Reading Stories Posted to the Front Page

December 20, 2015 5:14 AM

I often see short stories posted to the front page and wondered if Mefites had recommendations for ways to read them (yes, I know, with my eyes!)

I use the traditional blue background as I find too much white makes my eyes sore, so wondered how others read them and if they had any recommendations. I have a Lenovo Yoga 8 Tablet and Android phone in case that helps, but don't own a kindle or anything like that. Also I use Ubuntu so can't use f.lux. Thank you.

posted by marienbad to MetaFilter-Related at 5:14 AM (21 comments total)

I use Readability. You have to sign up for the service, but you can choose a black background / white text option, adjust your font (three choices), font size, and column width on the page you're reading or in settings. It gets rid of cruft from the original page, and there are a few options of how to download the urls you want to read. I use a Chrome extension on my laptop.
posted by taz (staff) at 5:48 AM on December 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Firefox has a nice reader feature now that pretty much replicates Readability, so that might be worth exploring. If the page can be processed, a little book icon turns up in the URL bar, which you then click.

Also, you may be interested to know that Redshift is a Linux alternative to f.lux, available in all good Ubuntu repositories near you.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 5:57 AM on December 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

I use Readability.

Instapaper is also a nice app/service that lets you save articles/links/etc. for reading later. And it also has a variety of view settings/options.
posted by Fizz at 7:27 AM on December 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Speaking of short stories, in the last month or two or three, someone here linked to a short story in a comment that I thought I bookmarked, but apparently didn't, and now I can't find it... It was called something like "The Moneychanger of Cenobi" wherein all my words are surely wrong except "The" and "of." But it was definitely-probably The [something] of [something]. Ring any bells?
posted by taz (staff) at 7:59 AM on December 20, 2015

If plain black text on a white screen hurts your eyes, your monitor is probably adjusted incorrectly. The default factory brightness setting on most LCDs is insanely high. It's meant to make the monitor look good in a store, not as an actual usable setting.
posted by Rhomboid at 8:53 AM on December 20, 2015

taz, are you looking for this?
posted by flatluigi at 10:49 AM on December 20, 2015 [8 favorites]

oooh, so close!
posted by taz (staff) at 11:27 AM on December 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Seconding Instapaper. Any lengthy story or article is sent to my Kindle using that service. Though, I'm using it less than I used to because the Reader Mode in Safari on my iPhone / Macbook also works quite well.
posted by honestcoyote at 11:57 AM on December 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

There is f.lux for linux.
posted by Obscure Reference at 4:07 PM on December 20, 2015

"The Moneychanger of Cenobi"

What else you remember?
posted by cjorgensen at 5:10 PM on December 20, 2015

I didn't read it, just (thought I) bookmarked for later, but I'm pretty sure it was S/F.
posted by taz (staff) at 10:27 PM on December 20, 2015

taz: is it this: The Ticket Taker of Cenote Zací? (link in this comment)
posted by marienbad at 6:53 AM on December 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

Yay, that's it – thank you!! <3
posted by taz (staff) at 6:59 AM on December 21, 2015

Awesome!! Glad to have helped.
posted by marienbad at 7:02 AM on December 21, 2015

Now I want to read "The Moneychanger of Cenobi".
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:45 AM on December 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

It's by Italo Calvino or maybe Umberto Eco? I'm sure you can find it online.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:56 AM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Whereas The Moneychanger of the Cenobites is a short story by Clive Barker about an existentially voided banker who plays with a magical rubiks cube until Pinhead comes along and turns him into a grey-skinned Silent Hill extra who, I dunno, barfs up coinage menacingly.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:40 AM on December 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

I use favorites for a lot of things, including posts & comments that link to short fiction I'd like to read. My favorites are a teeming hodgepodge. Has there ever been a pony request for a feature that allows users to sort & categorize their favorites lists?
posted by duffell at 12:17 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

There has, and Matt and pb experimented behind the scenes on some favorites-fiddling architecture a while back though as I recall it ultimately ended up seeming like a lot of fiddliness and asking-for-trouble.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:29 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I have wondered about categorising favourites as well, and wondered if this might be accomplished with a greasemonkey script.
posted by marienbad at 1:39 PM on December 21, 2015

I cannot read black text on a white background anymore even with my Android dimmed to its absolute dimmest setting (extreme photophobia due to rare eye condition). As there seems to be no web browser on Android that supports anything like the Deluminate plugin I use on my desktop computer for Chrome, I have taken to sending any webpages I'd like to read on the tablet to Pocket, which has a dark mode.
posted by salix at 8:10 PM on December 26, 2015