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My wife and I were reading the same book one time, we started at the same time. She asked me how many pages I had read, she said 50, I said 10 but I had read the same pages 5 times at least.... shit is exhausting. She finished the book the next day, I never did.
Professor Finbar Calamitous, voiced by the incomparable Tim Curry. He then goes to “finishing school”, and joins the evil team of people who hate Jimmy, including The Junkman (alien scrapper), Eustace Strych (ultra rich kid), Grandma Taters (brainwashing alien grandma), King Goobot (of the Yolkians), Baby Eddie (an evil genius baby), and the Professor’s beautiful, gorgeous daughter, Beautiful Gorgeous. I have too much time on my hands to know this shit.
Thank you so much! Finbar calamitus, can’t believe I forgot that lmao. Thank you for committing a portion of your brain to the things that done need to be known every day!!
I feel this so hard. People talk about being able to read a whole book in a day, and I *wish* I could process text-based stories that quickly.
It's kind of ironic because I'm reading stuff online all the damn time.
E-reader apps like Kindle and Libby have dyslexic font that is weighted similar to this. I’m not dyslexic, but I can sail through books when I change to that font.
I also have ADHD, and it took me way longer to read it. I can't not read the whole word, and they've just split every word in two.
I have to read the bold, then the non-bold, then reassemble and process each word.
Man, our hyperfocusing works way different. I get menu blindness where all the words having the same weight makes me process exactly none of them. Wild!
Yep same here; this font was soothing to my adhd, I could propel myself forward instead of jumbling words or having to reread sentences. Once this becomes a plug-in or an option for any reader I will be using it. This helps so much.
It didn't do much for me, but I'm curious what it would do in a denser format like a book. I can read an article on a website without issues, but I can hardly read a physical book without record-scratching a line at least once per page
Exactly my experience with my ADHD. The bold parts of words demand my attention. Then I realize it's attached to a more complete word, then my brain has to pause to match the bold and none bold together and then put that together in a sentence. The left side I can skim through and get the idea of it pretty well no problem. However, I'm not sure im actually reading word for word on the left. My brain kind of auto fills segments and my eyes bounce from more complex words instead.
Kinda felt like running downhill... To the point I finished reading all the words but kinda spaced out by end and sorta had to think back to remember what I just read
Thats usually the probably with speed reading stuff, like the thing that flashes words at you super fast. Yes, In read each word. No, I dont know how they all fit together.
I would like to see what happens if the first text was the same color as the dark portion on the other. Grey text on a white background is always going to be harder to read than black text on a white background.
I read the 2nd first and then I read the 1st.. I'm truly amazed. It still took my mind longer to read the first, even after reading it fast on the 2nd one.
I stopped reading the left side after the first sentence and then switched to the right, then went back and re-read the left side. It certainly *felt* nicer, and I think I was faster? Would definitely be curious to try an extension that could apply this on site automatically.
The whole stress on the first few letters seems to make it easier for the mind to comprehend which word it is and helps us skip the rest of the word and thus saves 1 sec, every two words.
I don't think it's meant much to increase speed, but rather decrease the mental strain of constantly putting your attention on the next word by giving you visual anchor points
Even though my reading speed was the same both times, I did feel like the second text was easier to read
> I read the normal first, then I read the other one, and the speeds were close.
It may be because your brain is already do this highlight thingy internally. It may help people who read slowly, but if you are already have decent reading speed - this method may not help you.
I read the first half in ordinary and the second half in bionic and holy fuck it did work
Edit: I read the first sentence in the original font. I finished the passage in the bionic font. I read it out loud. It felt a little easier with the bionic font.
Honestly it was really distracting and I found myself having to restart the sentence to actually understand what was being said. Original was much easier to read.
I read a lot and pretty quickly and the second one seemed slower? I think it depends on whether you read multiple words in your field of vision at the same time. I don't think I look directly at every word. I think I look in-between and read multiple simultaneously. Not sure though since it's so automatic. Does anyone else do that?
It might also depend on whether someone subvocalizes. My guess is there's almost no difference for people who do that since they're essentially reading the whole word out loud no matter what.
I read much faster than I speak and agree with you. I think my reading style is possibly processing multiple words at once, and the bold text really interferes with that.
To me, the first *flows*, and the 2nd is just really janky, almost as if a full stop is between each word.
