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Comment by jl2718 | Hacker News Reader

That moment when your brain falls asleep in class and tells you it unveiled the deep connection between carnival blister peanut texture and the quantum variational bound. And then you wake up suddenly and get scared because you think you might have yelled out something stupid.

Or maybe I’m just the only one.

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> Or maybe I’m just the only one

not just you - I didn't have a name for it, but my brain pretty much does free-association in that phase. On more than one occasion I've jolted awake because I've had a earth-shattering revelation, only to realise my idea was already invented (hot air balloon) or pretty ridiculous (like having your toaster burn the day's agenda on your toast).

I can't help but wonder: how many multi-million dollar ideas have I had and then promptly forgot as I got into deeper sleep?

> having your toaster burn the day's agenda on your toast

Shut up and take my money!

a laser and a galvo should do it

> pretty ridiculous (like having your toaster burn the day's agenda on your toast).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/258723592/toasteroid-fi...

Hmmm, you're onto something. If I could lower my morals just a bit, I could parlay these crazy ideas into fanciful crowd-funded cash-grabs. I'll be the visionary - I'll need a technical "co-founder" (to handle the photoshops and cheery promo videos)

I have this too. Suddenly I realise that each line of code I am writing is a doorway to a different parallel universe.

Or maybe that the numbers on the clock indicate the distance I have to run in the track meet.

My girlfriend has told me that sometimes when we drift off to sleep talking, I'll start making less and less sense. She occasionally interviews me and can keep me going in this free-association state for a couple of minutes. I'll have to get to her take notes. :)

The worst instance of this for me was when I was younger and would get a high fever. My brain would just constantly go over the same concepts, try to reconcile them, fail, retry etc.

Usually it would attempt something similar to yours, like reconciling the concept of orange with a physical shape, which just immediately fails.

My brain fell asleep in class once, and my head slipped off my hand. The noise of it hitting the desk woke me up again.

Everyone heard that one for sure!

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