They are now convoluting your schedule, your work, the fact that your mom just texted you that something’s going on with your grandparents — it’s just too much for your body to handle. Print media gives us the opportunity to sit down, and decide when we want to feel the emotions we want to feel, rather than letting some arbitrary algorithm decide how we should feel.

I’ll read news, not other people’s reactions to news.

I was introduced to the phrase “Plant Blindness” not long ago, maybe a form of “noise” in and of itself. It’s a type of bias where we tend to ignore plants/green stuff and lump it all together, not caring too much about it or what it means to/for us. Read this interesting BBC article.

We are chosen, not because we are holy, but that we may be made holy. The election precedes the character,

The Sox are terrible, with a record of 6-25. They did inexplicably sweep the Tampa Bay Rays this past weekend, and yet they’re still on pace for what would be the worst record in modern major league history.

And I wound up in command of this glorious box:

We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different. p span[style*="font-size"] { line-height: 1.6; }

K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches by Tyler Kepner:

This all actually started as the latest love letter to baseball, if you can believe it. What I’d like to emphasize here is that I’m not trying to just outright blast the game.

The damage being done in a physical, quantifiable manner to young people who are giving “maximum effort” today is something which should sharpen our understanding of the collective damage we’re doing to one another when we’re constantly demanding “maximum effort”.

But it is also wrong because so much of the time we spend engaged in “efficiency” has a fraying effect on us individually and collectively.

Mexico had abolished slavery and the rebellion was largely an attempt to preserve slavery in Texas.

San Antonio, Texas is the seventh-largest city in the United States.

“Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts,” he adds. So put down that damn book! You can almost hear the old grump himself (Schopenhauer had a reputation for being one) yelling at you from the grave.  Thinking for yourself… hmm …what does it mean? Schopenhauer says it is “following your own inclinations” or “basic thoughts” which only you can understand through and through. These are your truths.

I’m also mulling over the possibility of having different banners and/or otherwise different templates for the various META-SPIEL series, i.e. Phthursday Musings, Running Around Illinois, Pizza Around Illinois, and whatever other madness I might concoct going forward. This is probably all a bit much, though, unless somehow moving to Beehiiv has the unexpected side effect of skyrocketing interest in my writing about calf compression sleeves and the like.

except that one stalwart META-SPIEL reader and I did have a nice exchange about his setup, which is intriguing but which I decided wouldn’t work as well for the way I like to present META-SPIEL

I got over how much I dislike the spelling of Beehiiv and here we are

So I decided to include links to Instagram and Facebook, and to be mischievous and put my BlueSky URL in as my Twitter link.

The original Autobot and Decepticon logos, supposedly designed by Wayne Molinare

The fall of mystery Babylon will be like the fall of real Babylon - sudden, sure, and in the midst of her worst blasphemies.

If you’re not the smartest, best person in the room, it doesn’t mean you’re useless. (And ironically, the benefits of being the most competent person in a room include being handed more assignments — because, hey, you can handle it.) If you’re bad at sports, you’re still doing your body right by being outside exercising. We ought to be able to enjoy the things we’re not great at and shouldn’t feel pressured to continually do better.

Most people have the opposite habit: they complain about the weather. Endlessly. It’s either too hot or too cold. Too wet or too dry. But to savor each small season uniquely—unconditionally—trains us in a loving way to be more alive.It might also teach us how to see one another’s quirks and special abilities as love-worthy. We can meet others exactly where they are today, much the same way we meet each new season. With compassion and acceptance.

Even on a cold day, I urge you to dress warmly and take a walk outdoors. What does this day want to show you?

Enjoyment of structured activities. Polymathic individuals tend to actively participate in a variety of structured activities—such as playing musical instruments or practicing sports—that stimulate new ways of thinking, require intense use of attention and the acquisition of useful skill sets. “While some people will be drained by engaging in structured activities in different domains, polymathic people will be exhilarated by it,” writes Araki. Polymathic individuals have a distinctive tendency to pursue multiple interests beyond their main vocation, either simultaneously or sequentially. They do not differentiate between “work” and “hobbies” in terms of personal significance, viewing such non-vocational activities as inherently rewarding, contributing to a sense of personal satisfaction, broadening life experiences and complementing their careers.

A 2018 paper by Michael Araki suggests that individuals can also display “micro-polymathy,” which showcases a person’s ability to excel and integrate various facets of knowledge within a specialized context or a specific field, such as an artist who can sing, dance and act.

Jamais vu may involve looking at a familiar face and finding it suddenly unusual or unknown. Musicians have it momentarily – losing their way in a very familiar passage of music. You may have had it going to a familiar place and becoming disorientated or seeing it with "new eyes".

