- An Entirely New Way of Measuring Time
Nudge electrons into a higher energy state (the Rydberg state) and you can amass significant information about time without ever having to start the clock.
- Oliver Burkeman on Joseph Goldstein on Generosity
What’s truly most likely to happen if you put it off, which is that you’ll never get around to sending that message.
- Guillaume Wolf on How to Create the Future
This philosophy, which he shares on a micro level (individuals) and macro level (brands/organizations), focuses on getting concrete, measurable results in order to create what he calls a “reality shift.”
- Kevin P. Hand on Oceans and Airport Security
Beneath that is a rocky seafloor, which may be teeming with hydrothermal vents and bizarre otherworldly organisms.
So the next time you’re in airport security and frustrated…
- You can’t tell people anything
The things you say often don’t stick, and the few things that do stick are often distorted.
- Against the boundaries of any single destiny
More different lifestyles are represented to us daily, televisually than to any previous group of people, and actual jobs are more specialized.
- It’s odious to slap your fools
Even the dignitaries of the Church in the middle ages kept fools to make them laugh—or to laugh at them.
- The intensity of exuberance
In group celebrations we find exuberance differently. A love of festivities is universal, observed William James, and in many respects celebration is yet another form of human play.
- “Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.”
—Thomas Merton I highly recommend this article on The Improvement Illusion by Justin Murphy.
- Robert Hayden’s poem “American Journal”
much here is beautiful, dream like vistas reminding me of home
- We call it the zeitgeist
All of this is part of a shared space, it is what we call the zeitgeist, the spirit of the time, which is also what we express ourselves through.
- Here is a story of a woman running away from tigers
Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life, it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat.
- Jan 2022: Reddit
And if they’re driving slow, it’s because they’re transporting a large cake.
- Read the best essays before next year
Here you’ll find online essays on counterculture, pleasure, beauty, pre-state societies, love, cults, and individualism.
- Zweig on Memory
A sort of jellyfish glistening in the abysses of consciousness…
- Einstein’s Three Rules of Work
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
- Culture is to society as style is to the individual
An answer to the sterile ends of pure utility and the cold-heartedness of a survival mindset.
- Eric Fromm on how love is primarily giving, not receiving
In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving. What is giving?
- Relearning how to think according to David Foster Wallace
I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about “teaching you how to think” is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea:
- Do you remember when we talked about…?
Now Greif does not grieve as much as I about the warning sign he nailed onto the hedonist storeroom of memories that live rent-free in my mind. He insists this habit of happiness-by-experience results in “a life of permanent dissatisfaction and a compulsion to frenetic activity.”
- The past woven into the present
Our lives are made up of so many people who become parts of our lives and like lines from your favorite book, some parts of them remain long after they leave. And in the same exact way, it’s comforting to know there are so many lives you’re still a part of that you have no […]
- Kierkegaard on expression, irony, and humor
Pure thinking is a phantom.
- How to lose a nuclear weapon
Despite an extensive search, not a single trace of the crew nor the plane nor the cores has ever been found.
- Do you know about the nuclear exercise “Snowball” or Снежок?
In the days after, Soviet scientists’ reports detailed the impact of the nuclear blast on everything: vegetation, animals, shelters, vehicles, houses. And a small part on human lives.
- Sunday Showcase: Whistler’s “Nocturne: Blue and Gold…” is melodious and harmonious
Since when does aesthetic consideration take precedence over realistic observations? Well, since Whistler. He painted the commonplace with mood, color, and form.
- Oak Ridge’s radioactive mist
Swim naked in the local lake with Oak Ridge native Megan Fox, the mist caressing both of their faces would be radioactive.
- Yeltsin’s close nuclear call
It’s January 25, 1995 and you’re President Boris Yeltsin activating the “nuclear briefcase”.
- The tragic actor departs: a poem paired with oil paintings
And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there.
- Carl Sagan on the dumbing down of America and how science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time.
- Temptations while rich
Don’t brag about morals until you have money to fund your temptations.
- Billy Collins on the arbitrary distinction between revision and writing
And when I revise, I’m writing, aren’t I?
- Billy Collins on how no man is lonely while eating spaghetti
This time, I was at a corner table at Pasta Vivace!
on that side street next to the old music store.
- What does surveillance look like?
When everyone is watched, every behavior becomes dangerous.
- Sip your coffee and open the door to “Beer Mode”
Beer mode is a state of unfocused play where you discover new ideas. In contrast, coffee mode is a state of focus where you work towards a specific outcome.
- The Great Silence, The Fermi Paradox
It’s an entirely new situation, emerging from the physical possibilities that will face any species that can overcome the natural interstellar quarantine of its solar system.
- Carry on: an epitaph to a bag
Epitaph to a bag with a face.
- Pulitzer Prize winners Will and Ariel Durant on the lessons of history
The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.
- Pythagoras and Hepatia
Pythagoras vs. beans and Hepatia vs oyster shells.
- Hotter than ever
Is it hot in here or is there another wildfire? Links to articles about wildfires, climate change, environmental alarmism, and cattle.
- Weeklinks – Edition 3
This week’s links on creativity, social media, distractions, tips on writing and drawing, art, Lady Lilith, and Max Ernst. PLUS! Unusual inspiration for unusual times.
- Weeklinks – Edition 2
This week’s links on the secret wanderings of 900 cats, saving like a pessimist, observing the toxic clouds from fire and rockets, and plants!
