Notes

From another great piece of writing by Joan Westenberg, “Why Belief Beats Discipline”:

We are not consistent with our goals. We are consistent with our identities. And if your identity says you’re inconsistent, undisciplined, doomed to flake or drift or binge or relapse, then the moment you raise your standards, your subconscious files an objection. You “forget” your commitments. You postpone things “just for today.” You start researching better productivity tools instead of doing the actual work. All of it in the service of returning to your known baseline - the set of standards you believe you can meet.

The exits you’ve carved so carefully have become cages, keeping you from the growth you envisioned. Every time you choose distraction over presence, you’re training yourself to believe that this moment — this exact, unrepeatable configuration of breath and heartbeat and possibility — isn’t worth your full attention. You’re teaching yourself that you can’t be trusted with your own experience.

🔗prickly.oxhe.art/avoidance…

Watching the video “You need to be bored. Here’s Why” where Harvard Professor Arthur C. Brooks explains why boredom is a necessary part of our lives.

One of the reasons we have such an explosion of depression and anxiety in our society today is because people actually don’t know the meaning of their lives.

Good reminder to carve out some boredom time. No phone. No Internet. No distractions.

My favorite hack lately is adding detailed AI prompts to my text expander. Really useful for repetitive tasks like translation requests. Since I use AI primarily for Thai to English translation giving it specific instructions/added context is very useful.

Watched a video on the controversial question “Are wooden pencils better than fountain pens?” and it convinced me to order a wooden pencil and a pencil sharpener. I think it’s been decades since I used a wooden pencil. I have a really nice mechanical pencil that I almost never use because pens have always been my go-to and more so now that I’ve discovered fountain pens. But I’m willing to experiment.

I guess the question is: which wooden pencil? I’ll have to do some research.

Jack Edwards, the “internet’s resident librarian,” shares his book reviews and bookish thoughts on his Substack, Constant Reader. This week, he’s clapping back at bookish snobs. “Perhaps it’s more helpful to think of collecting books like collecting wine: you pick up novels you know you will enjoy at some time in the future. That time might be right now, or it might be next year. Like a bottle of Sancerre, you’ll bring it down off the shelf at the perfect moment, when you’ll enjoy it most. That’s okay, even encouraged, because the pursuit of literature is a deeply personal endeavour: it’s about reading things you want to read, when you want to read them."

🔗wiseup.readwise.io/wiseup-vo…

The Ritman Library has digitized 2,178 rare Occult books and made them available in their online reading room.

“Nature connectedness is now accepted as a key root cause of the environmental crisis,” Richardson told Guardian journalist Patrick Barkham. “It’s vitally important for our own mental health as well. It unites people and nature’s wellbeing. There’s a need for transformational change if we’re going to change society’s relationship with nature."

🔗www.sciencealert.com/the-words…

Explorers have discovered the world’s deepest shipwreck, lying 6,895 meters (22,621 feet) beneath the Philippine Sea.

🔗www.iflscience.com/the-world…

Back in 2016, deep inside a Canadian mine, geologists stumbled upon something extraordinary. At nearly 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) below the surface, they found water that had been sealed away for up to 2.64 billion years, the oldest known water on Earth.

🔗www.iflscience.com/a-geologi…