Ideas that don’t lose their wings rarely take off.
The hype I felt when I heard the 3D printer had been invented was a mistake. But my brain couldn’t help himself from making a secular leap into a sci-fi future of boundless imagination.
“I can finally print a car and take it to work.”
How long until the hoverboards from Back to the Future 2 start mass production? …
It starts making sense if by “attraction” we mean “attention.”
I bet something nobody got for Christmas was that yellow Ferrari they’ve been trying to manifest with their visualizations.
Honestly, they’d have a better shot by asking Rhonda Byrne to buy it for them using the gazillions of dollars she made with “The Secret.” Or sending a letter to the North Pole and wait for Santa to throw it down their chimney himself.
Having said that…
The law of attraction can still make sense if we put a little effort into a rebranding. Bring it closer to facts and reality, you know. …
Our brains evolved to forget our own mortality.
There is a tree growing somewhere, tailored just for me, swaying its branches at the whispered command of a gentle breeze. Someday, this tree will be cut down to become the wood of my coffin.
After reading that, I’m supposed to whinny in terror of this tree, frantically galloping away from it — and the mortality it represents — and make along the way a fulfilling life free from regret.
Now, I don’t want to be a dying old man reminiscing his life regrets, silently wishing reincarnation was a thing, (but not cross-species, unless someone makes sure I am born a capybara and not thermite) thinking, “Damn I wish I had memento mori-ed more often, or at the very least had prepared a farewell speech.” …
Don’t be yet another monkey randomly typing keys for eternity.
It’s not like we got scammed when we bought into the belief that “it’s impossible to fail if we persist for long enough.” But I’d say we should’ve read the fine print because they probably had the math that explained just how far from impossible we actually are.
It’s not statistically impossible, for example, that a bunch of monkeys write Shakespeare’s Hamlet word for word if left unsupervised in a room with a typewriter and no time constrictions.
And them routines are the typewriters we type in everyday: the diets, meditations, workout sessions; the client calls, zoom meetings and writing schedules. …
But only if we argue as people did 100 years ago.
Online anonymity, like some of Elon Musk’s tweets, is hard to defend.
For starters, it’s the main gateway for toxicity and hate used by trolls, cyber-bullies, and the rest of the mythical creatures populating our digital landscape. And unlike Musk, anonymity is not endorsed by a hoard of die-hard fans dismissing its bizarre, hallucinogenic personality and persecuting detractors like coordinated desk mobsters.
But despite its setbacks, we don’t want to give Zuckerberg an excuse to shove more cookies and policies and start launching ad campaigns endorsing Orwell’s 1984 lifestyle.
We need online anonymity to look better. So let me bring a century-old custom to the…
It’s not a way out of caring, but about caring the right way.
The sport of polo doesn’t even pretend to welcome poor people. It raises a one-ton, neighing barrier between you and the field and says, “Want to play? Sure. You need to afford one of these.”
I’m certain that I can’t even afford the carrots that those horses eat for breakfast. But I respect it.
Polo has a strong target profiling game. “If your blood is not blue, don’t bother.” The Sport of Kings. Want to know my problem with The Art of Letting Go? Its pretended accessibility.
As in, every time you talk about it someone will promptly cite the austerity of the Buddha and how everybody can practice it. Sure. But first, let me raise to the level of material opulence that he had before he was so fed up with it that decided to embark on a journey of enlightenment. …
The routines they follow are just the tip of the Zuckerberg.
Look, if Usain Bolt wins the race, we don’t give the medal to the shoes. But CEOs harvest success because of their “routines”?
I think of routines as a mere garnishment to one’s capabilities. Especially those of world-class achievers we love to copy — because according to the Internet, success is a better routine — and wear like expensive lingerie.
So you may discover that Arianna Huffington takes bubble baths every night and go, “Well I’m gonna try that and see what happens.” Don’t mind that she is CEO of Thrive Global, co-founded The Huffington Post, and wrote 15 books. …
An honest take at self-diagnosing lack of honesty.
On a scale from honest opinions to “flat-Earthism,” we’re all full of shit.
Maybe not “I believe NASA is a hoax made to sell t-shirts and documentaries” full of shit, but still; don’t get too cocky on your superior critical thinking. Our bullshit is way worse.
Because at least flat-Earthers don’t have a real, negative impact on society as a whole. They are safely isolated in their YouTube channels, forums, and documentaries. …
If we can’t have something, we’ll make it unreachable.
In the 1970s, László Polgár married a woman not out of love but to prove geniuses were not born. Then, they gave birth to three child geniuses in a row.
In the world of chess, they became known as the Polgár sisters. Susan was the first woman to reach grandmaster status, Sofia is considered the fifth-greatest chess player in history, and the youngest, Judit, was the number one female chess player for over a decade, and considered the greatest female player of all time.
Of course, the Hungarian media labeled them as child prodigies, inborn talents, geniuses. …
Trick #1: pick a “favorite curiosity toy.”
At 61 years old, my father remains sharp enough to know his age has closed some doors for him. It’s probably too late to become a pop singer or get a letter from Hogwarts.
It’s fine: wizardry is not a requirement to keep his curiosity sensitive to magic and wonder. In that sense, he’s still a 10-year-old. Every time I come over to his place for lunch, the main dish is questions.
“Why do jars do that ‘pop’ sound?” I would ask after opening one. Not that I’m an actual 10-year-old oblivious to the “pop sound” and the vacuum effect. The question is there as a mere catalyst. My father would mention something about air and pressure, which would remind him of Pasteur and a documentary he watched not long ago, inspiring him to go further off the rail into creative insight, the harvest of gravity as the new renewable energy, and how in some way or another, aliens are probably involved in all of it. …
