Creativity

Babble #article - "How do human beings produce knowledge? When we describe rational thought processes, we tend to think of them as essentially deterministic, deliberate, and algorithmic. After some self-examination, however, I've come to think that my process is closer to babbling many random strings and later filtering by a heuristic. I think verbally, and my process for generating knowledge is virtually indistinguishable from my process for generating speech, and also quite similar to my process for generating writing."

The Beautifully Strange World of Outsider Music #video - "Whether we're talking about The Shaggs, Wesley Willis, B.J. Snowden, Eilert Pilarm, Shooby Taylor, Gary Wilson, R. Stevie Moore, Tiny Tim, Luie Luie, Daniel Johnston, or whoever else -- this category of music is all about originality/authenticity. These musicians and artists aren't the most polished in the world, but they make up for it with passion and creativity. Open your mind up, go down the rabbit hole of outsider music, and have a good time!"‌

Copying #book - by Matthew Ström. "(is the way design works.) This is a very short book about copying. Its contents, unless otherwise noted, are licensed under CC-BY SA 4.0 (more on that in a bit). You can download, copy, remix, excerpt, change, and repost it however you see fit."

Descript - "Descript is a collaborative audio/video editor that works like a doc. It includes transcription, a screen recorder, publishing, full multitrack editing, and some mind-bendingly useful AI tools." Promo.

Gravity is just a habit #video

My Video Went Viral. Here's Why #video - "My hypothesis is that the algorithm, rather than viewer preference, drives views on the site. As the algorithm shifts, various YouTubers experience burnout (as what used to work no longer works) and right now click-through rate is the key metric. So clickable titles and thumbnails are the only way to get a lot of impressions and hence views - they are the only way to go viral. This leads me to wonder which audiences will become most prevalent on the site and if there will even be a place for educational content. In the long-term, hopefully YouTube is able to measure satisfaction through surveys and other metrics to ensure an optimal experience for everyone on the site."

Business of Creativity

Cinnamon - "With groundbreaking technologies we are able to pay creators fairly while you watch their content... without ads!"

Coil - "Experience web monetized content in your browser while supporting sites you love in real time."

The dark side of crowdfunding #video - "Crowdfunding gives gadget makers the power to launch their own companies, but sometimes their dream dies not long after launch. In this episode of In the Making, reporter Ashley Carman looks at how crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo are changing their business to prevent creators from never shipping their product."

Gumroad - "Gumroad helps creators do more of what they love. We have sent over $195M to artists, designers, educators, writers, influencers and more."

Liberapay - "Liberapay is a recurrent donations platform. We help you fund the creators and projects you appreciate."

Open Collective - "Collect and spend money transparently. Community is about trust and sharing. Open Collective lets you manage your finances so everyone can see where money comes from and where it goes."

Patreon - "CREATE ON YOUR OWN TERMS. Start a membership business to develop a direct relationship with your biggest fans and generate predictable, recurring revenue from your creative work."

Substack - "Earn money publishing on Substack"

Thankful - "Support the creators that you love using cryptocurrency"

Play

Richard Feynman on choosing only to work on problems that he found interesting regardless of value #article - "Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn't have to do it; it wasn't important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference. I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment."

Steve Wazniak on choosing problems to work on because they are novel and fun #video - Starts at 5:07.

Publishing

Anchor - "Anchor is an all-in-one platform where you can create, distribute, and monetize your podcast from any device, for free."

How to use emoji, accents, and symbols on your Mac #article - "macOS includes features that make it easy to find and type special characters like emoji and currency symbols."

Megaphone - "A simple, powerful way to podcast. The smartest tools to publish, monetize, and measure your podcast business."