Xe's site feels more like a kinetic playground, constantly adding wild new inventions, than a shimmering fractal of bad ideas to me.
This is where the niche excellence is first built which later, almost by accident, drives enormous amounts of business value when put into the right place. I totally get it. There is machine empathy you simply cannot build any other way.
You hit the nail on the head. This is exactly why I do these things, but the only difficult part is figuring out where to apply this experience and how to phrase things without sounding like a crazy person in the process. "Yeah I got bit by this when I was intentionally throwing my body out into the snakes for fun", doesn't really make quite as much of the right impact as I hope.
Ironically, I'm quite bad at product development, and where I really succeed is when I'm mentoring people and helping enable them to succeed. I'm glue professionally, which means that my individual contributions are terrible but in aggregate I help others succeed so much more that it adds up. I always look terrible at review time though, I end up having to bring a brag document and look kinda like a jackass.
This is where the niche excellence is first built which later, almost by accident, drives enormous amounts of business value when put into the right place. I totally get it. There is machine empathy you simply cannot build any other way.