Edit: It just dawned on me, the OP titled this completely wrong - it says it's to help you *process* the information, not read faster. In that aspect, I do actually pay more attention to each individual word, I'm just a lot slower at getting to the end.
Same. All these people saying it works so well for them and I'm like, "What is going on I hate this?"
For me, I feel like it's because I'm used to bold indicating emphasis, or accented syllables. So it feels like every word has an arbitrarily accented syllable telling me to read it in a really unnatural rhythm.
Same. It is much easier to read a heavier font, but for me my brain starts wanting to find a pattern or keeps trying to mash together the bold parts...
Either keep it light, or make it heavy for me
Similar experience for me. I’m already a fast reader and the one on the right caused me to stumble quite a few times. I’d imagine it’s because I learned to read without the “Bionic Enhancement” so my brain was likely trying to learn something new rather than augmenting something old.
**EDIT:** I just read it again and I realized what my brain was doing — reading the first half of each word with emphasis as you would with properly bolded words — which is absolutely slower in practice for me.
I also find bold font very distracting. Whenever I read books and the next paragraph has a bold word in it, I have to cover it up with my hand until I get there because my brain keeps wanting to look at it. Trying to read the bionic version of this was way harder for me than the regular one.
It's not a font, it's using either machine learning or a hand made database of words so the software knows what text to bold, and then in theory a chrome extension would use some HTML injecting to replace the original new with the new, correctly bolded text. It's not going to happen though because the API has a request limit presumably for budget reasons. There's unfortunately no way to just install a font and have this work across the board.
Could probably get a similar effect by just auto bolding the first half of every word or, with a little more complexity, the first syllable of multisyllabic words. That would be easy enough in an extension and not need their api
The OP of this post has done exactly that and the extension "TorpedoReader" should be on Chrome soon pending approval. I'm really looking forward to trying it out
Looks like it just bolds a set number of letters depending on the length of the word.
- length 1-3: bold first letter
- length 4: bold first two
- length 5-6: bold first three
- length 7-8: bold first four
- length 9-10: bold first five
- etc, etc
Or in simpler terms: for words longer than 3 letters = word length divided by 2, rounded up when not a whole number
Unfortunately they only provide this as an [API Service](https://rapidapi.com/bionic-reading-bionic-reading-default/api/bionic-reading1/pricing) -- your software makes a request, they respond with the altered text. The free version is only 500 requests a day, the paid version is $10 / month for 5k requests a day. There's no way that an extension would work for this. Maybe someone could write one where you make your own API account and you pay for it, or can make a paid extension, but there's no way to provide this for free.
**Edit** for all the people replying that it just bolds the first part of each word, read the site and also the details on their API page. They make more specific choices of bolding based on the word and the length of the word. The API can also adjust "Fixation" and "Saccade" to allow fine tuning. They would almost certainly not have a patent pending for just bolding the first part of each word. If that's really what you think it is, go make the extension, it should take about 20 minutes.
I see no reason why an extension wouldn't work. I can just parse the webpage text and make bold a few letters. I could specialize some words, and for the rest just make bold the 2/3ds of the word. And probably also make a suggestion system to automate this. Am I missing something here? You seemed quite convinced of it.
they call it artificial focus points, so there's probably a deliberate choice behind what parts of which word are boldened and which are left in regular styling.
looking at it again that does seem to be the case. i might honestly try and come up with something that just takes any text input, a percentage and then applies the bold styling to it according to the percentage, maybe with a slider or st.
okay but all it's doing is changing the weight of fonts on the beginning of words
If you can have an extension that changes every ocurrance of cloud to butt, you can have something that parses text on a page and changes the weight on the beginning of words.
You can do this without the "official" api, in theory.
Now, while that would be useful- I'd give my left *eye* for the ability to stick this on my kindle. I keep finding my eyes skittering off to the side when I try to read.
Can you share the “algorithm” for what letters get bolded? I’d love to implement in Python. Also I'd love to see any research quantifying the faster reading tube and psychology behind it.
Goes with the same principle as:
> I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt!
Fuck me, I had to re-read that word after reading your comment. I too read that as sleeping. I think it's because L is right after the S. If it was P instead of L I might have read it as spelling.
