growth

The wonder, and the curse, of friendship is choice.

Exercise uses energy, burns calories, perhaps maintains a certain level of fitness. Training aims at definite improvement. “The difference between a workout and training,” she writes, “is a smart, predictable increase of intensity.”

Many yearn for the “good old days” of the web. We could have those good old days back — or something even better — and if anything, it would be easier now than it ever was.

Music League makes music social in a way that social media algorithms, ironically, do not

…Cal Newport argues that we need to recognize the harms that technology has on us and our minds, and that it might be time to more aggressively curate the tools we allow in our lives.

Scott Nesbitt

For the umpteenth time, my son, with an Ikea stuffed ball he has had since infancy, is playing football in the living room. He is joined by one of his best friends, an equally football-obsessed 10-year-old who, before slide-tackling in what can only be described as a deliberate attempt to knock my son’s legs off, shouts: “Brexit means Brexit!” Confused, I pass it off as an example of tweenage precocity: which 10-year-old is happy to quote Theresa May while playing football?

Over the next year, however, I will hear the term used again and again when my son plays football at the local park. He turns 11 and is off to secondary school. There, too, the phrase seems to have become a “thing”. One evening, as he recounts the details of how he got a painful-looking graze on his shin, he quotes the attacking player’s prelude to clattering into him: “Brexit means Brexit!” I ask, finally, why people are saying this. Nonchalantly, as he practises “skills” with the same softball, he explains that the Brexit tackle “is a tackle that doesn’t get the ball, only takes out the player”. Urban Dictionary concurs, stating it is, among other things, “when somebody hits a massive slide tackle and usually sends them flying and it hurts them servely [sic]”.

Should you be getting Botox? Welcome to Ask Ugly, our new beauty column!

You won’t get suggestions for the best new niacinamide serum from Ask Ugly. Just eat a sandwich. I won’t recommend some celebrity-loved surgery for sucking the fat from your face – it needs fat. Instead, I want to dig into capital-B Beauty here: what it is, what it means, and how it’s been industrialized and assembly-line machine-squeezed into billions of plastic bottles.

Obliterate toil: automate it.

Automate ruthlessly. This is where I have seen the most surprising pushback. We’re programmers. Automating processes is what we do! People will flinch about this, afraid of time spent automating things that won’t pay off. Yes, we’ve all been there. So don’t do that. Don’t automate things that are really one-offs. If there’s any chance you have to do the same thing more than five times, automate it. If it’s complex and difficult for a human to do, automate it. If the blast radius of the explosion caused by a human doing it wrong is large, automate it. If the end results need to be the same every time, automate it.

Infrastructure should be automated as far as you can push it.

The upside of automation is that the software that does the work for you can be instrumented.

The discovery raises intriguing new questions about the role wildfires may play in spurring the growth of microscopic marine algae known as phytoplankton, which absorb large quantities of climate-warming carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere through photosynthesis and are the foundation of the oceanic food web.

“Our results provide strong evidence that pyrogenic iron from wildfires can fertilize the oceans, potentially leading to a significant increase in carbon uptake by phytoplankton,” said Nicolas Cassar, professor of biogeochemistry at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

The algal blooms triggered by the Australian wildfires were so intense and extensive that the subsequent increase in photosynthesis may have temporarily offset a substantial fraction of the fires’ CO2 emissions, he said. But it’s still unclear how much of the carbon absorbed by that event, or by algal blooms triggered by other wildfires, remains safely stored away in the ocean and how much is released back into the atmosphere. Determining that is the next challenge, Cassar said.

It’s been over a decade since we’ve heard from the elusive White Stripes drummer. Could renewed attention over a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nomination coax her back into the spotlight?

Ongoing loneliness, which can be accompanied by sadness, boredom or a sense of emptiness, can interfere with daily life. At times, loneliness may dampen the motivation to engage in day-to-day activities and even contribute to a withdrawal from others…

…Learning ways to cope with loneliness, then, might help with managing stress and maintaining overall wellness.

Much more in there, but the basics:

1. Focus on direction, not destination
   Immerse yourself completely in the journey and you will reach your final goal gradually.
2. Raise your hand
   Asking questions is a fundamental human right.
3. Learn at your own pace
   Find your rhythm, find your flow. Don’t compare yourself to others.
4. Unplug
   You have the right to disconnect and move your attention towards what’s essential. Learn unplugged, far away from digital distractions.
5. Change your learning path (and mind)
   Don’t get too comfortable in the habit zone and start with changing the aversion to change. Think differently and learn new things.
6. Take a break
   Micro-breaks, lunch breaks, and longer breaks will all improve your learning performance. You have the right to rest.
7. Make mistakes
   Don’t fall into despair but Fail Forward.
8. Leave it unfinished
   We live in a super busy, multi-tasking, results-oriented society. Step away from your long to-do list and enjoy once in a while the beauty of an unstructured day.
9. Unlearn and forget
   Harness the power of unlearning. Reboot your mind, abandon old knowledge, actions and behaviours to create space.
10. Slow down
    Sometimes slow and steady will win the learning race. Make haste slowly.

…That means electric bicycles, which have become a much lower impact solution than cars, are booming in many Amish communities.

It’s a lot quicker to jump on your bike and go into town than it is to bring your horse into the barn, harness it to the buggy, and go. It’s a lot quicker and you travel faster too.