Medwyn Goodall, "Invocation Part 2"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Sunday, May 2, 2021
"A Look to the Heavens"
"If our Sun were part of this star cluster, the night sky would glow like a jewel box of bright stars. This cluster, known as M53 and cataloged as NGC 5024, is one of about 250 globular clusters that survive in our Galaxy. Most of the stars in M53 are older and redder than our Sun, but some enigmatic stars appear to be bluer and younger. These young stars might contradict the hypothesis that all the stars in M53 formed at nearly the same time. These unusual stars are known as blue stragglers and are unusually common in M53. After much debate, blue stragglers are now thought to be stars rejuvenated by fresh matter falling in from a binary star companion.
By analyzing pictures of globular clusters like the featured image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers use the abundance of stars like blue stragglers to help determine the age of the globular cluster and hence a limit on the age of the universe. M53, visible with a binoculars towards the constellation of Bernice's Hair (Coma Berenices), contains over 250,000 stars and is one of the furthest globulars from the center of our Galaxy."
“Hustled Through Life”
“Hustled Through Life”
by Paul Rosenberg
“Most people, sad to say, are too rushed, frightened, and confused to think about what they really want out of life. They are hustled through school, forced into long-term decisions before they’re ready to face them, then held to those decisions by fear and shame. They choose from a limited set of options, and they know that change will be punished. Eventually they get old and find time to think, but by then they can’t bear to question too deeply; that would jeopardize their self-worth, and they haven’t time to rebuild it.
For an intelligent, creative, and expansive species like ours, this rush to nowhere is among the greatest of evils. And yet it continues, mostly unquestioned. At no point in the usual Western life do we stop, take some serious time for ourselves, and think about the overall:
• What’s life about anyway? What’s the point of what we do?
• What’s the purpose of a career? Why should I care about it above everything else?
• Why should I glorify the existing system? Why should I agree to support it?
• Who paid for everything I learned in school?
• Should I have a family? If so, why? If not, why not?
• What do I think is fun? Does it really coincide with the beer ads on TV?
• What’s the purpose of being like everyone else? Why am I so afraid to be different?
We don’t address such questions. Rather, we’re pushed past them. Even in a church or synagogue – places where larger questions are supposed to be addressed – the person in the pulpit wants us to become and/or remain a member of the congregation; their job depends upon it. There are true ministers and rabbis, but for most it’s all too easy to push their audience into what’s convenient. As a result, we see little motivation in the modern West, save for the basest of motivators: things that match a line from the Bible that says, “Whose god is their belly.”
Mind you, I’m not against wealth, good food, or sex. I think those are fine things. They are not, however, the whole of life. We are much bigger than that. We ought not be limited to belly-level aspirations. But when we’re rushed, that’s all we’re able to see.
Status and Fear: The two big motivators we face in this rush through life – fear and status – are both negative. Fear is a manipulation technology; people who make you afraid are hacking your mind. They want you to ignore reason and obey them fast. (I wish I could cover this in depth here, but we haven’t space. Please see issue #54 of my subscription newsletter.) When we’re afraid, we make our worst choices. Put plainly, fear makes us stupid. But we encounter it on a daily basis… and it destroys us by inches.
Status is the compulsion to compare ourselves with others, and whether we’re looking for the ways we’re better than others or looking for our shortcomings, it is deeply destructive. It’s also irrational, but the advertising business would crash without it and advertisers currently own the collective eyeballs of humanity.
Fear and status are, in a broad sense, drugs, and if you had a choice between smoking pot every day or being on fear and status every day, I’d definitely recommend the pot.
Confusion: Let’s be clear on something: Nearly every adult in the West will agree that politicians are liars and thieves… and yet they obey them without question. Is there any possibility we’d do such things if we weren’t harried and confused? When we are confused, we pass over our own minds and their deliberations. There’s an old joke: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?” But that’s precisely what confusion does to us, and under the pressures of confusion and authority, most people will ignore their own eyes.
Such things do not happen to people who are calm and confident. But the existing hierarchies of the West couldn’t function with a calm and confident populace; their operations require people to be frightened, confused, and blindly chasing status.
