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It’s been a treat watching the progression of Oxide over the past 2 years or so. I really hope they make a solid dent in the market. As an aside, if you haven’

• lproven 3y ago
  > I’d recommend the Oxide and friends podcast. This is what makes me sad. I've exchanged messages a bit with Oxide. I wanted to write about them. But they are many timezones from me, so live talk is very hard to schedule. I couldn't find enough info in text form to research a story. I am a speedreader. I can happily cruise along at 1000 words a minute and can burst up to 3000wpm for short periods. (I read whole novels this way in childhood: a 1970s novel of 200pp was 25min to half an hour.) It's how I do my job as a writer: lots and lots of reading. Tens of thousands of words a day. I can't do this with speech. I can't follow speech at 2x speed, and that's still less than half my normal reading speed. 1.5 to 1.75x is the maximum. I'd need a week to listen to the research material for every short article I write. No text discussion == no coverage. I am delighted that my colleague was able to do this story, but he's on the same continent as Oxide. I can't bear talk radio, it's so slow. I've never listened to a podcast in my life; the mere idea horrifies me. You want me to squander an hour on some unscripted chatter about something I could read in 5-10 minutes? Dear gods, no! :-(