Author: Craig Constantine

Only so many hours

February 2

Several years ago the idea struck me to try living in the digital world but without digital media. I realised that I used to have all these analogue habits that fell by the wayside as I spent more time online, and thought that six months without digital media would give me the opportunity to focus on more material activities.

~ From Jennifer Rauch on why Slow Media is satisfying, sustainable and smart

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There are, after all, only so many hours in the day. Our choices (or our defaults if we don’t choose) end up determining the quality of our lives.

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Still too long, didn’t read

January 31

From the moment food touches your tongue to the time it leaves your body, your digestive system and gut microbiome work to extract its nutrients. Enzymes in your mouth, stomach and small intestine break down food for absorption, while microbes in your large intestine digest the leftovers.

~ Christopher Damman, from Is weight loss as simple as calories in, calories out? In the end, itā€™s your gut microbes and leftovers that make your calories count

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That’s about the greatest summary I’ve ever read. The rest of the article is good too. Definitely not too long, and worth the read.

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Too long, didn’t read

January 30

The first thing Iā€™d like to point out is that the left and right sides of the energy balance equation could both be giving orders, and both be taking orders. The two possibilities arenā€™t mutually exclusive. And I think you can make a case for it going both ways.

~ Stephan Guyenet, from The science of body weight and health

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ā€¦but you should. Because the answer (to why we get fat) is complicated. There is no single, simple-to-control, cause and effect.

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Post-industrial

January 29

But what most energizes Walley is gathering stories that reveal the trauma left-behind industrial workers have suffered. She is also focused on how to prevent such devastating fallout, which can stoke the kind of social and political unrest thatā€™s roiling the U.S. as mining and manufacturing jobs disappear. ā€œThis stuff is talked about through things like statistics. People donā€™t get a sense of what it actually felt like,ā€ Walley says. ā€œConveying it through stories gives a whole different perspective.ā€

~ Elizabeth Svoboda, from Life and Death After the Steel Mills

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At one point, the area where I grew up was dominated by a steel mill. Then, slowly over time, it suddenly wasn’t.

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Regular contact

January 28

Another big hurdle is the time and effort it takes to schedule a gathering. In recent decades, participation in groups that allow friends to meet up easilyā€”such as unions, civic clubs, and religious congregationsā€”has dwindled. ā€œOne of the really great things about these institutions is they regularize contact,ā€ Cox told me. ā€œYouā€™re there at the same time or for the same kind of meetings ā€¦ with shared values and expectations for behavior. So it really takes a lot of the work off the plate of the individual.ā€

~ Olga Khazan, from The Friendship Paradox

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I’ve often thought about social things I could do to encourage bumping into more potential friends. But I have the cart before the horse: We used to have social things we simply did for the sake of those things, and it just happened that we ended up with a lot of friends (of various degrees of closeness.) It doesn’t work to seek friends by trying to hack which social things to do.

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Where does it come from?

January 27

Not every time that we talk about consciousness are we talking about experience. Sometimes ā€˜consciousnessā€™ refers to awakeness. When youā€™re asleep at night, or blacked out from too much to drink, youā€™re not conscious in this sense of the term. Alternatively, sometimes ā€˜consciousnessā€™ refers to awareness. Itā€™s this kind of consciousness that you lack when youā€™ve zoned out while driving. Youā€™re awake, but not youā€™re not fully aware of your surroundings. Itā€™s also this kind of consciousness that activists target when they engage in the process of consciousness raising.

~ Amy Kind, from How to think about consciousness

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I no longer get stuck wondering where did my consciousness come from when I was born. Nope. I’m now stuck on: Where does it go every night when I fall asleep. ā€¦and where does it come from each morning that I awake?

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Reality?

January 26

Ever since Plato started telling stories about people trapped in caves, philosophers have pondered the relationship between the mind and reality. How can we be sure that the world we think we know is the real world? After all, weā€™ve all been mistaken before ā€“ a person in a store window might turn out to be a mannequin, or two lines that appear to be curved might actually be parallel ā€“ so how can we be certain we know reality as it truly is?

~ D J Hobbs, from How to think like a phenomenologist

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I’m not sure I want to think like a phenomenologistā€¦

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It can also be about empowerment

January 25

Until now, she said, the history of medicine has been the history of doctors, whose priestly wisdom has been delivered to clueless, passive recipients as if it was gospel. Cousinsā€™s story reversed that. Psychiatrists had asked him to map his moods for three months, so he developed a simple means to do it online every day and share his mood map with friends. They provided a supportive network, a bit like Weight Watchers. His moods immediately started to improve and became more stable: the act of monitoring had itself produced an effect.