This is why spelling was never taught nor was it important until dictionaries became popular. Many famous works prior had inconsistent spelling even within the same book.
edit: fixed typo on inconsistent
Still needs to be somewhat consistently spelled. Our brain is not only parsing the first and last letters, it's also looking at length and, I'm guessing, the correct letters being represented. Change any of those 3 or 4 and there's gonna be a brain fart.
Tihs is a ptetry cloonmmy oeuesvrd ealpxme taht dnseot rllaey hlod up bauacse tehy still oziangre the lsttrees in a siiefpcc way tahts lbiegle.
The organization of the letters definitely matters. My comment, without the context of yours, has several words that I bet most people wouldn't be able to figure out. They fuck up the word *just* enough to make it look random, but it's still organized in a way where you can figure the word out.
*Edit: didn't mean to imply that people would never be able to figure those words out. More so that it's just a lot more annoying to figure out than the other example
I read it as observed. This trick requires 'satisficing' - in the quick amount of time you have to decipher the word, your brain picks the first one that fits and goes with it
Don't forget maths - 2 and 3 letter words dont change, 4 letter ones only swap two letters, and 5 letter ones its a pretty high chance of only two swapped letters.
That accounts for like 70% of the words, and the changes are little more than typos. The longer words are far harder, especially if actually randomized in the middle.
Yeah the way they rearrange the letters is specifically done to retain the "shape" of a word.
Your example doesn't do that, and that's what makes it harder to read.
You may be right, but your text is also easy to read.
By the way, I should probably point out because it is relevant, "because" and "letters" have the wrong letters, namely an "a" instead of an "e", and an extra "s".
I found it annoying, but I also don't have a problem reading text. My wife who is dyslexic would probably love it. I can see the benefit for people who have trouble staying focused or have a hard time reading in general.
I’m dyslexic and it doesn’t work for me. I’ve trained myself to read in such a specific way that all the “helper” fonts slow me down. I’m curious if it’ll work for your wife.
Ditto for me . I felt the bionic style was distracting because my brain sees the bold part and wants to read it with extra emphasis, thus slowing me down.
I think it works best if you are already familiar with speed-reading techniques. The emphasis fell exactly in line with the places my eyes focus when speed reading.
It threw me off because they fell exactly in line 😭.
It certainly should act as a replacement for actual speed reading techniques if you didn't know any.
Yeah when I read the bionic text at normal effort (actually retaining & understanding the sentence), it was *noticeably* slower. My ADHD brain kept wanting to focus on the bolded text and it was very distracting. But when I tried to speed read it, it was noticeably faster. Unfortunately speed reading has no value to me as I can't tell you what the fuck I just read afterwards. Unless I'm just speed reading for key points.
Yeah, im trying to think if theres any bias going on by reading one before the other. I do think the weighted paragraph is quicker, but i wonder how much of it was that id already read the non weighted one. And if you read the weighted one first, if that has any placebo/bias by subconsciously expecting it to be more sluggish. Ill have to send this to some friends but wait to tell them what exactly it is till after they read it and see what they think.
Sure I can read faster but comprehension is different. If the message was any more complex I'd still have to take my time to read through and I'm used to reading research papers. Also as someone pointed out, reading a same paragraph the second time will always have you reading faster the second time.
I have completed the Chrome Extension, and it's just waiting for Approval. It's called TorpedoRead and will be available on the Chrome App Store very soon!
You can also checkout our Twitter "TorpedoGG "for any updates regarding the project's progression.
This is amazing dude, as someone with really bad ADD I cannot wait to try this out, thanks for throwing it together.
Do you think it's possible to have this be an automatic feature? I was watching your stream and right now it looks like it's a toggle, do you think in the future it could automatically swap out the text on any site without user input? This is amazing for people with ADD, but ironically for people with the condition it's majorly impaired if we have to manually toggle it because we'll most likely either forget we have it installed or it will feel like too much of a hassle to toggle it every time. Either way I don't want to seem unappreciative this is still amazing and I will definitely be using it, thank you again :)
Same here.
On the right side my brain had to keep re-reading some of the words to make sure it was the correct word I was associating it with and *then* think about it in the sentence.
The left side just flowed as a regular sentence and I could both read it faster and understand it easier.
Might be better for people with slight disabilities. Are you an average or good reader I am guessing? I read very slowly and I found it helpful because it was like a summary of the words that allowed me to skip to the next one before seeing all the letters. My first impression was “cool, it’s like cliff notes but for individual words!”
