Connecting some dots vol.1
1.The order of time, Carlo Rovelli
We see the water in a glass like the astronauts saw the earth from the moon: calm, gleaming, blue. From the moon, they could see nothing of the exuberant agitation of life on earth, its plants and animals, desires, and despairs. Only a veined blue ball. Within the reflection in a glass of water, there is an analogous tumultuous life, made up of activities of a myriad of molecules，many more than there are living beings on earth.
2.The universe as in a glass of wine, Feynman
A poet once said, 'The whole universe is in a glass of wine.' We will probably never know in what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe.
There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflection in the glass; and our imagination adds atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition, we see the secrets of the universe's age and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization; all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it!
If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts -- physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on -- remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure; drink it and forget it all.
1.The order of time, Carlo Rovelli
We see the water in a glass like the astronauts saw the earth from the moon: calm, gleaming, blue. From the moon, they could see nothing of the exuberant agitation of life on earth, its plants and animals, desires, and despairs. Only a veined blue ball. Within the reflection in a glass of water, there is an analogous tumultuous life, made up of activities of a myriad of molecules，many more than there are living beings on earth.
2.The universe as in a glass of wine, Feynman
A poet once said, 'The whole universe is in a glass of wine.' We will probably never know in what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe.
There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflection in the glass; and our imagination adds atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition, we see the secrets of the universe's age and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization; all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it!
If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts -- physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on -- remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure; drink it and forget it all.
https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5maXJlc2lkZS5mbS90aGV3ZWlyZG8vcnNz&ep=14&episode=OWQxOGYyOTAtYTIyOS00OWQ4LWI2MTItZjUwNTYwNjMyNmMy
“Look for causes, not villains.
Look for systems, not heroes.”
“Look for causes, not villains.
Look for systems, not heroes.”
‘People usually think that the arts should only entertain, but that is not the role of the arts at all. The role of the arts is to explore the inner space of man; to find out how much and how intensely he can vibrate, through sound, through what he hears, whichever it is. They are a means by which to expand his inner universe.’
— Karlheinz Stockhausen
— Karlheinz Stockhausen
人的故鄉，並不止於一塊特定的土地，而是一種遼闊無比的心情，不受空間和時間的限制；這心情一經喚起，就是你已經回到了故鄉。----------《我與地壇》史鐵生
"The Walkman, Forty Years On | The New Yorker" https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-walkman-forty-years-on/amp
The New Yorker
The Walkman, Forty Years On
The gadget that taught the world to socially distance.
https://open.spotify.com/track/6pIEtY7GUErdJCTzmqYync?si=Axe_9vymR8eomj50cIbiBw
我喜歡一直重覆聽一首歌，值得那樣被聆聽的歌，很像一種坐標，在某種情緒里扮演著指引的角色，當你找不到適當的衣服包裝身體，找不到適合的表情黨面具時，可以把自己埋在這樣的歌里，你的全身上下被一整片迷離包圍，像香水，像在比體溫高出三四度的水面下浸泡著，舒服又不會迷失自己，讓歌詞偶爾拉扯你，提醒著該浮出水面深深吸一口氣。
我喜歡一直重覆聽一首歌，值得那樣被聆聽的歌，很像一種坐標，在某種情緒里扮演著指引的角色，當你找不到適當的衣服包裝身體，找不到適合的表情黨面具時，可以把自己埋在這樣的歌里，你的全身上下被一整片迷離包圍，像香水，像在比體溫高出三四度的水面下浸泡著，舒服又不會迷失自己，讓歌詞偶爾拉扯你，提醒著該浮出水面深深吸一口氣。
Spotify
<失明前>我想記得的四十七件事
Cheer Chen · Song · 2012
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/695/everyones-a-critic
This is pretty funny. Schulman talks to This American Life about how when you get a bad review, one way to neutralise it is to look up what else that person reviewed. You feel better if the person who gave you 1 star also gave a cupcake stand 5 stars
This is pretty funny. Schulman talks to This American Life about how when you get a bad review, one way to neutralise it is to look up what else that person reviewed. You feel better if the person who gave you 1 star also gave a cupcake stand 5 stars
This American Life
Everyone's a Critic - This American Life
People squirming in a world where everything is rated and reviewed.