Hill understood the necessity of providing the sender with a receipt for having paid in advance, and he implemented this in two ways: adhesive stamps to be affixed to the letter and preprinted, postage-paid envelopes and letter sheets. For the latter, a design competition produced a winner, noted artist William Mulready. The design features an allegorical figure of Britannia in the center directing letters right and left to people and creatures of the far-flung empire. Hill believed that the envelopes and letter sheets would be popular with the public, and he provided the adhesive stamps as something of an afterthought. The public, however, ridiculed the bizarre design. Many satirical caricatures were created and circulated, some by stationers who resented the government's incursion into their trade. The widespread derision led to withdrawal and destruction of the Mulready products after a very short time. Postage stamps, on the other hand, proved convenient and were widely accepted.

All the big, exciting uses for AI are either low-dollar (helping kids cheat on their homework, generating stock art for bottom-feeding publications) or high-stakes and fault-intolerant (self-driving cars, radiology, hiring, etc.).

AI pitchmen are explicit on this score: The purpose of AI, the source of its value, is its capacity to increase productivity, which is to say, it should allow workers to do more, which will allow their bosses to fire some of them, or get each one to do more work in the same time, or both. The entire investor case for AI is “companies will buy our products so they can do more with less.” It’s not “business custom­ers will buy our products so their products will cost more to make, but will be of higher quality.”

Is more engagement a mark of more success?

I would very much like to hear from you all about what you’d like to see or hear going forward, and where you’d like to see or hear it.

Elmhurst Art Museum

Second, it’s now been 17 years - 17 years! - since I left the cozy confines of a college town, and with it, the sort of built-in college-brings-famous-person-to-campus calendar. Today I live in a suburb where on a localized basis there’s simply nothing like that. There’s no shared cultural experiences among neighbors here, which means no shared experiences over creativity, unless the creativity involves some action someone’s kid pulled off on a soccer field.

But I am surprised at how frequently I’m going to concerts alone or with one other person, and never interacting with anyone else there. I thought I’d get to a point where I’d simply recognize a lot of people, at least say hello, but it’s never really worked out that way.

I am a believer in lemonade. I think that bad situations can often have positive side effects, can open one’s eyes to opportunities, etc. And I believe that the human condition is such that we are constantly going to be confronted by lemons, and if we don’t adopt the right mindset then we are doomed to sour existences.

My current understanding is that at least two other services are equipped to move my subscriber list and archive to their platform. I’m monitoring what others are doing and anticipate making the move some time in January. If any of you all have thoughts about which services you prefer, I’m all ears.

Barnes has some helpful comments: Laid him in a manger - The word rendered "inn" in this verse means simply a place of halting, a lodging-place; in modern terms, a khan or caravanserai (Robinson's "Biblical Research in Palestine," iii. 431). The word rendered "manger" means simply a crib or place where cattle were fed. "Inns," in our sense of the term, were anciently unknown in the East, and now they are not common. Hospitality was generally practiced, so that a traveler had little difficulty in obtaining shelter and food when necessary. As traveling became more frequent, however, khans or caravanserais were erected for public use - large structures where the traveler might freely repair and find lodging for himself and his beast, he himself providing food and forage. Many such khans were placed at regular intervals in Persia. To such a place it was, though already crowded, that Joseph and Mary resorted at Bethlehem. Instead of finding a place in the "inn," or the part of the caravanserai where the travelers themselves found a place of repose, they were obliged to be contented in one of the stalls or recesses appropriated to the beasts on which they rode.

Luke’s telling of the birth of Christ includes the shepherds, who lived apart from society in their lowly occupation, and the angels, who announced to those shepherds the arrival of the Messiah (Lk 2:9-14). From the humble to the heavenly, the contrast of shepherds and angels pictures the journey of the Son who came from the highest place to be the Lamb of God.

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer: WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS. Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.

Does anyone really dig in and listen to an album more than a couple of times anymore?

email is constrained as an ad business by a lack of “surface area.” Which leads to increased frequency and the risk of the leaky bucket.

Twitter won because of search. it wasn't a social network. it was an information network, and it excelled at real-time because of real-time search. that's a base requirement now.

Jack is fully focused on Nostr, not on Bluesky. He deleted his Bluesky account a while ago, even though he is still on the board of the Bluesky organisation. Reading this post makes it clear where his attention is though, and its not at Bluesky.

Power looms followed, triumphing despite resistance from the displaced Luddites. Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a loom attachment that used punch cards to store and automate weaving patterns. Now often credited as a precursor of digital computers

It took about 20 spinners to keep a single weaver supplied with yarn.

