Hello @Tamar, yes of course you can write articles covering information you have learned from the Netflix series ‘Babies’. As a matter of fact, I look forward to those texts since they will make for a good mix and diversity. I’m also looking forward to reading the story behind Wordhoney and yes, you can adjust the word count in a way that is comfortable for you and gives you enough freedom to use all your creative potential. 
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@Torsten, yes this is really her haha. She lies like this every morning when I have my coffee. @KellyW indeed she is. She’s a lovebug.
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Hi everyone! Good morning, happy start of the week (at least it is to me - it was Independence Day in Bosnia yesterday!) and I’m ready to throw myself into work with slightly more regularity. There’s a joke in Bosnian about being “divine”: “Everyone believes I exist, but nobody has seen me before.” I want to change that now 
Anyway, I just want to ask a few things as I’m collecting topics for tests. My first tests used to be about a relatively well-known topic (and would serve as tests on that topic, not reading comprehension exercises) so they had no accompanying text, and had 10 questions each. But now I notice most of you create a small text and a reading comprehension exercise consisting of 3-5 questions along with it. Should I go with this template as well? Is 10 questions excessive in this case?
Also, I’ll post my topics here and aim for at least one test daily for the month of March, increasing as time goes on and other, previous obligations start fading. Good luck everyone and expect to see more of me going forward 
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Hi Sumejja, many thanks for joining forces with us again 
As for your question, we should be aiming at creating creating materials that service the following purposes:
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Are useful and valuable for our users (learners of English as a second language and companies, institutions and organizations reusing our materials to educate their staff, teachers of English as a second language)
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Are fun and interesting for you to create
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Can be monetized one way or another
So, yes if you can create TOEIC part 7 based reading comprehension texts similar to the ones @tim_m, @KellyW, @Tamar, @Sean-C, @Leonika and @Elida have been creating this will be great. Maybe you could also share some ideas with @tim_m since he has created “English For You” as an additional project?
Ideally, we all would start exchanging ideas with each other
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Thank you for the reply! And I’m really glad to be back. I’ll be collecting ideas for the text topics and posting them here.
Also, where can I see the English For You project? With the number of messages in this topic, it can be a little hard to navigate it. Combing through the website hasn’t really helped much for now. I’d love to see us all bouncing ideas off each other!
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Sumejja, I agree with you, the thread has become a little long and difficult to navigate. I’ve been thinking about what exactly I need to do in order to get every single one of you to start communicating with each other so that we become a team rather than working as separate individuals. Do you have any suggestions?
As for English For You, this was an idea by @tim_m and you can read a little bit about it here: Why did you start freelancing? (New job) - #21 by Natalia_Polteva
Looking forward to your comments and questions 
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So! Here are the five topics I’d like to cover in the next few days. Let me know what you think, if you have any other suggestions etc.
- Blockchain Criticism - From Lack of Trust to Overengineering
- Blockchain and Gaming, Part 1 (because this is a great topic for several parts, but I can also leave it as one if preferred)
- Should There Be One Blockchain to Rule Them All
- Cryptocurrency: Coins vs Tokens
- Blockchain and Stem Cell Research (from this fascinating article: [How Blockchain Technology Can Accelerate Stem Cell Research
As for communicating with each other - I’m honestly not sure. Is there a possibility of creating a Slack workspace in which we could pitch new topics, discuss previous ones and share off-topic stuff?
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Hi Sumejja, I like all of the five topics you have suggested and really look forward to reading the texts and comprehension questions.
Yes, we can start using additional external communication channels such as Slack as soon as we reach a certain level of momentum. At the current stage we are still in this very early ‘jelling phase’ where it’s not clear yet whether or not there actually will be team. As of now, communication is 99% between a content creator and me. An exchange of ideas and thoughts among all members of our group hasn’t started yet but I’m working on it …
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Good morning everyone! 
@Torsten This “Babies” documentary is super interesting and I’m learning so much about how these tiny humans learn and grow. I’m afraid that I’ll have more than 10 articles written up by the time the series is done. 
Feel free to say no, but I’d like to continue writing on the topic of baby development until the last episode (there are eight 50-minute episodes in total). I’ve gone through two episodes and I’ve already pulled enough information for 6 articles! 
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Hi Tamar, about 1.5 years ago I listened to ‘Everybody lies’, a book by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (I listened to the audio version instead of reading it). I found the entire book fascinating and I remember how he described the concept of a ‘Doppelganger’ (partly because the word ‘Doppelgänger’ is German).
Here is a quote from the book:
One of the more interesting applications of big data is the ability to predict someone’s behavior through the use of a “doppelgänger”–a well-matched individual for whom extensive information is already available.
Now, what this means is that if there is one person (in our case that’s you) who finds a topic interesting and valuable, the likelihood that there is at least one more individual who is as interested in the same topic as this first person is very high.
In other words, if you find that the “Babies” documentary provides enough information for an entire series of articles/exercises then by all means please do continue writing them 
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Cool, thanks! Is that where the term “doppelgänger” came from? I just always thought that it referred to someone who resembles another person. 
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You are right. The original meaning of Doppelgänger is a person who likes very much like another one and the term is way older than ‘Everybody lies’.
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Hi @KellyW!
Your new test is online: Electromobility: a new way of getting around | english.best
Thank you 
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This story is exciting for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s about what is happening in Nairobi, Kenia as opposed to Palo Alto, California. African countries have so much potential and their economies and societes have started developing much faster than those of many west European ones, especially Germany where stagnation and resistance to change is getting stronger by the day.
Secondly, it’s a story about small local startup companies rather than yet the IPO of yet another unicorn born in Silicon Valley.
Thirdly, it’s about electric powered urban micro mobility which helps speed up the process of democracatizing technology as well as society. Many thanks for your great work, Kelly
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Hi @Torsten. You’ll notice I recently added a 6th batch of texts to our shared Google Drive folder. Though, I still need to tidy up some of the texts before we post them. Thank you 
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Hello @Andrea , thank you very much for creating the exercise about the bionic jellyfish. Can you imagine suddenly being able to swim three times faster yourself ?
Here is the link: Super-fast bionic jellyfish | english.best
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