Flashing Palely in the Margins
A few changes.
Planning a few changes around here, so I won’t be updating much in August. In the meantime, here’s a quick list of things that have caught my eye over the past few weeks:
Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it.
The Alternative to Thinking All the Time:
Life can disappear on us just like a cup of coffee consumed on autopilot.
I find myself constantly reminding people that thinking is an activity too. Yet how much time do you really make for it?
You can try to create around you a little bit of space that is all your own, a place where the rules of interaction you’ve chosen make sense and your actions have integrity.
An Interview with Mandy Len Catron:
Heartbreak is pedestrian, even though it feels profound.
On my second birthday we landed on the moon:
We are ancestors. We are descendants. And while we can’t fix the problems of the past in the present, we can make sure that we break the patterns that formed those problems. We can make sure the problems of our ancestors don’t plague our descendants. I want to be a good ancestor.
The case for taking forever to finish reading books:
By keeping your book in one location each time, you free yourself from the distractions of a commute or the pounding waves of a beach. As a result, a strange new relationship forms, between you, the voice of the book, and the room.
Why Canada Is Able to Do Things Better:
Canadians haven’t been conditioned to see history in epic, revolutionary terms. For them, it’s more transactional: You pay your taxes, you get your government.
The world needs to stop mindlessly fawning over Justin Trudeau:
It’s the luxury of foreigners to treat the politics of other countries as parable, entertainment or escapist fantasy. Actually living in a country run by a social media celebrity is a lot less fun.
Lessons learned from the government’s biggest attempt to fix tech procurement:
Procurement challenges show the need for continued focus on bringing more technical talent into government service.
Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change:
Technological breakthroughs that make clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels would also make it easier to develop the political will for rapid action.
Real Men Might Get Made Fun Of:
Speaking up costs us friends, jobs, credibility and invisible opportunities we’ll never even know enough about to regret.
In defense of escapism: Why it’s okay — yes, even now — to flip away from the news:
For us to be fully effective as a humans, entertainment is a critical outlet, because otherwise we might just be ruminating on all the problems in the world, sending our minds into downward spirals.
To stay married, embrace change:
Nostalgia, which fuels our resentment toward change, is a natural human impulse.
Who cares in the gig economy?:
Much of the fascination value of the gig economy as a phenomenon is in the imagined figure of the downwardly mobile, middle-class (often white) person who seems to have unfortunately “dropped” into the labor pool of the service industry and started treading water.
The path of the solar eclipse is already altering real-world behavior:
Buildings photographed to look like spaceships:
The goat, he screams like a man:
