Not thrilled with 9, but at least it’s a perfect square. Multiplying or dividing things by it is an incredibly underwhelming experience, and it manages to be such a dud that somehow, it’s not a prime number even though it only has one factor.Īs for the rest of the one-digit numbers, I enjoy 2, 4, and 8 because when I was seven I became obsessed with saying “2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1,024, 2,048, 4,096” before hitting a wall, 1 and I have an affinity for prime numbers, naturally, so 3, 5, and 7 fall into my favor. But then anytime you actually spend time with 1, you end up bored.ġ is also no fun to play with. We’ll lead off with the extraordinarily dull 1.ġ likes to masquerade as this poetic and profound thing, getting used in sentences I don’t really understand, like “the oneness of all” or something annoying like that. 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, and 100,000 are our friends-we get them, they get us, and in this post, we’re basically gonna just hang out with them and catch up, since you probably haven’t been good at keeping in touch. The numbers between 1 and 1,000,000 are everywhere in daily life. Today, we’ll keep things in the realm of the ordinary and the conceivable, capping ourselves at a million. So I’ve decided to do not one, but two consecutive posts on numbers, during which we’ll start at 1 and end up in a very scary place. Numbers are fascinating and precise and satisfying and delicious and whatever it is you’re thinking about at any given time, there’s at least a 60% chance that I’m over here thinking about numbers.
They’re subtle and subjective and rambly and flowy. They’re mushy and sometimes pleasant and sometimes annoying. I’ve never been especially impressed by words. It could be simple or sophisticated, mundane or whimsical, practical or creepy.īut I’m over here thinking about numbers. I don’t know what you’re over there thinking about.