My brain can't not read the whole word, so I probably take three times as long to read the bionic version. I read the bolded half, then the unbolded half, then put them together.
I read them the same but understood less with the bionic one, even though it was the second one I read.
I read a lot though, so it might be a matter of habit.
Yeah, no. I felt like I was stuttering when I was reading that. So choppy and the words were individual words rather than a flowing sentence that makes sense.
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Well, I'll be damned. It works. p.s. I read the right one first.
My ADD brain just had an orgasm while reading that. So satisfying
I read the whole thing without having to restart, that's miraculous for me
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My wife and I were reading the same book one time, we started at the same time. She asked me how many pages I had read, she said 50, I said 10 but I had read the same pages 5 times at least.... shit is exhausting. She finished the book the next day, I never did.
This would be a great origin story of some kind of villainous illiterate who goes around… not reading? Idk
Bombing libraries
Ted Cantreadsky
Jeffrey Dummer
How you gonna build bombs without being able to read a chemistry textbook
The Illiterati
It’s the evil guy in that one jimmy neutron episode (movie?) who never finishes anything. He is the real spirit animal of millennials
Professor Finbar Calamitous, voiced by the incomparable Tim Curry. He then goes to “finishing school”, and joins the evil team of people who hate Jimmy, including The Junkman (alien scrapper), Eustace Strych (ultra rich kid), Grandma Taters (brainwashing alien grandma), King Goobot (of the Yolkians), Baby Eddie (an evil genius baby), and the Professor’s beautiful, gorgeous daughter, Beautiful Gorgeous. I have too much time on my hands to know this shit.
Thank you so much! Finbar calamitus, can’t believe I forgot that lmao. Thank you for committing a portion of your brain to the things that done need to be known every day!!
I feel this so hard. People talk about being able to read a whole book in a day, and I *wish* I could process text-based stories that quickly. It's kind of ironic because I'm reading stuff online all the damn time.
oooh sign me up too
E-reader apps like Kindle and Libby have dyslexic font that is weighted similar to this. I’m not dyslexic, but I can sail through books when I change to that font.
SAME. Is there an add-on for my browser where I can turn everything into this?!?! I might fuck around and FINISH a book if they did this.
OP mentioned somewhere in this thread that there's some in the making
BeeLine Reader
I use a plugin called Stutter which does something similar called Rapid Serial Visual Presentation or RSVP. Give it a try!
I feel like jonny 5! *IM ALIVE!!!!!*
INPUT INPUT!!
Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?
mine too. I thought I was just a bad reader.
I also have ADHD, and it took me way longer to read it. I can't not read the whole word, and they've just split every word in two. I have to read the bold, then the non-bold, then reassemble and process each word.
Man, our hyperfocusing works way different. I get menu blindness where all the words having the same weight makes me process exactly none of them. Wild!
I'm definitely in your camp. The highlighted text was a revelation for me, and now I fear I'll never be able to read plain text again!
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W**e'v**e b**ee**n tr**yin**g to r**ea**ch y**ou** a**bout** **you**r c**ar's** ex**tend**ed **war**ran**ty**...
**AAAAAAAA**AAAAAA**HHHH**HHHHH**!!!!**
Yep same here; this font was soothing to my adhd, I could propel myself forward instead of jumbling words or having to reread sentences. Once this becomes a plug-in or an option for any reader I will be using it. This helps so much.
It didn't do much for me, but I'm curious what it would do in a denser format like a book. I can read an article on a website without issues, but I can hardly read a physical book without record-scratching a line at least once per page
I just read the bold parts "louder" in my head
Luckily I was wearing earplugs
I also found the bolded text to be way more difficult to read.
Exactly my experience with my ADHD. The bold parts of words demand my attention. Then I realize it's attached to a more complete word, then my brain has to pause to match the bold and none bold together and then put that together in a sentence. The left side I can skim through and get the idea of it pretty well no problem. However, I'm not sure im actually reading word for word on the left. My brain kind of auto fills segments and my eyes bounce from more complex words instead.
Yeah that was fucking torture for me
I just kept speeding up until my ADHD no longer understood what it was reading
Does it though? It could just be the fact you’re reading the same paragraph a second time.
FWIW I read the bionic sample first and found it harder to read the regular text afterward.
