… and therefore we blogged. Episode 9

by Aarushi Mukherjee · August 29, 2016

Happy Independence month bloggers! This episode, we have some fresh thoughts to inspire your days ahead… enjoy!

Saurabh recommends…

Watching 8 Mile (if you haven’t already)

I am not sure how many of you have heard of this movie. The name of this, by the way, is a street which used to be famous in the ghetto of Detroit because of the residence across it which later became famous worldwide after the release of the movie 8 mile starring Marshall Mathers, AKA Eminem. The movie is about a blue-collar worker by the name Jimmy Smith Jr. whose talents are on the other side of his brains, which he is not confident of. He worries about his potential as a musician even when encouraged by all his friends.

The movie has such a fantastic plot which keeps you hooked on every scene, with a continuous rhythm running in the background setting the tone for the movie. The song ‘Lose yourself’ from the movie was the first rap song to receive a Grammy award in the category. He also won the Academy award for the song and became the first hip hop artist ever to win an Academy award.

Even if you have no connection whatsoever with Hip hop, or even hate the whole genre, I recommend you watch this movie – I am pretty sure you will not be disappointed at all.
Whiplash is a fantastic movie, and I did not have to like jazz music to appreciate it. As a matter of fact I am a fan of that movie.
The movie 8 mile motivated the entire hip hop community so much that it elevated battle rap everywhere and became a career for so many people. In rap battles, you can still hear references from 8 Mile.

Karthik thinks…

This week, I thought it’d be good to OD on science!

We have always studied that the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Lot of us still teach our children that. However we have come to know clearly and undoubtedly that it’s completely wrong! 100 % bollocks! The Sun does not rise at all and because of that it does not set at all either! Earth rotates in its own axis and hence we see the Sun come up to our field of vision and our hemisphere from the eastern side of the planet and as it continues to rotate on its axis and revolve around the sun we see it leave our field of vision exposing the other side of the planet to the sun from the west. So there is actually no sunrise or sunset at all. That’s just how we’ve been seeing it so far.

Professor Brian Coxin an interview said, if all our Science books and religious books were all published with one disclaimer mentioning they might be wrong but all evidence so far suggests only the following and then wrote everything in the book, we might have been better at how we understand the world around us.

Imagine if the Bible started with “So… we might be wrong, but…” and then carried on with all of the testaments. How refreshing would that have been?!

And this point of view changes everything about how we learn and helps us question everything all the time. With that approach here are some newest interesting discoveries we’ve made in the last week. These are of course not all of them, I’ve picked just 3 or 4 of the ones I found really interesting.

Environment: The human impact on the natural environment is actually slowing down.Well, so far no species in this world has impacted the environment the way we have. More people understand that Global warming is screwing up our planet and its ecosystem. We need a lot more maturity in dealing with it. Or last minute panic works too I guess, but we might be making a mighty big mistake if we just let our next generation deal with it. But here is some good news in that front. We still are affecting the planet at the cost of many species but we are getting better at managing our needs and what we take from this environment. So there is hope.

Space: Another awesome discovery last week is that we have confirmation that there is an earth like planet that could harbor life of its own. We have actually found quite a few 1000 planets like that in our known universe over the last few years, but what’s great about this one is that its only 4.2 light years away! We have the technology to actually plan and get there within the next 40 years. Within our own life time! Well, at leastsome of us will I supposeJ. This planet is called “Proxima b”. Its about 1.3 times the size of Earth, and there’s a good chance it’s rocky. It orbits roughly 6.92 million kilometres from Proxima Centauri (nearest star to us after our own sun), and takes about 11.2 days to complete its orbit. So a year on this planet is only 11 days with leap years once every 5 years instead of the 1 in 4 year cycle we have here. One of the Russian billionaires is already putting a plan in place to send spacecraft there and take pictures of the weather, life forms (if any) and other conditions.

Life: We also have discovered a new species of animal that shared our space before we took over, some 18 million years ago. It was a “micro-lion”. This one looked like a lion and weighed just about 600 grams. They were about 10 inches long.And yet theywent extinct anyway I guess.

Oh and Albert is now on Spotify! Einstein, I mean. We’ve all heard or learnt about the theory of general relativity. The equation E=mc^2. Energy = Mass X speed of light squared, but have you ever heard him speak? Here is his voice on Spotify now. Listen to the legend explain his own equation!

Swati swears…

You will market your blogposts like a pro after reading this!

I was recently reading a multitude of articles on what should be the title of a blogpost or ‘promotional content’ on social media to endorse a blogpost or an article. My quest stemmed from the fact that while we generate great content with a lot of hard-work (and excitement), is it possible to get others to be equally excited about it too? I have had the good fortune of personally knowing some passionate bloggers who put their heart, soul, humor, research and a lot of heard-work in each of their blogposts, ones that I read with a coffee mug in my hand and yet don’t distract myself with even a single sip of coffee.

While I am a wanna-be blogger (it’s a lot of commitment, salute to all the bloggers for their consistency and dedication to their blogs – you inspire me to no end), I realize that content-marketing is as important as content-creation. Basically, you are not only the CEO of your blog, you are also the Marketing and Brand Manager of it.

So what did I learn from my reading? I will list here some of it and I hope you can use it and apply while ‘marketing’ your blog on social media:

1. Make it emotional

Look up the list of emotions online and use words that describe that emotion in your promotional content. Tell your readers how reading your blogpost will instigate a positive (happiness, excitement, relief, etc) or negative (pity, disgust, anger, etc) emotion in them.

Example: Feeling happy? This blogpost will make you feel even better!

2. My secret is yours

Tell it like you were telling them a secret – one that is about to change their lives but they must keep it to themselves, because, after all, it’s a secret!

Example: The secret to better time management is so simple, I didn’t know it until now!

3. Storytelling

We are all born with a love for stories. You can’t deny it. Your readers can’t deny it. When someone tells you a story such as, “I was about to eat that chocolate cookie when he snatched it away from my hand. Shocked, I asked him what was wrong with obvious angerand that’s when he revealed…”

Ah well, I have left something for your imagination there.

4. It’s about you, not me!

Everyone loves it when you talk about them! If you could click on only one of these two articles, which one would you pick?