PRACTICAL EVERYDAY LOGIC:
I’ve been thinking that there ought to be a universal “practical everyday logic” exam that we can voluntarily take, and we can share our scores with other people if we wanted to, post them on our social media profiles (Verified). That way, we’ll know not to argue with people who fail at simple logic. Less stress for everyone.
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FAITH:
“What would life be without your faith?”
I’m an atheist, but I consider myself a spiritual person. I think we all are.
My “faith” is love, and awe, and splendor, and beauty. Mercy, grace, compassion.
I cannot separate my life from my “faith”. My “faith” is how I make sense of reality.
Asking about life without “faith” is like asking what the world would look like if we did not have eyes (or, to be more accurate, the ability to make sense of the visual information that is transmitted through our eyes.)
Faith isn’t something we put on every weekend, like a hat- it’s embedded in every moment, in every breath, in every decision.
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IMPORTANCE OF DECLUTTERING
And unless you’re extremely organized, a house full of stuff can be very depressing. A cluttered room saps one’s spirits. One reason, obviously, is that there’s less room for people in a room full of stuff. But there’s more going on than that. I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what’s around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.
(This could explain why clutter doesn’t seem to bother kids as much as adults. Kids are less perceptive. They build a coarser model of their surroundings, and this consumes less energy.)”
– Paul Graham
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“Some day you will meet someone who cares for neither money, position, nor glory,
Then will you know how poor you are.” – Halford E. Luccock
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Reading, writing, conversing, playing music, painting- I consider all of these pursuits (and countless others) to be a form of thought, of contemplation.
Sometimes we think with our bones.
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STORIES TO TELL:
“Thirdly, I have stories to tell. They may not be the most amazing or the most fantastic of stories, but they are my stories; memories, thoughts, emotions, reflections, recollections, unique perspectives and states of mind that are just begging to be dug out from the corners of my mind and freshly interpreted. My head has always felt like a massive heap of books, ideas, notes, drawings and sketches cluttered in a massive incomprehensible mess accessible to none but yours truly, and even so with substantial effort. Perhaps it is time I tidied up and sorted everything out. Who knows, I might develop new insights on what previously befuddled me, rediscover forgotten treasures and learn even more about myself. What could possibly be more exciting than that?”
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SING YOUR DEATH SONG – TECUMSEH
“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, & demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long & its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people & grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food & for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one & no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools & robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep & pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song & die like a hero going home.”
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The Myth Of The Overnight Success, by Chris Dixon:
“Angry Birds was Rovio’s 52nd game. They spent eight years and almost went bankrupt before finally creating their massive hit. Pinterest is one of the fastest growing websites in history, but struggled for a long time. Pinterest’s CEO recently said that they had “catastrophically small numbers” in their first year after launch, and that if he had listened to popular startup advice he probably would have quit.
You tend to hear about startups when they are successful but not when they are struggling. This creates a systematically distorted perception that companies succeed overnight. Almost always, when you learn the backstory, you find that behind every “overnight success” is a story of entrepreneurs toiling away for years, with very few people except themselves and perhaps a few friends, users, and investors supporting them.
Startups are hard, but they can also go from difficult to great incredibly quickly. You just need to survive long enough and keep going so you can create your 52nd game.”
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MUSIC FROM CHILDHOOD (FF6 boss theme)
I was listening to this earlier- a song from my childhood- and somehow it “makes more sense” now than it did before.
It occurred to me that my ear has expanded over the years, that I’ve discovered new and more interesting and complex ways to listen to music.
And I realize this applies to so many things- to everything, really. My mind has been broadened, my understanding of beauty enriched.
Even if infinity is always infinitely far away, striving towards it is almost always beautiful, and worth the toil.
