Most DEFINITELY not in the realms of only artists or the creative

What even is creativity?

 

 

NOBODY CAN TELL YOU,

BUT THEY KNOW IT WHEN THEY SEE IT.

CREATIVITY IS JUST THE USEFUL BY-PRODUCT OF DOING, THINKING, AND BEING

Doing?

Engaging with…

You were born for great things

Whilst making these slides, I chose a notebook image of a map in Italian, and used Google Translate to find out what it meant. But as I typed it, one word at a time, Google interpreted it as different languages, which I thought was interesting.

 

A sentence that as it grows changes language. What could I make with that?

 

As I typed a second word!  

 

Interesting from an artist point of view or if you were making something that had an international audience perhaps?

Proven techniques*

* Mileage may vary

All of these require presence and effort

None/All are guaranteed

Many of these border on the clichéd, but they work! They really work (if you do)

So what then?

Go Looking For Best Practice

Use known and best practice. The site below has categorized methodologies that have been proven to help you work with your ideas better. This site contains lots of techniques to make your thinking more productive.

Find and develop your own methodologies

Lots Of Interesting Creative Prompts

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”

Use the Random, Luke

It was while reading Les Chants de Maldoror that French surrealist André Breton discovered the singular phrase that became foundational to the surrealist doctrine of objective chance:

 

Randomness, luck, chance and serendipity can be used as a spark of creativity, or to nudge things in new directions.

 

Randomness won't "do creativity for you" but sometimes it will be just what you needed.

 

As "Creative Prompt" tools go, I think this is an interesting one. You are allowed to replace "Draw" with "Create" and work in any format you prefer

I sometimes use Daytime TV as a random nonsense generator, packed with timely and cultural references.

The Pixar Story format

Once upon a time, there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

Simple. Read this, then fill in the blanks.

a. Use the Random Phrase Generator to generate two phrases

b. Find a way to combine them into one new, maybe weird phrase

Generate a new word at Neverspieler and use it in a paragraph. Who might use that word and in what context?

Define your project in six words, and use those words with MixWords to generate your projects new name :-)

Go to a charity shop

Find objects and make a Found Sculpture

Write your project's "catchphrase"

Often, when sharing your work or ideas, you need something brief and catchy to help catch peoples' attention.

At very least, attempt to create an "elevator pitch" for your project. A single sentence that really gets over what is great about it

Edward de Bono

• Six Thinking Hats
• Po
• Perception
• Lateral thinking
• Consider All Factors
• etc

 

..algorithms of thought.

Edward de Bono has produced lots of ideas around creativity. People pay a lot of money for his ideas, so maybe there is something in them.

The six thinking hats is a tool to boost the productivity of creative thinking by dividing up the different styles of thinking into six "hats":

 

Each hat has a different colour, but one hat (blue) is kind of a chair's hat, keeping all the other hats on task.

It's been a long time since I've used Six Thinking Hats, and forgotten quite how it works (there are courses you can go on, expensive literature you can buy) but...

...this article gives you more detail.

Describe your project and a challenge problem you guess you will innevitably run into at some point.

 

Now for each coloured hat/attitude critique/suggest ONLY from that hat's perspective.

This is often most productive and fun in a group, but is also very useful on your own, because it let's lots of maybe unrelated issues and ideas to surface with interferrence from the each other

GROUPING: Use the Random Word Generator to create six words, and then put them into two groups.

rub, patch, shift

herd, piano, change

GREEN

CLIMATE

BRAIN EXERCISE 1 based on a de Bono exercise

I got these words, and made the groups below based on "Rub of the green", "Green patch" and "Green shift" vs "Climate change", "Pianos are very sensitive to the climate", "Herd thinking, is like going-with-flow, which is a kind of climate".

 

There are no wrong answers, but you need to justify your group choices.

Pairing: Use the Random Word Generator to create eight words, and then pair them

confront sick

party licence

occupation summary

lost merchant

BRAIN EXERCISE 2 based on a de Bono exercise

Brian Eno

Brian Eno posits that music can be used to do very practical things for our mood and focus. Music for Airports provides calm soothing textures, but doesn't have motifs that grab your attention.

Travel into SoundTrip space. Choose a word. Use WASD and mouse to travel around distant galaxies of sound.

 

How could you maybe use the soundtrack you made as the basis for a campaign advert or marketing material for your project/idea? 