As a Result… As a result, most of us hurry through life, never knowing why. We live as others do, simply because that path is streamlined for us, exposing us to a minimal level of fear and shame. But that path does something else: It keeps us from experiencing ourselves. Seldom has this problem been put more succinctly than in this quote from Albert Einstein: “Small is the number of them who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”
Stop following the crowd. Turn your back on the popular script. Stop feeding at the same trough as everyone else. Break away and learn to see with your own eyes, to feel with your own heart. Don’t conform. Let people criticize you. Decide for yourself what your life will be about. Make it matter.”
"A True Mother..."
"For many great deeds are accomplished in times of squalid struggle. There is a kind of stubborn, unrecognized courage which in the lowest depths tenaciously resists the pressures of necessity and ill-doing; there are noble and obscure triumphs observed by no one, unacclaimed by any fanfare. Hardship, loneliness, and penury are a battlefield which has its own heroes, sometimes greater than those lauded in history. Strong and rare characters are thus created; poverty nearly always a foster-mother, may become a true mother, distress may be the nursemaid of pride, and misfortune the milk that nourishes great spirits."
- Victor Hugo
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/2/21: "Markets, A Look Ahead: This Week, Two Critical Things To Watch!"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/2/21:
"Markets, A Look Ahead:
This Week, Two Critical Things To Watch!"
The Poet: Robinson Jeffers, “Be Angry at the Sun”
“Be Angry at the Sun”
“That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept,
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you.
Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people,
Those warriors,
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies,
the passionate Man plays his part;
the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and dupes
to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.”
Yours is not theirs.”
- Robinson Jeffers, 1941
"I Can't Convince Myself..."
“I can’t convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.”
- Kenneth Smith
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
- Oscar Wilde
“Why Not Despair?”
“Why Not Despair?”
"“To view our times as decadent and dangerous, to mistrust the government, to imagine that those in power as not concerned with our best interests is not paranoid but perceptive; to be depressed, angry or confused about such things is not delusional but a sign of consciousness. Yet our culture suggests otherwise. But if all this is true, then why not despair? The simple answer is this: despair is the suicide of imagination. Whatever reality presses upon us, there still remains the possibility of imagining something better, and in this dream remains the frontier of our humanity and its possibilities To despair is to voluntarily close a door that has not yet shut. The task is to bear knowledge without it destroying ourselves, to challenge the wrong without ending up on its casualty list. “You don’t have to change the world,” the writer Colman McCarthy has argued. “Just keep the world from changing you.”
Oddly, those who instinctively understand this best are often those who seem to have the least reason to do so – survivors of abuse, oppression, and isolation who somehow discover not so much how to beat the odds, but how to wriggle around them. They have, without formal instruction, learned two of the most fundamental lessons of psychiatry, philosophy, and religion:
You are not responsible for that into which you were born...
You are responsible for doing something about it.
These individuals move through life like a skilled mariner in a storm rather than as a victim at a sacrifice. Relatively unburdened by pointless and debilitating guilt about the past, uninterested in the endless regurgitation of the unalterable, they free themselves to concentrate upon the present and the future. They face the gale as a sturdy combatant rather than as cowering supplicant.”
- Sam Smith
"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 5/23/21"
"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 5/23/21"
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“When you don’t have the data and you don’t have
the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call."
SUN MAY 23, AT 1:00 PM: "Fauci Finally Admits COVID-19 May Have Come From Wuhan Lab, 'Not Convinced' Of Natural Origin"
SUN MAY 23, AT 2:00 PM: "Wuhan Lab Workers Were 'So Sick They Sought Hospitalization' According To US Intelligence" "They may represent 'the first known cluster...'"
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Updated May 23, 2021, 10:08 A.M. E.T.
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 166,815,600
people, according to official counts, including 33,126,900 Americans.
Globally at least 3,455,400 have died.
Updated May 23, 2021, 10:08 A.M. E.T.
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"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases,
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
- https://covidtracking.com/
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases,
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
- https://covidtracking.com/
"The individual comes face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent."
