Jon Vanhala @jonvanhala - Tumblr Blog

New research suggests fun isn’t a distraction from learning — it’s the brain’s way of rewarding us for navigating uncertainty, discovering patterns, and staying mentally alive.

Why play brings us pleasure - Big Think

(via Music for Unlikely Superheroes & Doomed Romances - The Ankler) Music for Unlikely Superheroes & Doomed RomancesComposers Finneas O’Connell (‘Beef’), Kris Bowers & Michael Dean Parsons (‘Spider-Noir’) and Joel P. West (‘Wonder Man’) on the joy and challenges of genre-bending scores

'You're not just recalling words, but an emotion': The lifelong benefits of making music

Music serves as an ergogenic and affective aid in land-based exercise, yet its real‐time impact during swimming remains underexplored. Prior work has focused on pre‐performance arousal or post‐exercise recovery, leaving a gap in understanding how music tempo affects swimmers’ psychophysiological and emotional responses. This study examined the effects of no music (Beats Per Minute [BPM]), slow‐tempo (65 BPM), and fast‐tempo (120 BPM) music on affect (via the Exercise‐Induced Feeling Inventory [EFI] and Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale [PACES]), Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE), and stroke mechanics during an 800 m self‐paced freestyle swim. In a single‐blind, randomized crossover trial, 24 university swimmers (18 male, 6 female) with ≥ 1 year of experience and neutral music preference completed three 800 m trials under randomized auditory conditions using bone‐conduction headphones.

Tempo influences affective responses and perceived exertion during musical self-selected swimming in a randomized crossover trial | Scientific Reports

(via Why singing is surprisingly good for your health) perhaps the most remarkable benefit of singing is that it appears to play a role in helping the brain repair itself from damage. This was illustrated by the story of former US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who survived being shot in the head during an assassination attempt in 2011. Over the course of many years, Giffords relearned how to walk, speak, read and write, with therapists utilising songs from her childhood to help her regain verbal fluency.

jazz-improvisation

Nina Simone Town Hall, N.Y.C. 1959

photo: © Herb Snitzer

(via The case for and against clipping - Digiday) as with anything in the creator-economy tool that drives serious attention revenue, clipping is not without controversy. Critics say it rewards the most extreme, boundary-pushing behavior, nudging streamers to act out in hopes of going viral, while platforms scramble to claim their share of the pie and brands try to tap into the ecosystem without running afoul of FTC rules. Here’s a look at both sides of the clipping argument:

(via Can Microdramas Save Hollywood? - The New York Times) Low-budget, vertical and short, microdramas have exploded into a billion-dollar U.S. market, and are becoming a lifeline for Hollywood’s creative force. We take a behind-the-scenes look on set and at the industry’s first red carpet award show.

(via Disney TV Sellers' Guide: What ABC, FX & Hulu Actually Want - The Ankler)

(via Saatchi & Saatchi Moves Showcase To SXSW London From Cannes Lions) Saatchi & Saatchi is moving its New Creators’ Showcase to SXSW London in a development that ends its 36-year partnership with Cannes Lions.The move was announced as the world-renowned advertising agency opened entries for the New Creators’ Showcase 2026, which will debut at London SXSW in June as part of a new partnership with the UK SXSW spin-off.The showcase, which has been curated and presented annually at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity since 1991, is a celebration of the very best in creativity, storytelling and visual innovation with previous winners including The Daniels and Jonathan Glazer.

(via Cannes Lions' Creator Boom Meets Expense Account Agony - The Ankler) Last year, you could barely walk down the Croisette in Cannes, France without running into someone with millions of social media followers. It was the year that creators stormed Cannes Lions’ International Festival of Creativity amid the marketing world’s warm embrace of online stars and the $185 billion in global advertising revenue they were expected to generate in 2025. Film and TV A-listers largely sat out the fest as new stars from Alix Earle to Amelia Dimoldenberg to Jake Shane took up residency at the du Cap and the Carlton.

A new tier of talent — not quite influencers, not quite amateurs — is quietly turning their own content creation into a viable career path. These are professionals, founders and side-hustlers with real expertise and modest audiences, building businesses that don’t rely on being MrBeast. As layoffs, hiring freezes and stalled development pipelines force many in media and entertainment to rethink their next move, social media is starting to look like a pretty good sudden hustle — if not the entire Plan B.

The Next Job Pivot: Professionals Becoming Creators — and Cashing In

Talent is sitting on the fence as the Riviera is rocked by reality.

Cannes Lions’ Creator Boom Meets 2026’s Budget Buzzkill

(via 50 Young Hollywood Workers Tell All: 'My Bank Account is So Sad' - The Ankler) A new wave of grads is about to flood the market — even as earlier ones still struggle to find their way

(via Trauma Therapy for High Achievers - MindClear Integrative Psychotherapy) Insight Alone Is Not Enough Many high achievers are deeply self-aware. You may be able to trace your patterns back to earlier experiences and articulate exactly why you operate the way you do. You might feel ambivalent about therapy, held back by the belief that “I should be able to handle this.”Instead of turning toward emotional experience, many high achievers rely on intellectualizing. They can analyze their thoughts, understand their patterns, and explain their behaviors with precision. But insight alone doesn’t resolve emotional pain. Understanding something is not the same as feeling it, processing it, or allowing it to shift internally. There is also often a tendency to minimize, telling yourself, “It wasn’t that bad.”Alongside this can be a fear of losing control. If control has been a primary way of staying safe, the idea of opening up emotionally can feel destabilizing and threatening. Letting someone else see your vulnerability, or even practicing vulnerability, can feel unfamiliar, exposing, and at times, unsafe.This is because trauma is not just stored cognitively. It is held in the body, in emotional responses, and in deeply ingrained relational patterns. Allowing you to understand something and still feel the same way. Therapy for high achievers is not just about knowing – it’s about experiencing something different.

Everyone fails before they get better. The infant. The athlete. The founder. The superstar. Not once. 10s of thousands of times. Dozens of times today alone. True story: My old landlord in Chicago had only ever heard me practice. Never perform. I was a professional musician rebuilding my chops after a few years away, now deep in the woodshed. Scales. Arpeggios. Coltrane licks. solo transcriptions. Missed notes. The same phrase repeated 40B times over and over. The musical equivalent of a figure skater drilling a quad jump, flailing, getting up bruised and disheveled to try again, and again, and again One day, I'm on my way out in a tuxedo on the way to a gig. She stopped me in the hall, wondering why.... "What? You get paid for THAT?" ha! She was completely utterly shocked. All she had ever heard was what I was practicing that couldn't do... yet. Growth often looks and sounds like failure, until suddenly it doesn't. (!) Failure isn't the thing you push through to get to the learning. It IS the learning. The obstacle is the way. The people I work with who grow fastest share this trait: they stopped being ashamed of being mid-rep. They perform at the level they've earned today and do the work to get 1% better for tomorrow. That's the ethic that matters. The only failure is allowing ego to get in the way of making that adjustment. Give yourself forgiveness. What are you working on getting better at right now?

Post | LinkedIn

(via Single Brain Connection Pinpointed as the Starting Point of Learning - Neuroscience News) Researchers identified the specific location in the brain where learning first takes hold. The study uses zebra finches to demonstrate that complex motor skills, like singing, speaking, or playing an instrument, initially hinge on a single type of connection between brain cells, known as a synapse, within the basal ganglia.This discovery provides a long-sought answer to how the brain balances the need for “babbling” experimentation with the precision required for mastery.

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