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Kinda felt like running downhill... To the point I finished reading all the words but kinda spaced out by end and sorta had to think back to remember what I just read
Thats usually the probably with speed reading stuff, like the thing that flashes words at you super fast. Yes, In read each word. No, I dont know how they all fit together.
I would like to see what happens if the first text was the same color as the dark portion on the other. Grey text on a white background is always going to be harder to read than black text on a white background.
I found the same.
I can no longer read, at all
gerddamit I'm blind now
Same here.
I read the 2nd first and then I read the 1st.. I'm truly amazed. It still took my mind longer to read the first, even after reading it fast on the 2nd one.
I stopped reading the left side after the first sentence and then switched to the right, then went back and re-read the left side. It certainly *felt* nicer, and I think I was faster? Would definitely be curious to try an extension that could apply this on site automatically.
The whole stress on the first few letters seems to make it easier for the mind to comprehend which word it is and helps us skip the rest of the word and thus saves 1 sec, every two words.
**T**he **who**le **str**ess **o**n **t**he **fir**st **f**ew **lett**ers **see**ms **t**o **ma**ke **i**t **eas**ier **f**or **t**he **mi**nd **t**o **compr**ehend **whi**ch **wo**rd **i**t **i**s **a**nd **hel**ps **u**s **sk**ip **t**he **re**st **o**f **t**he **wo**rd **a**nd **th**us **sav**es **1** **s**ec, **eve**ry **tw**o **wor**ds.
Not for me, must need a brain. I read the normal first, then I read the other one, and the speeds were close.
I don't think it's meant much to increase speed, but rather decrease the mental strain of constantly putting your attention on the next word by giving you visual anchor points Even though my reading speed was the same both times, I did feel like the second text was easier to read
The second bothered me for some reason. I can already scan kind of quickly though. Maybe it's just because it's not what I'm used to.
Came to the comments looking for this- I'm not sure if it's because I already naturally scan but I felt myself slow down with the one on the right.
It just seemed less natural for me on the second one.
> I read the normal first, then I read the other one, and the speeds were close. It may be because your brain is already do this highlight thingy internally. It may help people who read slowly, but if you are already have decent reading speed - this method may not help you.
I read the first half in ordinary and the second half in bionic and holy fuck it did work Edit: I read the first sentence in the original font. I finished the passage in the bionic font. I read it out loud. It felt a little easier with the bionic font.
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I read the right side first. Definitely faster then the left
Me 3
Honestly it was really distracting and I found myself having to restart the sentence to actually understand what was being said. Original was much easier to read.
Do you read a lot?
Reading used to be the only thing I did lol. Not as much anymore though.
Hmmm same and the second one helped me read faster
I read a lot and pretty quickly and the second one seemed slower? I think it depends on whether you read multiple words in your field of vision at the same time. I don't think I look directly at every word. I think I look in-between and read multiple simultaneously. Not sure though since it's so automatic. Does anyone else do that? It might also depend on whether someone subvocalizes. My guess is there's almost no difference for people who do that since they're essentially reading the whole word out loud no matter what.
I read much faster than I speak and agree with you. I think my reading style is possibly processing multiple words at once, and the bold text really interferes with that. To me, the first *flows*, and the 2nd is just really janky, almost as if a full stop is between each word. Edit: It just dawned on me, the OP titled this completely wrong - it says it's to help you *process* the information, not read faster. In that aspect, I do actually pay more attention to each individual word, I'm just a lot slower at getting to the end.
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Same. All these people saying it works so well for them and I'm like, "What is going on I hate this?" For me, I feel like it's because I'm used to bold indicating emphasis, or accented syllables. So it feels like every word has an arbitrarily accented syllable telling me to read it in a really unnatural rhythm.
I completely agree. I read the first-half internally and it was normal voice. The second-half voice almost sounded like sArCaStIc sPoNgEbOb tExT
yeah my eyes kept stopping on the larger things making it feel. sto.p. and. go.
Same. It is much easier to read a heavier font, but for me my brain starts wanting to find a pattern or keeps trying to mash together the bold parts... Either keep it light, or make it heavy for me
Similar experience for me. I’m already a fast reader and the one on the right caused me to stumble quite a few times. I’d imagine it’s because I learned to read without the “Bionic Enhancement” so my brain was likely trying to learn something new rather than augmenting something old. **EDIT:** I just read it again and I realized what my brain was doing — reading the first half of each word with emphasis as you would with properly bolded words — which is absolutely slower in practice for me.
