Random
by Jacob Pettit · updated 4mo ago
Random
by Jacob Pettit · updated 4mo ago
“Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.” - Marcus Aurelius
Jacob Pettit added 4mo ago
One of the most intelligent case studies in design is the Chinese tea cup. They’re made without handles simply because if it’s too hot to touch, it’s too hot to drink.
Humans naturally want to add more. Add a cardboard sleeve, add a warning on the outside of the cup, add a handle. The result of all these things never cools down the actual contents.
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“We are the generators of the Internet, we are generators of the media. What we give our time, attention, and money to is what thrives, and what doesn’t get it is what dies.” -Ezra Klein
Jacob Pettit added 4mo ago
You cannot process thoughts or develop perspective while endlessly consuming content, so periodically disconnect from the web, dwell some days in darkness, and then you’ll awaken new insights, for it is only when night obscures the world that it reveals the galaxy. -Gurwinder
Jacob Pettit added 4mo ago
Kurt Vonnegut, talking about when he tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope:
“Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of b
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Treat your “to read” pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it). After all, you presumably don't feel overwhelmed by all the unread books in the British Library—and not because there aren't an overwhelming number of them, but bec
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We remain a society obsessed with individual achievement. We equate success with elevation: “Climbing the ladder”, “Scaling my Everest”, “Being on top of the world”. Fatherhood is changing you. But if you step back, you’ll see it's changing all of us together. What might happen to a group of dads who realise they could help change each other?
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My challenge, information-wise, isn't about finding a needle in a haystack. It's that I'm confronted on a daily basis, in Carr's words, by "haystack-sized piles of needles." — Oliver Burkeman
Jacob Pettit added 4mo ago
“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.” — Seneca
Jacob Pettit added 4mo ago
“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”-Marcus Aurelius
Jacob Pettit added 4mo ago