The original Mayflower’s sails were probably woven with around 30 threads to the inch in each direction. If, like the replica, they used 3,800 square feet of fabric, they would have taken nearly a million yards of yarn. Before the Industrial Revolution, just spinning that much yarn required about two years of work.

oh yeah, that which is a photo-sharing website which lets you upload a photo and then doesn't let you see it for a year.

The first is that the practice of revisiting is the bedrock of the humanities. Revisiting is what distinguishes entertainment from culture. It is important to recognize that there is a time and a place for both things and that entertainment routinely becomes culture but that transformation occurs precisely in the very act of revisiting.

Facebook super-charged huge societal changes in how the first layer of interpersonal interaction occurs. It also had an outsized impact on news interaction; because of the way Facebook and Google have monopolized advertising, and also because of the way Facebook algorithms have buried broad realms of content while elevating others, Facebook has become a platform best suited for a combination of idle banter, propaganda, and, well, more propaganda, in the form of incessant advertising.

And lastly, just discussing the apostles, they will be eternally honored.  They will be eternally rewarded, according to Revelation 21:14.  They have a very, very special place in...in eternity.  I don't know if you remember that verse; it says the wall of the city, that's the New Jerusalem in heaven, had twelve foundation stones and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.  So these were the unique, unique men that God called through Christ to be special in that first generation to lay the foundation of the New Testament.

Furthermore they were able to confirm their teaching as true by signs and wonders and mighty deeds, according to 2 Corinthians 12:11 and 12.  God gave

They were the foundation of the church because they laid the doctrinal foundation down.

Has caused… to be born again (313) (anagennao from aná = renewal, again or from above + gennáo = beget) means to be physically born again (but not used this way in the NT), to beget again, to father anew, to bring to birth again, to regenerate, cause to be born again.

In secular Greek literature anagennao is used in a botanical sense, as when the trees, plants, and flowers come to life in the spring.

After the destruction of Jericho, Joshua placed a curse on anyone who might rebuild the city (Joshua 6:26). Jericho remained unoccupied until the time of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, about 500 years later. Then Joshua’s word was fulfilled when Hiel of Bethel rebuilt the city, at the cost of the lives of two of his sons (1 Kings 16:34).

6So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd and we are His dearly loved sheep, says: ...The sheep listen to His voice. He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out.

When Jesus traveled through Zacchaeus’ town of Jericho, He was on His way to Jerusalem, where He would celebrate the last supper with His disciples.

Zacchaeus was curious about Jesus and wanted to see with his PHYSICAL eyes what all the commotion was about.

Initially the Seleucid kings seem to have respected the tradition of transmitting the high priesthood from father to son, but after the disappearance of Onias III in 175 BCE they started to sell the title to the highest bidder, first to Onias’s brother Jason and after him to Menelaus.

One of the most important differences between the high priests of this time and the Hasmoneans is that the earlier high priests, at least up until the end of the Ptolemaic period, although assuming some prerogatives previously belonging to the Davidic king, definitely did not assume military powers.

Thoreau believed, “a sort of crusade” — but we get to choose whether to crusade for productivity or for presence.

He was featured as a backup on the National League All-Star Team in the Nintendo game R.B.I. Baseball.

Lots of front-end developers struggle with CSS. I struggled with it too! CSS is a deceptively complex language, and it can often feel inconsistent and frustrating, even after you have years of experience with the language.

Magnolia flowers are fantastic on sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, added to cold noodles, used on tacos, added to salads and more. Pair with fresh cheeses and in dishes that would work nicely with ginger.

finding ways to turn have-to’s into want-to’s can have the following psychological benefits: You will feel better. You will be engaged more deeply. And, you will find tasks to be more meaningful.

the list of the most boring hobbies included sleeping (You snooze, you lose), religion (Praying for a miracle?), watching TV (Wait, what?), observing animals (Like your average bed and breakfast bird watcher), and doing math (That actually does add up). 

Reply All (Or At Least Reply 10) George Sisneros had an interesting approach to getting started on Twitter. He wrote 10 tweets a day, but didn’t post them on his account. Instead, he posted them as replies to other big accounts. Then, he took the ones that performed best as replies and posted them as original tweets on his own account. This helped him get exposure to new people through the replies and ensured everything he posted on his own account was a proven hit. (Btw, here’s my advice about how to step up your Twitter reply game.)

Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club ChicagoNorman Dinkel, the longtime owner at Dinkel’s Bakery.

The future of the iconic Dinkel’s sign, which hangs vertically on the side of the building, is uncertain, Dinkel said.“I’ve still got to figure out what’s going to happen to it,” Dinkel said. “I’m told there might be some collectors interested, but I don’t know yet.”

