in years (I work on an end user product for one of the largest companies in my field whose primary focus is enterprise b2b sdks; if end user continues at this pace there's a chance they drop the whole division EOQ3).
Interestingly enough, no, not really. If you want to look it up, they call it the 'Matthew Effect' (from the biblical parable in matthew about the servants being given tithes by the master and using them).
Kids who read more get more from what they read later. If you've read ten books and your neighbor only one, you retain more and understand more from the next book you've read. Unless you completely stop reading, or they suddenly start reading way more, the earlier start with your reading will give you far greater benefits. A humorous little fact is that you can predict college gpa better with the amount of books read by age five (I think, it might be by grade five, it's been a while since I read the study) than by the SAT/ACT tests.
I teach English and philosophy at a 30th grade level. You wanna know how I'm doing? Well, I might be homeless again soon, I think the CIA is manipulating me, and God can't stop dicking around with the phenomequalitesselation of the karmic entanglements within my monadic lens of reality, but at least I have decided I am a prophet of the Mormon Church and will be the 48th and 50th president of the United States soon, so I got that going for me.
79 Comments
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 103 pts · 15d
I had a collegiate reading level in 3rd grade.
Most people assumed it was because I was wicked smaht.
It's because I had no friends and hated life and used books as escapism. And just learned a ton of trivia along the way.
I like to joke that my knowledge base is vast as an ocean, but deep as a puddle, and if you aren't careful you'll fall into a sinkhole like astronomy, geology, or lord of the rings lore.
applebusch@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 16 pts · 15d
i like the mental image of a huge body of water where most places are only a few inches below the surface but youll randomly find little lava tubes that go unexpectedly deep (evidence of temporary hyperfocus), several deep valleys (more enduring fixations), and a couple mariana trenches (special interests). reminds me of the train on the water in spirited away.
also this was me...
boring_bohr@feddit.org · 11 pts · 15d
If you feel like it, tell me the first random astronomy thing that comes to your mind đ
ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip · 27 pts · 15d
Space is big like really big. It would take well over an hour to walk from here to the moon and the moon is really close
boring_bohr@feddit.org · 11 pts · 15d
fartographer@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 15d
Big if true
BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 15d
More than two hours, Iâd say
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 12 pts · 15d
Space is REALLY BIG and SUPER EMPTY
There are sections of space called "voids" where there's almost nothing. Like even LESS nothing than usual.
The largest one we know of is called the Böotes (super)Void. In 200,000,000 light-years, there are around 60 galaxies.
You could duplicate our galaxy around 2,300 times and still not reach from edge to edge.
If we were in the center of the void, we wouldn't have discovered other galaxies even exist until telescopes got sophisticated, large, and sensitive enough to see the faint and distant galaxies that were closest. Sometime in the late 1960s/early 70s, most likely.
ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 13d
That's a hella big Böotes; universe has serious cake
But actually on a real note do you think humans would have even invented telescopes that good by then if we were in the center void like that? How can you tell if a telescope is getting better if you don't have any stars to compare to, maybe just seeking out sharper images of planets we would have stumbled into it eventually? Also that would mean that the planets would be really incredibly noticable in the night sky
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 13d
Astronomy history is fascinating to me. We used to think that other galaxies were just nebula in the milky way.
We would still have all the stars from our own galaxy to study, but I think that given how much we have improved telescopes with the intent on studying CLOSE stars, those improvements would have led to the discovery of galaxies 100 million LY+ away.
Fun fact: we don't know what's on the other side of the galactic disc from us. As we look toward Sag A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, there's too much dust and non-luminous matter in the way, and we can't really see what's past a certain point. There's also something pulling all the galaxies around us (and us) toward it, in that big patch of what we can't see. It's called the Great Attractor. We know it's pulling on us because of red/blue shift of surrounding galaxies, but we don't actually know what it is that's pulling. It COULD be a large cluster of galaxies whose gravity is just pulling us all together, but it might also be some cosmic eldritch horror that's literally consuming the universe. That last one is slightly less likely though...
gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org · 2 pts · 15d
a black hole's radius grows linear with its mass. but its volume grows with the third power of its radius. so, the more massive a black hole gets, the less dense it gets.
Jolteon@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 15d
The actual black hole doesn't get any less dense though. The event horizon just starts encompassing a larger amount of space.