- J. Edgar Hoover
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"The 'Cases' We’re Not Hearing About"
by Eric Peters
"We have heard endlessly, practically every 15 minutes – about “the cases!” “the cases!” – of positive tests. But almost nothing about the cases of people becoming very sick and some of them very dead after being injected with the “vaccines.” Plural; there are at least three. Which is a weird thing in itself, when you think about it. Why three?
Doesn’t that at least triple the odds of their being a problem? And of figuring out what it is, if there seems to be one? And there is at least one admitted-to problem – that of blood clot formation in some of the victim-recipients of these concoctions. Who (to be fair to the pharmaceutical cartel) failed to exercise the due diligence normally expected of anyone buying a used car; they didn’t even check for “Bondo.” Instead, they simply rolled up their sleeve and allowed themselves to be injected with an unknown substance with unknown risks. Which is Jim Jonesian, almost. The mindless, even hysterical Faith is certainly the same.
The only real difference – ironically – is that the latter-day injected want (presumably) to live. And yet, they are shockingly reckless with their lives. They have no idea what is being shot into them- because no one does. Except perhaps those who made what is being shot into them. And yet, they line up like it’s Black Friday and the latest GameBoy is on the shelves.
It is an interesting symptom of the sickness – the mental illness – going around. On the one hand, literally hysterical fear of a physical sickness that is known to have an extremely low risk of death for most people; on the other, an equally hysterical eagerness of these same people to assume an unknown risk they’ve been told – italicized, to make the point – is “safe and effective,” two things that cannot yet be known given the fact that these “vaccines” are much too new to have any kind of established track record to make such claims, nor prior human trails to support such claims.
We are supposed to just trust the pharmaceutical cartel – which has immunized itself from any liability for the harms its vaccines may cause going forward and which has an established track record of causing them in the past. Would you buy a used car on that basis?
It is a fact – inarguable – that these “vaccines” are not safe, for at least some of the thousands of people the CDC admits have suffered death coincident to being injected and the tens of thousands of “adverse” effects the CDC has also acknowledged – but the public hears very little about this from the Fear Organ that emitted a juggernaut of hysteria about “the cases! the cases!”... of positive tests.
This disparity ought to raise some eyebrows, call into question the motives of the grinders of the Fear Organ. All that concern about hypothetical “granny” dying because someone who wasn’t sick didn’t wear a “mask” to buy groceries. Almost no concern at all about the actual people who’ve actually died – or become very sick – after coming into contact with a Needle.
Parents who would never let their kid ride a tricycle without a helmet or walk to school are unworried about them being injected with god-knows-what for the sake of risk that is for them so attenuated as to be all-but-nonexistent. It is all very...interesting.
Perhaps even more than we realize – yet.
What follows is admittedly anecdotal but I am personally vouching for it since I personally know the people involved.
My sister reports the case of her old high school friend’s mom – neither elderly nor previously sick – suffering a stroke shortly after being injected with one of the “vaccines.”
The teller at my bank – whom I’ve known for years – inadvertently gave me a large sum of extra money when I went to cash a check the other day; when I went to return the money, she told me she had been “feeling foggy” and having “trouble concentrating”...after being injected.
A good friend of mine is a nurse at a VA hospital. He reports that several of the people he works with – not patients, staff – have had “bad” reactions to the Holy Anointing, including one who became extremely sick and had to go the hospital for treatment.
That’s a lot of people within my own small orbit. It is much more concerning to me than a “virus” that hasn’t killed anyone I know or even gotten anyone I know seriously sick. Including myself, notwithstanding my utter failure to “practice” any sickness kabuki whatsoever. I do know a few who, over the course of the past year, felt not-so-great for a few days. Which is – which was – a quite normal thing in the Before Time, when catching a bug and having a cough and body aches for a few days wasn’t cause for hysteria.
But why no hysteria emanating from the Fear Organ over the fact that previously healthy people are becoming not-healthy (and worse) after being injected? This hysteria would be legitimate, too – because unlike the ‘Rona, which is almost exclusively a threat to the very elderly and the already sick, the vaccines are a threat to the healthy and not-elderly.