Norman Dinkel, 79, and the longtime owner, said it was closing so he could retire.

The bakery had been in talks with a few business partners interested in buying the bakery, but deals to sell the business fell through because “they didn’t want to actually work in the business,” Dinkel said.“They want to buy a business and make money, but this is a business where you’ve got to work every day,” Dinkel said.

it was also the first to experiment with growing plants on the moon. The spacecraft brought a small, cylindrical biosphere called the Lunar Micro Ecosystem (LME). The LME contained different seeds, such as potato, cotton, rapeseeds, and Arabidopsis thaliana, a common weed.

Aside from bringing samples back to our planet

It also bears noting that one could view the first stage of Cornell notes in light of the practice of keeping a waste book and then later transferring their more permanent and better formed ideas into their commonplace book.

The median duration of a podcast, according to a survey of ten million episodes in 2018, is 38 minutes and 42 seconds.

If you aren’t living your dreams, then you’re living your fears (Daymond John)

“For years, I’ve had to listen to co-workers tell me how I should be in this pool or that pool, how I’m missing out on all this social time with my coworkers but that's a load of crap,”

Echoing Whitman — who owes his cultural reverence to Burroughs and who, in the wake of his paralytic stroke, considered what makes life worth living and counseled to “tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies” — Burroughs adds: Unlucky is the man who is born with great expectations, and who finds nothing in life quite up to the mark. One of the best things a man can bring into the world with him is a natural humility of spirit. About the next best thing he can bring, and they usually go together, is an appreciative spirit — a loving and susceptible heart.

Unlike at the mall, this kind of escalator lifts nobody up.

Realize that uncertainty brings benefits, like unleashing creativity and resilience.

When we don't know something, we tend to fill in the blanks, often with garbage assumptions. Why? Many of us would rather be unhappy than uncertain.

No one is likely to dig through your thoughts in any file format.What matters is how you transform the text into useful stuff for you and others. Even then, it will be forgotten quickly.

The indoor color scheme serves only the purpose of making it clear that the place is not filthy.

from an older familial tradition of gum-in-stocking that my mom came up with, though that sometimes wound up involving weird, weird gum, like toothpaste tubes that said Bazooka. Anyway.

J.J. became much closer with his mother and centered himself on his Catholic faith.

Jenny Kendler, Music for Elephants, 2016, antique 1921 player piano with ivory keys and custom die-cut vellum score based on the artist’s predictive algorithm, 50 x 57 x 29 inches (700 lbs)

Kendler partnered with the Natural Resources Defense Council to find data on African elephant populations. She then extrapolated that data set to create a musical score based on an algorithm where each note represents a month’s worth of elephant poaching (the lower and longer the note is held, the greater number of elephants killed for their ivory). By the time the 10-minute song concludes its finale, only 300 notes or “months” are played (25 years total); we’ve reached the elephant’s extinction. 

Our school mascot is the dolphin, and I found this thing, and I pitched people over Facebook on the idea of having kids color in our school logo and put their drawings in the window and doing other little dolphin related things and what not.

Worse, parents of kindergartners and first graders but not also older kids, they’re starting off with no familarity with the community norms.

I had intended to write at great length about baseball. But I’m shelving that. Decided it was best saved for a full META-SPIEL instead of Musings.

For each subject that you might have ongoing thoughts about, start a separate “Thoughts On” journal. Whenever you have some thoughts on this subject, open up that file, write today’s date, then start writing. To give you an example, here are my “Thoughts On” journals as of today: Accounting Addiction Airports Alcohol Ambition Animation AppDevelopment Artist

If you’re feeling you don’t have the time or it’s not interesting enough, remember: You’re doing this for your future self.

It works best as a nightly routine. Just take a few minutes and write at least a few sentences.

Every day at some point, just open up this diary, write today’s date, then start writing. Write what you did today, and how you are feeling, even if it seems boring.

only to find that your favorite app’s search doesn’t seem to be as good as you thought it was at first

Enough that we fear losing the things we’ve already found out more than we favor gaining new ideas.

Then we’re free. We’ve stalked the prey, secured it for later nourishment. We can safely forget. We’ve insured against faulty memories. Now on to the next quest, finding something new to stash.

you saved them, then let them go back into the ether. No perpetual thinking on an idea; you wrote it down, let your second brain remember for you.

Highlight our findings.

T. rex, meaning "tyrant lizard king," has been the sole species of the genus Tyrannosaurus recognized since the dinosaur was first described in 1905.

The war in Ukraine will shape the future of the entire world. If tyranny and aggression are allowed to win, we will all suffer the consequences. There is no point to remain just observers. It’s time to stand up and be counted.