Dojan@pawb.social · 6 pts · 15d
I can relate to this so hard. I've no idea how many books I read as a kid, but often several per week. I still love reading, obviously, it's just that I don't dedicate as much time to do it anymore. Been trying to pick the habit back up though.
One of the quirks I developed as a result of my reading habits, is that I'd use very dated terms when speaking my native tongue. I have so many early-1900s insults in my head, it's almost unfortunate I never get to use them.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 15d
Everybody gangsta until you drop a grammatically correct "heretofore".
Dojan@pawb.social · 1 pts · 15d
English isnât my native tongue, and thatâs not an insult, but that shouldnât be very hard. The word is self-explanatory.
ACindyDerg@piefed.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 15d
Same, though I also think that the people testing me did not have the requisite reading comp to make a test... I sure as hell did not get Ender's Game when I first read it, even though I passed the AR test
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 15d
Oh I hated the accelerated reading tests. To prove a point in 5th grade, about how it's not actually making me want to read because of rewards, since I could read 20 kindergarten level books and get more points than the 2 500+ page books I was reading, and it would take less time.
Also pro tip for anyone who considers it, Battlefield Earth is NOT child appropriate. Or appropriate for anyone to read, honestly. Just skip anything by Hubbard...
ACindyDerg@piefed.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 15d
I was always good at taking tests and a rather fast reader, so I didn't care at that point. What sucked for me was a few years later when I had to write summaries of the "book I read that month" because I had to be writing about the same book for the whole month when I would finish the book like 5 days in, so I was remembering what happened like 6 books ago by the end of the month.
Also unfortunately I then, many years later, learned and realized that the books I was reading were written by a pedophile. one of the series ended with them making a pedo god, and the other one had far too many details and seperate instances of children sexually exploring for a 40+ year old man to be writing about... Now I'm terrified of recommending shit I read or watched as a child because what if I am just not remembering some horrific thing that happens in it.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 15d
I was there by 5th grade and read grade 5 in first grade. I never read a ton, but I gave cred to my grandma, who would read me "the pokey little puppy" when I was 2 and 3 and 4 years old like every night I was there (a lot).
I had the book memorized and was able to follow along to all the words without knowing how to actually read or anything about sounds. Apparently that was a big leg up in learning to read.
protist@retrofed.com · 4 pts · 15d
Having someone read to you when you're little often is a huge leg up, whether or not you even try to follow along with the words yourself
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 15d
Same for me was told I was super smart but if it ain't history, evolutionary biology, geography, cartography, or mechanical technology it's basically all just a puddle. Knowing how to read maps good and which way is north instinctually is fucken useless nine times out of ten nowadays.
rf_@lemmy.world · 58 pts · 15d
Systemic failure weâre all dealing with. You did all you were told to do, you went to school, you sat down, you listened and you got the degree. Then maybe you got the job, maybe you just now lost the job, and the wages didnât keep up with inflation, so you canât get the house and you canât get the family, too expensive.
Everything got expensive, then the world complains why you arenât having any children, why youâre not consuming. You turn on the tv or your podcasts and you see illiterate people get platformed spouting nonsense about conspiracy theories and to do your research.
Then you see this comic and you see the connection. You see that a promise was broken. You did your part but the system ripped you off. Youâre angry or depressed. Itâs time to take action. Vote for Count Binface.
hansolo@lemmy.today · 9 pts · 15d
For every millennial called "gifted, " there was a Boomer parent crowing about how smart their kid was.
Boomers gave us all trophies so they wouldn't have the kid without the trophy. The same thing tricked down generations.
The whole thing is a scam to placate middle class parents. It has very little to do with the kids.
protist@retrofed.com · 12 pts · 15d
I just couldn't disagree more, as the millennial you're describing and the parent to an 8 year old. There's nothing at all wrong with a participation trophy, in fact, it boosts kids' interest and it helps them feel like they belong. Don't think they're not also acutely aware of losing a game, or who on the team are the most and least skilled.
At the same time, I'm of the mind that sports should be fun. Cutthroat competition sucks for kids, there's no reason for it
terranoid@lemmy.cafe · 0 pts · 15d
I never thought of it that way, but now that I look back at it, it's true. It was all way more for the parents. The kid was an essential asset for their ego. They were competing for who had the most successful child.
