The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
— Dorothy Parker, Author and Poet
Very droll, Dorothy! But I have to say, you do sound a little blamey.
When something is boring, shouldn’t we fix it — make it interesting — rather than tell someone they need to show a little curiosity?
Welcome to thatsoundsboring.com. Here you’re sure to find at least one post that sounds cosmically boring. Read it and, I hope, you’ll emerge on the other side boredom-free — or cured, as Ms. Parker might like to think of it. My yet greater hope is to change your relationship with the subject, to help you begin to claim intellectual ownership of it.
Some people own a lot of things — beach-front property, Gucci bags, and maybe a Ferrari, for example. Others carry wealth in the form of ideas and an elevated understanding of how the world works. This is what I mean by intellectual ownership.
My name is Paul Merlyn. When I’m not working as a software engineer, I’m a dad to a teenage daughter. I spend a lot of my time trying to help her discover the world. Along the way, I’ve come to see through teenage eyes how boring things become when they’re badly explained.
In creating this site, I’m setting out to shine my light — as dim or bright as it may be — on some of the world’s most boring topics. History, economics, philosophy, the classics, mathematical principles — I’m coming after you all!
The cure for boredom is … not to be so boring.
— Paul Merlyn, Software Engineer and Dad
Latest posts
Join the crusade against boredom
Dorothy and I can’t do this alone. Do you have passion for something? Can you shine your literary light on it? If so, the world needs you to publish on thatsoundsboring.com.
Submission guidelines
Audience: write as if your reader is a smart teenager
Goal: steer your reader away from boredom with every sentence you write
Mission: your post leaves the reader feeling like an insider, someone who now knows their way around the subject of your post
Length: just as long as you need to complete your mission
Copyright: you wrote it, you own it
