Clare

I read too much dense nonfiction and burned out the book reading part of my brain, and it massively impacted on my ability to read for pleasure, but do you know what immediately fixed that and led to my current 2-5 book a week reading spree? Reading old middle grade and YA novels I loved as a kid.

- if group meeting you are organising, be dictatorial on options + triage who needs to be there and who doesn't (ie. who you schedule around vs who can read the minutes/watch a recording)

i have a flow for this:
- if 1:1 meetings, use calendly or similar so the person can book what suits them
- if group meeting that you are not organising, have a link to a calendar view that is visible to others

YouTube video by ContraPoints CONSPIRACY | contrapoints

The number of good points per minute in this video is extremely high, which is wild because it is 2 hours and 40 minutes long.

youtu.be/teqkK0RLNkI?...

A hazy ball of white light fills the image. The ball is brighter toward the center of the image, becoming more diffuse toward the edges of the image. Bands of rusty-brown dust stretch across the core.

A spiral galaxy, seen tilted at a slight angle, on a dark background of space. It glows softly from its center and out to its edge. The disk is a broad swirl of dark-reddish dust webs and sparkling blue patches where stars have formed. Atop the center of the galaxy is a foreground star that appears very large and bright with four diffraction spikes emanating from it. The star is relatively close to Earth compared to the galaxy.

Wisps of pinkish-grey clouds fill the scene. Patches of dark dust obscure the glow. Bright, blue-white stars shine through the cloud.

An area of space filled with stars. Most of the stars are small, distant dots in a range of orange colors; closer stars shine with a bright glow and hold four thin diffraction spikes around them. These closer stars appear both bluish and reddish. Clouds from a nebula cover the left half of the scene, giving it a blue-greenish cast. More clouds also drift over the black background of space on the right side of the image.

hubble’s recent images 🌌

can’t believe this telescope is almost 35 years old and still giving us these BEAUTIFUL images of our universe 🥹

I wonder if there has to be a breaking point on that model, though. Optimising for addiction worked on our brains then, but our addiction-rattled brains might be different now. Or maybe this is a question of convenience eroding quality of existence; people still want to be fulfilled, right?

The idea that "intellectual life has been commodified" is resounding. I wonder if that could turn...if the so-called "productive" elements of the knowledge economy (information processing, data analysis, etc) are sucked up by AI, can we shift back to respecting inquiry for its own sake?

Brooks is responding to responses on his own article in the prior issue about "how the Ivy League ruined America"; it's an interesting article that rails against what my Education lecturers at uni described as "the neoliberalisation of education"---edu that hinges on standardised testing and such.

They select for the qualities that the meritocracy can quantify---but those aren't the qualities that matter. Intelligence is overrated, and temperament and desire are underrated." - David Brooks in The Commons in February's issue of The Atlantic

...But my argument is that our system doesn't even turn out ideal capitalists: Large numbers of new employees have to leave their firms because companies don't know what to look for in applicants...

"I do think universities churn out *knowledge workers* because intellectual life has been commodified. Students and workers are caught in the same system that wants us to live lives of total work....

Why do you say so? It seems to me the paper is careful about what it claims (see attached from the paper itself and editors' notes), but the PR is atrocious.

Australia too!

I am <24h into a week off Twitter and my brain feels....much, much, much (much much much) better.

Also missed being on a platform that doesn’t cause visceral pain!!!!

I missed being on a platform with scientists. Holy shit.

Gil—the paper does not (and is careful not to). There is a separate claim out of Microsoft now that they have supportive data that was presented on Feb 18 at a Station Q meeting, and that will be presented again at APS March Meeting.

Murukami’s latest works with this idea of “adjacent worlds”, and comes in two covers as a lovely homage. My local bookshop gave me both dustjackets—I think this is a delightful omen for 2025!

Green illustration is Takaya Katsuragawa; indigo is Jialun Deng.

and many other things!

- “Forest Picture” voetica.com/poem/7044
- “That sanity be kept” ramblingatthebridgehead.wordpress.com/2021/07/11/t...
- “Vision and Prayer” voetica.com/poem/5555
- “Fern Hill” voetica.com/poem/3807
by Dylan Thomas
- Shakespeare’s sonnets :)

- “Permanent Press” by Alice Friman (I loved you then / in the old way of longing. Four wars / nine recessions, ten presidents: patches.) www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...
- “Blues for Almost Forgotten Music” by Roxane Beth Johnson www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54418/...

Poetry:
- “Traveler, your footprints” by Antonio Machado www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58815/...
- “The Art of Disappearing” by Naomi Shihab Nye anthonywilsonpoetry.com/2014/07/22/l...

Very open to recommendations for 2024, especially in the vein of interesting fiction. I am suffering a little from too-many-books, and have a bit of a list going, but good recommendations that cut through the noise are welcome.

- Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking - Emiko Davies
- Our Share of Night - Mariana Enriquez
- The Scent of Time and The Burnout Society- Byung-Chul Han

Still cooking on Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Ethics of Ambiguity!

Books:
- The Fellowship of the Ring - J. R. R. Tolkien (r)
- The Sovereignty of Good - Iris Murdoch (r)
- Cell Biology by the Numbers - Rob Phillips and Ron Milo
- Apology - Plato (r)
- Cosmicomics - Italo Calvino
- Stella Maris - Cormac McCarthy
- The History of Jazz - Ted Gioia

A relatively concise list of the best things I read, watched, listened to, and cooked in 2024. More for my record-keeping than anything!
clarebir.ch/my-top-reads...