Dustings #66

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Oh, hey boys. It’s me.

I’m in a particularly good mood. The book mailing is over and the funding for the next season is completed. These are two of the less pleasant parts of running this site, so I’m glad to have them in the rearview mirror.

It’s even better than it has been in past seasons because the new support-structure runs indefinitely. Family-level supporters can drop-off at any point in time and be replaced by Friend-level supporters on the waiting list for a full-supporter slot. And should the number of supporters ever dip below the number I need to keep the site running, then that’s just the sign I need that it’s time to move on to my next venture. Being able to automate that decision is particularly satisfying.

The other thing I’m really happy about is the new book schedule going from once a year to once every 18 months. For the first time in years I don’t have the feeling that it’s Friday and I have an essay do for school on Monday that I haven’t yet started. That 6 months extra is revitalizing me. I’ve actually already started work on the next book. And I have some other projects in the pipeline as well that will be available to supporters at either level.

Posting Schedule Notes

I used to take a break from posting from Christmas until mid-February. I won’t be doing that this season. Posting will continue full-time for the next 18 months. The schedule will be Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from the 1st through the 25th of each month. So instead of a 2 month break and a week off every season, I will be taking a small break at the end of each month.

In that break I’ll focus on working on the newsletter, which will be a monthly release. Love Letters (the new newsletter) will go into depth on my three favorite effects/purchases from the previous month. The first issue comes out June 1st at noon New York City time. Future issues will come out on the 1st of the month, also at noon. I’m specifying the time because there may occasionally be some one-off thing I have available (like a copy of one of my older books that may turn up) and I will make those available in the email that comes with your newsletter on a first-come, first-serve basis. So if it’s important enough for you to want to try and obtain something along those lines, now you know the time and place to do so.

Speaking of the newsletter, Family-level members can advertise twice a season. You have an 8.5 x 11 inch page to do what you will with. If you get your ads to me by the 25th of the month, they’ll definitely be included in the next month’s newsletter. After that point, it’s still likely, but I can’t guarantee it.

Sorry for the boring administrative stuff. That’s mostly behind us going forward.

Here’s an idea that came to me from friend-of-the-site, Dan R.

From his email…

I call it the "false decoy ploy" or "lazy man's classic force".

Let's assume that you're right handed and imagine a magician would approach you with a deck of cards like seen in the next image (1.) and cheekily said "go ahead and pick a card but don't let me influence you..."


Which card would you (the layman) go for, honestly?

Definitely not the one sticking out, right?

If my theory proves to be correct, you will go for the card I labelled "decoy" in the next image (2.) as it's the easiest to touch or grab from the spread.

So far this force worked for me 100% at a laughable sample rate of 2 (!) tries. And I've been running around with this idea since 2005!

Okay, so let’s test this out. There’s really no chance this will work frequently enough to be reliable, but I’d be curious to see how often it hits if a couple dozen of you were to test it.

So give it a shot and send me an email with your results. Put FDP in the subject line (for “False Decoy Ploy”).

In actuality, what I’m really doing here is a meta-test. I’m testing the idea of testing ideas via readers of the site. I’d like to see the responses I get.

If this is the sort of thing I can get people to help with, then we could do other simple—and potentially more useful—tests. And then something like the double-turnover testing I did over the course of multiple years could be crowdsourced and done in a weekend.

“I’m a magician.” Yeah, no shit. If the top hat didn’t give it away, the 45% body fat with a waistline that’s broader than your shoulders would be a big hint. The inability to tie a bow-tie so it sits properly. The suit jacket button about to pop right off from the strain of holding in your gut. No neck. The forced smile. The panicked eyes. We get it, you’re a magician.