Delay jquery function inside the function?

setTimeout() just schedules something to run in the future and the rest of your Javascript continues to run. It does not block further Javascript execution. This is often called an "asynchronous" operation. It runs in the background and will call a callback sometime in the future when it has completed its work. It is also referred to as "non-blocking" because it does not block the rest of your Javascript execution.

Anything you want to not run until the setTimeout() fires must be put inside the setTimeout() callback or called from there.

// define function
function timer(){
    myVar = setTimeout(function() { 
          console.log("SLOW");
    }, 10000);
}

// schedule first timer
setTimeout(function() { 
    $("#nytLevel").hide();   

    // now start second timer
    timer();
 }, 3000);  

It's worth mentioning that jQuery has a .delay() method that works with animations and other functions put in the queue and it can sometimes streamline your code. In the case above, you could do this:

$("#nytLevel").delay(3000).hide().delay(10000).queue(function(next) {
    console.log("SLOW");
    next();   // keep the queue moving in case there's something else in the queue
});

Please note that .delay(xxx) only works with jQuery methods that themselves use the queue (such as animations) or with methods you put in the queue yourself using .queue() (as I've shown above).

setTimeout() is an asynchronous function, meaning that code will not pause until the setTimeout() time is completed. If you want code to be delayed along with the setTimeout(), you can put the other code inside of the initial setTimeout()

setTimeout( function(){ 
    $("#nytLevel").hide();
    myVar = setTimeout( function(){ 
        console.log("SLOW");
    }  , 10000 );                      
}  , 3000 );

I wouldn't recommend this, but you could fashion a recursive function to do what you wanted, using a flag to dictate before or after timeout. In the below example you'd call it like this runAfterTimeout() or runAfterTimeout(false)

function runAfterTimeout(run) {

    if (! run) {
       console.log('about to wait 10 seconds');
       setTimeout(function(){runAfterTimeout(true)},10000);
       return;
    }

    console.log('this section runs after 10 seconds');

    setTimeout(function(){$("#nytLevel").hide();},3000);
}

Fiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/m9n1xxra/

Bear in mind, timeouts are not 100% accurate. The engine will look for an appropriate break in execution to execute what you want, but if the engine is in the middle of something else, that will execute first.