My voice, more alive

When you listen to the home page, my voice no longer reads the text in one flat tone: it sighs, it laughs, it gets carried away, it slows down where it should. The words are exactly the ones on the page, only the way they’re said changes. It’s a trial on the home page first, before rolling it out to the rest of the site.

In the two carousels on the home page, the nicknames one and the one about people who hear, the sentence I’m saying now shows up at the bottom of the image while you listen, word by word, a bit like a story. You press play, and it moves on by itself from one step to the next.

On a computer, if you’re listening to the home page, each step’s description tucks away behind a small round button at the bottom right of the image, to make room for the subtitles. If you’re reading without sound, it stays visible like before. The button lets you open or close it whenever you want.

At the top of the home page, I now say I’m a random 32-year-old human who’s got no powers and no religion, and that I’ve been hearing them all the time since 2021. Several steps of the nicknames carousel were also rewritten, including the angels one and the last one, where I explain my little loophole: I picture them as placeholders with dotted outlines.

With a free account, you can now listen to 50 sections of the web book in my voice, instead of 20. The message asking you to sign in to listen is also shorter.

On phones, the button to listen to the home page cover was white on a light background, you could barely see it. It’s now black, and it no longer shows the time while playing, which made the row of buttons overflow.

Without an account, when a section asked you to sign in, my little explanation played, and when it ended the audio started again by itself on the next section. That’s fixed: after the message nothing starts, and once you’re signed in it’s the section you picked that plays.

The stories page announces new reflections, with their drawing: critical thinking coaching, “They’re too cool for us”, delusional optimism, “Who are the Earthlings?”, the imaginary limit of reason, psychiatrists who do edging, and the bogus concepts all along. They’re being written right now.