Can we use music to "force us" to generate a cool idea?

Write down your idea. You can record some of the sound if you want to.

Note: All of the sounds used in this toy, are public domain and available at Freesound.org

Figure out how these tools/toys work and imagine what sort of media you could use the "music" you make for. A kids' show, a horror film, etc

Also, as you are playing, how might the visual appearance of the tool be integrated into a video about your project perhaps? Or steal a concept and apply it to your project.

All these tools create ambient sounds. Can you discover a soundscape you could use for something?  What would that something be? How long would the track need to be? Who is it for? Would you have a voice track?

If you want you can record a sample of the sort of audio texture that resonates with you. If you don't like any of these, the activity below has tools to mix free sounds into a soundscape - make your own!

Above is an ambient track, presumably, to burble away in the background and remind you of nature shows from the BBC.

 

• Who is this for?
• When might they listen to it?
• For what reason?

In People Like Us, Vicky Bennet creates and audio story. Can you create one using the tool/sounds below?

Explore These Sonification Resources

Then make your own

Make music like Brian Eno.

Make a band sing.

Conduct the Blob Opera

Oblique Strategies

Created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt to help with the development of musical ideas.

Use these decks

Think about your project. You might want to dwell on an irk or uncertainty you have been mulling.

 

Now, turn over one card from each deck and apply its guidance to your thinking.

1. Freeform capture - “Grab from a range of sources without editorializing.”
    
2. Blank state. ​"Start with new tools, from nothing, and toy around"
    
3. Deliberate limitations
    
4. Opposing forces “Sometimes it’s best to generate a forced collision of ideas”
    
5. Use Creative prompts - Oblique Strategies (online), others like Make It Pop or Design With Intent or BrainSparker (are some of my faves)

Freeform Capture

Grab your project idea and go on a trawl for any media, resources and ideas you can find.

Your mission is to create a mood board of the things that might be visually relevant to you project idea.

 

Here are few unusual places to start looking, feel free to go "off piste".

Deliberate Constraints

HeavyPaint is a tool that takes a wildly different approach to most graphics editors or paint program. You will need to download and use the demo.

 

Paint something around using only three colours. Begin with VERY LARGE BRUSHES.

Use A.I

It was Douglas Engelbart who first understood the importance of computer technologies in bootstrapping human capabilities and augmenting human creativity.

A.I will never replace artists, but appearing now are many A.I or Machine Learning driven tools that can help you create new things and explore new ideas and some are incredibly fun to use. 

Play with the tools below to augment your creativity. As well as exploring, consider how these tools might be in 5 years time.

Use image-based A.I

Play with these tools, just to see what is possible. Consider what you would do if you could steal the functionalities you discovered for your project, because many are open source, so maybe you can!

Use audio-based A.I

These sites automatically generate music. Is it any good?

Try the AIVA, Evoke and/or Boomy music-making services to create a 2 minute backing track for a video about your project

Maybe see also

Text-to-image A.I

Describe your project to A.I and it will paint it for you

Text-based A.I

Write a poem or song to your project. Base it on what A.I gives you as a starting points.

An inspiring collection of Artificial Intelligence projects from Google, often with tools you can use. Explore and find one that resonates with your project ideas

A stunning collection of A.I / M.L demos to explore.

Face The Music - make music with your face.

Curaturae - as you type, artefacts are shown relevant to what you type.

Bring any photo to life with Deep Nostalgia.

Often, I go for a walk and try to notice something new, something I haven't noticed before. 

 

It means looking in differently places and with differing focus. 

 

Every time, I don't think it will work, and it does. Often I take a picture to keep the memory/idea/thought.

Frequently, Ian McMillan tweets his poetic observations on his morning walk.

Go for a walk - take pictures, or make notes/sketches of things you wouldn't have normally noticed.

Go for a walk

Is Psychogeography "going for a walk" or something else? Is it of interest to you?

Explore an historical map of where you live.

Explore these Story Maps and imagine your own. You can also make your own very easily with Google My Maps

Plan your next circular walk with Route Shuffle

Be inspired by the designs of these maps

Stroll Down Flatbush - A Google Maps-like interface to 1920s USA

The Street Wisdom podcast, all about walking to get creative. Using something you listen to whilst walking an interesting approach, if a bit pedestrian.

 

What do you think?

Explore these map tools

Some of these tools generate "fantasy maps" others are interesting ideas etc.

