David Pennington
@davidpennington
I write stuff. I’d like to write more stuff. Currently: reclaiming my brain.
David Pennington
dtpennington.com
Dr. Gage studies how certain activities can stimulate the growth of new cells in the brain. “I think if you’re doing complex work that involves making decisions and planning, that may matter more than whether you’re using your hands,” he said.
Working With Your Hands Is Good for Your Brain - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Everything is fake, the world is a construct. Reconstruct it.
Our strength should not be measured by our ability to push away our tech, but by our ability to hold and live with tech in peace.
Matt Klein • Unplugging Is Not the Solution You Want
PTSD is literally defined as being “marked by an inability to construct a coherent story of our past.”
Phoebe Tickell • New Deep Narratives: We Need New Stories of What It Means to Be Human
But that’s not why you should write.
You should write because when you know that you’re going to write, it changes the way you live.
You should write because when you know that you’re going to write, it changes the way you live.
James Somers • More People Should Write
Side projects as the key to the good life By Marty Bell • 31 Jul 2025
When I was 13, I created a chat room for teenagers to talk about art and photography (the tagline was, if I remember, “The future of art but we don’t give a fuck”). I think that was the first self-made project I put out into the world, and it taught me one of the most important
... See moreTo be a gardener is to give a fuck. To be a gardener is to be invested in a place—to know it, to protect it, to be present to it. How can we protect and heal ourselves and our planet if we’re not willing to step into, and value, the role of the gardener?
Wonderground • Audacious Gardening: On Daring to Care
Regaining the connection between human and nature, so maybe the instinct of human nature can finally take over.
the internet isn’t some alien force that descended upon us.
It’s just us, but bigger.
It’s just us, but bigger.
Joan Westenberg • The Original Sin of Everything
So this is what’s happened to the world: optimization trumps human preference. The people who want to win the argument are effectively prepared to ignore human truths to preserve the integrity of the artificial model.