What can kids do? Read, and books=smart, so they were competing with each other at how good their kid was at... reading. So they came up with bullshit metrics like, "my child is in 4th grade but just finished a book at a 9th grade level... isn't your child in 8th grade? Wow, my child is reading books he can't even understand yet."
It was always about the fucking parents.
hansolo@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 15d
You get it.
My parents, and dozens of others, got a hard sell to plop my useless-ass name into the book "Who's Who of American High School Students." As if it mattered at all. It was an ad for kids with dickbag parents that wanted to spend $150 to be in an asshole phonebook. And many did. And their parents were proud and bought the hard copy book for that year, and none of us gave two shits. It had no value, no bearing on anything. A complete waste of money for a fleeting ego boost to the parents.
terranoid@lemmy.cafe · 1 pts · 15d
Yeah, i think we were raised in similar narcissistic households and maybe others didn't share that experience as much. My parents got a scent of the gifted child effect and tried to do everything to nurture it.
For so long they made me feel like I was super special but as an adult I can see how unhealthy it all was, and how much they fed off that attention.
Maybe for some children it was a normal gauge of how well the child is doing, but for myself every little achievement felt like, "oh so you felt okay with x? let's see how well you can do x+1. You know there's a kid who took college classes at 16? I think we should sign you up. What about astronomy? Have you heard of space camp?"
I felt like failure was terrible because of how disappointed they'd look if i didn't take well to some new assignment. Completely fucked way to grow up.
hansolo@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 15d
Mine wasn't narcissistic, but my parents didn't mind a little free classicism. Then, after years of "your child is so smart!" in high school I didn't want to do work because I was a teenager. So years of "just apply yourself!" lectures. Y'all, I can only do so much calc homework before I lose the will to live.
protist@retrofed.com · 0 pts · 15d
That you're equating your parents signing you up for inclusion in "Who's Who" with being assigned to gifted classes as kid is perhaps a testament to the failures of the American education system
hansolo@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 15d
Ironic you would make this comment as a slam on the American education system without having understood I only said my parents got a hard sell. I never said they went for it. The sales people filled the library with students in more than one AP course, and a few of the wealthier families with kids on sports teams.
Anyway, my point is that parents were pulled in and sold this, not a single student even knew what these books were, especially since the "Who's Who" other titles are all about adults paying to be in a national registry of self-important people.
protist@retrofed.com · 0 pts · 15d
The idea of reading level targets is from decades of research in education and human development. It has zero to do with parents' egos
architect@thelemmy.club · 1 pts · 15d
Lol doing everything right and taking the advice of people that never actually did anything all that exciting without someone else to hand them that opportunity is pretty funny. Hereâs an alternate translation of this: âI did the exact same thing everyone else did and expected that to lead to anything but what everyone else got, which considering everyone did it already, was very little â.
The answer is always to break the mold and disrupt shit.
thethrilloftime69@feddit.online · 34 pts · 15d
I think we have to separate achievement in this capitalist society from the skills we were told to acquire.
Being a good reader has a million benefits. If let's you think about ideas that you might not encounter in real life. It allows you to live inside someone else's mind. It makes you more empathetic. It makes you capable of thinking more creatively. It makes you consider things that you might not have been able to otherwise. Being a good reader makes you a more well rounded, intelligent and creative person.
Just because it didn't get you a high paying job in this grifters economy doesn't mean it was useless. Keep reading. Keep dreaming of a better world. Keep striving to be a real human in a world full of grifting capitalist drones.
Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net · 32 pts · 15d
Weewf. Why you got to call me out like that? I was reading at a grade 10 level in grade 5. Now I just post stupid memes on the internet.
Mongostein@lemmy.ca · 21 pts · 15d
Yeah because when it comes to getting ahead skills donât matter. What really matters is who your uncle is or whose ass you kiss.
blarth@thelemmy.club · 1 pts · 15d
One only need look at Donald Trump. Guy is the dumbest ass and would be working the drive thru at a Burger King (not even a McDonaldâs) if his dad wasnât a wealthy, uninhibited ghoul of a human being.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 15d
I had an uncle, Dr. John Potoooooooo who went to MIT who is a top professor. A genius. It's in my blood. I'm smart. Great marks. Like really smart.
That means I have much better blood.
LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 15d
Me reading at a collegiate level in 2nd grade then ending up as a dumbass adult.
