David Pennington
@dtpennington
I write stuff. I’d like to write more stuff. Currently: reclaiming my brain.
David Pennington
dtpennington.com
Instantaneous access to everything obviously comes at a cost. The cost being that we all behave like demented Roman emperors, at once bored and deranged, summoning whatever we want at any time.
Catherine Shannon • Your Phone Is Why You Don't Feel Sexy
Persistently for the last twenty years the ideals of order or liberty have dwindled in our books; the ambitions of wit and eloquence have dwindled in our parliaments. Literature has purposely become less political; politics have purposely become less literary. General theories of the relation of things have thus been extruded from both; and we are
... See moreG. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton • Heretics
You might think of this chart as the shape of attention. After clicking to start, thousands rapidly exited, some immediately, some after a minute or two. But if you could make it past three minutes, you were more likely to finish than to give up. And once you hit five minutes, your odds of completing the exercise were very high. A quarter who... See more
Larry Buchanan • ‘Weird and Daunting’: 7,000 Readers Told Us How It Felt to Focus
Pretty much all new tech launched since 2003 or so has been a ten-dollar fix for a one-dollar problem.
The Internet is Destroying Your Attention: How to Survive the Attention Economy
highexistence.com
"The Chinese say you need three things for paintings: the hand, the eye and the heart,” says the painter David Hockney. “I think that remark is very, very good. Two won’t do. A good eye and heart is not enough, neither is a good hand and eye.”
Head, heart, hands
The solution to the atomization curse that both gives us significantly more time back, and makes us much happier, is to seek to reintegrate these various foci of life as much as possible .
Nat Eliason • De-Atomization is the Secret to Happiness
This obsession with the immediate “unburdening” of a thing you created is common in non-Japanese contexts, but I posit: The Japanese way is the correct way. Be an adult. Own your garbage. Garbage responsibility is something we’ve long since abdicated not only to faceless cans on street corners (or just all over the street, as seems to be the case... See more
Craig Mod • Garbage
1 The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2 It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3 It should do work that is clearly and demon-strably better than the one it replaces.
4 It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5 If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6 It
... See more