Daily Reads:
Learning a bit more about Vera Birkenbihl’s thinking tools – the ABC List and the Analografitti, and attempting to use them in my own consumption. There are echoes, parallels, and overlaps with Mortimer Adler’s "How to Read a Book". Learning to distinguish between the kinds of knowledge I’m consuming and using the appropriate tool for effective assimilation is my never-ending objective.
via Darius Foroux on Nietzsche: "Amor Fati" or "Love of one’s fate" is a principle that Friedrich Nietzsche made famous. Learn to accept the events you cannot change or control, and find the value in them. I thought for long that it was Stoics who introduced this concept: they did speak freely about this but not as explicitly as Nietzsche did. (The other concept from Nietzsche’s philosophy is the idea of perspectivism – there is no such thing as objective truth or universal values.)
Robin Hanson explores how signalling drives down fertility rates. The world over, population growth rates are declining rapidly. After decades of fear that the earth was getting overpopulated, the economic argument is now starting to look at the potential consequences of not enough ‘new’ people, while the ‘old’ people live longer. Hanson’s observations are worth considering, even though there are no solutions without serious tradeoffs.
Ryan Holiday’s note-taking method or commonplace book is the English version of the Zettelkasten method. I found the video in his blog post called 38 reading rules that changed my life. You say you don’t have time to read but what does the screen time app on your phone say? What does your calendar say?
I’ve not watched Spielberg’s 1977 Movies Alien Encounters of the Third Kind. This explanation of the five tones of alien language has been wanting to, but I’ll make do with the video included in this post for now. What starts with simple five tones ends in one of the most magnificent displays of color and music, suggesting that all it takes to connect is to speak and to listen.
QOTD:
Employees don’t get their value from their organisations. Organisations get their values from their employees. – JP Castilin
Music:
Vivid Consort perform Can She Excuse My Wrongs, written by John Dowland (1563-1626)