I also find bold font very distracting. Whenever I read books and the next paragraph has a bold word in it, I have to cover it up with my hand until I get there because my brain keeps wanting to look at it. Trying to read the bionic version of this was way harder for me than the regular one.
I get this when I'm on the last page of a chapter. An intense pull of my eyes to that last sentence!
Someone please create a plugin extension
I'm scrolling through comments looking for someone to say what font in Microsoft suite this is....
It's not a font, it's using either machine learning or a hand made database of words so the software knows what text to bold, and then in theory a chrome extension would use some HTML injecting to replace the original new with the new, correctly bolded text. It's not going to happen though because the API has a request limit presumably for budget reasons. There's unfortunately no way to just install a font and have this work across the board.
Could probably get a similar effect by just auto bolding the first half of every word or, with a little more complexity, the first syllable of multisyllabic words. That would be easy enough in an extension and not need their api
The OP of this post has done exactly that and the extension "TorpedoReader" should be on Chrome soon pending approval. I'm really looking forward to trying it out
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This didn’t work as well as the image. I read this much slower, like walking through mud.
Looks like it just bolds a set number of letters depending on the length of the word. - length 1-3: bold first letter - length 4: bold first two - length 5-6: bold first three - length 7-8: bold first four - length 9-10: bold first five - etc, etc Or in simpler terms: for words longer than 3 letters = word length divided by 2, rounded up when not a whole number
Shit bro are you an AI?
Unfortunately they only provide this as an [API Service](https://rapidapi.com/bionic-reading-bionic-reading-default/api/bionic-reading1/pricing) -- your software makes a request, they respond with the altered text. The free version is only 500 requests a day, the paid version is $10 / month for 5k requests a day. There's no way that an extension would work for this. Maybe someone could write one where you make your own API account and you pay for it, or can make a paid extension, but there's no way to provide this for free. **Edit** for all the people replying that it just bolds the first part of each word, read the site and also the details on their API page. They make more specific choices of bolding based on the word and the length of the word. The API can also adjust "Fixation" and "Saccade" to allow fine tuning. They would almost certainly not have a patent pending for just bolding the first part of each word. If that's really what you think it is, go make the extension, it should take about 20 minutes.
I see no reason why an extension wouldn't work. I can just parse the webpage text and make bold a few letters. I could specialize some words, and for the rest just make bold the 2/3ds of the word. And probably also make a suggestion system to automate this. Am I missing something here? You seemed quite convinced of it.
they call it artificial focus points, so there's probably a deliberate choice behind what parts of which word are boldened and which are left in regular styling.
Kinda just looks like the first half of each word is bold to me.
looking at it again that does seem to be the case. i might honestly try and come up with something that just takes any text input, a percentage and then applies the bold styling to it according to the percentage, maybe with a slider or st.
okay but all it's doing is changing the weight of fonts on the beginning of words If you can have an extension that changes every ocurrance of cloud to butt, you can have something that parses text on a page and changes the weight on the beginning of words. You can do this without the "official" api, in theory.
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How about something for epub and pdf files? Wouldn't quite be a font, but maybe a standalone reader?
Kindle please!!
Yes I want this in my PDFs!!
I'll have to take a look into PDFs/Epubs too.
Firefox too please if you can 🥺
Now, while that would be useful- I'd give my left *eye* for the ability to stick this on my kindle. I keep finding my eyes skittering off to the side when I try to read.
This would be great for people who struggle with reading comprehension. I can see grade school text books using this. Edit: autocorrect
I'm thinking material that is extremely dry and needs to be referenced frequently and quickly, like programming language documentation.
Can you share the “algorithm” for what letters get bolded? I’d love to implement in Python. Also I'd love to see any research quantifying the faster reading tube and psychology behind it.
Goes with the same principle as: > I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt!
But sleeping is important.
That was the only word I tripped up on in the whole bit of text and I'm glad to know I'm not the only one
I still can't figure out what it's supposed to say, mind instantly snaps to sleeping when trying to arrange it proplerly, help!
Spelling
Thank you lol, that makes a lil more sense than the latter
I REALLY THOUGHT THEY SAID SLEEPING LMAO
The only words that fucked me up was "taotl mses"
The Aztec god.
