Life
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Winning a coin toss
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2 min read
“There never was a man who could go out in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street today, and another tomorrow, and so on, day after day. He may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it…
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Embracing uncertainty
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1 min read
Bored when you know too much. Anxious when you know too little. The good news is that you can’t control the universe. Acknowledging your powerlessness should set you free instead of trying to float onto absolutes. Writes Lifehacker Darius Foroux: Lighten up. Relax your muscles. Get rid of that tense face. Don’t worry. And have…
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Gamed and uattended
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1 min read
Beyond the robot. Waiting for the robot. The question of who does what won’t matter when the automata yield the paintbrush, teach Castilian Spanish, dance, and write best-selling romance novels. Even if this is all simulation, the gamers from above played their part in permitting the unscripted. Like hungry pigeons, we were just picking up…
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Looking sideways
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1 min read
An inner radicalism tugs away at the illusion of coherence. What we strive for often makes zero sense to others, if at all to ourselves. But we feel it. The contrarian begs to differ if only to avoid the stuckness of traditional thought. In all likeliness, it’s the things misheard, misquoted, misunderstood — mere accidents…
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Inside the head
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1 min read
Mute/unmute Blind to our blindness Freedom within the cube Our sensory perception tells us how we should interpret the world, which is often a series of paradoxes. It’s the bits in the brain that make the world a reality, not the external stimuli itself. “If you could perceive reality as it really is, you would…
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Oblique Strategy: Turn it upside down
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1 min read
“Turn a seeming disadvantage to your advantage. The greater the seeming disadvantage, the greater the possible advantage.” Robert Fripp via Brian Eno
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Impatient with action, patient with results
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1 min read
Impatient with action, patient with results. Taking consistent, small steps, each day turns thousands of drips into a bucket of water. But it’s not so much the practice that matters — it’s the execution. Proper action uncomplicates thinking. As Albert Einstein once said, “Nothing happens until something moves.” Shooting the basketball with improper form every…
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The running conversation in your head
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1 min read
The mind is perpetually stuck in the future, worried about tomorrow instead of tomorrow’s yesterday. It’s as if we’re running toward an elusive finish line, lured by the temptation of retirement. Hold up…why do we move so fast? Skimming and skipping produce a race to the bottom. We expect the algorithms and Google shortcuts to…
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Method to the madness
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1 min read
Crazy from the outside, ordered on the inside. New York only appears chaotic. But within the frenzy is a viable system of cosmos. There’s a hidden system at play, no different than how the brain works. Like neurons, taxi cabs and hedge fund managers are all trying to out-compete each other in a race to…
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Is it better to be first or a fast second? 🤔
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1 min read
It doesn’t really matter whether you’re first or a fast second. It doesn’t even matter if you’re third or fourth or late to the game altogether. What matters is maintenance. If you build something, it is your responsibility to maintain it. Google out invented Yahoo, Alta Vista, and Ask Jeeves. Now it’s on to powering…
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In praise of the color gray 🌫
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3 min read
If you turn your mobile screen gray, you’ll use it less. The candy-colored apps will lose their addictive poking flavor. Most people disdain gray skies, pleading for blue and sunny instead. Gray appears boring and aging. A mere 1% name it as their favorite color. It neutralizes excitement and offers no hope. But author Meghan…