https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYWNhc3QuY29tL2Z0LWV2ZXJ5dGhpbmctZWxzZQ&ep=14&episode=N2QyNDg4NTItZTg0MC00NzdjLWI0YzgtOGJkYmQ0OGE0M2Yy
interesting observation on how we “constantly wanna improve ourselves”
interesting observation on how we “constantly wanna improve ourselves”
Google Podcasts
Culture Call - Unpacking the internet with Jia Tolentino
As The New Yorker magazine's go-to millennial, Jia Tolentino writes cultural criticism about the internet and how it affects us. She recently published Trick Mirror, a wildly popular collection of essays that explores contemporary culture. On this episode…
Athleisure, barre and kale: the tyranny of the ideal woman | News | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/aug/02/athleisure-barre-kale-tyranny-ideal-woman-labour
“Figuring out how to “get better” at being a woman is a ridiculous and often amoral project – a subset of the larger, equally ridiculous, equally amoral project of learning to get better at life under accelerated capitalism. In these pursuits, most pleasures end up being traps, and every public-facing demand escalates in perpetuity. Satisfaction remains, under the terms of the system, necessarily out of reach.
But the worse things get, the more a person is compelled to optimize. I think about this every time I do something that feels particularly efficient and self-interested, like going to a barre class or eating lunch at a fast-casual chopped-salad chain, like Sweetgreen, which feels less like a place to eat and more like a refueling station. I’m a repulsively fast eater in most situations – my boyfriend once told me that I chew like someone’s about to take my food away – and at Sweetgreen, I eat even faster because (as can be true of many things in life) slowing down for even a second can make the machinery give you the creeps. Sweetgreen is a marvel of optimization: a line of 40 people – a texting, shuffling, eyes-down snake – can be processed in 10 minutes, as customer after customer orders a kale caesar with chicken without even looking at the other, darker-skinned, hairnet-wearing line of people who are busy adding chicken to kale caesars as if it were their purpose in life to do so and their customers’ purpose in life to send emails for 16 hours a day with a brief break to snort down a bowl of nutrients that ward off the unhealthfulness of urban professional living.”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/aug/02/athleisure-barre-kale-tyranny-ideal-woman-labour
“Figuring out how to “get better” at being a woman is a ridiculous and often amoral project – a subset of the larger, equally ridiculous, equally amoral project of learning to get better at life under accelerated capitalism. In these pursuits, most pleasures end up being traps, and every public-facing demand escalates in perpetuity. Satisfaction remains, under the terms of the system, necessarily out of reach.
But the worse things get, the more a person is compelled to optimize. I think about this every time I do something that feels particularly efficient and self-interested, like going to a barre class or eating lunch at a fast-casual chopped-salad chain, like Sweetgreen, which feels less like a place to eat and more like a refueling station. I’m a repulsively fast eater in most situations – my boyfriend once told me that I chew like someone’s about to take my food away – and at Sweetgreen, I eat even faster because (as can be true of many things in life) slowing down for even a second can make the machinery give you the creeps. Sweetgreen is a marvel of optimization: a line of 40 people – a texting, shuffling, eyes-down snake – can be processed in 10 minutes, as customer after customer orders a kale caesar with chicken without even looking at the other, darker-skinned, hairnet-wearing line of people who are busy adding chicken to kale caesars as if it were their purpose in life to do so and their customers’ purpose in life to send emails for 16 hours a day with a brief break to snort down a bowl of nutrients that ward off the unhealthfulness of urban professional living.”
the Guardian
Athleisure, barre and kale: the tyranny of the ideal woman
How we became suckers for the hard labor of self-optimization.
Though Capitalism and Consumerism are the one that you can more easily critique on a theoretical level than reject in praxis. Can knowledge and awareness itself help us change our behavior ?
Reading Jia's essays always reminds me of David Foster Wallace. You guys have to check it out. Though I'm sure you will be depressing