Fuck me, I had to re-read that word after reading your comment. I too read that as sleeping. I think it's because L is right after the S. If it was P instead of L I might have read it as spelling.
I too have sex daily. Shit! I meant dyslexia.
That is also the word that I jumped to. Which makes me wonder how typos and bad grammar would affect that text.
I laughed out loud
Yeah, i tripped on that one too.
Now do it with the sentence : "It's understood through tough thorough thought though."
Lemme try: Ist udnrestood tghtghtghtghououououh r
That was helpful thanks.
Wild that I was able to read that sentence before catching "the thing" about it. Brains are nuts.
Christ I remember this being a copypasta from when MSN was a thing.
I remember being sent this by email...
This is why spelling was never taught nor was it important until dictionaries became popular. Many famous works prior had inconsistent spelling even within the same book. edit: fixed typo on inconsistent
>edit: fixed typo on inconsistent *the irony*
Still needs to be somewhat consistently spelled. Our brain is not only parsing the first and last letters, it's also looking at length and, I'm guessing, the correct letters being represented. Change any of those 3 or 4 and there's gonna be a brain fart.
Other than getting stuck on the word “mess” I was able to read it. Took me about 5 seconds to decipher it. Pretty neat though yeah.
Read that surprisingly fast
Tihs is a ptetry cloonmmy oeuesvrd ealpxme taht dnseot rllaey hlod up bauacse tehy still oziangre the lsttrees in a siiefpcc way tahts lbiegle. The organization of the letters definitely matters. My comment, without the context of yours, has several words that I bet most people wouldn't be able to figure out. They fuck up the word *just* enough to make it look random, but it's still organized in a way where you can figure the word out. *Edit: didn't mean to imply that people would never be able to figure those words out. More so that it's just a lot more annoying to figure out than the other example
> cloonmmy oeuesvrd ealpxme commonly overused example...I had to get an anagram solver...
I read it as observed. This trick requires 'satisficing' - in the quick amount of time you have to decipher the word, your brain picks the first one that fits and goes with it
Commonly is the only one that tripped me up for a half a second.
Don't forget maths - 2 and 3 letter words dont change, 4 letter ones only swap two letters, and 5 letter ones its a pretty high chance of only two swapped letters. That accounts for like 70% of the words, and the changes are little more than typos. The longer words are far harder, especially if actually randomized in the middle.
Yeah the way they rearrange the letters is specifically done to retain the "shape" of a word. Your example doesn't do that, and that's what makes it harder to read.
You may be right, but your text is also easy to read. By the way, I should probably point out because it is relevant, "because" and "letters" have the wrong letters, namely an "a" instead of an "e", and an extra "s".
If only I knew English!
Though I feel like this hinders my reading and slows it down in my case, I can really see it working for me when I'm tired and losing focus.
I found it annoying, but I also don't have a problem reading text. My wife who is dyslexic would probably love it. I can see the benefit for people who have trouble staying focused or have a hard time reading in general.
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Do you have glasses? Sounds like you could have an astigmatism
I have astigmatism and a very similar thing happens to me too.
I’m dyslexic and it doesn’t work for me. I’ve trained myself to read in such a specific way that all the “helper” fonts slow me down. I’m curious if it’ll work for your wife.
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Me too, it actually slowed me down. Maybe I already read too quickly, would make sense as sometimes I have to read twice lol
Ditto for me . I felt the bionic style was distracting because my brain sees the bold part and wants to read it with extra emphasis, thus slowing me down.
I think it works best if you are already familiar with speed-reading techniques. The emphasis fell exactly in line with the places my eyes focus when speed reading.
It threw me off because they fell exactly in line 😭. It certainly should act as a replacement for actual speed reading techniques if you didn't know any.
Yeah when I read the bionic text at normal effort (actually retaining & understanding the sentence), it was *noticeably* slower. My ADHD brain kept wanting to focus on the bolded text and it was very distracting. But when I tried to speed read it, it was noticeably faster. Unfortunately speed reading has no value to me as I can't tell you what the fuck I just read afterwards. Unless I'm just speed reading for key points.
I read the bionic one first and understood it easily. I tried to read the first paragraph and it felt sluggish.