- Sunday Showcase: Expansion by Paige Bradley
The Sunday Showcase, not to be confused with “The Sunday Scaries”, literally zooms in on a piece of artwork and shares videos and/or quotes from the artist.
- Weeklinks – Edition 1
This week’s links on the causal relationship between Vitamin D + COVID-19, the vaccine-autism myth,+ PBA cards!
- Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Day Quiz for August
11 new words, brought to you by Merriam-Webster
- Harvest
It’s harvest and I ask for more time without pressure.
- Vespers (End of August)
And some things have the nerve to be getting started…
- To be a scientist is to be naive
What is the cost of lies?
- Yordi As Seen By Yordi: #1 in an interview series
This is the first “interview” (it’s very short, only a few quotes from each conversation) with friends and family members who are Deaf. My 25 year-old brother, Yordi, is using photography as a way to escape from his three other roommates, not counting the kitten and the Dalmatian, all of which are Deaf, except for […]
- What I love is blue
What I love about you is blue.
- Weather to vaccinate, or not.
Whether the weather weathers the whether.
- The Marriage of Romeo & Juliet by Death (1967-1975) by Salvador Dali
- Daniel Coyle on The Talent Code: Greatness isn’t born, it’s grown.
Skill is insulation that wraps neural circuits in reponses to certain signals.
- The Great Mathematician Paul Erdős on Possessions and Coffee
Between scientific conferences, universities, and the homes of colleagues all over the world.
- Van Morrison’s Into the Mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry.
- The only difference between the Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist – Salvador Dalí
The Temptation of St. Anthony (detail), 1946 Oil on Canvas, 89.5 x 119.5 cm (35 1/4 x 47 in.) Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique
- Henry Miller on the mystery of attention
Even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious.
- What Charles Bukowski didn’t say
Charles Bukowski didn’t say you should find what you love and let it kill you.
- Daniel J. Levitin on Organization: Chapter 1
Categorize to save yourself.
- If you inherently long
Become it first.
- All of Life is Practice
All of life is practice.
- August 29 News Download: Pacific Light Undersea Cable
A data pitstop on the way to China.
- Don Draper’s Brand
Change the conversation and you control the brand.
- Fear and Circumstance in Las Vegas
Place yourself in circumstances of want, and ask yourself, “is this what I fear?
- Wages in Cuba and a quote from my former Professor of Latin American Politics
Ending the dual-currency system is expected to lead to the eventual removal of subsidies and bankruptcy.
- The Gallery Inn
San Juan, Puerto Rico.
- Frame control on why gun control is political in the U.S.A
You were on your own.
- I’ve decided on Tolstoy’s Decision Making Matrix
You’re never at the beginning of some event.
- Nuclear incidents in the 1950s
Nothing is known of attempts to recover the nuclear weapon and presumably it is still in the ocean.
- Soviet Spy Klaus Fuchs
…not until 1949 that decrypted cables from the United States Army Signal Intelligence Service (SIS)’s “Venona” project revealed Fuchs was a Soviet spy.
- озёрск / Ozersk
Those in paradise were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.
- Expanding our limits by learning a language
It’s called modelling.
- The future is the past projected
We think we can see space.
- The Action Movie Fairy Tale
But these movies built a generation of men who are now in their 30s and 40s.
- The Modus Operandi of Abusive Relationships
“I make a sketch of the person” said Mr. K., “and make sure that one comes to resemble the other.”
- Vulnerability in Russian is уязвимость*
So preoccupied your body starts accumulating bruises, scratches, sprains.
- Learning Russian by listening to music
I came to bring this song / From the crystal tears.
- Optimism is a political act.
Perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better.
- A Child’s Curiosity
Babies are not blobs, but true scientists.
- The secret fear that keeps you up at night is…
An uprising of octopi.
- Once you strip away the platitudes, a life of passion and purpose will always cost, as T.S. Eliot reminds us, ‘Not less than everything.’”
- Women and Qualifications
Beyond criticism.
- Alan watts on the length of life
A long life spent in a miserable way.
- Sail away from the safe harbor
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
- On the up and down
Life is a condition.
- Barely learned
Forget about forgetting.
- A reality-tunnel is kind of silly
Bigger, funnier, sexier than ever.
- The same man who wrote “… I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.”
Seek out some simple and true feeling.
- Learning Russian for the love of Russia’s women
How come you don’t understand that this is
- Hot, sunny, coolness in the shade
“A new background created without hope or joy, without feeling of permanence or without a conviction of its rightness. But inevitably beautiful.” June 1936, Anais Nin
- Senior and junior Morales
Un padre con su hijo.
- Lie back and think of pleasure
Start drinking. Daydream about your death.
- Wise Living
Whatever and whoever.
- Keeping Time
A link to Tversky and Kahneman.
- Recommendations to impress your cat with: photos of Colette
Sharing is caring.
- Consume a creator
I had consumed and then I created, or rather, I had chewed something up and spat it out.
- A student’s email on gender
I thought about what you said regarding the men/being women thing.
- 3 Minutes with Michel de Montaigne
It’s within your capacity to ask yourself what you think and what you know.
- A not-quite lunch date with USCIS
Biometrics and boredom.
- A Quick and Dirty Snapshot of Marcel Proust
Writer, poseur, mama’s boy, and tips on how to woo him.