Impact comes from challenging expectations. Since expectations are always shaped by context, impact can only exist in a specific moment in time. There is no such thing as a lasting impact—only sparks that rarely become fire.

Some mornings, in a perfect world, you might wake up, have a coffee, finish meditation, and say, “Okay, today I’m going into the shop to work on a lamp.” This idea comes to you, you can see it, but to accomplish it you need what I call a “setup.” For example, you may need a working shop or a working painting studio. You may need a working music studio. Or a computer room where you can write something. It’s crucial to have a setup, so that, at any given moment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools to make it happen. If you don’t have a setup, there are many times when you get the inspiration, the idea, but you have no tools, no place to put it together. And the idea just sits there and festers. Over time, it will go away. You didn’t fulfill it—and that’s just a heartache.

—David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish

I’m impressed with the good translation of a fun book into a fun movie. Rocky’s “implementation” is spot on. Ryan Gosling’s acting carries the movie along. The script is perfect, not a wasted second—makes a two and half movie feel super fast.

The similarities in tone and development with The Martian are obvious, which makes the acting of Matt Damon and Ryan Gosling so parallel. Like two actors have worked on the same character (Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford implementing their versions of Jack Ryan.)

It doesn’t need to be comprehensive—it just needs to be effective enough to get you moving.

If I start journaling and then forget about it because I got pulled into action, that means it worked. But when I look back and see the gaps in the log, I can’t help feeling bad about it.

So just let that go.

This note is being typed in my computer.

Commited into a repo in Forgejo in my homelab.

Deployed from Forgejo into my site in homelab.

Served from my homelab.

One step closer to self-hosting everything!

A symbol is a bridge between the conscious and the unknown.
It carries a quiet resonance—the sense that something beyond words is being touched, and yet somehow understood.

The urge to watch something while I eat.

The urge to listen to something while I drive.

The urge to call someone when I’m reviewing tasks.

Just make it memorable.

Memory is what threads experience into a continuum.

Two things are memorable:

1. A good story.
2. A powerful image.

1. Form follows function
2. Design to facilitate action and connection
3. Hide complexity under the surface
4. But expose it to those interested

“The day starts when you go to sleep, not when you wake up.”

If I start late the task, I have to rush through it, I kill every possibility of a dead time, of margin.

That’s my recipe for dopamine that I’ve become addicted to.

If I’m to get any respite, I must get some margin, and that means I must be able to start early.

Focus on the start date, bring it forward, cultivate some margin.

The second part of Goethe’s quote tells us the stakes of this choice: “If I know how you spend your time,” he said, “then I know what might become of you.”

“The way you spend your days is, of course, the way you spend your life.”

If Medicine 2.0 is about reacting effectively to disease and recovering the patient, Medicine 3.0 is living to avoid disease in the first place.

There’s some psychology 2.0 and 3.0 as well: living in such a way that the mental friction doesn’t sink you into negative states.

The two most important characteristics of any tool or system we design are:

1. Quality
2. Composability

Quality is the level of care and attention given to the tool in relation to its intended use.

Composability is the ability of the tool to combine with other tools to form more complex solutions.

Perspective is gained by zooming out. When you zoom out you can see what was adjacent to the frame but not in the frame. Perspective is, therefore, gained by reflecting on what exists but is not shown/not said.

“Now for the evidence,” said the King, “and then the sentence”.

“No!” said the Queen, “first the sentence, and then the evidence!”

“Nonsense!” cried Alice, so loudly that everybody jumped, “the idea of having the sentence first!”

— Lewis Carroll, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”

Appreciation for the things we use.

It’s not what I have, or even what I want. It’s what I use.

What I use has a home — visible, accessible, within reach.

What I use gets worn. And wear is a badge of honor, a quiet kind of beauty.

The things I use carry the scars of work, the traces of a life well lived.

The Pricemaster is one of the best things I’ve watched in a long time. That contrast of ordinariness and awkwardness. The soundtrack elevating the experience. It is disturbing and funny at the same time. And the strange acceptance.

1. What was the best thing that happened yesterday?
2. Will this enlarge or diminish me?
3. Does this contribute to the variety of the world?
4. What would it look like to be done for the day?
5. What did you really want to say?

Individuation and integration are the two processes to become whole.

“When you arrive at a certain level of mastery, every action you take builds you up instead of wearing you down.”

No interest in the story anymore—too much hustle.

Not even in the gist, the headline skim.

What matters is the vibe: an elusive feeling, a lightning-strike of emotion.

Meaning reduced to its essence, where language breaks down.

A meditation on death. A spectacle too. Boyle knows how to craft an impressive image, a touching moment. Music was exceptional, as always.

Naming something can change our perception of it. We prime the brain to connect the thing to something. Suddenly we perceive it with a different lens.

Powerful thing naming is.

“We should all become masters.”

But masters of what?

Of that which absorbed us as children.

“A world which increasingly consists of destinations without journeys between them, a world which values only “getting somewhere” as fast as possible, becomes a world without substance.”
—Alan W. Watts, The Way of Zen

It’s a masterpiece.

The sense of overwhelm is asphyxiating. The story constantly branches, so that at any moment multiple crises are pressing down on Howard at once. If Greig Fraser mastered “dirty” photography in The Batman, the Safdie brothers master dirty dialogue here—overlapping, chaotic, and deliberately disorienting. The film is a rollercoaster that offers no respite. And Adam Sandler’s performance? I’m at a loss for words.

Efficiency often comes at the expense of diminishing the tangible experience of being in the world. It makes sense intellectually, but—as we are all learning (especially your audience!)—it does not make sense experientially.

You are an example of conscious living, Rajiv, and an inspiration to so many of us. Sacrificing the joy of lived experience for the expediency of results is not leading us to a better place.

(my comment to a YouTube video by Rajiv)

“He hel distracted conversations in the hall, always looking somewhere else, unsure what he was looking for—only that it wasn’t the conversation he was in.”

I couldn’t stop watching this show — that’s more than I can say for 99% of what gets made. The story keeps many possibilities open and builds genuine suspense — you’re always wondering what might happen next. I wasn’t a big fan of the ending, though; I expected more.

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

This could have been a straight comedy—Lebowski-style—but instead it becomes everything at once: action, drama, comedy, thriller. It’s amazing how PTA pulls this off.

It says a lot about the state of the world that the whole supremacists-versus-resistance thread has shades of parody and yet still feels completely believable.

The film also has some of the best car-chase sequences I’ve seen in years.

DiCaprio and Penn are on another level. Penn fully inhabits the weirdo role; DiCaprio absolutely nails his character, blending commitment, doubt, apathy, desperation, and exaltation.

“Is it not a pleasure to learn, and to practice what you have learned at the right time?

Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar?

Is he not a person of virtue who remains unresentful when others do not recognize him?”

—Confucius, Analects 1:1