Yet – strangely, if one assumes that “safety” and “health” truly are the motivating factors behind all of this – the injections continue to be pushed on the healthy population. Clear signals are being sent from corporations and the government (they are increasingly the same thing, in different form) that those who do not submit to being Anointed will be debarred from air travel – which many must use for their work and which is the only practical way for many to see family members living far away – their access to “public” areas and so on denied. It is a clear threat of repercussions – piled on top of the manufactured threat of a “virus” that has been deliberately blown out of all proportion. Which serves the purpose of terrifying millions of healthy people into willingly lining up to be injected.
One might ask – why? Why the hysteric urgency to mass-vaccinate healthy people who stand literally almost no chance of dying from the ‘Rona with vaccines that may well stand a higher chance of doing them permanent harm? Given the percolating facts about problems with these vaccines, why not dial it back a bit?
Perhaps it is sensible for the relatively small number of people who do stand a more than 0.0-something chance of dying from the ‘Rona to assume the risk of being injected. Maybe, on balance, it is worth it – for them. Like chemo, for those with cancer. As a last resort – to avoid dying. After having tried everything else. But it makes no sense for the the healthy population – especially children – to be injected...unless there is some other objective. Given the facts about the vaccines – and the suppression of the facts about the ‘Rona – it is something worth considering.
There is a quote making the rounds online attributed to Jacques Attali, who was an adviser to French President Francois Mitterand back in the ’80s. Its provenance may be questionable but the sentiments it expresses ring true: “The future will be about finding a way to reduce the population. Of course, we will not be able to execute people or build camps. We get rid of them by making them believe it is for their own good. We will find or cause something, a pandemic targeting certain people, a real economic crisis or not, a virus affecting the old or the elderly, it doesn’t matter, the weak and the fearful will succumb to it. The stupid will believe in it and ask to be treated. We will have taken care of having planned the treatment, a treatment that will be the solution.” God help us, if it is."
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Related, highly recommended:
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Related:
"How It Really Is, And Will Be"
And how it all ends for the good ship World Economy...
Full screen recommended.
Any questions?
Saturday, May 1, 2021
"Shortage Of Everything Is Here! Prices Are Soaring: Prepare Yourself For Panic And Chaos!"
Full screen recommended.
"Shortage Of Everything Is Here! Prices Are Soaring:
Prepare Yourself For Panic And Chaos!"
by Epic Economist
"If you are amongst those who have been waiting months for an order to come in, you should get prepared for even longer waiting periods, skyrocketing prices, widespread shortages, and less variety of an increasing range of products as strains in the US supply chain are compromising manufacturers' and retailers' ability to keep up with the exploding demand. And if you're thinking about buying a new car, smartphone, or any domestic appliance, you might face the longest waiting line and the highest price surges in the market as a global chip shortage continues to delay the production and delivery of several goods.
The semiconductor shortage was initially concentrated in the auto industry. Last year, after the sanitary outbreak burst in America and triggered the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, global supply chains faced a major breakdown and carmakers decided to reduce orders for chips anticipating a decline in demand, while tech companies - seeing their sales jump amid lockdown mandates - ran to ensure as many chips as they could. However, the health crisis and government stimulus have changed consumer shopping patterns, and demand for cars never ceased to grow.
Right now, as the shortage is going from bad to worse, it has spread from cars to consumer electronics. According to Goldman Sachs, 169 US industries embed semiconductors in their products. And considering the largest part of chip production remains concentrated in a handful of suppliers, supply chain experts have been warning that the crunch is likely to last until 2022. The constraints are already driving up the price of vehicles across the country particularly because car dealers are seeing stock levels sharply drop. In March, the average price for a new car has jumped to $37,200, marking an 8.4% increase from the same period a year ago.
Plastics and resins and a series of other raw materials, including steel and aluminum, are also facing major shortages and consumers are already trying to judge how rising prices and material shortages are likely to play out during the second half of the year. But it’s not just chips and raw materials. A lot of things consumers buy on a regular basis are disappearing from grocery shelves while others are registering price hikes while inflation subtly eats away at our wallets. Even though raw materials have seen the biggest price increases, the cost of many household goods has started to creep up as well, as the supply chain crisis is also impacting what’s available at grocery stores.
