DamnInteresting

I do hope to dabble in video content some day, but making videos is not yet in my skill set, so it'll take a lot of work to get there. In any case, I don't think I'd put my videos on YouTube, that algorithm seems toxic for creators.

There's also the unpleasant fact that somebody else is already filling YouTube with content based on my catalog. Despite having done the original topic selection and research, I'd look like the johnny-come-lately.

Years ago this YouTuber did some paid voice work for me, narrating dozens of my site's non-fiction articles for an audio book. Fast forward a few years, and he started making his own videos about the exact stories he narrated for me. Dozens of them. It's not technically violating copyright law, but it is parasitic and backstabbing.

A few examples:

Me: (October 2020): https://www.damninteresting.com/how-miss-shillings-orifice-h... Him: (November 2020): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBkAVE7cspw

Me (2006): https://www.damninteresting.com/it-came-from-above/ Him (2017): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbPG8jSud14

Me (2006): https://www.damninteresting.com/the-crypt-of-civilization/ Him (2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0pduckpU-A

I recently had someone look through his catalog, and so far he has over 70 videos that seem to be strongly "inspired" by my site's work. I worry he'll shamelessly gobble up everything I have created. Google is already burying me in the regurgitations. Blah.

Apologies for the rant, it just pains me to see these poachers reaping all of the rewards for others' research and leg work.

I avoid mentioning it by name, I don't want to engage in obnoxious self-promotion. But if you search for my HN username on most podcast platforms it'll be the first result.

I have a few homegrown tools, the most notable is one I use to record narration for an audiobook-like podcast. I paste my script into the software, then it will go through the script one sentence at a time. I record and re-record it until I am happy with the take, then it moves on to the next sentence. When I'm done, I can download the audio as one merged WAV file.

I occasionally think about sprucing it up to offer for public use, but it's the kind of task that never reaches the top of the to-do list.

Hey, thanks! I accept your praise with reserved modesty. I received some admonishments from public commentators for some of the silly wordplay in that particular article, but I regret nothing [with regard to that article's silly wordplay].

https://www.damninteresting.com : This is my outlet for my love of writing non-fiction, my enjoyment of graphic design, and a playground for web design and development. It also gives me a chance to mentor younger writers. The site is going to turn 17 years old this September. Sheesh.

I see this logic for javascript, css, and fonts, but is it still worthwhile to host image files on a CDN if your site has a lot of high-resolution jpegs?

Thanks for the tip! I shall seek it out.

> it's also a bit triggering for children with fears of the dark, with the line "goodnight noises everywhere".

Can you say more about why you feel this way? I ask because I feel the opposite. To me, saying "goodnight" to noises everywhere is almost like my three-year-old calling a ceasefire for the night; the noises are also going to sleep, so she need not worry.

As an author, voice actor, and the dad of a three-year-old, there is something about "Goodnight Moon" that is a pleasure to read aloud. The pacing is excellent, the syllables deftly selected. My favorite passage is at the end: "Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere." There is something satisfying in the cadence of the words. It's difficult to articulate why this is.

Similarly satisfying kids' books: "Tomorrow Most Likely", and "All the World."

Yes, though it is not a huge quantity of content. If memory serves, there were four writings made exclusively for the book.

The publisher really was a pain in the ass. In addition to what I already mentioned, they insisted that I be listed as the book's author, despite the fact that I only wrote about half of the content. I argued for the author credit to be "The [name of the website] Editors", but they ignored my input, claiming that books sell better when a single person is named as the primary author. In so doing they drove a wedge between me and my fellow authors.

Thank you for the kind words! The reason I found the cover so objectionable is because our project has always been very careful to cover subjects accurately, and without hyperbole or embellishment. Then they make our book look like a tabloid newspaper, the polar opposite of "very careful to cover subjects accurately, and without hyperbole or embellishment."

Thanks! Yes, unfortunately the physical book was never released as an e-book. It was released around the time e-books were first becoming viable, and a few months after it was published the publisher proposed we release it as an e-book. But the new contract was very far-reaching, and would have granted the publisher half of all proceeds of any "electronic distribution" of the book's content. When I asked them to revise the contract to exempt the preexisting website from this condition, they lost interest.

I am deliberately evasive about the book title because I do not wish to engage in obnoxious self-promotion. But if you are sufficiently curious, my username is a huge clue that should lead you to the title if you do some minimal Googling.

Disclaimer: The book was a bit of a fiasco, our website was an established property with an established audience, and the publisher insisted on taking the book design in a direction contrary to our values. I can recommend the content of the book, but its design makes me cringe to this very day.

And Brandon Sanderson, if you are reading this, thanks for being such a class act!

edit: If you really want a copy of the physical book, follow the breadcrumbs to get my email address,and I can mail you a free copy. I have a box full of them.

I am an author, and years ago I was invited to participate in an event at a bookstore where local authors were gathered to meet their fans and autograph books. Toward the end of the book signing, a fellow came to my table and said some very kind things about my work. He asked me to sign a copy of my book for him, and I obliged, asking "who should I make it out to?"

Turns out that fellow was Brandon Sanderson, by far the most famous and successful author participating in the event. It was around the time he published his first Wheel of Time book. Everyone around me knew who he was and they were all starstruck, and horrified that I was so oblivious. I felt silly for failing to recognize him, but he was totally cool about it. He was gracious and kind, and very supportive of this small-time author. In spite of his success, he was so down-to-Earth that his advice is probably worth heeding.

> I'll be that guy and point out that "Unique" is interesting because it falls in the same category of words as forever, infinite, dead, and pregnant, adjectives which do not take comparative qualifiers because they describe Boolean states.