Unfortunately, this war is likely to be long-lasting. Taking different forms, it may well continue for years. But the most important issue has already been decided. The last few days have proved to the entire world that Ukraine is a very real nation, that Ukrainians are a very real people, and that they definitely don’t want to live under a new Russian empire. The main question left open is how long it will take for this message to penetrate the Kremlin’s thick walls.

But there was one big unknown about this plan. As the Americans learned in Iraq and the Soviets learned in Afghanistan, it is much easier to conquer a country than to hold it.

My colleague Dave described what happens on his current project, whose manager doesn’t consider the impacts of time lost to excessive multitasking: The manager likes to split people up between teams, 50 percent here and 50 percent there, or 50, 25, and 25. But when this happens, it seems like they forget the percentages and think the team has all full-time people. Then they seem surprised at how long things take. Also, being on multiple teams means more overhead in meetings and less coding time.

One software group of mine measured how we devoted our time on projects for several years (Wiegers 1996). Individuals tracked the hours they spent working on each project in ten activity categories: project planning, requirements, design, implementation, testing, documentation, and four types of maintenance. We wanted to know how we really spent our time, compared to how we thought we spent our time, and compared to how we were supposed to spend our time. In the first year that we collected data, we devoted an average of just 26 hours per week to project work. The time tracking made us all more conscious of finding ways to focus our time more productively. However, we never exceeded an average of 31 hours per week of project time.

a more appropriate threshold could be 20 cases per 100,000 people per day.

But brands will always need someone to explain TikTok microcultures to old losers.

the three vibe shifts he has survived and observed: Hipster/Indie Music (ca. 2003–9), or peak Arcade Fire, Bloc Party, high-waisted Cheap Mondays, Williamsburg, bespoke-cocktail bars; Post-Internet/Techno Revival (ca. 2010–16), or the Blood Orange era, normcore, dressing like The Matrix, Kinfolk the club, not Kinfolk the magazine; and Hypebeast/Woke (ca. 2016–20)

Customers can pay as little or as much as they want; the minimum is $1, but higher amounts will unlock increased selections. Dynamite, IDW, Image, and others have offered books through Humble Bundle.

Digital comic sales made up 12.5% of all 2020 comic sales

Yes, according to MRC Data, CD sales in the US increased 1.1% in 2021 from their sales in 2020. But in 2020 they had fallen 26% from 2019, “the format’s biggest year-to-year decline ever,” leaving the CD at an all-time low since its introduction as a commercial format.

the upside of having a sea of knowledge filled with seemingly irrelevant information that bubbles up into someone's consciousness along with targeted details is that random, hodgepodge associations can cultivate creative thinking.

John MacArthur discusses power in the Bible noting that Scripture certainly testifies to God’s glorious power (Ex 15:6), His irresistible power (Dt 32:39), His unsearchable power (Job 5:9), His mighty power (Job 9:4), His great power (Ps 79:11- Spurgeon's note), His incomparable power (Ps 89:8 - Spurgeon's comment), His strong power (Ps 89:13 - Spurgeon's note), His everlasting power (Isa 26:4), His effectual power (Is 43:13), and His sovereign power (see Ro 9:21-note).

Before this season, the Bengals had not won a playoff game since 1990, when they beat the Oilers (now the Titans), the longest drought in the four major North American sports.

mobile captures more than 50% of gaming industry revenue

In all our talk of meaning, purpose, four hour workweeks and lifestyle design it’s easy overlook the reality that people have to pay their bills, keep the lights on, and put food on their tables.

Creators rarely have a shortage of things they want to create. However, that overflowing creative drive can make it difficult to focus your output in a way that serves you best. You wind up drifting from project to project, jumping at each new bit of inspiration, only to leave a trail of abandoned projects in your wake.

Focus. Clarity. Process. The ability to generate opportunities, identify and grow your audience. These are the keys to your success — and they can be learned.

Rather than offer an expanded version of my For The Interested newsletter (the “more” approach I had originally tried that didn’t work), I launched a “different” paid newsletter called This Is How I Do It. Each week’s issue offers a behind-the-scenes look at exactly how I do something to grow my audience and build my business.

This doesn’t mean that we should somehow blithely accept any and all shortcomings as perfectly acceptable. Sometimes coming to terms with what’s complicated really does mean throwing shit away.I operate from this mindset though: Most bad things are done by good people. Little lies, petty thefts, cross words. We are human. We should not celebrate the bad because it is bad, but rather, we should celebrate our basic humanity, trespasses and all.

But because their presence there would constitute a powerful part of the history of the game.

