People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
~Søren Kierkegaard, author of Provocations
HAPPINESS
Your mood vs your reality [All Marketers Are Liars]
, Seth’s Blog | Tweet
Who is happy? Are rock stars, billionaires or recently-funded entrepreneurs happier? What about teenagers with clear skin?
RUNNING
Kilian Jornet, sky runner [Run or Die
], The New Yorker | Tweet
Crouched over a Jetboil camp stove at the base of Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in the Western Hemisphere at 22,831 feet above sea level, Kílian Jornet Burgada prepared himself tea. A swoosh of snow blew off the triangular peak looming nine thousand feet overhead, where he’d been a few hours earlier. Jornet showed no fatigue from that morning’s training run: after camping halfway up the mountain the previous night, he ran up to the summit and all the way back down to base camp.
CAREERS
Ten more reasons why you should quit your job and work for yourself, Medium | Tweet
I want to live. To pursue the things that make my heart beat faster.The things that get me excited at night and motivate me to push all boundaries. I want to be free. To have the luxury of exploring my passions and doing more of the things I love. It’s not an easy thing to do. And yes, it involves big risk and a lot of uncertainty. But still — it is possible and do-able in every single way. And because of that, I decided to write ten more reasons why you should quit your job and work for yourself instead. Whether or not you decide to do so is up to you.
ART
Van Gogh and the decision that changed art history, BBC
| Tweet
In 1878 Van Gogh was a struggling would-be preacher. At his lowest ebb, he began to draw. Alastair Sooke looks back at this pivotal moment in history.
READING
How reading transforms us [Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction
], NYT | Tweet
MOST writing seeks to influence you to think or feel how the author wants you to think or feel. The article you are reading now is no exception. We want you to think about certain things in a certain way. But there’s another kind of influence, not typically associated with writing, that works in a different fashion. Here, you don’t try to make people think or feel in any particular way. Instead, you try to get them to be themselves.
PSYCHOLOGY
Is it possible to accidentally plagiarize? [Give and Take
], Science of us | Tweet
Yesterday, Vulture posted about Sam Smith’s legal troubles over his hit “Stay With Me,” a song with a melody that sounds pretty darn close to Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” (You can compare the two songs for yourselfhere, if you like.) Reports indicate that Smith and his team were very willing to work with Petty & Co. to reach a settlement out of court; as one source said to NME about the situation, “It wasn’t a deliberate thing, musicians are just inspired by other artists.”
THE MIND
Yes, walking through a doorway really does make you forget–here’s why, Forbes | Tweet
More often than I care to admit, I’ll walk from one room to another with a clear vision in mind of whatever I need to do once I get there, but then I get there and can’t remember why I started. The only thing that happened between my first movement and my last is that I walked through a doorway. Surely that has nothing at all to do with forgetting something I knew just moments before, right? Wrong, says new research.
SCIENCE
A scientist’s defense of free will [A Different Universe
], The Creativity Post | Tweet
Our commonsensical view holds that everything we do in life is a choice and we are totally free to choose between the options which we think are available to us. Many scientists, however, see a fundamental problem with the conventional wisdom about free will and claim that it is nothing more than an illusion.
WRITING
Pyrrhic Victory: Definition and Examples for writers, The Write Practice | Tweet
Calling the ending a bummer is an understatement. Calling it a Pyrrhic victory would be very accurate.
Is your story suffering from ‘Convenience Factor’?, Jennifer Blanchard | Tweet
Has this ever happened in your story: Your character is on a quest to find a missing watch. He spent the last three scenes retracing steps, questioning bystanders and searching high and low. Then he finds himself at home, trying to piece together the clues, when all of a sudden in walks his sister’s best friend’s mom. She’s holding a clue in her hand that will solve everything. She gives it to the him.