~ John-Paul Flintoff, from Thereā€™s an app for that

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I particularly like, “the overexamined life is not worth living,” twist on that old phrase.

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The complexity of relationships

January 24

So why did we evolve a large brain if it wasnā€™t essential for toolmaking? One reason is that existing in a large social group is very mentally taxing. Those who are better at playing the social game will have more access to mates and resources and will be more likely to reproduce. As the groups get larger, so the computational power needed to keep up with the interconnections grows exponentially, as does the stress.

~ Mark Maslin, from Why Humans Are So Smartā€”And So Stressed Out

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I’m too often stressed out (ever / at all is too often!) It helps to get really clear on what exactly is stressing me out. Because the complexity of relationships is a featureā€”not a problemā€”of our expansive, beautiful, wonderful, modern world.

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It’s complex

January 23

So you think your choices have reasons behind them and, if these reasons are good ones, then you think that others, in principle, could see this, too. You recognise in yourself, and think that others should recognise in you, a choice aimed at something worth seeking, and a choice by someone who can make that call. This means that what you are after is ā€˜goodā€™ not just in a sense confined to you, but visible to everyone. Once the goodness of your choice is visible to everyone, it is a kind of absolute goodness ā€“ a goodness that anyone could recognise.

~ Christine Korsgaard, from Philosophers and other animals

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Really complex. The road to hell is marked by unconsidered decisions.

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Personal

January 20

Everyone has an atmosphere peculiar to himself, pervaded by all of his characteristics. We cannot radiate anything unlike ourselves or our ideals. The qualities you radiate will either attract or repel people. Your atmosphere will affect your career.

~ Orison Swett Marden, from The Power of Personal Atmosphere

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We could debate whether such atmospheres are a good thing, and what responsibility we each have to cultivate ours. But first, it’s just interesting to study it and wonder about it.

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Curiouser and curiouser

January 19

English speakers know that their language is odd. So do people saddled with learning it non-natively. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. In countries where English isnā€™t spoken, there is no such thing as a ā€˜spelling beeā€™ competition. For a normal language, spelling at least pretends a basic correspondence to the way people pronounce the words. But English is not normal.

~ John McWhorter from, English is not normal

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It had never occurred to me to wonder if spelling competitions existed in any other languages.

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Small changes

January 18

The most obvious way to stabilize blood sugar levels is to decrease sugar and carbohydrate intake. However, this is not the only way. Research has proven that simple changes can drastically mitigate volatile blood sugar fluctuations. Some strategies to stabilize blood sugar and optimize mood include [ā€¦]

~ Mary J. Scourboutakos, from Blood sugar fluctuations after eating play an important role in anxiety and depression

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Worth reading just for the little 6-point bullet list at the bottomā€¦

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A small number

January 17

[ā€¦] a small number [of books] were truly transformative for me. They served as intellectual lighthouses on my journey, helping me understand what was happening to me as I explored my past, my psyche, and my pain.

~ Tiago Forte, from The 10 Most Transformative Books on Personal Development Iā€™ve Read

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An interesting list. I’ve not read any of these books. I do have one of them in my pile of books at hand. I’m not endorsing the specific books. I do very much endorse the idea of making top-ten lists to share what one has learned.

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Archeology and music

January 16

Simply sound-related things today: An image of a babbling brook and archeologyā€¦

It is possible that some 8,000 years ago, in this acoustically resonant haven, people not only hid from passing coastal thunderstorms, they may have used this place to commune with their deadā€”using music. Thatā€™s a possibility hinted at in the work of archaeologist Joshua Kumbani, of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and his colleagues.

~ Sarah Wild, from What Did the Stone Age Sound Like?

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Seems obvious that archeology would be interested in soundā€” but I’d never thought of that aspect of it before.

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Detailed

January 15

I often stroll around exploring all the little nooks and crannies of places. I found this at Winterthur as part of small display of dried flowers. The display was barely mentioned at the info center, off the normal route (especially if one had taken the minibus ride to avoid walking the slightest distance), and hanging in the back of gazebo mostly out of sight. On the other hand, the sun peeked out just as I was standing there.

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