For a second, I thought you'd be talking about synesthesia and how some people can "smell" numbers, etc. I always found that fastinating to read about.
I was gonna throw more synesthesia in there, but since things were getting a bit long I elected to link instead to the S article from a while back (Solomon Shereshevsky).
How was it working with other writers over on Cracked? I've maybe written with other authors like a few dozen times over the decades, probably averaging one of these per year (but clustered in bundles like 2023, where I did like 15.
They had a very cool internal "workshop" process where you pitched the counterintuitive stuff you wanted to throw in an article, and editors would send you back to find something better (they rejected like at least 10 items for my "Myths About Curing Common Injuries" before I finally had enough for a 6-item list, which then shrank to 5 on publishing).
But as part of that process, other writers could pitch in with ideas (if the original author was open to it), so then you'd get up to the 5-6 list item threshold together. Then, if those entries were accepted, you'd each write the item you pitched.
Very robust! Here, it's like, "let's get two authors together to loosely 'proof' each other's work."
It's fun to create like that, but I bet you ended up with some better stuff overall with a more careful process like that. On the flip side, if you just create more stuff, you tend to get better quicker, which pays bigger long term results.
I've also seen some really clever and creative stuff crop up because of additional freedom to create without pressure, like I assume your Nest-Expressed stuff mainly is (but if that's all been thoroughly copy-edited, I will need to change my view).
Well, freelance contributors got paid and Cracked was at the time by far the biggest comedy site - my first article got something in the ballpark of 2 million views I believe.
So yeah, they were very strict in the guidelines and how they screened stuff.
But by then I of course also had my own Nest-Expressed.com where I could write what I wanted.
Creativity is such an interesting thing to consider. Sometimes, you get more of it if you have serious constraints, like an art project where you have to figure out how to use negative space, or that dried-spaghetti-marshmallow-tower project. Other times, maximum freedom is ideal.
That was one of my observations with AI - you get more inspired, unconventional ideas if you give it some constraints, even if they're completely random. This worked especially well for AI Jest Daily, where instead of asking for broad joke ideas about a topic, I'd give it a news headline or ask it to find some common tropes about a topic and then zero in on making those funny.
In homeschooling the kids, learned about different ways of learning - visual, audio, tactile- and trying to incorporate as many as possible to better understand, and later retrieve. So in teaching math, they would read the equation or word problem, write the equation, say the equation, build the equation with manipulatives. Like exercise, use it or loose it.
For a second, I thought you'd be talking about synesthesia and how some people can "smell" numbers, etc. I always found that fastinating to read about.
As for the "vibrating sand" stuff, it actually made it into an old Cracked article I co-wrote back in the day: https://www.cracked.com/article_20829_5-amazing-magical-powers-created-by-simple-science.html
I was gonna throw more synesthesia in there, but since things were getting a bit long I elected to link instead to the S article from a while back (Solomon Shereshevsky).
How was it working with other writers over on Cracked? I've maybe written with other authors like a few dozen times over the decades, probably averaging one of these per year (but clustered in bundles like 2023, where I did like 15.
They had a very cool internal "workshop" process where you pitched the counterintuitive stuff you wanted to throw in an article, and editors would send you back to find something better (they rejected like at least 10 items for my "Myths About Curing Common Injuries" before I finally had enough for a 6-item list, which then shrank to 5 on publishing).
But as part of that process, other writers could pitch in with ideas (if the original author was open to it), so then you'd get up to the 5-6 list item threshold together. Then, if those entries were accepted, you'd each write the item you pitched.
Good old days.
Very robust! Here, it's like, "let's get two authors together to loosely 'proof' each other's work."
It's fun to create like that, but I bet you ended up with some better stuff overall with a more careful process like that. On the flip side, if you just create more stuff, you tend to get better quicker, which pays bigger long term results.
I've also seen some really clever and creative stuff crop up because of additional freedom to create without pressure, like I assume your Nest-Expressed stuff mainly is (but if that's all been thoroughly copy-edited, I will need to change my view).
Well, freelance contributors got paid and Cracked was at the time by far the biggest comedy site - my first article got something in the ballpark of 2 million views I believe.
So yeah, they were very strict in the guidelines and how they screened stuff.
But by then I of course also had my own Nest-Expressed.com where I could write what I wanted.
Creativity is such an interesting thing to consider. Sometimes, you get more of it if you have serious constraints, like an art project where you have to figure out how to use negative space, or that dried-spaghetti-marshmallow-tower project. Other times, maximum freedom is ideal.
Creativity is fickle.
That was one of my observations with AI - you get more inspired, unconventional ideas if you give it some constraints, even if they're completely random. This worked especially well for AI Jest Daily, where instead of asking for broad joke ideas about a topic, I'd give it a news headline or ask it to find some common tropes about a topic and then zero in on making those funny.
Everything is a wave. Even the thoughts you are thinking can be recorded as a wave.
Indeed! You might really enjoy this one: https://goatfury.substack.com/p/on-the-same-wavelength
In homeschooling the kids, learned about different ways of learning - visual, audio, tactile- and trying to incorporate as many as possible to better understand, and later retrieve. So in teaching math, they would read the equation or word problem, write the equation, say the equation, build the equation with manipulatives. Like exercise, use it or loose it.
Emotional binaries hit the feelings aspect. I think Emotional should be on the list of "ways of learning " all on its own.
Yes! Different lenses of thinking. This is so important.
I thought this was going to be about echolocation; how blind people can actually see the world through sound
That is yet another interesting conversation for another day! I love the way we can repurpose our brains.