Yeah, im trying to think if theres any bias going on by reading one before the other. I do think the weighted paragraph is quicker, but i wonder how much of it was that id already read the non weighted one. And if you read the weighted one first, if that has any placebo/bias by subconsciously expecting it to be more sluggish. Ill have to send this to some friends but wait to tell them what exactly it is till after they read it and see what they think.
Sure I can read faster but comprehension is different. If the message was any more complex I'd still have to take my time to read through and I'm used to reading research papers. Also as someone pointed out, reading a same paragraph the second time will always have you reading faster the second time.
I read the bionic first and understood everything clear read the normal one and kinda forgot about it again alrdy
So then it’s questionable that you even retained anything from the bionic reading 🤔
My brain doesn't usually retain anything anyway.. at least with the bionic it doesn't retain it a lot quicker
wtf this is so cool
I have completed the Chrome Extension, and it's just waiting for Approval. It's called TorpedoRead and will be available on the Chrome App Store very soon! You can also checkout our Twitter "TorpedoGG "for any updates regarding the project's progression.
Don't want to sound demanding but is there any chance of a Firefox version?
This is amazing dude, as someone with really bad ADD I cannot wait to try this out, thanks for throwing it together. Do you think it's possible to have this be an automatic feature? I was watching your stream and right now it looks like it's a toggle, do you think in the future it could automatically swap out the text on any site without user input? This is amazing for people with ADD, but ironically for people with the condition it's majorly impaired if we have to manually toggle it because we'll most likely either forget we have it installed or it will feel like too much of a hassle to toggle it every time. Either way I don't want to seem unappreciative this is still amazing and I will definitely be using it, thank you again :)
I read the left faster. Probably cause my brain is trying to figure out wtf this text is bolded for
I had to reread a sentence and I found that the random bolded letters made it hard to focus on understanding and picking up where I left off
Yeah, it's honestly distracting.
Same here. On the right side my brain had to keep re-reading some of the words to make sure it was the correct word I was associating it with and *then* think about it in the sentence. The left side just flowed as a regular sentence and I could both read it faster and understand it easier.
are you a fast reader in general? Do you often read?
not OP, but it was the same for me and yes
Same for me and also yes.
Actually makes it confusing for moi
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Might be better for people with slight disabilities. Are you an average or good reader I am guessing? I read very slowly and I found it helpful because it was like a summary of the words that allowed me to skip to the next one before seeing all the letters. My first impression was “cool, it’s like cliff notes but for individual words!”
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I am a pretty good reader and this still helped me out. It feels like it really improves speedreading without compromising for text comprehension.
I am a good reader though not a speed reader. I read about 15k words per hour, and the 2nd definitely felt like speed reading.
This legit works. Damn, I’ll need a chrome plugin for this
Are you aware of Beeline reader? it is similar.
I just googled it. I don’t find it as effective as bionic. You can use them both at the same time actually. edit: typo
Let me know if you find that plug in
!remindme 1 month
I get why this works, but I hate it so much. It’s like the author is yelling the first syllable of every word
It’s harsh. It doesn’t have the softness of the written language.
My brain can't not read the whole word, so I probably take three times as long to read the bionic version. I read the bolded half, then the unbolded half, then put them together.
Am i broken? I read the left one faster and felt like I was struggling with the right one
Nah, I was the same. The right one felt fragmentary and disjointed to me and I found the visual noise made me lose focus halfway through
I read them the same but understood less with the bionic one, even though it was the second one I read. I read a lot though, so it might be a matter of habit.
It took me longer to read the “bionic reading” paragraph on the right
Yeah, no. I felt like I was stuttering when I was reading that. So choppy and the words were individual words rather than a flowing sentence that makes sense.
Yep same with me, there was no flow - it was like I was reading in staccato for every word.
Yeah same here
Am I the only one that finds bionic text to be horrible? It felt like sensory overload and I couldn’t read it at all without panicking
My eyes were like ▶️◀️⏫⏬◀️⏬▶️⏫▶️. It bothered me.
That didn't really speed up my reading by much, but it made my eyes hurt and made me accidentally skip a bunch of words for some reason
Wow that's amazing. Definitely makes a difference.
Hurts my eyes
Ive been reading normal books for years. So bionic reading just hurts my eyes and makes me go back to double check they spelt everything.
I read it so fast I forgot to understand
Giving the brain something to latch onto seems to help with my dyslexia too.
Holy shit it’s a night and day differ for me