For a generous and noble spirit cannot be expected to dwell in the breast of men who are struggling for their daily bread.
~ Dionysius
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Author: Craig Constantine
Oblivion
So begins her obsession with dominating the mind by dominating the body, which would follow her throughout her life in various guises — running, karate, yoga, cycling, skiing — always ambivalent and self-conscious, until it finally resolves into a glimpse of the larger truth beneath the mechanics of illusory perfectibility: that we exert ourselves so violently on keeping the package of the body intact in order to keep it from spilling its immaterial contents — the soul, the self — into oblivion.
~ Maria Popova from, The Secret to Superhuman Strength: Alison Bechdel’s Illustrated Meditation on the Life of the Body, the Death of the Self, and Our Search for Meaning – The Marginalian
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Ah yes, “oblivion.” Good stuff. Popova is referring to a graphic artist, and midway through the article is an exquisite cartoon example; the author drawing, figuratively and literally, a metaphor for life involving a hill and a bicycle. Reading that cartoon brought to mind my beloved practice of meditating on death. (Try this explanation.) Closely related I often call to mind the impermanence of things. Sometimes I mix the two, thinking…
This is my last sip from this [my favorite, morning coffee] mug. (Knowing it will one day be broken.)
This [regularly scheduled weekly] conversation with this person is our last one. (Imagining when priorities change and we’re no longer working together.)
This conversation I’m recording for a podcast is my last one. (Because I will die.)
This dinner with this person [my mom, my spouse, etc] is my last one. (Because one of us will die first.)
The goal is not to be morbid and depressed; The goal is to maintain a realistic perspective to enable wringing the absolute maximum enjoyment and appreciation from every single waking moment.
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Evil
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
~ Quintilian
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Upper bounds
If we play our cards right, we could live hundreds of thousands of years more. In fact, there’s not much stopping us living millions of years. The typical species lives about a million years. Our 200,000 years so far would put us about in our adolescence, just old enough to be getting ourselves in trouble, but not wise enough to have thought through how we should act.
~ Toby Ord from, We Have the Power to Destroy Ourselves Without the Wisdom to Ensure That We Don’t | Edge.org
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I find it beneficial to have my perspectives stretched. This article walks through scales of time in a delightful manner. It pauses to ask questions, and to point out people who did certain things at precise points in our history. There are countless opportunities to shift perspective. For example: I’ve been alive for 1/100 of recorded human history. And recorded history is only 3/100 of the age of our species. The aggregate progress of humanity is simply the sum of our individual efforts, and my life represents 1/100,000,000,000 of humanity so far. Stretched perspectives indeed.
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Discontent
This is discontent, but it is not the discontent of pessimism. It is noble discontent which is the secret of progress. Only the pusillanimous are content. Heart’s desires are divine discontents. Only the unsatisfied do things. The satisfied do nothing. Unsatisfaction is the stimulus to achievement. Satisfaction is destruction and leads down to the chamber of death.
~ Jack London
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More light
There’s also a long list of advertisers who rely on this confusion to abdicate their ethical responsibility in terms of their money winding up in the pockets of bottom-dwelling grifters and bigots. The murkiness makes it easier to pretend it’s not happening, and it’s this accountability gap the group hopes to target
~ Karl Bode from, Nonprofit Takes Aim At Fox News By Demystifying Ad Exchanges | Techdirt
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Caution: Depending on your viewpoint, that article will make you cheer, or will enrage you. What I want to focus on is, “murkiness” and I want to split a fine hair.
I believe there’s visibility, (in the sense that it is clear who is accountable for some speech [advertising is speech],) anonymity, and murkiness which obscures the dichotomy of visibility versus anonymity. My position is that murkiness is never a positive thing. The knowledge that something is being said with accountability, (who said it is clear,) versus with anonymity is critical for one to be able to evaluate some speech for oneself. That knowledge is removed when there’s murkiness.
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A self
But in order to be self-aware, first one needs a self to be aware of. And that takes a while. Often an entire lifetime.
~ Hugh MacLeod
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Wait wat?
Since around 2009, methamphetamines have been made with phenylacetone (P2P). Is there a chemical different causing schizophrenia?
