December 2011
49 posts
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Maria Popova's Beautiful Mind - Mother Jones →
From an interview with the creator of Brain Pickings:
When you intercept the rumination process with something that requires your full attention—that’s stimulating and absorbing, that places a demand on your intellectual focus—you don’t get to ruminate. In a way, it’s a mental health aid to be able to do that so much. My routine, what I do, it just feels like home. It’s my comfort food.
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[Transcript] Tyler Cowen on Stories - Less Wrong... →
I’ve long thought of Cowen’s talk as a must-listen and listened to it multiple times. And now it’s been transcribed. And thus, a must-read. Filed under: storytelling.
Stories, to work, have to be simple, easily grasped, easily told to others, easily remembered. So stories will serve dual and conflicting purposes, and very often they will lead us astray.
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Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens § SeedMagazine.com →
Technology is fairly good at controlling external reality to promote real biological fitness, but it’s even better at delivering fake fitness—subjective cues of survival and reproduction without the real-world effects.
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“People tend to think that creative work is an expression of a preexisting desire...”
– David Byrne. I was reading Colin Marshall’s thoughts on Bicycle Diaries and remembered this quote from my own write-up.
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WatchDo things the long, hard, stupid way - Frank Chimero. Finally got around to watching @fchimero’s talk on struggle, creativity, gifts. Worthwhile, as usual.
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“Compulsive avoidance of embarrassment is a form of suicide.”
– Colin Marshall
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How To Not Get Sick On An Airplane →
austinkleon:
I get sick every time I go home for Christmas, and while it isn’t helped by lack of sleep and alcohol abuse, I’m pretty sure 75% of it is the 3-5 hours I spend on what is, essentially, a flying petri dish.
So thanks to The Wall Street Journal for these tips (which I’ve summarized):
Hydrate (drink water, use saline spray).
Clean your hands with alcohol-based hand sanitizer
Use...
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“Embrace all change, not just change that benefits you.”
– Carolyn Hax.
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“It’s so easy not to realize you’re under someone else’s influence. When we tell...”
– Carolyn Hax.
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How American food got so bad — Marginal Revolution →
I attempt to explain how this came about, in the podcast and in one chapter of my forthcoming book An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies.
I will read this book.
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“Being cheerful is really no recipe to get down to work: nothing happens until...”
– Alain de Botton.
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Damien Hirst prepares to unleash another round of... →
I like this litmus test that Damien Hirst suggests:
If I put a painting outside a bar at closing time, and it’s still there in the morning, it’s a crap painting.
He also suggests the market for art is bigger than you think, even at his prices:
I remember flying into L.A. at a time when my paintings were 20,000 to 50,000 pounds and looking at the swimming pools here and thinking ...
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Magical Thinking - Psychology Today →
5. To name is to rule. […] After watching sugar being poured into two glasses of water and then personally affixing a “sucrose” label to one and a “poison” label to the other, people much prefer to drink from the “sucrose” glass and will even shy away from one they label “not poison.” (The subconscious doesn’t process negatives.) Rozin has also found that people are reluctant to tear up a...
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Bluebrain’s App Central Park (Listen to the Light)... →
[The app] uses a global positioning network to activate different themes as the listener wanders through the park. The app contains more than 400 tracks, each tied to a location. They were written to fit together harmonically like a sonic jigsaw puzzle.
I’d download it on iTunes if I lived anywhere nearby. Oh, and how cool would it be if they had a bigger map with famous recordings...
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Cooking Food Featured in Fantasy Novels - WSJ.com →
On a recent evening, Ms. Monroe-Cassel used boar tenderloins to recreate a dish served during a wedding feast with 77 courses in “A Storm of Swords.”
I really hope I invented this word: cuisplay.
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You're Not Me: Nyjah Huston and Inflationary... →
Pete Beatty (@nocoastoffense) sums it up: “In which @kylebeachy invents skateboard crit”.
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“Your mind will take on the character of your most frequent thoughts: souls are...”
– Marcus Aurelius.
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“Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to...”
– Zadie Smith, “Other People’s Words, Part One,” in Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (via)
And this, my friends, is why I’m an inveterate collector of quotes. Nice find, Austin.
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“If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you’re...”
– Aaron Sorkin on Sports Night, via Battleship Pretension, Episode 246.
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Music Students Hit the Boxing Ring - WSJ.com →
“It does feel satisfying to hit something.”
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“They cannot admire you for intellect. Granted—but there are many other...”
– Marcus Aurelius.
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“The people who move to the suburbs aren’t nearly as stupid or careless or...”
– Andrew Potter.
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Last Notes: The wild, sublime music that composers... →
Making things is a better way to spend your time than staring at the wall contemplating what little time you’ve got left.
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“It is ridiculous not to escape from one’s own vices, which is possible,...”
– Marcus Aurelius.
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Missing the Point | RyanHoliday.net →
Getting up and going for a run everyday doesn’t need to be “justified” a few months later by competing to finish an arbitrary number of miles in a certain amount of time against a bunch of other unhappy losers. No, you run because keeping a healthy body and clear mind is part of your job as a human being. Because its a commitment you made to yourself that you’re obligated to keep no matter...
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Tom Bissell on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim -... →
It seems fair to ask when a game’s expansiveness becomes an affable form of indentured servitude.
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“All things are short-lived—this is their common lot—but you pursue...”
– Marcus Aurelius on fame, death, and social media.
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“I don’t give a fuck if you’re doin’ petty shit or big shit....”
– Young Jeezy in “Jeezy Talks to the People”.
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