Oliver Burkeman provides an important and insightful reassessment of productivity. The drive to get more done can become an excuse to avoid figuring out what we actually want to accomplish. By confronting this question, we unlock a more meaningful approach to organizing our time.
Cal Newport
Out here by myself in 2016 at a place almost totally inaccessible to normal people; motorcycle stuck on that hill for several hours. There’s no water! Nowadays I stay home, look at the picture.
He turned to Stephen and said:
—Seriously, Dedalus. I’m stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back some money.
—That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national library today.
—Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.”
Ulysses by James Joyce
The domain name MMXXII.com was first registered by me at Dotster more than 17 years ago. I was hoping that when the year 2022 eventually came around, I’d have something interesting to say on this weblog.
And then finally it got here; and even more surprising to me, I got here with it. So, starting January 1, 2022, I started posting and fiddling with an assortment of content ever since. Stay tuned to see if it improves over the next few years. You’ll see something new every day.
Here are my ambitious next steps:
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The task is great and full of responsibility. It is nothing less than that of leading the world out of confusion and back to order.
The I Ching
How much energy could be harvested from this string of lightning strikes?
On March 27th, 2021, a series of severe thunderstorms crossed middle Tennessee, causing widespread flooding and putting on an impressive lightning show.
While most of the lightning stayed up in the clouds, the occasional bolt went to ground, and “cloud crawlers” put on a spectacular display every so often, too.
Which famous son* of a famous father preferred to spend the night of his old man’s celebrations brawling in a bar five hundred yards from the party, rather than hobnobbing with his family?
Our spies tell us a punch was thrown, and his faithful assistant was unable to Hold It Back. A father-son competition for publicity? Dad definitely won this round.
*As Hold It Back was the name of one of Jonny Rokeby‘s albums, nobody could really be in much doubt which father and son were in question.
Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith
In this novel forty-one million Englishmen die, but it is only suggested through the hardships of one couple.”
Richard H. Tyre – emphasising that effective writing involves understatement.
Men will gain infinitely more knowledge, insight, and eventually more products, from mastering the depths of the sea than from spending billions more trying to achieve conquest of sterile space.”
Jacques Yves Cousteau [all wet]
Haunting the seas from Norway through Iceland and all the way to Greenland, the Kraken would attack vessels with its strong arms, and having a taste for human flesh would devour the ship’s entire crew at once.
EDGAR
Come on, sir. Here’s the place. Stand still.
How fearful and dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air show scarce so gross as beetles.
GLOUCESTER
Set me where you stand.
King Lear (Act 4, scene 6, by Shakespeare)
On this night in 1846,following the marvellous calculations of Le Verrier of Paris and Adams of Cambridge concerning the celestial phenomenon known as the perturbations of Uranus, Herr Gaulle of Berlin discovered the existence of a new planet, one of the greatest triumps of theoretical astronomy. The planet was named Neptune“
Book of Days by Elizabeth & Gerald Donaldson
Where’s that smile?