Two tweets stood out as highlights for me on Twitter today. The first from @Naval is perhaps self-evident to everyone who uses and relies on Twitter as a source of information:-
Twitter is a much better resumé than LinkedIn.
— Naval (@naval) January 28, 2019
Can’t argue with that.
LinkedIn is the most polished version of yourself that you’ve composed in order to impress others who have the power to positively impact your career. Whereas (used properly) Twitter is the way that individuals can distribute their life-changing ideas and positively impact people on a global scale.
LinkedIn broadcasts your claimed deeds and your promises about the future. Whereas Twitter shows how you actually behaved and the way you approach your life. Given the choice of both, I know which one I’d be more comfortable to use as a proxy…
And onto the second tweet of the day:-
I have synesthesia which means I can "taste" words. Ask me what your name tastes like.
— Julie McDowall (@JulieAMcDowall) January 27, 2019
This is just brilliant on so many levels. After all, who doesn’t want to know what their name tastes like?!
I was reading about synesthesia last week so, as often seems to happen – provided you’re not following a raft of inane reality TV stars – Twitter provided that all-essential follow-up to hook me back in. From world-famous artists (Van Gogh), physicists (Richard Feynman), writers (Nabokov) and musicians (Liszt, Pharrell, Kanye West, Tori Amos), many people have this unusual skill of being able to taste words, sounds, hear colours – or many other combinations of the senses. Incredibly, there are apparently around 80 different types of synesthesia.
Interestingly, it might be the case that more of us have traces of this ‘superpower’ than we realise. For example, one experiment showed:-
“Significantly more people than chance, for instance, associated the smell of mushrooms with the colours blue or yellow. Lavender elicited the colour green and the texture of sticky liquid, while ginger was perceived as black and sharp.”
As I’ve written about before on this blog, it’s clear that the world of senses is far richer and more complicated, extending far beyond the simple five that most of us are led to believe we possess from an early age. Seems quite fitting, doesn’t it?