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CREATIVITY IS CONCEPTUAL COLLISION:
“Tom Robbins says you can’t manufacture creativity or wonderment, but you can pull yourself out of context so dramatically that you gawk in amazement at the ubiquitous everyday wonders you’re culturally conditioned to ignore. I think this is key: To get new ideas we need to see the world with new eyes–we need to evoke a novel way of seeing things. For me that involves throwing myself into new situations. Some of the thinkers I respect the most have credited travel, walks in the park, and marijuana as creativity catalysts. Really, its anything that triggers free association and the right conceptual collision. We need disruption of the profane so that we can engage with the sacred and creative.”
– Jason Silva
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BE HAPPY WHERE YOU ARE, MISSED IF YOU’RE GONE, THRILL OF GREAT WORK:
“If your happiness is based on always getting a little more than you’ve got…
then you’ve handed control over your happiness to the gatekeepers, built a system that doesn’t scale and prevented yourself from the brave work that leads to a quantum leap.
The industrial system (and the marketing regime) adore the mindset of ‘a little bit more, please’, because it furthers their power. A slightly higher paycheck, a slightly more famous college, an incrementally better car–it’s easy to be seduced by this safe, stepwise progress, and if marketers and bosses can make you feel dissatisfied at every step along the way, even better for them.
Their rules, their increments, and you are always on a treadmill, unhappy today, imagining that the answer lies just over the next hill…
All the data shows us that the people on that hill are just as frustrated as the people on your hill. It demonstrates that the people at that college are just as envious as the people at this college. The never ending cycle (no surprise) never ends.
An alternative is to be happy wherever you are, with whatever you’ve got, but alway hungry for the thrill of creating art, of being missed if you’re gone and most of all, doing important work.” – Seth Godin
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“Tell everyone you know: “My happiness depends on me, so you’re off the hook.” And then demonstrate it. Be happy, no matter what they’re doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way you feel—and then, you’ll love them all. Because the only reason you don’t love them, is because you’re using them as your excuse to not feel good.”
— A Hicks
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“Ugly is irrelevant. It is an immeasurable insult to a woman, and then supposedly the worst crime you can commit as a woman. But ugly, as beautiful, is an illusion. A matter of taste, a whim, an eye, a beholder, an opinion, a spin, light crossing the frame, paint, projection. The moment. Context.”
— Margaret Cho
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Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.
– Dalai Lama
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In the movie, Bangladeshi laborers speak openly about how their wives cry in their absence, their struggle to make ends meet on their $18 daily salary and their dreams of providing easier lives for their children. During the intimate conversations, the construction workers do their best press out smiles, but at least one man is brought to the verge of tears as he reveals that an on-the-job injury means he can no longer work or provide for his family.
SMU students create video sensation from Little India interviews
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don’t be a sucker:
protect and insure yourself against collapsing systems-
build your savings, learn, learn, and get the hell out if you have to-
but never get jaded. never kill hope.
if you go, go in pursuit of building your dreams.
make some magic.
you don’t have to hate where you’re from…
you just need to know what your principles are,
and run at them with all your heart
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Now, at that time in my life [around 2008], it felt very much like, ‘OK. The record business is broken. The model is broken.’ I’d go through periods of having to look in the mirror and say, ‘Let’s see. I just made an album I spent a year working on. I turned it over to the record label to get manufactured. It leaked, and I’m online, just boiling furious, at fans who’re talking about how much they love this new album, that they just stole.’
And then I’d think, ‘Wait a minute. They’re not standing outside my house, bootlegging copies out the back of their van, y’know, to make money. They’re sharing their excitement about songs I’ve written, and music I’ve done. And they’re excited about it. And I’m pissed off at ‘em, because what? They didn’t wait until a month from now, when they’d have to drive to a record shop (if they can find one,) to buy a piece of plastic they don’t want, then rip it back to their computers, to…man, this sucks. Ok, something’s not right.’ Or they can buy it from iTunes at a lower bit quality, which at that time was also copy protected, which I was strongly against.
It becomes very clear, if you can remove the emotion from the equation, that the delivery system is broken. And the relationship between fans and artists and record labels is also broken.”
— Trent Reznor on the music industry