At this point, you probably have noticed that the variety on grocery shelves has been dwindling. Companies are strategizing and prioritizing some products to optimize production. The new consumer patterns have pushed brands like Coca-Cola to discontinue products much faster than they normally would. And experts warn food and beverage companies will keep shrinking their portfolios this year, meaning that your favorite cookie, soup, or soda flavor may soon disappear from the stores.
Walmart, for instance, dramatically diminished their offering to unburden their supply chain during the health crisis. The retailer reduced most product categories, just maintaining two options in each - their own in-house brand and the best seller category brand, and this trend will certainly persist throughout this year. Shortages of canned goods are expected to include a wide range of staples, varying from canned vegetables to soft drinks, and craft beer. Most vegetables are grown seasonally and harvested once a year, and after supplies are gone, "you can't simply produce more of it," explained Gus Lebiak, president and COO of Krasdale Foods, a grocery wholesaler in New York City.
Business Insider reported that bacon and hot dogs and several pork products might become scarce in the summer. "Bargains on meat might be tough for consumers to find this summer," said the analyst. "So my advice to consumers would be to stock up when you find a good deal."
If you haven't started prepping just yet, you should take the chance to stock up on your favorite staples before stores completely ran out of supply. Given that the supply chain crisis is getting worse by the day, there's no end in sight for the ongoing product shortages. And the longer you wait, the highest will be the risk to find inflated prices and a very limited variety of flavors and brands. The time has come for Americans to confront the effects caused by the trillions of printed money that are flooding the system. Heated demand and supply shortages will undoubtedly reflect the rapid decline of our purchasing power, so get ready because the next stage of the US economic collapse will bring about challenges you might have never imagined."
Must Watch! "Trouble Is Coming; Economy Is Crippled; Addiction To Free Money; Households Depend On Free Money"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe,
"Trouble Is Coming; Economy Is Crippled; Addiction To Free Money;
Households Depend On Free Money"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Braided and serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Gemini.
Like its mythological namesake, the nebula is associated with a dramatic transformation. The planetary nebula phase represents a final stage in the evolution of low mass stars like the sun as they transform themselves from red giants to hot white dwarf stars and in the process shrug off their outer layers. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa's transforming star is the faint one near the center of the overall bright crescent shape. In this deep telescopic view, fainter filaments clearly extend above and right of the bright crescent region. The Medusa Nebula is estimated to be over 4 light-years across."
The Poet: Czeslaw Milosz, “A Song On The End Of The World”
“A Song On The End Of The World”
“On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.”
~ Czeslaw Milosz
“88 Truths I’ve Learned About Life”
“88 Truths I’ve Learned About Life”
by David Cain
“In the early days of this blog I published what I thought was a throwaway post, entitled “88 Important Truths I’ve Learned About Life”. It was nothing but 88 sweeping aphorisms I had collected as they occurred to me, delivered with a bit of snark. But it was a huge hit and still brings new people to Raptitude. Today I can’t bear to look at it. It’s just too preachy. But I understand the appeal. It’s fun to throw down an aphorism, and ask yourself if you really believe it. Here’s what I’ve learned (I think) in the seven years since. Also quite preachy.
1. Growth means doing things that are hard for you right now. There’s no other way.
2. The news doesn’t show you how the world is. It shows you whatever will make you watch more news.
3. Metal tools and utensils cost a lot more, but last about twenty times as long as plastic ones.
4. Good listeners are rare. When you find one, keep them in your life. And pay it forward.
5. Nobody sees you the way you see yourself, which should probably come as a relief.
6. Often nobody wants to make decisions for the group. Everyone appreciates the person willing to propose a time or a place.
7. Every generation thinks the one that came before them and the one that came after them are the worst.
8. For whatever reason, everywhere in the world human beings are willing to spend enormous amounts of money and time on alcohol.
