Tom's Review #181 - Abundance, Rich Girls, Alvvays
📖 What I’m Reading:Outcome Orientation as a Cure for Information Overload – Common Cognition
The Abundance Agenda – Matt Bruenig
The Impossible Profession – The New Yorker
Book finished: Rich Girl Nation by Katie Gatti Tassin: 5/5
☝️ Word of the Month:rupestrian (adj) roo-PES-tree-uhn Relating to, composed of, or carved on rocks. From Latin rupes (rock). “Set in a former 13th-century rupestrian chapel, the hotel has incredible interiors, with towering arches, golden stone, and rooms carved into the cave.” 🎵 Jams of the Month:The shoegaze bliss of Alvvays
The cheeky, mathy rock of American Football
The involuntary head-bob lyricism of Nas
💬 Quote of the Month:Friedrich Schiller, in response to a friend who wrote him to complain of “meagre literary production"— The ground for your complaint seems to me to lie in the constraint imposed by your reason upon your imagination. I will make my idea more concrete by a simile. It seems a bad thing and detrimental to the creative work of the mind if Reason makes too close an examination of the ideas as they come pouring in—at the very gateway, as it were. Looked at in isolation, a thought may seem very trivial or very fantastic; but it may be made important by another thought that comes after it, and, in conjunction with other thoughts that may seem equally absurd, it may turn out to form a most effective link. Reason cannot form any opinion upon all this unless it retains the thought long enough to look at it in connection with the others. On the other hand, where there is a creative mind, Reason—so it seems to me—relaxes its watch upon the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it look them through and examine them in a mass. . . . You critics, or whatever else you may call yourselves, are ashamed or frightened of the momentary and transient extravagances which are to be found in all truly creative minds and whose longer or shorter duration distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. You complain of your unfruitfulness because you reject too soon and discriminate too severely. ps: who among us (X) pps: Jokic with verve and wiles (X) ppps: Boiler Room of the month (YouTube) |
Thomas Tassin
📖 What I’m Reading: Mike White’s 15-Year Journey For “The White Lotus” – Trung Phan Mike White is Ed Schneebly from School of Rock. He wrote Season 1 of White Lotus in 14 days. And True Detective helped pave the way. The Grand Encyclopedia of Eponymous Laws – Roger’s Bacon “Gibson’s Law: For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD.” “Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” “The Lindy Effect: The future life expectancy of a...
📖 What I’m Reading: We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It – The New Atlantis Tough one. I go back and forth. Yes, we benefit from many hidden systems that are indeed miraculous. Clean water, abundant food, etc. But there are still a lot of people struggling, and abundance, as we’re learning, causes its own problems. But I generally agree with this author’s outlook. We would do well to recognize this stuff more. This is the first in a series of essays on boring miracles. 50 Years of Travel...
📣 Update: This is now a monthly newsletter. 📖 What I’m Reading: Kim Jong-nam – Wikipedia “Kim Jong-nam was the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. From roughly 1994 to 2001, he was considered the heir apparent to his father. He was thought to have fallen out of favor after embarrassing the regime in 2001 with a failed attempt to visit Tokyo Disneyland with a false passport, although Kim himself said his loss of favor had been due to advocating reform.” Stop speedrunning to a...