I wonder if there's a 看 equivalent for ears.

- There was a recommendation earlier about a study that measured the lack of visual imagination (same topic, different article). Listening to a reading of a familiar book helped me parse where I might end up in that study's results. I know where I see the furniture in the room the reader spoke of, and what I see on the streets in that reading, but those won't be the same images in another listener's head.

One listens to an audiobook. One reads a printed book. One listens to a reading of a book that's been recorded, whether for entertainment or education. My argument on audiobooks as separate from reading is that having one person read to another puts the reader's interpretation in between the book and the audience, whether in a period drama image of a group sewing around a fire or a more timeless one of a child in bed listening to a parent. The rhythm, the tone, the emphasis can vary from one reader to another, and that raises the question of what the listener's interpretation of the material becomes. I expect my choice is similar to the reason teachers disallowed Cliff Notes and the like - what did the student pick up, the material in the book or just the stuff the pamphlet (substitute reader here) talked about? (Bit of a side note, it's the reason I'm against the audiobook version of Cliff Notes.)

The addition of sound effects paints a picture for the reader that might not be the reader's own mental image, and doing so changes the book into something more like a radio play - a collaborative performance of other people's take on the story. (Also, the gathering in the car sounds more like gathering around a radio or an early TV once was, or a present-day book club.)

I would counter that visual impairments have braille as a substitute for letters, which would enable a BVI reader to pick up an interpretation independent from that of the narrator; however, I don't have enough information on how dyslexia and other learning disabilities are affected by reading text along with an audio component. However, in that circumstance, as well as in all others, I hold that audiobooks are not reading, but reading aids, the same way those books on tape were.

- Saw a rerun recently including the destruction of a mythical city and wondered which particular coast was a more appropriate analogy. I understand why a complicit sickle of a reporter wouldn't want trouble with a politician brother, but I might be more sympathetic to the conflict-of-interest situation there if I hadn't seen the two together so often, or heard all the screeching about nepotism earlier.

Also, I really hope this outlet knows what their articles sound like in a state with a two-party government; and that readers of this one also consider that such a large purchase is more likely to be discussed between the two people, especially when there's regulation determining how to handle that purchase in relation to Madam Term Limits.

This story's a bit of an old wound, but a reminder of the effect an interpretation has on its audience.

(Parallels here to the current media situation.)

- I side-eye a state's complaints about islands that have already been purchased made while it's doing the same for itself. Also, still very much in support of this.

- Ending with this because if it's true, there might be something to keeping one's breathing through the nose after all.