9. Almost all casual photos would be improved simply by getting closer. You don’t need to get people’s entire bodies in the frame.
10. You don’t really know someone until you know what they struggle with most.
11. Not long ago, tea, sugar and spices were really hard for ordinary people to get. But they’re still as delicious as they always were. So enjoy!
12. If you spend a week tracking how you actually spend your waking hours, you will probably be shocked.
13. Friendships take work to maintain, and it’s possible the other person is doing all the work.
14. One way to add hours to your week, and months to your life, is to put your phone somewhere beyond arm’s reach.
15. Often, to make a breakthrough with something, you just need to stick with it a little longer than you usually do. Even five or ten minutes.
16. You can shave a decade or two off your working life by understanding compound interest and the long-term value of your purchases.
17. It’s almost impossible to convince someone of something once they see you as being on the “other side”.
18. Losing weight really is as simple as reducing the number of calories you eat. Not easy, but very simple.
19. Often we convince ourselves that we have less freedom than we really do, so that we don’t have to be responsible for doing the right thing.
20. Listening to the blues really does help when you have the blues.
21. I said this last time, but as a reminder: it’s worth retrying foods you didn’t like the first time.
22. We all have unconscious biases, even nasty ones about race, class and sex. Don’t believe anyone who says they don’t have any.
23. We are all thinking and ruminating nearly all day long, which is why we constantly seek activities that can relieve us from it, like music, TV, drinking, sex and death sports.
24. Romantic love might be a pretty recent invention, so don’t get too bent out of shape if your experience doesn’t fit the mold.
25. When you quit smoking you immediately realize how bad you stank all those years.
26. Daily meditation has a way of making solutions to many of your problems suddenly obvious.
27. “Comfort zone” is an annoying term but it sure is useful. It’s the only place to find solutions to your longest-running problems.
28. Everything has more detail to be found, if you take some time to look even closer. Especially plants.
29. The main reason we argue online is because it feels good, but we like to imagine it’s also somehow noble or helpful.
30. “Act the way you want to feel” actually works a lot of the time.
31. One thing nobody regrets is becoming a fit, active person.
32. Our beliefs about right and wrong come from mostly from intuitions and gut feelings, not logic.
33. We evolved to go days without food. Missing a meal shouldn’t be a big deal, but if you skip the odd lunch people will assume you have an eating disorder.
34. New York City is a pretty neat place. Don’t die without visiting, if possible.
35. Pretty much all double albums would have been better as single albums. Except maybe The Wall.
36. Propaganda’s effects can last forever. Two hundred years later, most people still think Marie Antoinette said “Let them eat cake”.
37. It’s really liberating, after trying to look smart for so many years, to start freely admitting when you’re wrong and when you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
38. Every household should have an aloe plant. Don’t wait until you burn yourself to go get one.
39. We’re all going to die, and on the whole that is definitely a good thing. Wouldn’t it be terrible if all of this never ended? It would also get very crowded.
40. John Waters was on to something when he said, “If you go home with someone, and they don’t have any books, don’t f**k them.”
41. Voting is only one of many avenues individuals have for shaping the direction of society, and it’s an extremely low-leverage one.
42. The ability to make good art depends a lot on your willingness to make lots of bad art in between.
43. We tend to think more about negative events than positive ones. Knowing that is helpful, in case you think there’s something wrong with you.
44. A decent definition for self-love is “Doing for yourself what you would want your kids to do for themselves.”
45. Not making your bed in the morning sets the bar kind of low for the rest of the day.
46. Having a defensible opinion, on any topic at all, actually requires a ton of work. Mostly reading.
47. Everything you own has an effect on your psyche. Less stuff makes for a less disturbed mind in general.
48. Bachelors, if you want to class your place up a bit, a few plants goes a long way.
49. We are all atheists, in a sense. Every person denies the existence of either most or all of the gods that have been proposed.
50. The most insightful news source in America is The Onion.
51. Meeting and/or staying with locals completely changes the travel experience.
52. The best and worst thing about life is all the other people. Well, mostly.
53. Becoming exceptional at something is probably just a matter of making #15 your normal way of doing things.
54. Going for a walk almost always alters the mood, at least a little.
55. One quality everyone finds attractive is competence, at anything really. Experts are super sexy.
56. We would probably be more moral creatures if we acknowledged how difficult fairness and compassion actually is for members of our species.