Gottlieb: I think this is the difference between what a friend would say to this person and what a therapist would say to this person. Because what the friend tends to do is to say, “Look at all the wonderful things you have in your life,” which is not helpful at all because they can’t see it anyway. You know it’s very funny when you look at the difference between how we talk to our friends and how a therapist might approach this. Because I think that people would expect the therapist to say, “Well, look at all these things that you’re not seeing.” But no. In fact, what I would probably do is I would agree with them and say, “Yeah, you know, I can see that you’re really not satisfied.”And then what happens for them is the more that you kind of go into their mindset that they start to see something new, that they start to say, “Well, actually, I have this really great partner, and I have this really great job.”

they conflate what society wants them to want, what their parents want them to want, what the culture tells them they should want versus what they inherently want. And if it goes against some of those things—like some of those culturally accepted things of what we should want—it’s very hard for them to even acknowledge that that’s something that they want.

the Dalai Lama always says—which is the secret to enduring satisfaction is not to have what you want, but to want what you have. The satisficer is one who wants what she has, and the maximizer is the one who is always chasing, trying to have what he wants.

And it really takes up your emotional energy in a big way, because it’s almost like it’s a perfectionism type of thing.

The maximizer will see that sweater and kind of put it under another sweater, so nobody will buy it. And just in case, go to the next store. And keep looking, because maybe they’ll find something a little bit cheaper or a little bit more attractive or, you know, whatever it is, right?

Satisficers are those people who, let’s say: You’re trying to buy a sweater, and you go into a store and you find a sweater that fits you. It looks good. It’s the right price. You buy it, you’re happy, you’re done. Right? It meets all of your criteria.

And I think that the people who are happiest when we talk about people—and I would maybe use the word contentment

and then the next week, they’re walking by a store and they see something else in the window and they think, Oh, that one would have been better. And so they’re just never satisfied with what they have.

the second macronutrient of a happy life, which is satisfaction

Let’s move on to the second pillar

Joy is an emotion, right?

They went to Hawaii, and I don’t get to go to Hawaii.

And when they realize that, they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I spent like an hour and a half mindlessly scrolling through the internet.”

she found that when she made time for fun she not only enjoyed her life more, but she found that actually it made her more productive.

There are people who don’t know how to have fun. I think that we think somehow in our culture today of ambition and moving forward—you know, all sorts of pressures—that people think that fun is frivolous

So anhedonia is when people are depressed; they literally cannot experience joy in the things that would normally bring them joy if they were not depressed.

because they’re excessively stoic or for whatever reason—that they have insufficient enjoyment of their lives?

I think that we all ask ourselves, when it comes to happiness is: How can I love and be loved?

There are three macronutrients to happiness. They are enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose.

I think that happiness as a byproduct of living our lives in a meaningful way is what we all aspire to. But happiness as a goal in and of itself often is a recipe for disaster

I do find enjoyment as pleasure plus elevation.

For one thing, there is easy mode, and there is hard mode. You switch between them by toggling a setting.

On the project’s website, decentzinelib.com, Frankson had coyly written, “Currently, there is one known location for browsing, lending and borrowing… [I]f you have ‘found’ a discrete zine repository and would like to submit it to the index for listing, please use the subject line: NEW LOCATION.”

When I mentioned it was decentzinelib@gmail.com, there was a murmur of recognition and then Frankson told me the “decent” part of the address stood for “decentralized,” a nod to the decentralized space they’d created. 

And that might lead to, ‘Oh, you bind your own books?’ ‘Yeah, you know, I look for these methods of stitching, and I try to replicate them myself. And, in fact, I have this project of distributing and trading zines that I've stashed in the Greater Victoria Public Library.’ And people are like, ‘What?’” 

Frankson told me they also diligently worked the zine library into casual conversations, disclosing its existence in a calculated way. 

Frankson did a fair bit of recon to pull off the reverse heist. They scoped out the stacks in search of the least populated area, hoping to place the fake book containing the zine library among books that were infrequently checked out (and therefore infrequently reshelved by librarians who might notice it). Frankson remembers settling on the Canadian Geography section

Frankson is someone who’s always involved in some kind of project or another—ones that don’t involve “monetary gain or hype,”

The inside cover of Handpicked Tours had a handwritten message where a bookplate typically would go. Bearing the ransom-note-like appearance of having been cut up and reassembled, it offered congratulations —“you just found the ‘central branch’ Book and Zine TRADING Library!”— and instructions: “Be sure to leave something if you take something so the library stays well stocked!” 

Despite the name of the set being “record setters” there was no specific mention of records that were broken by the players included.

Avoid feelings.

