on everything

Bryan Cranston on the importance of a good script

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:41:00 -0500

“The hardest work I’ve ever had to do is on poorly written material where you’re going, “How can I make sense of this? How can I…” It’s effort. You can feel the flop sweat.”

Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad.

True for work as well.

"We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 23:24:19 -0500

“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.”

- Richard Feynman, born on May 11, 1918, on the role of scientific culture in modern society – timeless, remarkably timely read.

Pair with how ignorance drives science.
(via explore-blog)

"Wired: Peter Thiel, expressing his dissatisfaction with technology’s progress, recently noted, ‘We..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:16:47 -0500

“

Wired:
Peter Thiel, expressing his dissatisfaction with technology’s progress, recently noted, ‘We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.’ Do you agree with him?

Bill Gates:
I feel sorry for Peter Thiel. Did he really want flying cars? Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another. On the other hand, 20 years ago we had the idea that information could become available at your fingertips. We got that done. Now everyone takes it for granted that you can look up movie reviews, track locations, and order stuff online. I wish there was a way we could take it away from people for a day so they could remember what it was like without it.

”

- Bill Gates in a recent Wired interview with Steven Levy

[via Gary Tan]

(via whitneymcn)\

Touche.

What if money didn’t matter - Alan Watts

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:47:00 -0500

What if money didn’t matter - Alan Watts

explore-blog: How to find work that makes your heart sing.

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:28:42 -0500

explore-blog:

How to find work that makes your heart sing.

literaryjukebox: We live in a society where romantic love is...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:11:07 -0500

literaryjukebox:

We live in a society where romantic love is idealized: if we search long enough, we will find “the one,” the soulmate who is perfect for us, who will grow and change at the exact same rate we do, who loves us exactly as we are and never expects us to change, who always wants us sexually, never has bad breath or gets grouchy, and is perfectly desirable in every way. We expect our partner to fully meet us on an intellectual, physical, sexual, and spiritual basis; to be our lover, best friend, a companion, confidante, confessor, therapist, and family, all rolled into one. This sets up monumental expectations which all of us invariably fall short of.

Laura Davis in Allies in Healing

Song: “Love Is Everything” by Jane Siberry

iTunes :: Amazon :: Back to Brain Pickings

nevver: Bukowski

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:59:50 -0500

nevver:

Bukowski

nevver: Work

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:43:39 -0500

nevver:

Work

Thomas Keller On Why Passion Shouldn’t Drive You

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:07:34 -0500

“It’s not about passion. Passion is something that we tend to overemphasize, that we certainly place too much importance on. Passion ebbs and flows. To me, it’s about desire. If you have constant, unwavering desire to be a cook, then you’ll be a great cook. If it’s only about passion, sometimes you’ll be good and sometimes you won’t. You’ve got to come in every day with a strong desire. With passion, if you see the first asparagus of the springtime and you become passionate about it, so much the better, but three weeks later, when you’ve seen that asparagus every day now, passions have subsided. What’s going to make you treat the asparagus the same? It’s the desire.”

Thomas Keller On Why Passion Shouldn’t Drive You

"We want to believe in talent. As Jean-Paul Sartre put it, “What people would like is that a coward..."

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 08:43:13 -0500

“We want to believe in talent. As Jean-Paul Sartre put it, “What people would like is that a coward or a hero be born that way.”, knowing that it protects us by degrading the very achievements that it pretends to elevate; magically separating us from those that are great athletes, ensuring that we are incompatible with them; and relieving those of us who are not excellent of responsibility for our own condition. “To call someone ‘divine’” Friedrich Nietzche once wrote, “means ‘Here we do not have to compete.’” In the mystified notion of talent, the unanalyzed pseudo-explanation of outstanding performance, we codify our own deep psychological resistance to the simple reality of the world, to the overwhelming mundanity of excellence.”

- Daniel Chambliss, The Mundanity Of Excellence

Excellence, Chambliss shows us in his study of great swimmers, does not arise from talent — usually discovered only after athletes begin to win regularly — nor from hard work, as he found by comparing the routines of the great and not-so-great. Excellence comes from deliberate practice:

the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully, habitualized, compounded together, added up over time. While these actions are “quantitatively different” from those of performers at other levels, these differences are neither unmanageable nor, taken one step at a time, terribly difficult.

Ignacy Paderewski, the musician, once said, ‘Before I was a genius, I was a drudge.’

So, be aware that ‘talent’ is an afterthought, and working ‘hard’ is optics. The tie that connects those involved in great work is their focus on their process, their obsession on deliberate practice: writing every morning before work, swimming the laps with the hands and feet just so, or playing the same concerto, very carefully but with brio, 100 times.

The most important takeaway is to work on your practice: it is a tool above all others, and one that we use to shape ourselves, a tiny bit every day.

(via stoweboyd)

nevver: Hemingway

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:29:16 -0500

nevver:

Hemingway

hypervocal: Little Girl Pens Letter To Yosemite National Park...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:27:51 -0600

hypervocal:

Little Girl Pens Letter To Yosemite National Park Ranger, Returns Stolen Sticks

The next generation will turn out to be alright. I have faith.

Why moonshots matter

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:53:00 -0600

“Larry Page lives by the gospel of 10x. Most companies would be happy to improve a product by 10 percent. Not the CEO and cofounder of Google. The way Page sees it, a 10 percent improvement means that you’re basically doing the same thing as everybody else. You probably won’t fail spectacularly, but you are guaranteed not to succeed wildly.”

More I read about Larry Page, more I like him. Right person to lead Google.

PSA: It's now illegal to unlock your phone

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:47:00 -0600

Yes, you read it right and it’s not from Onion. Kinda like, you buy a car, the dealer locks it and to unlock it you now have to pay the dealer or go to jail. Corporations win, consumers lose. Asinine.

Subsidy model is disconnected from the actual purchase of the phone. Subsidies work better for carriers since they can hide the cost. Bet nobody knows how much they’re paying for the actual subsidy ($650-$199). I can bet it’s more Pawn shop rates rather than Bank rates. Why not charge real price and offer financing (la T-mobile)? But that’s too transparent for most carriers.

Read.

Tiny Beautiful Things

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:04:00 -0600

Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.

When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t “mean anything” because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes.

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life.

Dear Sugar #64

Never satisfied. McKayla Maroney of U.S., with her silver medal...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:27:31 -0600

Never satisfied.

McKayla Maroney of U.S., with her silver medal during London 2012 Olympic Games

In KC, it's no time for a game

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:35:00 -0600

I would argue that your rationalizations speak to how numb we are in this society to gun violence and murder. We’ve come to accept our insanity. We’d prefer to avoid seriously reflecting upon the absurdity of the prevailing notion that the second amendment somehow enhances our liberty rather than threatens it.

How many young people have to die senselessly? How many lives have to be ruined before we realize the right to bear arms doesn’t protect us from a government equipped with stealth bombers, predator drones, tanks and nuclear weapons?

Our current gun culture simply ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.

Give me Liberty, or give me Death.

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:27:09 -0600

Give me Liberty, or give me Death.

Cost of war.

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:24:03 -0600

Cost of war.

Willpower.

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:22:30 -0600

Willpower.