Journal

12 entries for London

Saturday, November 23, 2024

learn to teach so others can learn

254: Language Transfer with Mihalis Eleftheriou

[We tend to teach by showing but that’s not always what’s most effective; dogs and cats do that too. Sometimes it’s better to explain with words what is helpful for the learner.]

[We’re already translating thoughts into language.]

[Xenophobia that occurs naturally as a brain resonse needs help and solutions more than ostracizing, and learning the foreign language can be super helpful there.]

Friday, November 22, 2024

Dynamicland FAQ

A book cannot do something for you. Instead, reading a book can change you into someone who can do something for yourself. The role of a great medium is not to help people get things done, but to help people become deeper people — by providing a context in which they grow their skills and knowledge, broaden their context and perspective, and deepen their awareness and discernment.

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

whichever side you take, someone profits from the merch

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Men & Grief

[All grief is one: like touching the ocean at any of the imaginary lines we’ve drawn, it’s all one body of water.]

[When my partner senses that I’m holding back grief and invites me with a simple gesture like a hand on the shoulder, it’s hard to meet them there but I try to anyway, because to say “no worries, everything’s fine” would be to negate their good instincts for how I’m feeling.]

[I appreciate things that make me cry because they give me the chance to shed a few more of the tears repressed during childhood, when I had learned that doing so was dangerous.]

Thursday, November 14, 2024

When does it make sense to focus on not liking someone’s approach versus accepting and appreciating diverse ways?

Sunday, November 10, 2024

[Journalism has a chance to present culture in a psychological order that helps us orient, but often submits to promotional calendars resulting in bestseller lists and cinema charts, as if popularity would be the most useful factor in making decisions.]

[Choosing of what we wish to be informed requires knowing ourselves well enough to not selectively ignore what we need; perhaps it’s a position that could be prepared for with therapy.]

[Political news could draw us into how our society works and equip us to improve it intelligently. Word news could humanize foreign cultures and add context beyond dramatic events to help break us from fixating too locally. Economic news could go beyond standard figures to instill understanong of the human realities behind our goods. Celebrity news could be refocused on people from who we can learn how to be better and realize our own talents. Disaster news could help us feel grateful for every pain-free moment. Consumer news could point us to what can help us live a more fulfilling existence.]

[As humans evolved from a time where not much would change, where when something that did might be important or deadly, we need to readjust our perceptions to clarify that what is novel is not always important.]

[We most desperately avoid introspection when forming awkward but vital ideas, and that’s when the news grabs us.]

[Not everything we need to round ourselves out can be found in the present; for some perspectives we will need to look to the past for ideas that will still be in our thoughts tomorrow.]

[Children, wildlife, and heavenly expanse of the galaxies can give us relief from the news-induced self absorption that our time and moment is the most important.]

Part of The News: A User's Manual.

Monday, November 4, 2024

Art is a tool to help us with a number of psychological frailties which we would otherwise have trouble handling: our inability to understand ourselves, to laugh sagely at our faults, to empathize with and forgive others, to accept the inevitability of suffering without falling prey to a sense of persecution, to remain tolerably hopeful, to appreciate the beauty of the everyday and to prepare adequately for death.

Part of The News: A User's Manual.

Monday, August 12, 2024

Capoeira Podcast

[Advice should be like snow: the more gentle it falls, the longer it stays.]

Sunday, August 11, 2024

The road to mastery 1 by Mestre Poncianinho

[Learn to be comfortable with getting motivated to work when you plateau and not give up.]

Saturday, August 10, 2024

[Scoping out a scene that isn’t aware of itself.]

Monday, August 5, 2024

Cachila: Uruguay – Tambores del Candombe N° 2 (2009)

Pure vocal percussion, sometimes with actual drums. Can’t help but solo or move on some of these explosive rhythmic drives. Some tracks fuse conversation, sound play, and humour.