simon

"Every day, people are using the fossil fuel equivalent of all [now nearly twice] the plant matter that grows on land and in the oceans over the course of a whole year," ecologist Jeff Dukes explained.

In another calculation, Dukes determined that "the amount of plants that went into the fossil fuels we burned since the Industrial Revolution began

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.

– Theodore Isaac Rubin

Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.

(Richard Feynman)

How to avoid cynicism:

Act in ways opposite to your instinct. If you hate something, find out more about it. Again ask 'What is this?', 'Who made this?', 'Who is this for?' Genuinely. Never stop doing this"

-via @being_on_line

Honesty is a strange aesthetic criterion to prioritize. Great confessional art was never about accurately representing reality, but about giving voice to the process of experiencing it—how we feel, not what we’re feeling, making lucid that which usually eludes full expression.

(One of my favorite pieces of parenting advice: You have to give yourself what you needed when you were a kid, and give your kids what they need now.)

Closed questions are also bad questions. Instead of surrendering power, the questioner is imposing a limit on how the question can be answered.