I think to break up the linear feeling is actually refreshing for someone like me. It was actually perfect for me to get a break from it for two years and write something completely different, and then I could come back to it and fine-tune it and maybe even improve it somehow. When you have a different year in life, you sometimes spot things that you didn’t spot when you were inside of it.

When they come to us they often know what is happening and don’t need us to be a news aggregator.

The Atlantic introduced nine writer-driven subscriber newsletters this fall and three new staff newsletters.

How we put it to use: Our consumer strategy and growth team used this insight — that people who are familiar with The Atlantic appreciate the range that it offers — in planning recent marketing emails to prospective subscribers. (The sharp writing below is from senior copywriter Ashley Larkin, who also helped in synthesizing and clarifying the five needs statements.)

Take a single nine-pocket sheet and a reasonable $100 budget, and build a nine-card collection with a unifying theme.

nearly all tweets come from less than 6 percent of American adults.

But this disjunction between reviewer and audience doesn’t just happen with children’s movies. The problem with being a professional critic is that you end up consuming so much culture that you stop processing it like a normal person. Once you’ve seen your 20th car chase of the year, the novelty begins to wear off. But the average audience member is not mainlining movies like that. A paint-by-numbers action or comedy flick may feel completely fresh to them—and so may a banal superhero movie or the latest Harry Potter or Star Wars release.

In the past, I used to quote much more -- my dissertation advisor pretty much cured me of that.

There are very examples of trudging through a person’s archives to reconsider them in a positive sense

The love and joy inherent in a wedding ceremony are also characteristic of the ministry of Christ, who came into this world because of love (John 3:16) and brought joy to all who believe (Luke 2:10).

The miracle made a strong impression on Jesus’ new disciples, teaching them from the start that He could take care of them (Isaiah 46:4; Matthew 6:8).

One consideration is that of honor. In those days, family honor was of vital importance. Weddings usually lasted for seven days, during which time food and wine supplied by the bride’s and groom’s families flowed freely. To run out of either implied a thoughtless or impoverished host. Running out of wine would bring dishonor upon the family name. As a personal favor, Mary turned to her divine Son for help. Her family was about to be shamed in the community, and she knew her Son could do something about it.

Jesus’ creation of wine may be significant, prophetically. Jeremiah had foretold that in the Messianic age “they will rejoice in the bounty of the LORD—the grain, the new wine . . .” (Jeremiah 31:12). Amos said that Israel “will plant vineyards and drink their wine” (Amos 9:14). The association of the Messiah with a time of plenty—including freely flowing wine—makes Jesus’ first miraculous sign all the more meaningful.

The dreariest thing in all the world is a godless old age, and one of the most beautiful things in all the world is the calm sunset which so often glorifies a godly life that has been full of effort for Jesus, and of sorrows patiently borne as being sent by Him.

massive Ant-Transformer armor

Optimus Prime asks Tony Stark what his Transformer-sized armor is made from, as the hero reveals it's made from carbon nanotube transistors, printed on silicon wafers, with a capacity of about fifteen amperes.

"Imagination is the air of mind," in which it lives and breathes.

it had floated out into the stream, and was nowhere to be seen.

This world is but canvas to our imaginations.

Lester won his first two World Series rings in Boston, and he also learned what being a good teammate on and off the field meant."You have people from all walks of life on a team that have one goal," Lester said. "I saw David [Ortiz] bring a lot of those guys together that you never thought would be friends. I wanted to bring that when I came to Chicago."While he was one of many stars on the Red Sox, Lester took on that role that Ortiz had played in Boston when he signed with the Cubs in 2015. Kris Bryant was still in the minors and players like Javy Baez, Kyle Schwarber and Anthony Rizzo had yet to reach their peak for a franchise in need of a winning mentality more than a century since its last title. Lester took it on himself to bring everyone together.Ross recalled one memorable road trip to Oakland that included a private plane to take a group to Pebble Beach for golf. A day later it was a private bus to a Kenny Chesney concert, all expenses paid by Lester."It was the greatest trip I've ever been on," Ross said. "It's not about private planes and stuff, but just that he wanted everyone to have a good time."And there were the postgame parties Lester threw at his house not far from Wrigley Field. Everyone was invited."I knew we had a young team," Lester said. "We wanted to introduce ourselves and also get to know other people. Best way to do that is off the field. Besides, we like hosting, which always helps. I'd rather just walk up to my room and go to sleep than worry about getting an Uber."

