The weather is getting weirder
Britons may remember 2012 as the year the weather spun off its rails in a chaotic concoction of drought, deluge and flooding, but the unpredictability of it all turns out to have been all too predictable: Around the world, extreme has become the new commonplace.
Especially lately. China is enduring its coldest winter in nearly 30 years. Brazil is in the grip of a dreadful heat spell. Eastern Russia is so freezing – minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and counting – that the traffic lights recently stopped working in the city of Yakutsk.
Bush fires are raging across Australia, fueled by a record-shattering heat wave. Pakistan was inundated by unexpected flooding in September. A vicious storm bringing rain, snow and floods just struck the Middle East. And in the United States, scientists confirmed this week what people could have figured out simply by going outside: last year was the hottest since records began.
End of the world slated for December 2013?
The difference between pleasure and joy, as explained by Zadie Smith and Thomas Aquinas
The difference between pleasure and joy, as explained by Zadie Smith and Thomas Aquinas
A fascinating, comparative study on joy and pleasure by Gary Gutting, writing for the NYT’s philosophy blog called The Stone.
Zadie Smith understands pleasure as an experience of the daily occurrences of life: eating, people-watching. These “small pleasures” satisfy a big part of her desire for pleasure.
Joy is very different: it doesn’t, per se, provide pleasure but is rather a “strange admixture of terror, pain, and delight.” Smith’s true love for her husband and child is far more important than pleasure, for instance.
Both agree that joy is something much more than the bodily pleasures that satisfy an animal. As Smith puts it, animals always “choose a pleasure over a joy.” Aquinas, agrees, though with a philosophical refinement: “We do not attribute joy to brute animals”—it’s not quite that animals choose pleasure over joy; there’s no choice because they are incapable of experiencing joy in the sense that humans do.
The difference between pleasure and joy, as explained by Zadie Smith and Thomas Aquinas
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/the-joy-of-zadie-smith-and-thomas-aquinas/
A fascinating, comparative study on joy and pleasure by Gary Gutting, writing for the NYT’s philosophy blog called The Stone.
Zadie Smith understands pleasure as an experience of the daily occurrences of life: eating, people-watching. These “small pleasures” satisfy a big part of her desire for pleasure.
Joy is very different: it doesn’t, per se, provide pleasure but is rather a “strange admixture of terror, pain, and delight.” Smith’s true love for her husband and child is far more important than pleasure, for instance.
Both agree that joy is something much more than the bodily pleasures that satisfy an animal. As Smith puts it, animals always “choose a pleasure over a joy.” Aquinas, agrees, though with a philosophical refinement: “We do not attribute joy to brute animals”—it’s not quite that animals choose pleasure over joy; there’s no choice because they are incapable of experiencing joy in the sense that humans do.
Massimo Vignelli on market research
“I don’t believe in market research. I don’t believe in marketing the way it’s done in America. The American way of marketing is to answer to the wants of the customer instead of answering to the needs of the customer. The purpose of marketing should be to find needs — not to find wants.People do not know what they want. They barely know what they need, but they definitely do not know what they want. They’re conditioned by the limited imagination of what is possible. … Most of the time, focus groups are built on the pressure of ignorance.”
Massimo Vignelli on market research
“I don’t believe in market research. I don’t believe in marketing the way it’s done in America. The American way of marketing is to answer to the wants of the customer instead of answering to the needs of the customer. The purpose of marketing should be to find needs — not to find wants.People do not know what they want. They barely know what they need, but they definitely do not know what they want. They’re conditioned by the limited imagination of what is possible. … Most of the time, focus groups are built on the pressure of ignorance.”
This post lays out the Minimum Viable Kitchen (MVK) for creating gourmet food. It’s aimed at the person that wants to make truly great food, but isn’t quite sure where to get started or how expensive the commitment will be. As it turns out, you can assemble all the kitchen equipment you need to become a great chef for under $1000. This post isn’t trying to convince you to become a great chef or a foodie, but if you are already so inclined, it will help you get started.
The Minimum Viable Kitchen by Matt Maroon at Priceonomics details how to get a decent kitchen, from knives to dessert paraphernalia.
This post lays out the Minimum Viable Kitchen (MVK) for creating gourmet food. It’s aimed at the person that wants to make truly great food, but isn’t quite sure where to get started or how expensive the commitment will be. As it turns out, you can assemble all the kitchen equipment you need to become a great chef for under $1000. This post isn’t trying to convince you to become a great chef or a foodie, but if you are already so inclined, it will help you get started.
Time-lapse of blooming flowers by Katka Pruskova.
Time-lapse of blooming flowers by Katka Pruskova.
On Samsung's genius
Great analysis by Farhad Manjoo over at Slate, explaining why Samsung’s strategy (building everything from refrigerators to computers) is actually working:
This flood-the-market strategy isn’t elegant. It can be confusing for customers, a pain for Samsung’s carrier partners, and very difficult for the firm’s engineers and designers to keep up with. It also doesn’t have history on its side. Other firms that have tried the build-everything approach—see Apple in the early 1990s, or Hewlett-Packard over the last decade—eventually begin to lumber under their own complexity.
Yet Samsung’s strategy is extremely well suited to our current tech era. We live in a time of profound transition, when the future of everything is up in the air. The world’s tech-addled masses are switching from desktop devices to mobile ones, from bulky programs to sleek apps, from limited local storage to acres of space in the clouds. When everything is in flux, predicting what will be hot a year from now—“skating to where the puck is going to be,” to quote Steve Jobs quoting Wayne Gretzky—becomes all but impossible. Samsung’s strategy is to put a man at every spot on the ice. Be in enough places and you’re bound to catch something no one was predicting—like, for instance, the world’s bizarre love affair with phablets.
