All posts tagged: Writing

Confessions Of A Newsletter Writing Market “Permabear”

Confessions Of A Newsletter Writing Market “Permabear”

Published by Jenni Sidey

On my jog yesterday morning I was listening to a podcast about gambling addiction and heard the host bring up the age-old story of a guy selling sports betting picks. The host laughed and asked the obvious question: if this guy is so good at picking winners, why does he need to sell his picks? Why doesn’t he just bet on them himself and get rich? It’s a fair question, and one I’ve asked about plenty of people over the years. But for whatever reason, after having just finished writing my latest investing dashboard piece, I found myself turning the question around on myself. If I think my analysis of markets and investments is worthwhile, why am I spending my time writing about it instead of simply investing my own money and going about my business? What exactly am I doing here? Am I really just a “fear monger”? It’s a fair question. Austrian economists have spent decades being accused of peddling doom, predicting catastrophes that never arrive, and frightening people into buying gold or …

How ‘cornflakes’ can help decode ancient writing

How ‘cornflakes’ can help decode ancient writing

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. They’re called cornflakes. These overlooked scraps of papyri (texts written on paper made from the papyrus plant) carry partial snapshots of ancient worlds.  For archeologists, cornflakes deserve care and attention as much as their complete cousins do—and that’s exactly what took place this summer, at the University of Michigan’s (U-M) Papyrus Conservation Summer Seminar. An international group of nine researchers acquired and practiced the latest papyrus preservation techniques on papyrus fragments held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  “Most of them [the researchers] came to Ann Arbor with zero papyrus experience, but the group ended up conserving more than 150 big and small papyri in just two weeks,” Giuliano Sidro, curator of the U-M papyrology collection, said in a statement.  The …

Writing Your Own Fanfiction Is Good for You

Writing Your Own Fanfiction Is Good for You

Published by Jenni Sidey

The movies, books and television shows we love are particularly good at engaging our imagination because of their rich narratives and complex characters. When fans become fascinated by their favorite media, they naturally want to extend the story and explore other scenarios for those characters. For many fans, the way to do that is through fanfiction. Created by fans solely for the enjoyment of other fans, fanfiction is part of the “gift economy” of fandom, with writers investing a great deal of time in their stories and then sharing them for free. Thus, the culture of fandom has been one of appreciation instead of critique. Recently, however, fanfiction writers have been criticized by readers for allegedly using AI to generate stories. In the booming Heated Rivalry fandom, fans recently took to reddit to expose some of those writers, effectively pushing them out of the fan community. Fans posted that knowing some of their favorite fictions were created with AI broke their hearts. Many felt deceived and betrayed because the writers had anti-AI tags on the …

Most People Prefer AI Writing, but That’s Because It’s Trained on Us

Most People Prefer AI Writing, but That’s Because It’s Trained on Us

Published by Miika Tikkanen

You probably think you prefer writing created by a human. But a new study is proving that you may not actually. You may just like things that sound human. Led by Cambridge University Press and researchers at Villanova University, the study asked its 1,682 participants aged 18 to 81 to read a few fictional stories to determine whether they could tell if they were AI-generated, and then asked them to rate the quality of each story. The study consisted of three separate experiments. In part one, all participants were given a story – some told it was AI-generated, others told it was human-written – and then rated its quality and engagement. In the second and third experiments, the participants were divided into two groups: one with 424 participants and the other with 481. Each person was given one human-written and one ChatGPT-generated story, though it was not disclosed which was which, and they were asked to identify which story they believed was authored by ChatGPT.  They found that the participants rated stories generated by ChatGPT …

‘Widow’s Bay’ Creator on Writing Season 2, Lessons From Season 1

‘Widow’s Bay’ Creator on Writing Season 2, Lessons From Season 1

Published by Daniella Wilson

The writing process has just begun for the second season of Apple TV‘s latest hit series Widow’s Bay. Show creator Katie Dippold participated in Collider’s Showrunners on Showrunning panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday, where she opened up about the project’s startling success. Starring Matthew Rhys as the mayor of a New England island that the residents are convinced is haunted, Widow’s Bay quickly became one of television’s buzziest shows after its April launch and went on to land a whopping 19 Emmy Award nominations, including best comedy series. “It took a long time,” Dippold said about how soon she got a sense that the show had picked up as many fans as it did. She joked that she remains “terrified” of Reddit but eventually took enough of a look on the social media platform to see that the amount of discussion about Widow’s Bay was increasing wildly. “Seeing that was really shocking.” The writer, also known for her work on such features as The Heat and Snatched, explained that she did not know …