 

What would be on the fantasy map of your project?

 

Might these tools create the base for you to scribble on?

The Echoes tool (right) is a web-based tool that lets you drag .m4a sound files onto a map to create "audio experiences that people walk through" using their mobile phone.

 

These tools let you edit your sounds. Audacity is available on the Software Centre or free to download, Audiomass is simpler web-based audio editor

Note: The free version of Echoes only allows you to upload .m4a sound files (which happens to be what QuickTime Player on a Mac records).

You can either make an Audio Walk, or consider the places you might attach audio to. What would it say? What sound effects might you use? Would you use music? How would people know your Audio Walk was even there?

Create An Audio Walk

Created by for use by medical professionals, this 360 video shows aspects of the End of Life care process.

Explore collections of 360 content.

If you can't get out of the house, what do 360˚ videos offer instead?

 

Find an explore these 360˚ videos, and work out what they are good at, and how you might use them in your project.

 

Cut Up Method

Cut It Up

Known for using the Cut-up Method, David Bowie even made simple software called The Verbalizer to help with the process.

Watch the videos above and learn about the Cut-up Method

To do this activity you need at least 3 or 4 paragraphs of text. Either write about your project, or copy a chunk from something from Project Gutenberg.

Use these cut up tools to help tease out poetic insight, new concepts, or maybe just great nonsense

Text Cut-Up Method

Marvel at the variety of visualisation methods used to display data about "text". Take some time to "really get" what's going on in some of them.

Regarding your project. Do any of these resonate for you?

Wonder at the approaches taken to visualise Alice In Wonderland

Assuming you have "some text" - why not play with the very powerful Voyant Text tools?

 

 

Paste your text into WordTree.

 

 

 

 

Do they open any ideas for you?

Blackout Poetry

Image: https://writers.com/what-is-blackout-poetry-examples-and-inspiration

Textual "carving" or subtractive

Make A Blackout Poem

Watch this video to learn about Blackout Poetry. Get a newspaper, magazine or book (you can deface) and make your own poem.

If you don't have physical text to scribble on you can use this blackout tool with preset texts, or  this blackout poetry tool that you can drag a small text file onto.

Above is a search for "blackout poetry" on Pinterest, lots of

interesting interpretations.

Palimpsest and Montage

Image: https://www.helixcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ii_k6i7edd50.jpeg

Writing on writing

What text, book, magazine would be "the perfect ground" for your project?

 

Maybe an old encyclopedia, or an Ordnance Survey Map or a newspaper?

 

Try working "on" something else, maybe paying heed to what is underneath, or using multiple sources and layers collage style.

Get your source images.  Here is a page with lots of varied, many freely available to use as  "Creative Commons" 

Here are two handy tools that speed up the tricky process of "isolating" an image, or removing the background. Or you can search for "isolated" or PNG images which tend to have transparent backgrounds.

Pixlr and Photopea are two incredible web-based graphics tools. Make a montage about your project ideas.

Have a look at the Edinburgh Collage Collective, and marvel at how striking images are combined, very very simply, to create a fab result. 

Palimpsest on Pinterest

Search for your project themes… on Pinterest*

Quite simply, search for concepts related to your project on Pinterest and see what the world has already gathered for you.

 

Collect the ones you like or can use somehow

• Pinterest has tools to "pin" items
• Google Keep lets you collect links and images
• I personally use Diigo a similar bookmarking/tagging service
• Maybe a notebook/scrapbook/photo album work for you
• Maybe a spreadsheet of links?

Pay close attention to how you collect/curate, and if it doesn't fit your workflow/style of working, find a better/easier way to collect "stuff"

 

This will become a continual background ongoing process, so it really helps if it works for you.

At some point, whether making a presentation or designing promotional material your project will need a visual brand. Why not collect the images you have found into a mood board?

 

A mood board is like a one-page scrapbook that has aspects of "the sorts of things" you want to incorporate which might include words, fonts, icons, whatever.

 

You can use Powerpoint, Google Slides, Google Jamboard or try the tools below.

"Sleep on it"

This, for me, is a method proven many times over.

 

All that is required is that you ask your subconscious to give you the answer to your question in the form of a dream before you go to sleep. It helps if you add something along the lines of "and don't use obtuse metaphors, just give it to me straight".

 

In the morning, if you remember your dream, write it down the minute you wake. It's amazing how fast they fade otherwise. You may want to explore Lucid Dreaming.