Dialectical_Specialist@quokk.au · 12 pts · 15d
Don't let your dreams become all-star memes
aeiou@piefed.social · 11 pts · 15d
Had a 9th grade reading level according to my kindergarten teacher. Probably the last time I was proud of myself.
Gormadt@slrpnk.net · 9 pts · 15d
But hey, at least we're harder to mislead and we understand the media we consume better.
blujan@sopuli.xyz · 10 pts · 15d
Yeah, we're not oblivious to the state of the world around us and that gives us âchecks notesâ anxiety and frustration with the people who are.
Gormadt@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 15d
The tools to see the faults yes, we need to drive to take the steps to build the world we wish to live in.
But without the tools to see it's faults we could never build a better tomorrow.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 15d
I was reading at a college level in 5th grade.
it only provided the opportunity to wreck the smug sense of superiority of my teacher, whom berated me daily for being "difficult" and "undisciplined".
guess I was unchallenged by your lackluster curriculum you dumb bitch.
I'll never forget the look on her face when she saw my reading comprehension score came back a few points higher than her own. she even attempted to identify if I was cheating.
RebekahWSD@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 15d
Humans were mean but books were not. I never thought it would get me far, that was my parents very misguided assumptions.
damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 15d
I used to read one level above my grade always. Then when I would get into the grade, the English teacher was always impressed that Iâd read everything already and I was always impressed at the extremely stupid questions they would ask about the âauthorâs intentâ in writing this poem.
Itâs a fucking poem, Linda. Chill your beans at trying to be an amateur psychologist for a man dead 300 years already.
imadethis@fedinsfw.app · 4 pts · 15d
There was a massive crime perpetrated against high school students. Somehow, the teachers took the good idea of teaching a book and pointing out its underlying themes and historical context (that scene in great expectations where the girl plays the card game against the protagonist, as an example) to gain a greater understanding... and drove it into the ground by needlessly making everything (the infamous blue curtains) this massive deal that you absolutely had to contemplate and tear apart and put together with everything else, waaaaah!
thermal_shock@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 15d
Hey, I'm proud of my kid knowing words other than "six seven" like a god damn imbecile. Surprises me regularly with his lexicon.
Even if it doesn't help the way we expect in the future, it sure as shit isn't hurting.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 15d
At some point years ago I did some online test and it turned out my English language vocabulary was somewhere in the top 0.01% or something like that.
Which is kinda ridiculous because I'm not a native English speaker.
I think it's the result of years of lots and lots of reading things in English: books, newspapers, magazines, even online.
Then on top of that I moved to Britain, which did wonders for learning the local slang of at least the part of it were I lived and even meant some words I learned I only really know them in English (for example, terms used in professional Finance) because I learned them in English, not in my native language.
Also, a lot of the most supposedly sophisticated words are basically the Latin or Greek words barelly changed (sometimes not at all) or technical terms that originated in the dominant language at the time that tech was invented, so they're pretty much the same in all languages I know (so, say, the word "heliocentric" is pretty much the same in my native Portuguese, in Spanish, French, English and so on) so for things like scientific and technical terms having a good vocabulary is mostly language agnostic.
deacon@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 15d
Same.
At least I can do a nice turn of word though.
deacon@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 15d
And it was worth it for all the Pepperoni Personal Pan Pizzas.
deacon@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 15d
I have to constantly rein in my impractically large vocabulary to minimize the degree to which I sound like a pretentious prick, but just recalling how the crisp on the outer edge of those pepperonis was surpassed only by the crisp on the top of crust makes the world feel balanced again, if only for a moment.
Grass@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 15d
the lack of usage paired with nobody knowing any of the words in real conversation led me to become out of practice and stupid
whereitsat@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 15d
think of the internet cred though. you may make 500k less a year but you can come up with a thousand zingers to reply with instead of calling someone 'a re**ard' like a barbarian.
don't you feel good about yourself?
Ishmael@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 15d
a reynard?
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 15d
I mean, it unlocked big ideas earlier than most people, and I got a head start on serious critical thinking, which has shaped my life in many positive ways. But it didn't, like, directly lead to financial prosperity. Honestly it probably hampered it because I had too much context to exploit others with a clear conscience way before I had the means to do so at scale.
"Reading level" is more about literary comprehension than technical understanding. And embracing baser modes of expression has only made it easier to effectively communicate.