            As a consequence of favoring discovery over creation, the concept of ownership of an object also changes. Much like the mathematician discovering a fundamental truth, we as designers shouldn’t take credit for the objects we create if they are truly natural.

so defining an object’s quality simply by its output is also not an option

Aligning company goals with the value provided — as ephemeral as it might be — is the foundation for a company that is built to last

Some people

You either hire reporters to cover teams or you don’t, and that means keeping a lot of journalists (currently around 450) employed.

Average revenue per subscriber back in 2019, again according to the founders, was $64 at a time when a subscription cost as much as $120 per year. Today, revenue per subscriber is likely well below that. It’s hard to say without access to the financials, but based on figures reported today, it has likely sunk below $55 per subscriber.Not great.

Including a $100 million dividend they paid themselves in 2020, Eisner and Madison Dearborn made a 55% return on Topps

21. 2020 Topps Now USA Election Bernie Sanders #21 Can a meme become a trading card? A mittens-wearing Bernie Sanders proved emphatically that it can. The card, which shows the Vermont senator at the presidential inauguration, went on to sell a massive 91,169 copies. That’s the most ever for any Topps Now card. It garnered plenty of mainstream attention and likely made its way into the hands of many non-collectors looking for a timely souvenir from a memorable moment.

Mimosa Shah

The unfolded “mailer” showcases the particular bending, wear, and tear on prints as they travel from one destination to another, bearing singular traces of human touch. Tangible markers, like abstract patterns produced by the colorful tape holding folded images together, signify intimacy and personalization. There’s a sense that this piece of mail can’t or won’t be duplicated, that it’s bound for only one mailbox: yours.

When galleries passed on purchasing them, Shore took advantage of the fact that the postcards didn’t list locations and could therefore be from anywhere. On a subsequent road trip, he paused at rest stops around the country and surreptitiously—and provocatively—stocked postcard racks with selections from his mountainous stash.

These thinkers and dreamers often need to bring more time and focus to stages 1 and 4 in order to keep their creative process on track. Balance inspiration with generation by creating the necessary structures to help you commit to action and put one foot in front of the other to make it happen—or just collaborate with a doer who you can outsource your ideas to! 

More inward-focused, idea-generating types excel in stages 2 and 3: getting inspired and coming up with brilliant ideas. But they run the risk of getting stuck in their own heads and failing to materialize their brilliant ideas in the world.

stages 2 and 3 are all about inspiration: dreaming, reflecting, imagining, opening up to inspiration, and allowing the unconscious mind to do its work. Stages 1 and 4, meanwhile, are about generation: doing the external work of research, planning, execution, and collaboration.

One of the most illuminating things I’ve found is a popular four-stage model of the creative process developed in the 1920s. In his book The Art of Thought, British psychologist Graham Wallas outlined a theory of the creative process based on many years of observing and studying accounts of inventors and other creative types at work.

the rise of the tech companies represents a qualitative change. The oil and real estate magnates of the 1982 Forbes 400 didn't win by making better technology. They won by being really driven and good at making deals. [2] And indeed, that way of getting rich is so old that it predates the Industrial Revolution. The courtiers who got rich in the (nominal) service of European royal houses in the 16th and 17th centuries were also, as a rule, really driven and good at making deals.

The pure tech companies used to be called "high technology" startups. But now that startups can punch through the middle of the ice crust, we don't need a separate name for the edges, and the term "high-tech" has a decidedly retro sound.

But on religion everyone's an expert.

If you're nice, as well as wise, you won't merely resist attacking such people, but encourage them. Having new ideas is a lonely business. Only those who've tried it know how lonely. These people need your help. And if you help them, you'll probably learn something in the process.

Another reason people dismiss new ideas is that it's an easy way to seem sophisticated. When a new idea first emerges, it usually seems pretty feeble. It's a mere hatchling. Received wisdom is a full-grown eagle by comparison. So it's easy to launch a devastating attack on a new idea, and anyone who does will seem clever to those who don't understand this asymmetry.

The lower time limits for intense work suggest a solution to the problem of having less time to work after you have kids: switch to harder problems. In effect I did that, though not deliberately.

There is some technique to it: you have to learn not to lie to yourself, not to procrastinate (which is a form of lying to yourself), not to get distracted, and not to give up when things go wrong.

It was similar with Lionel Messi. He had great natural ability, but when his youth coaches talk about him, what they remember is not his talent but his dedication and his desire to win.

It was similar with Lionel Messi. He had great natural ability, but when his youth coaches talk about him, what they remember is not his talent but his dedication and his desire to win.

Most people type around 40 words per minute (WPM) with skilled typists hitting upwards of 100 WPM. Competition typers can break into the 200 WPM.

Before I had kids, I had moments of this kind of peace, but they were rarer. With kids it can happen several times a day.

So I inverted the 5 regrets, yielding a list of 5 commands Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.