Divya
@divsdoo
Divya
“The Boyfriend” was fascinating to me. Born to a pair of Soho artists of little acclaim and fading wealth in the 70s, he grew up in a well-heeled bohemian milieu that haunted him. In this scene, he was tortured by his own mediocrity: not lucky enough to be a nepo baby, not talented or driven enough to create the extraordinary life to which he felt... See more
12/21 - girls' trip to the gulag
Do not become or end up with someone like this
Communities of artists form more or less spontaneously, and that creates the one thing the rich can’t passively generate (although they can attempt to ‘buy’ it) and crave more than any other, culture; ‘the cool’, TASTE; the urban picturesque.
- Comment on Youtube about gentrification in art.
Reciprocity in Nature examples:
Crown shyness—A unique behavior of certain trees where they avoid overlapping their canopies to maximize group access to resources
Mycorrhizal Networks and Trees—Underground, tree roots are laced with fungal filaments that share nutrients and chemical messages
Coral Reefs and Algae—Coral polyps build limestone skeletons
"If that's all you know, if that's the world you've grown up in, you cannot see the boundaries for which you have to run... You cannot see what you have to rebel against, and instead you just try, sometimes heroically, to find love, friendship… Something meaningful and decent within the horrific fate that you’ve been given."
- Kazuo Ishiguro
on presence and on agency
Something I’ve been thinking of lately: none of us is agentic in every pocket of life. Parts of our psyche mature on different timelines, so the initiative we show in one aspect can vanish in another.
Someone can look outrageously in charge in area X, then fold like a lawn chair in area Y.
Take Herzog's memoir, where he writes about bolting off to
... See moreSo, which is it? Should you follow your curiosity and trust the process? Or should you define a clear goal and pursue it agentically?
Walking up and down the road by our farm, I conclude that it is a false dichotomy. I can have goals and unfold (it might even be that I need goals to unfold), but it has to be a specific kind of goal.
What tends to go
... See moreIf I want to explore something, I never think about attending a class; I do the reading on my own or seek out experts for conversations.
- Herzog
Herzog mapped the actual landscape and found the shortest path to his specific goals. (And his goals were very specific. He never wanted to be “a filmmaker,” he wanted to make this film and then that film.)
Even if you can’t experience the thing directly, try going for information-dense sources with high amounts of detail and
facts
, and then reason up from those facts. On foreign policy, read books published by university presses -- not
The Atlantic
or
The Economist
or whatever. You can read those after you’ve developed a model of the thing yourself,... See more
facts
, and then reason up from those facts. On foreign policy, read books published by university presses -- not
The Atlantic
or
The Economist
or whatever. You can read those after you’ve developed a model of the thing yourself,... See more
nabeelqu.co • Nabeelqu
When understanding a new field, beware of starting off with resources that already have a narrative built in. It is better to use sources like textbooks that focus more on the facts and rich detail (i.e. zoomed in resources) then move to narrative-heavy sources to help critically judge them (zoomed out resources).
People who have not experienced the thing are unlikely to be generating
truth
. More likely, they’re resurfacing cached thoughts and narratives. Reading popular science books or news articles is not a substitute for understanding, and may make you stupider, by filling your mind with narratives and stories that don’t represent
your own synthesis
.
truth
. More likely, they’re resurfacing cached thoughts and narratives. Reading popular science books or news articles is not a substitute for understanding, and may make you stupider, by filling your mind with narratives and stories that don’t represent
your own synthesis
.