Language and Thought

Discipline is what the factory and the office and the store share with the prison and the school and the mental hospital.

A scrub is a player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing about.

Confidence is a necessary ingredient for success in any area of life. So is humility, but if you’re not careful, humility can morph into a kind of imposter syndrome that stops you in your tracks.

the thing is, as an adult, you get to make your own cool. you get to choose your own friends, live your own life. and let me tell you, in my life, where i make the rules, i am the coolest cat around.

being passionate about your hobbies is cool. asking good questions is cool. reading books is cool. taking notes is cool.

thinking of projects and then... See more

Believing in magic can be an irresponsible thing to do if it leads you to disengage from your material responsibilities– but if you’re a responsible person trying to get meaningful work done, and there’s a real possibility that something wonderful could happen and make everything tremendously better, it’s worth making a little space for, isn’t it?

The tough thing about getting diagnosed with something later in life is that it makes you question everything that came before it.

The concept of communication is sustained, generated by technology, so really with the Internet we attain the highest limits of communication. But what I would ask is, ‘Who is it that communicates?’ Who is it? There is one terminal and then another. There are two terminals, two specific areas of abstraction which change the information. But also,... See more

Socrates said that manual laborers make bad friends and bad citizens because they have no time to fulfill the responsibilities of friendship and citizenship.

Perhaps I could lean into my weirdness and curiosity, and earn a living from a small group of similarly curious weirdos. It felt like the permission slip I needed to give it a shot.