Until November... [Updated]
/
This is the final post of October.
This is also the final post of Season 7 at the Jerx. The final newsletter for Season 7 will be sent to supporters on the first of November.
If you’re a current supporter, you’ll also receive information in your email about staying on to support Season 8 (which will entail just keeping your subscription going) or cancelling your supporter slot (which will entail… well… canceling your subscription payment—it’s pretty straightforward, I guess). Season 8 will operate the same as season 7 did with the same rewards structure and scheduled releases.
If you’ve been on the waiting list for one of the full supporter slot for some time now (say, six months or more) you’ll almost definitely have the opportunity to grab a full supporter slot next month. As the end of the season is really the only time people drop off. I’ll keep you wait-listers updated on that.
Let’s see… what else. Oh if you’re a Rich Uncle Millionaire-Level supporter and have an ad for the final newsletter of this season, try to get it to me by the 28th.
New posting, and Season 8, begins on November 6th (remember, the new schedule is that posting begins on the first Monday of the month, not necessarily the 1st of the month).
Season 8 will again be an 18 months season and will take us to Spring 2025. Which will be… impossibly… the 10-year anniversary of this site.
If you planted an acorn on the day this site started, by the time the end of Season 8 rolls around, the tree would be… well… it would still be pretty small actually. That’s not a great example of the passage of time.
If you had a child when this site started, by the time the end of Season 8 rolls around, it would be “too old” for, like, half of the people kicked out of the GLOMM.
Crazy.
[Added Oct. 22]
If you’ve ever tried to learn Morse code, but struggled with it because the dots and dashes are so non-intuitive, reader Atticus X. has an interesting technique to learn it that is unlike any method I’ve seen before. It’s not the most direct method because it adds an extra “translational” step into the process. But I have a feeling it’s the type of thing—like memorizing a deck with songs and rhymes—where the material that supports the memorization will eventually fall away, and you won’t need it anymore. The method is in the form of a pdf of a children’s book.
He’s giving it away for free if you join his Propless Mentalism facebook group before November (it will be a few dollars afterward). You know I don’t just promote anything someone happens to be giving away for free unless I think it’s good. In this case, I think it’s probably a good learning tool. Although it’s hard for me to say, became I already know what it’s trying to teach. But I get a sense this could be useful for people who find it hard to learn Morse code because it’s too abstract—and it may be an easier way to get a non-magician friend on board to learn it.
This is odd. I found this strange piece of paper outside of Joshua Jay’s apartment the other day. It seems like a note he was writing to himself about something?
I wonder what it means. 🤔 Well… I guess we’ll never know.
I received a lot of positive feedback about the WikiTest idea I posted in Monday’s mailbag. A couple of people have already put the idea into use and it seems to be working for them.
I hesitated to put that idea up because it was one of those things where I thought, “I bet someone else has already thought of this. Probably wrote it up on the Cafe or the WikiTest facebook or something.”
That sort of thought often keeps me from posting something I think might be useful.
To keep the ideas flowing freely in the future, I would like to offer:
The Jerx All-Purpose Disclaimer
I’ve never stolen an idea in my life. Once, that I can remember, I read an idea, forgot it, and then it came to me some time later, and I believed it had come from my head. And there are times I’ve independently come up with an idea that already exists in the literature.
But I’ve never read something and thought, “Hmmm… I think I’ll write that up as my own idea!”
So if you read something here that seems like it came from somewhere else, please, let me know about it. If the idea is similar enough, I’ll happily credit and link to where people can read more about it. And if the idea is essentially the same, then I’ll reach out to the person behind it and ask them if they’d like me to credit them or remove the post entirely.
I am, admittedly, not well-read in the world of magic. To spur my own ideas, I don’t read other people’s magic theory, I don’t participate much in the online magic community, I barely even watch instructional downloads for tricks I’ve bought past the point where I know how to do them. So I sort of rely on people who are better stewards of magic wisdom than I am to keep me in the know when there’s something they think I’d be interested in, and to let me know if anything I’ve written has a direct precedent. So don’t worry that I’m going to get weird or defensive if you say, “That idea is very similar to this….” I enjoy making those connections. I just don’t have the knowledge-base to necessarily make them myself.
Hey, this looks pretty interesting…
It looks like Joshua Jay is giving an interview where he discusses three things.
His favorite person.
His favorite place.
His favorite thing.
If you’re in New York on October 27th, you should check that out.
I wonder what he’s going to say!
See you all in November. Have a great Halloween! I recommend one-upping the houses on your block that give out the full-size candy bars and instead giving everyone who comes to your door one of these three pound gummy worms.