~ “Dynomight” from, The main thing about P2P meth is that there’s so much of it
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As I was reading those two sentences, my world was just fine… until that very last word. I was ready for death, overdose, addiction, and there are probably a dozen more words that I don’t expect would fit there, but which wouldn’t make me go, “wait wat?” So i started reading…
I quickly realized this article is basically the science behind Breaking Bad. There’s also an enormous amount of “this is not good” information in there. For example, an apparently exponential-function graph of deaths is never a good thing. There’s also a bit of industrial chemistry, and a large scale sewerage treatment plant data collection . . . well, it’s worth the read.
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Change in name only
In a change of government the poor change nothing but the name of their masters.
~ Phaedrus
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Gömböc
So in a nutshell, Gömböc is cool, Hungarians are proud of it greatly. So naturally, they made a 4.5-ton statue replica of the shape.
~ Atlas Obscura from, Gömböc – Atlas Obscura
I could probably write a blog post about other interesting math-related puzzles and shapes that come from Hungary… or about the number of Hungarian mathematicians… but instead, I’ll just point you towards this particularly interesting thing.
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Incomplete with Janne Laurila
How does movement influence personal change and adaptability in life?
Movement evolves from a tool for improvement to a means of adapting to life’s challenges.
I think that when I started doing Parkour, the movement was a kind of like— it was constant exploration. […] But as more time has gone, I started to feel that that change isn’t just trying to improve. [It’s] more to adapt on how you can perform? Or how would— How do you see a challenge? Or how do you process a challenge?
~ Janne Laurila (1:47)
The conversation explores how movement intertwines with personal growth, adaptability, and energy management. Starting with parkour as a way of improvement, Janne shares his journey of evolving to see movement as a tool for adaptation rather than mere enhancement. Factors such as physical energy, time management, and life changes, like raising children, shape his relationship with movement.
Living in Finland adds layers to this experience, with long periods of light and dark influencing mood and activity. Balancing responsibilities as a parent, entrepreneur, and student while managing ADHD highlights the challenges of maintaining schedules and finding moments of recharge. The conversation concludes with reflections on compassion, curiosity, and the acceptance of being incomplete as guiding principles.
Takeaways
Change and movement — How parkour shifts from improvement-focused to adaptation-oriented.
Energy and time management — Balancing energy and available time in a demanding schedule.
Impact of light cycles — Navigating the challenges of extreme light and darkness in Finland.
ADHD and scheduling — The difficulty of adhering to schedules despite careful planning.
Family integration — Using Pokémon Go as a way to bond with children and stay active.
Self-compassion — Recognizing the importance of being kind to oneself amid life’s chaos.
Continuous growth — Embracing curiosity and the idea of being incomplete as motivations.
Resources
Daniel Vitalis — A podcaster discussing movement as nutrition.
Pokémon Go — A mobile game blending outdoor exploration with technology.
Art du Déplacement — Referenced as a movement practice.
Kurt Vonnegut — Quoted for mindfulness in appreciating simple moments.
(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)
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What are you capable of?
Anyone can put a challenge in front of themselves that they are unable to do. How well do you know what you are capable of? How well do you know how to make yourself capable of more. I train to know who I am and how I can improve.
~ Jesse Danger
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Because enough people know
there are enough users who understand how it is supposed to work. They expect to be able to listen to any podcast anywhere they want. Most probably don’t understand why they have this ability, about the history and technology design that made it possible, but they understand that they have the ability. And it doesn’t have to be all of them or even most of them, just enough of them, whatever that means. And for right now, at the end of 2021, there are enough. Podcasting has always been and remains an open platform. I can’t say it will be for the future, but so far so good.
~ Dave Winer from, Why podcasting isn’t dominated
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I like Winer’s point that the web (websites, web browser, blogs—not asocial media platforms) and podcasting are not dominated by any one large company. He’s pointing out that we’ve two examples of things not centrally controlled—two examples of success (so far, things could always change.) And therefore it’s quite possible that we could build something else, another new media format, which is also free, open, and not centrally controlled.