57. Lasting habit changes always involve some kind of identity shift. Running every day stops being a grind only once you begin to feel like a runner.
58. To pass easily through crowded sidewalks, stare just above everyone’s hairline and keep your speed up. They will get out of the way.
59. Not hiding it when you’re wrong commands more respect than always appearing to be right.
60. We are all selfish, to a pretty alarming degree. If you’ve ever bought a cocktail, you bought it instead of eyeglasses or medicine for some poor kid somewhere.
61. Whoever invented the zipper was a goddamn genius.
62. When a party has degenerated into people showing each other their favorite YouTube videos, it’s time to call a cab.
63. Future societies will laugh at us for how we let advertising cover nearly every available public space.
64. Other people, generally, can see solutions to your problems more clearly than you can. (Use this to your advantage.)
65. Fears get stronger whenever you heed them, and weaker whenever you act in spite of them. This is a simple law you can depend on.
66. Most of the difficulty and awkwardness associated with a task is stacked right at the beginning, so it’s over with quickly unless you chicken out really early on.
67. Listening attentively to someone’s problem without trying to solve it is a skill that’s greatly appreciated, and is worth practicing.
68. Humans are too complex for everything in their lives to run smoothly at once; it’s probably normal to be a mess in at least a few areas.
69. Lots of people you know are hiding addictions, and you’d never guess who.
70. There will always be enough suffering in the world to horrify you a million times over, so it may not be worth dwelling on at times when you’re not doing anything about it.
71. There’s a kind of low-brow pleasure we get from being angry and indignant, and very often there’s nothing else we gain from it.
72. Most classic novels are very readable, but we think of them as dry and awful because of the ones forced on us in high school.
73. There is a paradoxical relationship between ease and difficulty; sticking to easy things makes life hard, while doing hard things makes life easy.
74. Posture has a predictable and immediate effect on mood.
75. Goals have to improve your life in the short-term in order for you to keep at it all the way to the long-term rewards.
76. It can be really freeing to see a given present moment as though it’s the beginning of your life. In a sense, it is.
77. People usually like it when you ask them for advice in their areas of expertise. Also, #64 makes this a smart thing to do.
78. How free you feel in day-to-day life depends a lot on your willingness to open up to discomfort when it happens. That can be practiced.
79. There’s no need to eat iceberg lettuce in a world with available romaine, baby spinach, arugula and endive. Branch out!
80. By the time voices are raised, communication has stopped.
81. A few fancy, high-quality grocery purchases are still way cheaper than even a crappy restaurant experience, and there will be leftovers.
82. People that lie to others in your presence would probably lie to you just as easily.
83. We overvalue pithiness because it’s immediately gratifying, and we undervalue nuance because it takes too much work. But you should share this post anyway.
84. Keeping secrets is really hard for almost everyone. The secret-keeper eventually confides in one other person, thinking they won’t do the same thing.
85. We tend to think the person we are is the person we’ve been so far.
86. Self-doubt is hard to deal with but it does keep our standards high. The worst art is made by people who think everything they do is great.
87. We always think that our latest dilemma is the one that will destroy us, but so far none of them have. The sky has fallen a thousand times already.
88. Don’t worry, everybody else is crazy too.”
"Acceptance..."
"Acceptance is a crucial step forward for those who prefer the idea of living this life over simply existing within it. Accept all that you've said and what you've done, because you cannot change your past. Accept the idea of the unknown, because the future is the unknown waiting patiently to reveal itself. Accept the person you have become thus far in your journey, because you are the only person who will be there with you when you finish it. Do all of this so that you may never find yourself having to accept regret that haunts you at two a.m., leaving you sweaty and broken hearted. All you have is this minute; not this hour, or this day, or this year. Live in this minute so that you won't get stuck simply existing with your guilty past, or with nothing but anxiety for the future."
- Margaret E. Rise
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