Above-average reading level is only really helpful long-term if you specialize in literature.
Doug@piefed.social · 5 pts · 15d
I was just competing with my friend who was way smarter than me. I plateaued once he moved away.
StillAlive@piefed.world · 5 pts · 15d
Why tf are you attacking me?
CubitOom@infosec.pub · 4 pts · 15d
I skipped Harry Potter tho so that was nice.
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 15d
I've realized the most efficient way to succeed in life (hours spent studying vs perceived achievement) is to be able to talk to people and talk to them well. If you're born with a golden mouth, you're set.
nymnympseudonym@piefed.social · 4 pts · 15d
I would be willing to bet that if you take a random survey of people who read above vs below grade level, the former group enjoys life more, has more options, and winds up living longer
architect@thelemmy.club · 1 pts · 15d
Living longer? With this stress?
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 15d
Preach on
FinishingDutch@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 15d
Yeah. If anything, admitting that youâre an avid reader will have people saying âYou think youâre better than me because you read?â Or some other dismissive comment regarding people who enjoy books.
So Iâve personally chosen to absolutely agree to that question: people who read are better than people who donât.
And it doesnât even need to be boring books. Yes, I will even count comic readers amongst our reading brethren. Anyone who reads with actual intent is alright in my book đ
5gruel@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 15d
Seems a bit shallow to tie that much of your identity to reading books. who cares if you read?
Etterra@discuss.online · 4 pts · 15d
It sure as hell didn't get me as far as my mother expected. But she was drunk half the time anyway so meh
plateee@piefed.social · 4 pts · 15d
This is their site, unfortunately it doesn't look like this exact image is available as a sticker.
Other shirts look cool though.
https://jessacreates.com/
Gerudo@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 15d
Oh those are great
BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 15d
Books are good though
unmagical@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 15d
All that reading at a uni level in grade school did for me was make me utterly surprised when we had to peer review papers my second year of uni and I'm gazing down 5 pages with no complete sentences, the only punctuation used is in the complete wrong way, and misspellings of words that I know are on every office program's spell checker. Fast forward a few years and POTUS has the oratory skills of a fifth grader and I might lose my programming job because marketing and sales haven't managed to sell the product in years (I work on an end user product for one of the largest companies in my field whose primary focus is enterprise b2b sdks; if end user continues at this pace there's a chance they drop the whole division EOQ3).
PlaidBaron@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 15d
No but it did make the other kids think I was weird for reading LotR in grade 5.
EmilieEasie@fedinsfw.app · 3 pts · 15d
Yeah, 'cuz eventually everyone else just catches up anyway! Reading at a college level in college isn't that impressive.
imadethis@fedinsfw.app · 1 pts · 15d
Interestingly enough, no, not really. If you want to look it up, they call it the 'Matthew Effect' (from the biblical parable in matthew about the servants being given tithes by the master and using them).
Kids who read more get more from what they read later. If you've read ten books and your neighbor only one, you retain more and understand more from the next book you've read. Unless you completely stop reading, or they suddenly start reading way more, the earlier start with your reading will give you far greater benefits. A humorous little fact is that you can predict college gpa better with the amount of books read by age five (I think, it might be by grade five, it's been a while since I read the study) than by the SAT/ACT tests.
EmilieEasie@fedinsfw.app · 1 pts · 14d
I don't really find that all that impressive because schooling success is so strongly correlated with socioeconomic status
wewbull@feddit.uk · -1 pts · 15d
No they don't. Not in my experience.
Remember, half of people are below average and average isn't that impressive.
EmilieEasie@fedinsfw.app · 2 pts · 15d
I did go to college with some dummies myself, but most of them could read the material they were required to
wewbull@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 15d
The majority did not go to college.
EmilieEasie@fedinsfw.app · 1 pts · 15d
I see what you're saying. I was only thinking in terms of school, since no one really tracks your reading abilities in the "real world" anyway.
Impractical_Island@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 15d
I teach English and philosophy at a 30th grade level. You wanna know how I'm doing? Well, I might be homeless again soon, I think the CIA is manipulating me, and God can't stop dicking around with the phenomequalitesselation of the karmic entanglements within my monadic lens of reality, but at least I have decided I am a prophet of the Mormon Church and will be the 48th and 50th president of the United States soon, so I got that going for me.
Rivermoonwolf@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 14d