 

I have tried keeping a dream diary, and every time I have, I later thanked myself for doing so.

 

How does it work? I don't know, but I reckon we know more than we know we know.

Meditate 

It may sound silly, having said that creativity is all about doing but meditation, after even only 10 minutess, you will find that the relaxed but focussed state meditation brings, is very similar to the creative state known as flow, when you are fully absorbed in what you are involved in.

From Mindfulness apps to Transcendental Mediation with David Lynch or even Yoga. Find a way for meditation to augment your creativity.

Focussing

Obviously not therapy, but fun perhaps?

 

If you were designing a site to help ONLY YOU, what might it realistically do?

Therapy?

Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry is more creative since having therapy, says his wife

This exercise is a slow burn. It'll take time, so maybe move on for now, but keep it in mind as a possibility.

Talk To The Teddy Bear

No substitute for therapy, but a problem-solving and design methodology borrowed from Extreme Programming.

 

It goes like this. When you have a problem, it is often good to talk it over with someone, even if they don't know ANYTHING about the domain of the problem. I used to ask Stan, a retired engineer from Fords.

 

The idea is simple. When we talk our brains work differently from when we think silently.  Find a teddy bear (or photo or anything) and explain, out loud, your problem, or design goal to the teddy bear.  

 

You will be surprised. It works!

 

 

Try the Intuiti experience, I think it's a bit like Tarot.

Or the Daily Affirmations helper app.

Be in nature

Does this need explaining? Linked with the "go for a walk", exercise, if nothing else you benefit from so many positives, you're bound to be creative 

 

When you can, find a wood, or sky or beach or river or sea or wide open fields with fresh air and spend some time there.

 

What sort of nature do you have closest?

 

What sort of nature pulls you?

 

 

Brainstorm

Brainstorms are often most fun, and effective as collaborative activities but you can do a similar activity on your own. I often do. The goal is to generate as many ideas, good or bad, as you can, using the mantra there are no bad ideas.

Google Jamboard is both a shared whiteboard and a physical whiteboard/screen. A few physical Jamboards are available around in the Library

 

 

Borrowed from Information Architecture practice (UX), the methodology of "Card Sorting" involves defining all the things, or ideas and then grouping them, and giving the emergent groups names.

 

Often used to design systems that match users' mental models, it is much better than defining category names and putting things in them (which doesn't allow for a more up-to-date, deeper understanding.

List all the different aspects that you want to cover in your project, include words that you feel, specific terms, whatever and put them into a managable number (some say between 5 or 7)  groups. Name the groups - it will help you better understand your themes and direction.

Automatic writing

Try this automatic writing exercise, or find a better one.

 

Whenever I have tried it, I have been surprised, slightly bemused, and amused by what I produced.

 

See this article on Free-Writing. You may want to set a timer, or a word count to aim for.

This methodology was used by the Surrealists and Dadaists. Simply start and keep going.

You can use paper (best), a tool like Calmly, or maybe try YourWorldOfText. Does an unusual tool change what you write?

Method acting

inhabiting, roleplay

What would Bach do?

Use this Random Person generator to ask how this person would approach your idea.

 

Try an "channel" this person, get into their skin, then ask...

 

• How would they improve it?
• How might they describe it?
• How might they criticize it?
• What might they make?

 

When looking at Paul Smith, designer I found...

A self-confessed hoarder, his office is an Aladdin's cave of toys, books, lucky rabbits and things that inspire him. As his book states, "you can find inspiration in everything... and if you can't, look again".

Create Personas

Borrow a methodology from UX (User Experience) where you define "example customers" or whatever term is appropriate for your intended audience(s).

Now flesh out their details, interests, lifestyle, hobbies etc. and the personas you create be a touchstone for all your design decisions. The tools below might help

 

See: How To Create A Persona

Design an aspect of your project as a cartoon conversation

Maybe the conversation explains a process or a tricky part of it to a particular persona?

The Remixer site lets you create "trading cards", giving them names, attributes and images.

What would the four cards be that represented most of your audience? Create four cards.

Once you've created you Remixer cards, now play them against four pairs of these Inclusive Design cards. What happens?

The Perceptual, Cognitive and Interaction lens cards are really useful at extending your exploration even further.

Make It Move

You don't have to be Walt Disney to invent a character and make it move. Many of these tools use A.I to help you get things moving.

