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> EARLY ONE MORNING, Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces beg

> EARLY ONE MORNING, Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces began to appear. She also saw a few people she didn’t know It’s really hard for me to read a WIRED article for information. I mean I realize that’s not what it’s there for but it takes forever to get into the content of the article.

c7DJTLrn 5y ago
Nails on chalkboard.
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
Hear hear. Maybe Wired should talk about the coffee she's sipping, made from beans harvested on the south coast of Java, where there is a legend of a queen who drowned...
- andi999 5y ago
  I need more detail... what happened to the queens relatives.
  - K0balt 5y ago
    Forget the relatives, where did those BUTONS on her shoes come from!
- tengbretson 5y ago
  The important thing was that she had an onion on her belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say.
Reason077 5y ago
> "it takes forever to get into the content of the article." I've found this is the style of American long-format journalism in general. Just look at something like The New Yorker: not to dispute the quality of their writing, but the word counts certainly skew high. Articles in comparable British publications tend to be a lot more succinct.
- e17 5y ago
  I agree, and if you consider Private Eye in particular, they make the New Yorker or The Atlantic look like the Proust. Having said that, the British periodical landscape is sorely lacking a good centrist/apolitical current affairs publication in the American style.
  - auxym 5y ago
    The Economist? Or do you consider that too right leaning?
    - malandrew 5y ago
      The Economist hasn’t been right leaning for at least half a decade or longer now.
- dorfsmay 5y ago
  I know this is going to sound crazy, but give it a try sometime. When I lose track while reading an article, or find difficult to understand it, I stop and reading it bottom up, one paragraph at a time. First the last paragraph, then the one before that, etc... This cuts through directly to the conclusion, then the detailed explanations form particular to general (which works better for me) and I can skip the "excitement build up" at the top of the article.
  - vishnugupta 5y ago
    I second this. I applied it to this[1] super long winded article in New Yorker to get the gist of the article. This article is littered with these passages and it's super frustrating. In the end from my view point it's a shallow piece with very little new insights. FWIW the article didn't age well as India is being ravaged by the 2nd wave. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/why-does-the-pandemic-seem-to-be-hitting-some-countries-harder-than-others https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/why-does-the-p...
    - 5y ago
vishnugupta 5y ago
> When the call ended, Marr sat back heavily, feeling an old frustration coiling tighter in her body. She itched to go for a run, to pound it out footfall by footfall into the pavement
- bsenftner 5y ago
  This style of writing is so present tense sensationalized, I cease to believe what is written simply because all this fictionalized present tense prose they dress the article up is 100% made up - so how is one to take the "facts" seriously?
inanutshellus 5y ago
Wait, is this a Wired link? The URL seems to go to drive.google.com and... that weirded me out so I didn't click on it but figured I'd check out the comments to see what folk had learnt.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
I have read both now, and IMHO there's more actual content about scientific matters in the Wired piece.
wffurr 5y ago
Writers with frustrated literary ambitions...
0xffff2 5y ago
I refuse to click on Wired links anymore. The signal to noise ratio is way to low to ever be worth it.
- newsbinator 5y ago
  Could someone here please make a Wired auto-summarizer that cuts out the stuff about what the subject of the article had for breakfast that day and retains the insights?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
weaksauce 5y ago
The short of it is that there was some early research done in TB transmission and they found that the nose was really good at blocking particles larger than 5 microns but it showed that 100 micron particles would be suspended in the air as an aerosol and there was subsequent research that used the 5 microns as gospel for aerosol cutoff even though particles greater than that could be considered aerosol and that cutoff stuck.
Gibbon1 5y ago
This twitter thread from Jose-Luis Jimenez is far far better. https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1391111720526024708 https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1391111720526024708 Credentials: https://www.colorado.edu/chemistry/jose-luis-jimenez https://www.colorado.edu/chemistry/jose-luis-jimenez

c7DJTLrn 5y ago

Nails on chalkboard.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago

Hear hear. Maybe Wired should talk about the coffee she's sipping, made from beans harvested on the south coast of Java, where there is a legend of a queen who drowned...

andi999 5y ago
I need more detail... what happened to the queens relatives.
- K0balt 5y ago
  Forget the relatives, where did those BUTONS on her shoes come from!
tengbretson 5y ago
The important thing was that she had an onion on her belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say.

Reason077 5y ago

> "it takes forever to get into the content of the article." I've found this is the style of American long-format journalism in general. Just look at something like The New Yorker: not to dispute the quality of their writing, but the word counts certainly skew high. Articles in comparable British publications tend to be a lot more succinct.

e17 5y ago
I agree, and if you consider Private Eye in particular, they make the New Yorker or The Atlantic look like the Proust. Having said that, the British periodical landscape is sorely lacking a good centrist/apolitical current affairs publication in the American style.
- auxym 5y ago
  The Economist? Or do you consider that too right leaning?
  - malandrew 5y ago
    The Economist hasn’t been right leaning for at least half a decade or longer now.
dorfsmay 5y ago
I know this is going to sound crazy, but give it a try sometime. When I lose track while reading an article, or find difficult to understand it, I stop and reading it bottom up, one paragraph at a time. First the last paragraph, then the one before that, etc... This cuts through directly to the conclusion, then the detailed explanations form particular to general (which works better for me) and I can skip the "excitement build up" at the top of the article.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  I second this. I applied it to this[1] super long winded article in New Yorker to get the gist of the article. This article is littered with these passages and it's super frustrating. In the end from my view point it's a shallow piece with very little new insights. FWIW the article didn't age well as India is being ravaged by the 2nd wave. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/why-does-the-pandemic-seem-to-be-hitting-some-countries-harder-than-others https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/why-does-the-p...
  - 5y ago

vishnugupta 5y ago

> When the call ended, Marr sat back heavily, feeling an old frustration coiling tighter in her body. She itched to go for a run, to pound it out footfall by footfall into the pavement

bsenftner 5y ago
This style of writing is so present tense sensationalized, I cease to believe what is written simply because all this fictionalized present tense prose they dress the article up is 100% made up - so how is one to take the "facts" seriously?

inanutshellus 5y ago

Wait, is this a Wired link? The URL seems to go to drive.google.com and... that weirded me out so I didn't click on it but figured I'd check out the comments to see what folk had learnt.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago

I have read both now, and IMHO there's more actual content about scientific matters in the Wired piece.

wffurr 5y ago

Writers with frustrated literary ambitions...

0xffff2 5y ago

I refuse to click on Wired links anymore. The signal to noise ratio is way to low to ever be worth it.

newsbinator 5y ago
Could someone here please make a Wired auto-summarizer that cuts out the stuff about what the subject of the article had for breakfast that day and retains the insights?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

weaksauce 5y ago

The short of it is that there was some early research done in TB transmission and they found that the nose was really good at blocking particles larger than 5 microns but it showed that 100 micron particles would be suspended in the air as an aerosol and there was subsequent research that used the 5 microns as gospel for aerosol cutoff even though particles greater than that could be considered aerosol and that cutoff stuck.

Gibbon1 5y ago

This twitter thread from Jose-Luis Jimenez is far far better. https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1391111720526024708 https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1391111720526024708 Credentials: https://www.colorado.edu/chemistry/jose-luis-jimenez https://www.colorado.edu/chemistry/jose-luis-jimenez