In common contexts "unique" just means "unusual." It's like how "theory" can just mean "hypothesis" in normal discussion, but in strictly scientific contexts it only applies to explanations that are supported by a large body of evidence. So if one is in a rare context that is sensitive to the strict boolean definition of "unique," then you are correct. All other times (i.e., most of the time) you are incorrect.

When it comes to language, the most common usage is the correct usage. This may occasionally annoy us (see: "literally", "begging the question", etc.), but the fact is that languages are fluid and evolving, and there was no moment in history when the English language was frozen and declared perfect. Language is inherently democratic, and sometimes one is outvoted.

Granted, it's fine to try to realign the language to match your preferences, but more often than not this is a fool's errand.

Another way to look at it: This hypothetical person created their 'system' because they valued their connections enough to establish a way to maintain them. And they specifically added you to the finite list of people they don't want to lose touch with. So it is genuine—it's just a reminder, we all need reminders once in a while.

Now, if the person isn't actually your friend, but a professional contact (e.g., recruiter) who just hopes to extract value from you someday, then those guys can go jump in a lake.

I am in almost exactly the same boat. I built my first Wordpress-based website in 2005, and it is still online today. I've had to employ a constellation of plugins (some third-party, some home-grown) to keep Gutenberg from mangling my content. Gutenberg could have (and in my opinion, should have) been just another official plugin. Instead it's trying to break my site's bones so they will re-heal in a new configuration. Begone unwelcome meddler!

Here in the USA it is most commonly sold on store shelves as "Accent". Worth noting: MSG is naturally occurring in some foods, such as cheese. And if you salt a tomato slice, a lot of MSG is produced.

MSG: The tastiest nocebo.

Oh, I'm sure their intent is to just brighten up the audio, make it more engaging. And they probably rarely or never misrepresent the views of their interviewees. Still, it just sits wrong with me for a person's words to be used to say something they didn't exactly intend to say. It's like quoting someone out of context.

Like I said, it's a little thing. It doesn't ruin the show for me, I just cringe a little every time the trick is used.

I loved old school Radiolab, especially the themed episodes (e.g., Blood) but I stepped away from listening a few years ago because it started leaning too heavily on eyeroll-worthy ideas such as 'ooh, maybe there IS a mystical force behind this phenomenon!' The credulous tone was offputting for me. But I listened to a few recent episodes and it seems like they've dialed back that device.

One thing that still bothers me about the podcast, however, is hard to explain: as Radiolab listeners, we might hear a few sentences from an interviewee, then the host voiceover jumps in to summarize something, and then we hear a little "that's right!" or "yes!" or "mmm hmm" from the interviewee.

I know the interviewee is not actually reacting to what the host said, the voiceover is recorded after the interviews. The Radiolab sound designers just plucked the interviewee's confirmation vocalization from another part of the audio and inserted it there. To me it feels just a little bit dishonest, it's putting words in the interviewees' mouths. Imagine if you were interviewed for the show, and the host made an erroneous statement, and then your voice involuntarily chimes in with "That's right!"

It's just a little thing, but it rubs me the wrong way, and they've been doing it for as long as I've listened to the show.

I can't speak for the creator of Wordle, but some of us just want to put some nice things out into the world without the stinking pollution of advertising.

Thanks for the kind words!

I wouldn't consider it poaching for content I curate to appear here; to the contrary, I sometimes share relevant links on HN myself. I am mostly put off by sites that claim to be hand curated by a few people, and then a significant fraction of their links are clearly based on my efforts. I don't want to name names, but there was a very popular curated site/newsletter that was leaning heavily on my work for a few years. Fortunately someone there seems to have realized it was uncool, and they backed off.

Edit: To be clear, here I am discussing my site's curation of third-party links. We also create our own content, but I don't share those articles on HN myself, I would consider that gross.

I think people tend to underestimate the effort involved in curating content. Reading and assessing all of that stuff is time consuming. And there are a lot of complainers and axe-grinders out there who harass you when your curation does not exactly match their interests and values. People assume you linked to a thing because you 100% agree with it. People respond flippantly to the titles without reading the articles. People get mad because they hit a "you've read X articles" paywall. It can be a lot to deflect.

The other pain point in curation is the relentless poaching. If you find any success doing it right--by keeping tabs on creators directly--soon other lazy (often more popular) "curators" will be using your hard work as a major source of their own links, without giving any credit.

Hey, thanks for making a bright spot in my day! I appreciate your appreciation. [RecursionError]

Location: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: LAMP, Python, Javascript

Résumé/CV: https://alanbellows.com/

Email: alan at damninteresting dot com

Check out this video of the "streamers" the probe encountered in the corona: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQXNqhQzBLM

On this day a fartcannon made me feel appreciated. Thanks!

Edit: I hope this didn't come off as flippant; it is refreshing to receive encouraging words without the all-too-common "but I don't like how you do such-and-such".

Indeed. As is too often the case, a few bad actors ruin an otherwise elegant solution.

For what it's worth: When I first launched my Wordpress-based website back in 2005, I initially had it set up to post full articles to the RSS feed. Soon, however, a major downside appeared: It became absolutely trivial for other sites to reproduce my content, and they did in droves. My writings appeared all over the web on generic Wordpress sites, usually attributed to other people. After grappling with the problem for a few months I gave up and switched the RSS to only publish intros, and that mostly resolved it.

Sure, it is always possible for a human to copy and paste my articles' text to their CMS, or for someone to write a simple scraper to extract the desired content. But both of those solutions introduce various hassles, and they require a human to fully accept that they are stealing content, which much fewer people are willing to do.