 

With regards to your project, hink about what the character you create would be saying.

 

What purpose could this character be put to in support of your project idea? A critic? A fan? A helper?

 

Where could this lead?

These animations, like those of Terry Gilliam, brilliantly show what happens when more thought than effort goes into making the animations. Love them.

Make a video

without using a phone/camera

Make a video for your project using one or more of these tools. None of them necessarily need any source videos to make them instead creating interesting slideshows or animations from documents etc

 

Brilliant tool, but paid unfortunately, but you can use it once (or clear your cookies and use again).

It turns a text phrase into YouTube videos with those phrases. Amazing.

Solve Problems That You Deliberately Made

Watch enough of "How to paint like Willem de Kooning" and learn about how the "just starting" and then fixing "what's wrong" approach works.

Creative Problem Creating is almost a digital version of a similar process

Imagine somehow defacing or destroying your project irreparably.

 

How would you do it, and how would you salvage something better than what was lost?

Deliberately make a problem/mess/start and then don't "fix it", go with its flaws and make it better

A fun game I played with my daughters is to scribble onto a piece of paper and then the other person has to turn it into something.

When I was an artist, I'd play this game with myself.

 

Try it.

Make a Zine

Just a pause for thought. 

 

Zines owe something to Chapbooks in terms of heritage, small, cheap books, many targeted at children in the 17th century.

Chapbooks at the British Library

Chapbooks from York

Getting your ideas onto 8 panels (including a front and back cover) is harder than it sounds.

 

If you aren't already familiar with zines, explore and discover.

Electric Zine Maker is a charming desktop tool you would need to install and is really worth exploring just for the experience, but you can always approach this is with a piece of paper, scissors, glue and pens.

I made a super simple zine making tool to help me figure out where the pages should be

It sometimes an idea to get all your ideas on one page. And whilst personally, I think Mind Maps aren't always the best for communicating the huge topics, because they can be overwhelming, when constructed collaboratively, the process is the communication, and the mind map itself, a useful byproduct of that process.

Either alone, or with someone who is working on a similar project to yours, mindmap your project(s)

York has a licence for Lucidchart, I like the Coggle app, or you may discover a better one, or use paper, whiteboard

"Growing" your ideas in a network is one thing. Sometimes you will find yourself working with data that is all about connections and networks. Strangely, these are often called graphs network graphs. Explore Map the Power and My Little Crony. Both these visualisations display connected information.

One day, you might need a sophisticated tool like The Vistorian or Flourish, to display your data. Not all charts are bar charts!

The purpose of this exercise is just to become aware of networks, and the possibilities, that you may put to use soon.

Make a very large collaborative map with more than street names.

Stop Writing From Top-to-Bottom

Often when writing a longer piece, a novel or an essay, instead of just starting at the beginning it pays to assemble the fragments. 

 

Interactive Narratives (non-linear games) are collections of mainly textual passages that you navigate around, changing the story as you go. 

Whether writing an essay, or designing a game explore the world of interactive narratives and play with the excellent Twine editor. Note: can be downloaded from Software Centre, downloaded free, or used online.

When working in an Information Architect (UX) role, there were many ways to find out what the users really want and need. One of the truly most valuable methods was going to where they were, and just hang out with them, asking them to just let you sit in the corner and observe.

Alternatively, if you are looking for lyrics, ideas, or similar, go people watch. Find a cafe or bus or wherever and just listen. The fragments of dialogue you hear will be gold.

Find the people you are interested and watch and listen. Take notes.

Note: I once did this in a pub, and, with a skinhead, boots and being middle-aged was asked if I was "the plod". The aim is to politely blend in, and not be "the story" :-)

Chaos Magick is an interesting occult approach, because you kind of make it up as you go along.

 

All magick at its core, has an element of intention, change and  "making something from nothing", or "making things be" which to me, sounds in the exactly the same ballpark as creativity.

Make a sigil for yourself or your project on paper. Take a picture. The two tools below help turn a photo into a vector or SVG file which means you can edit it.

Being familiar with differences between vector files (editable points) and photos (pixels) is important

Alternative Vector Editors

Now turn your sigil into a logo with the Penpot tool below

Design your project's flag

What would the flag for your project look like? Use these tools to make your own

 

Can you distill the components or messages into a few simple images or even colours and shapes?