On Thin Ice by Charlie Walker review – a Siberian adventure goes off the rails

On Thin Ice by Charlie Walker review – a Siberian adventure goes off the rails

Published by Sam Flores

In late February 2022, Charlie Walker set off on a hiking holiday in northern Siberia. In temperatures as low as -50C, he intended to trek a thousand miles north along the frozen surface of the river Lena, then out across the solid Laptev Sea to the port town of Tiksi, before finally flying home to London. “The plan,” he writes, “was simple in concept.” A sub-zero camping trip through a region populated by wolves and bears and scarred by centuries of historical trauma, in a country that was about to invade one of its neighbours: what could possibly go wrong? On Thin Ice is Walker’s third travelogue. Previous excursions have included a 43,000-mile bicycle ride across three continents, a 1,000-mile solo walk through the Gobi desert, and a river trip down the Congo in a leaky canoe. When not performing incredible feats of forward motion, according to his website, he gives talks to business leaders on subjects such as “risk taking” and “the line between courage and recklessness”. Reading his latest, it’s clear he’s familiar with the …

Writing and Reading Philosophy, Iaan Reynolds

Writing and Reading Philosophy, Iaan Reynolds

Published by Jenni Sidey

The syllabus here is from my second time teaching “Writing and Reading Philosophy” (PHIL 2400) this past spring at Utah Valley University. At a moment when large language models seem to offer students a quick solution to their anxieties about school work—but this “solution” is shown to lead to declines in students’ writing, reading, and critical thinking abilities—I found it so significant that my department decided to include a class dedicated to “old fashioned” philosophical reading and writing as part of its major core. This context makes the class particularly enjoyable to plan and teach, because I get to see students develop their philosophical skills and confidence in a way that they hadn’t thought was possible. The idea guiding the class is simple: students will become better at writing and reading philosophy if they practice often, with plenty of feedback and opportunities to reflect on the process. With this in mind, and recognizing that students taking the course would ideally be in their second year of philosophy, I built a syllabus emphasizing frequent and short …

Some Introverts Think Best by Writing

Some Introverts Think Best by Writing

Published by Jenni Sidey

It is easy to overlook those who are slowest to speak. Most of these are introverts. And some of those introverts, a rare but consequential minority, seem to most often experience thought most fully through the act of writing. As Susan Cain (2012) observed, introversion spans a spectrum, united by a preference for low stimulation and rich reflection. Qualitative research reveals further nuance along that spectrum. For some, the internal monologue suffices; for others, thought develops and manifests best through writing, where words on a page are both a mirror and a lamp. Writing as a Generator of Thought The cognitive process theory of writing, as articulated by Flower and Hayes (1981), emphasized the recursive nature of it: writers do not simply transcribe ideas but generate and clarify them in the act of drafting itself. Educational research shows that for some introverted students, writing jumpstarts thinking (Erickson et al., 2021). Studies in primary education link higher writing performance and motivation to an interplay between unconscious rumination and purposeful, written exploration (Frontiers in Education, 2024). In …

Memoir as Medicine: Writing to Heal

Memoir as Medicine: Writing to Heal

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is my 20th year teaching memoir writing at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. I’m always in awe of the stories people yearn to tell. It’s this yearning, or burning need to write, that finally gets them to the page. A memoir is written in the first person and follows a clear theme or focus. It’s about a slice of life, not an entire life. Not everyone is inclined to write a memoir. It is not for the faint-hearted. The strongest writing is fearlessness, courage, and a willingness to take risks. A memoir is a conversation with yourself. I often suggest that students begin posing a question that they want answered. Trauma Memoirs Trauma memoirs are a category in themselves. The most effective ones are paced both narratively and emotionally, without letting the darkness overwhelm the story. Mary Karr and Joy Harjo have done this beautifully in their memoirs. In her recent memoir, Saved By A Song, Mary Gauthier writes that when trauma is dislodged through writing, it releases some of the infection. One way …