But I don’t like that Winer has glossed over the fact that podcasting only appears to be open, (in the way that the web is open.) Podcasting appears to be open, and isn’t yet dominated by one large company, because the podcast creators individually go to great lengths to make their shows available everywhere. There are multiple large companies trying to leverage the listeners against the creators. I’ve given up on trying to lead podcasting to be open, the way the web is open; I simply hope that someone else sees what I see and that I live to see podcasting grow to be a first-class, truly open, platform, (the way the web is.)
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In the bud
Every evil in the bud is easily crushed; As it grows older it becomes stronger.
~ Cicero
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Temperature matters
The other evidence we have is animals who live in the cold have higher metabolic rates, higher activity levels, yet higher body fat and body mass than those that live in the warmth. This suggests that fluctuations in body fat may be tied to changes in temperature exposure, and not just to protect us from famine. The bottom line is temperature matters.
~ Brad Pilon from, Does Temperature Affect Weight Loss? – Brad Pilon’s ‘Eat Blog Eat’
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My pull-quote is from the very end of Pilon’s article. Overall it lays out a delightful overview of the main systems that regulate our body composition. I love this last point—the part I’ve quoted—because it has nothing to do with humans; It’s a nice “and the same thing seems to be true for other mammals” that provides a great reality check on the models he’s presented in the article.
Pilon is the author who made things clear and simple enough for me to try intentionally manipulating the window of time each day when I stuff food in my face. Being intentional about that greatly increased my awareness of subtle signals from my body. At 8:30am, when I’m day-dreaming of blueberry pancakes, am I actually hungry or am I simply having a craving for carbohydrates? And when I wake up at 1am with a massive cramp in my left calf… I should probably have remembered to take my magnesium supplement before bed, and I better eat a banana first thing in the morning.
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Thought and action
Please remember I am talking about the world as it is. The men who act without thinking, and the men who both think and act, are the ones who mould the world. The man who thinks and does not act never moulds the world. He may think that he does—but that, too, is only a thought, the thought of a deedless, actionless thinker.
~ Jack London
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Rescuing life from productivity
And so we get to the crux of our human predicament — the underbelly of our anxiety about every unanswered email, every unfinished project, and every unbegun dream: Our capacities are limited, our time is finite, and we have no control over how it will unfold or when it will run out. Beyond the lucky fact of being born, life is one great sweep of uncertainty, bookended by the only other lucky certainty we have. It is hardly any wonder that the sweep is dusted with so much worry and we respond with so much obsessive planning, compulsive productivity, and other touching illusions of control.
~ Maria Popova from, Escaping the Trap of Efficiency: The Counterintuitive Antidote to the Time-Anxiety That Haunts and Hampers Our Search for Meaning – The Marginalian
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For years I’ve been finding myself judging my day, each evening as I go to sleep. I lie down, and try as I might, my thoughts go beyond simply reviewing. I tried to stop doing the judging part, to no avail.
There’s a Steve Jobs quote about asking himself a question each morning, and that’s great, (but not something I do.) I realized that I’m asking myself that question at the end of each day after closing my eyes to beckon sleep:
If that was the last day of my life, am I satisfied with what I did?
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Otherwise life feels empty
So I make it really simple. I’d say art is: “That which you have no choice but to do, because your soul demands it”.
~ Hugh MacLeod
Yes, it’s a fairly flawed definition. But it illustrates something that most people don’t get about artists or entrepreneurs. We do it, because if we don’t, life feels empty. The downside being, it doesn’t exactly come with an easy life.
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The only rule
What I learned from reading about writing…
~ “Dynomight” from, What I learned from reading about writing
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This was a fun read and is mostly not the usual titles one sees suggested to read on writing. Among many things, I am a writer. I enjoy learning what appears—in others’ view—to be the right way to do things. The more I read, write, and read on writing, the more I’m convinced it’s just like any other mastery practice: The only rule is that there really are no real rules. Understand the best, accepted practices, (often labeled “rules” to get the newbies to start in the correct direction,) and then later move on to do whatever you please.
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If you change
You have two options. You can stay the same and protect the formula that gave you your initial success. They’re going to crucify you for staying the same. If you change, they’re going to crucify you for changing. But staying the same is boring. And change is interesting. So of the two options, I’d rather be crucified for changing.
~ Joni Mithcell
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