On Reddit explore fictional, historical and even cursed flags.

Explore the world of flags, find a flag type that might suit your project

Accretion

Harrogate artist Anna Whitehouse (instagram) has engaged with more than 2,000 people worldwide, and closer to home, to help her sculpt a beetle a day for 100 days.

Everyday app

Make an intention to do something every day/often and try to keep to it

some random ideas

Whether you like John Mckie's outsider art, painted onto scraps of cardboard or not (I do), you have to be impressed by his persistence and work rate. Almost every day there is a new one that he bangs out on Ebay .

On Kawara's date paintings explained

Armed with a 1940s book of wild flowers, I saw Fiona Higston make a new flower from paper, wire and tape every day on Instagram

Many A.I based tools are expensive, in terms of processing power and memory, and so in turn, become expensive to use. NightCafe offers you 5 daily credits, presumably to keep you coming back.

 

All you need to do is think of a descriptive phrase and it generates "a work of art" for you.

"A sea of pugs"

From Genuary (creating generative code in January) to Inktober (ink drawings in October) to NaNoWriMo (write a novel in a month) there are events where everyone shares their work and progress.

 

These are great to help you develop the habits to progress.

 

There is bound to be one focussed around whatever you are interested in, and if not start one.

The Daily Create

The Daily Create gives you fantastic prompts everyday on Twitter and is fantastic.

 

Subscribe, create, #ds106

Diary/Notebook/Sketchbook

Keep a Notebook/Sketchbook/Log/Diary

Whilst David Lynch says notebooks preserve the life of bad ideas, I disagree.

 

Doodling around notes has been shown to improve recall.

 

I produce more ideas than I can remember so I log them down (not all are great unfortunately)

 

Moving from screen to paper often REALLY helps something shift conceptually.

 

I personally use these Notebooks  because the paper is smooth, plain and the pages have numbers so I can index any thoughts that are good at the front. And you can get them in some lovely colours (watch out for sales).

 

Try it!

Consider Time

Timelines Revisted is a fabulous resource. Explore the many ways time can be represented, and marvel. 

Apollo 11 in RealTime is different again, as is The Actual Time Machine. Explore these wildly different approaches to time.

Loom is an interesting way to interact with historical photographs

Really interesting exploratory interface, that slices archive texts together.

Example Timeline made with padlet

Now, think about how time might best be represented in your project or idea. Use these tools and begin making or thinking. Tiki-toki and Padlet are good simple timeline tools. Why not try to begin creating a timeline, you will need dates (obv), and text and maybe images or YouTube links.

Tiki-toki

Knightlab Timelab has some great timeline examples.

Of course, having explored the items above, you may have designed your own unique visualisation ideas, these tools are very much the "standard" way of displaying time

GoogleData studio and KnightLab Timeline require you to have correctly formatted data already in a Google Sheet.

Help Yourself

My Habit Tracker Has Made Me an Accidentally Positive Person

There are methodologies, quantified life tools, calendars and to-do lists, habit trackers, reminders, apps and ALL SORTS of things that do all sorts of things.

 

Hack these tools augment your creativity, let them remind you to sketch the cat, or whatever it takes to do anything creative. 

 

You are still going to have to the work, but let the computer do the admin.

Use computers to really help and support you in your creative efforts. That's all.

Habit tracking, sprints etc

This article on habit tracking

iLys is a really strange writing tool where you set a wordcount target, and then start typing. It doesn't even let you see what you've written until the end. 

Calmly - distraction free writing.

Consider using dictation to write text. Note: Google Docs has this feature too. If you've never actually tried it, give it a whirl.

If you are a regular user of Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook etc you are probably aware of the bubble effect , where because you like X, you get more of Y and Z and never ever stumble over an N,M,L,O,P.

As an alternative way to "get news" could I suggest you explore RSS Readers, with which you can personally curate the news sources you follow, with little or no algorithms getting in the way. Feedly is free and fun. I also like InoReader. Amazing tools.

 

Those times when your feeds are tiringly taken over with a single subject, an RSS Reader is a breath of fresh air.

Become "THE EXPERT" in…

... this!

Wikipedia has a "random link" feature. I added it to my browser's default tabs to open when I start a browser, so every day I am given a random page to do with whatever comes into my head.

Marginalia is a search engine that does the opposite of Google, finding the least most popular, the niche and obscure. Use it sometime.

The Weird Old Book Finder