On Samsung's genius
Great analysis by Farhad Manjoo over at Slate, explaining why Samsung’s strategy (building everything from refrigerators to computers) is actually working:
This flood-the-market strategy isn’t elegant. It can be confusing for customers, a pain for Samsung’s carrier partners, and very difficult for the firm’s engineers and designers to keep up with. It also doesn’t have history on its side. Other firms that have tried the build-everything approach—see Apple in the early 1990s, or Hewlett-Packard over the last decade—eventually begin to lumber under their own complexity.
Yet Samsung’s strategy is extremely well suited to our current tech era. We live in a time of profound transition, when the future of everything is up in the air. The world’s tech-addled masses are switching from desktop devices to mobile ones, from bulky programs to sleek apps, from limited local storage to acres of space in the clouds. When everything is in flux, predicting what will be hot a year from now—“skating to where the puck is going to be,” to quote Steve Jobs quoting Wayne Gretzky—becomes all but impossible. Samsung’s strategy is to put a man at every spot on the ice. Be in enough places and you’re bound to catch something no one was predicting—like, for instance, the world’s bizarre love affair with phablets.
The Cup Is Already Broken
The Buddha told his student, ‘Every morning I drink from my favorite teacup. I hold it in my hands and feel the warmth of the cup from the hot liquid it contains. I breathe in the aroma of my tea and enjoy my mornings in this way. But in my mind the teacup is already broken.’
Like The Buddha’s teacup, your hard drive has already failed. That file will already no longer open. That software is already obsolete. That hardware is already dead.
If one accepts that the hard drive is already failed, perhaps they will backup right now to prepare. Perhaps one will choose the file types they use carefully in order to assure the greatest longevity. Perhaps they will choose software that has stood the test of time. Perhaps they will choose hardware that is easy to maintain, repair, or replace.
Some poetry by Patrick Rhone, author and curator of Minimal Mac about why you should back up your hard drive right about now. You probably have nothing better to do than save your data & memories.
The Cup Is Already Broken
http://minimalmac.com/post/40193527821/the-cup-is-already-broken
The Buddha told his student, ‘Every morning I drink from my favorite teacup. I hold it in my hands and feel the warmth of the cup from the hot liquid it contains. I breathe in the aroma of my tea and enjoy my mornings in this way. But in my mind the teacup is already broken.’
Like The Buddha’s teacup, your hard drive has already failed. That file will already no longer open. That software is already obsolete. That hardware is already dead.
If one accepts that the hard drive is already failed, perhaps they will backup right now to prepare. Perhaps one will choose the file types they use carefully in order to assure the greatest longevity. Perhaps they will choose software that has stood the test of time. Perhaps they will choose hardware that is easy to maintain, repair, or replace.
Some poetry by Patrick Rhone, author and curator of Minimal Mac about why you should back up your hard drive right about now. You probably have nothing better to do than save your data & memories.
Hunter S. Thompson’s daily routine.
After alcohol-induced blackout, this MIT researcher created glowing ice cubes to track his drinking
After alcohol-induced blackout, this MIT researcher created glowing ice cubes to track his drinking
Some people complain about their headache, others innovate:
After an alcohol induced blackout, I made self-aware glowing ice-cubes that beat to the ambient music. The electronics inside the ice-cubes know how fast and how much you are drinking. The cubes change color from green to orange to finally red as you keep drinking beyond the safety limit. If things get out of control, the cubes send a text to your close friend using your smartphone.
Follow the link for the video.
After alcohol-induced blackout, this MIT researcher created glowing ice cubes to track his drinking
Some people complain about their headache, others innovate:
After an alcohol induced blackout, I made self-aware glowing ice-cubes that beat to the ambient music. The electronics inside the ice-cubes know how fast and how much you are drinking. The cubes change color from green to orange to finally red as you keep drinking beyond the safety limit. If things get out of control, the cubes send a text to your close friend using your smartphone.
Follow the link for the video.
The Science of productivity:
Shockingly, when we look at some of the most elite musicians in the world, we find that they aren’t necessarily practicing more but, instead, more deliberately. This is because they spend more time focused on the hardest task and focus their energy in packets — instead of diluting their energy over the entire day, they have periods of intense work, followed by breaks. Not relying on willpower, they rely on habit and discipline scheduling. Studies have found that the most elite violinists in the world generally follow a 90-minute work regime, with a 15- to 20-minute break afterwards.
The Science of productivity:
Shockingly, when we look at some of the most elite musicians in the world, we find that they aren’t necessarily practicing more but, instead, more deliberately. This is because they spend more time focused on the hardest task and focus their energy in packets — instead of diluting their energy over the entire day, they have periods of intense work, followed by breaks. Not relying on willpower, they rely on habit and discipline scheduling. Studies have found that the most elite violinists in the world generally follow a 90-minute work regime, with a 15- to 20-minute break afterwards.
Cops, emergency room doctors, and insurance actuarists all know it. They realize how many crazy impossible things happen all the time. A burglar gets stuck in a chimney, a truck driver in a head on collision is thrown out the front window and lands on his feet, walks away; a wild antelope knocks a man off his bike; a candle at a wedding sets the bride’s hair on fire; someone fishing off a backyard dock catches a huge man-size shark. In former times these unlikely events would be private, known only as rumors, stories a friend of a friend told, easily doubted and not really believed.
But today they are on YouTube, and they fill our vision. You can see them yourself. Each of these weird freakish events just mentioned can be found on YouTube, seen by millions.
The Improbable is the New Normal by Kevin Kelly, founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, writes an excellent article about the unexpected nature of our time (spent browsing the Internet).