Sleep smarter →

Published June 6, 2018  ·  All posts on Jun 6  ·  , ,

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has now classified overnight shift work as a Group 2A carcinogen. This means that staying up late repeatedly, and working overnight, is a strong enough cancer-causing agent to be lumped in with lead exposure and UVA radiation. That might sound crazy, but there s now a ton of scientific data showing exactly how this happens.

~ Shawn Stevenson, pg 43 of Sleep Smarter

Shift work that involves circadian disruption? Carcinogen.

A while back I wrote a piece on Sleep. It turned into three parts and after writing it, I felt I had only scratched the surface. Then I stumbled over this book.

I read the book and it’s really good! I blasted through it agreeing all the way. If you know everything about sleep, you’ll still enjoy seeing it all laid out in an approachable fashion. If you have NOT YET MASTERED SLEEP — wait, what is wrong with you?! Sleep is the single most important thing in your life. It is the activity you spend the most aggregated time doing. Remind me why you have not spent time studying sleep and improving yours?

ɕ

Irrelevance →

Published June 4, 2018  ·  All posts on Jun 4  ·  

If you don’t like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less.

~ Eric Shinseki

slip:4a211.

Is the world getting better or worse? →

Published June 3, 2018  ·  All posts on Jun 3  ·  

We will never have a perfect world, and it would be dangerous to seek one. But there’s no limit to the betterments we can obtain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing.

~ Steven Pinker from, Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers

slip:4uteta2.

I feel constantly pushed to take on a myopic and biased view that the sky is falling, that this moment right now it the last chance to avoid catastrophe, that the human race has never been closer to the brink of– blah, blah, blah.

I choose to celebrate progress. I choose to shine light on the people who are making a difference. I choose to point out the positives. I choose to engage with only a tiny few of the myriad of complex issues the world faces because that’s the scale where I can make a difference. That’s the scale where each person makes a difference: Individual reasoned thinking, enlightened discourse, and responsible action.

ɕ

Men without chests →

Published June 1, 2018  ·  All posts on Jun 1  ·  

If one believes in objective order and value, then the failure to feel the proper sentiment in the face of a particular stimulus cannot be justified on the basis of mere personal preference, casually categorized under the rubric of “to each their own”; rather, it must be frankly countenanced as a deficiency in one’s human make-up. As Lewis confesses, “I myself do not enjoy the society of small children: because I speak from within the Tao I recognize this as a defect in myself — just as a man may have to recognize that he is tone deaf or colour blind.”

~ Brett McKay from, Men Without Chests

slip:4uaoai4.

…from C.S. Lewis‘s, 1934 The Abolition of Man.

The more I read, the more I find I want to explore and continue learning.

ɕ

Silence →

Published May 30, 2018  ·  All posts on May 30  ·  

Silence is a source of great strength.

~ Lao Tzu

slip:4a239.

Time management →

Published May 29, 2018  ·  All posts on May 29  ·  

The caveat is that this quadrant can be mistaken as something that shouldn’t be part of life, but that is not true. It is really important to have a balanced life between work and your personal life. You need downtime to not get burnt out and that is where quadrant four comes into the picture. The challenge is you allocate most of your time to quadrant two, with just enough of time spent in quadrant four to get by.

~ Thanh Pham, from How To Prioritize Todo Lists With A Sheet of Paper

slip:4uaipo1.

I disagree.

Everything in the UN-important half (the lower half in the diagrams) of the quadrant is the Bad Lands to be avoided. There’s no such thing as “work life balance.” I spent decades trying to fiddle with that balance. There is only life. I strive to do only important things. I strive to only do NON-urgent things by paying attention to what I should be doing. I strive for a wide variety of activities which are all necessary, important and not urgent. One might even say: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

I have control over only two things: My thoughts and my actions.

ɕ

Jesse Danger: Systems thinking, game design, and novelty →

Published May 27, 2018  ·  All posts on May 27  ·  

Jesse Danger: Systems thinking, game design, and novelty

What principles can we learn from integrating movement, play, and systems thinking to foster personal growth and collaborative learning?

Jesse Danger takes time out from teaching parkour to share thoughtful insights on topics such as systems thinking through game design, the role of novelty, and how to work with a group toward a single focus while still honoring the individual. Along the way we also discuss life lessons learned through playing chess.

Nothing will ever be the same as it was. Things are constantly changing. So everything is novel all the time.

~ Jesse Danger (14:00)

The conversation centers on Jesse Danger’s journey from being a parkour practitioner to a facilitator and educator. Topics include his personal experiments with consistency in training, the philosophy behind his organization, and how business serves as a tool for sharing his vision. Jesse highlights the transformative power of systems thinking, particularly through game design, as a method for teaching life skills and movement principles.

Jesse and Craig also discuss the role of novelty in personal and group development, emphasizing how new experiences can level the playing field and foster deeper connections. The conversation touches on broader themes like balancing individual needs with group goals, overcoming the constraints of competition and authority, and cultivating an integrated, holistic approach to learning and living.

(more…)

Supply-and-demand is a model →

Published May 26, 2018  ·  All posts on May 26  ·  

The reason for the strange behavior of energy prices near limits is because the system is very interconnected. It is a self-organized system that gradually changes over time. New customers are added over time. These customers are often also wage-earners. They decide what to buy based on their own wages, and based on other considerations, such as the prices of competing products and whether inexpensive financing is available.

~ Gail Tverberg from, How the Economy Works as It Reaches Energy Limits — An Introduction for Actuaries and Others

slip:4uouho1.

Supply-and-demand is a model. There’s nothing wrong with the model. Does the model still fit reality as we approach the limits of how much energy our economy can consume? (tl;dr: it does not.)

ɕ

Life time →

Published May 25, 2018  ·  All posts on May 25  ·  , ,

No such thing as spare time.
No such thing as free time.
No such thing as down time.
All you got is life time.
Go.

~ Henry Rollins

slip:4a294.

Programming is terrible →

Published May 24, 2018  ·  All posts on May 24

Writing code that’s easy to debug begins with realising you won’t remember anything about the code later.

~ Tef from, Write code that’s easy to delete, and easy to debug too.

slip:4upopo1.

Most of the programming I do — if you were to watch — looks very much like me sitting and staring suspiciously at my computer. Occasionally I sip a beverage. Occasionally I will rub my chin. Sometimes I will grudgingly type some code, knowing full-well I’m building something I’m going to curse about later.

ɕ