Ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Stephen Goforth
Whoever protects himself against what is new and strange and thereby regresses to the past, falls into the same neurotic condition as the man who identifies himself with the new and runs away from the past. The only difference is that the one has estranged himself from the past, and the other from the future.
CG Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Creative minds are rarely tidy. -John Gardner
Keep your eyes open before marriage. half shut afterwards. - Benjamin Franklin (Born: Jan. 17, 1706)
Dusti Talavera said she saw the children fall into the pond through her apartment window, and immediately ran out to help. One firefighter says what she did was “amazing.” Watch a 9-News video report below or read the story here.
Recent findings suggest that age beliefs may play a key role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Tracking 4,765 participants over four years, the researchers found that positive expectations of ageing halved the risk of developing the disease, compared to those who saw old age as an inevitable period of decline. Astonishingly, this was even true of people who carried a harmful variant of the APOE gene, which is known to render people more susceptible to the disease. The positive mindset can counteract an inherited misfortune, protecting against the build-up of the toxic plaques and neuronal loss that characterise the disease.
David Robson, The Expectation Effect: How your Mindset Can Transform Your Life
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. –Martin Luther King (born: Jan. 15, 1929)
Ontology is the study of being. Therefore, an ontology of the self is a person's account of how he or she came to be. Hankiss finds that young adults 10 to use four different kinds of “strategies” in constructing their ontologies of self: the dynastic (a good past gives birth to a good present), the antithetical (a bad past gives birth to a good present),the compensatory ( a good past gives birth to a bad present), and the self-absolutory (a bad past gives birth to a bad present).
Dan McAdams, The Stories We Live By
Confusion between leadership and official authority has a deadly effect on large organizations. -John W. Gardner
Earned success gives you a sense of accomplishment. Employers who give clear guidance and feedback, reward merit, and encourage their employees to develop new skills are the most likely to give you those feelings. Look for a boss who acts that way—and if you have the opportunity, be that kind of boss.
Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic
The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. -William James (born Jan. 11, 1842)
I became a more frequent flosser by taking the package of floss out of my medicine cabinet and sitting it next to my toothbrush, where I could always see it. I used to procrastinate on washing dishes, but now I do them every day like clockwork, thanks to a Bluetooth speaker that I use to listen to podcasts while I stand at the sink. Having a clean kitchen, in turn, means I cook more—an activity I really enjoy—and resort to expensive takeout orders less frequently. I figured out what was stopping me from doing some of the things I knew I could do, and I tried to eliminate the obstacles I could control, to reasonable success. Figuring out how to do something a little less or a little more is likely to yield the best results for most people, even if it’s not going to turn you into a different human.
Amanda Mull writing in The Atlantic
Ram Mehta says, “At one point in my life I was homeless, and my mom basically wanted to tell me ‘never forget where you came from.” Watch the WFAA-TV video below or read the story here.
In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu wrote, “Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.” He no doubt intended it as a dire warning. But as the years have passed, I have come to interpret it as more of a promise and an opportunity.
I have learned that the prison of others’ approval is actually one built by me, maintained by me, and guarded by me. This has led me to my own complementary verse to Lao Tzu’s original: “Disregard what others think and the prison door will swing open.” If you are stuck in the prison of shame and judgment, remember that you hold the key to your own freedom.
Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic
The concept of accountability is as important as the concept of leadership. -John W. Gardner
Users keep encountering similar content because the algorithms keep recommending it to us. As this feedback loop continues, no new information is added; the algorithm is designed to recommend content that affirms what it construes as your taste.
Reduced to component parts, culture can now be recombined and optimized to drive user engagement. This threatens to starve culture of the resources to generate new ideas, new possibilities.
If you want to freeze culture, the first step is to reduce it to data. And if you want to maintain the frozen status quo, algorithms trained on people’s past behaviors and tastes would be the best tools.
The goal of a recommendation algorithm isn’t to surprise or shock but to affirm. The process looks a lot like prediction, but it’s merely repetition. The result is more of the same: a present that looks like the past and a future that isn’t one.
Grafton Tanner, writing in Real Life Magazine
Care about people’s approval / and you will be their prisoner. -Lao Tzu.
A woman knocked on the glass at a hockey game and urged the Vancouver Canuck’s assistant equipment manager to get a mole checked out. It turned out to be cancerous. He didn’t know who the woman was, so he tracker her down with the team’s help.
#HockeyTwitter, we need your help!
— Vancouver #Canucks (@Canucks) January 1, 2022
Please RT to spread the word and help us connect Red with the woman he considers his hero. pic.twitter.com/HlZybgOnjf
NBC News has a video report below or read the story from ESPN here.
Adobe express logo
Adobe has released a single template-focused app called Creative Cloud Express (replacing Adobe Spark) that combines some of the best features from the Creative Cloud Suite for mobile and web. Quickly create everything from social media posts to promotional posters and videos with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. Drag all sorts of elements into your composition from text, icons, shapes, free photos and fonts, music and other design elements. Assets from Photoshop and Illustrator can be utilized as well. Convert videos to GIFs and documents to PDFs. Great for non-professionals with little video editing experience. However, if you’re a pro, this is not a full-featured video editor.
Creative Cloud Express includes premium features from:
• Adobe Premiere Rush — Shoot, edit, and share videos on mobile and desktop.
• Adobe Photoshop Express — Edit and retouch images, create collages, and combine photos.
• Adobe Spark Video — Quickly create stunning video slideshows.
• Adobe Spark Page — Turn words and images into beautiful web pages.
More on the features here.
Teaching resources from Adobe for Educators here.
While Express is already included in many Creative Cloud subscriptions, there is a free version available or get more templates, photos and fonts with a paid subscription for $9.99 a month (or $99.99 a year) here. Better yet, there is a three-month free trial here. More info on the plans here.
If you live without passion, you can go through life without leaving any footprints. - Betty White
A Chicago Tribune columnist wrote a piece in the late 1990s that has become known as Wear Sunscreen. She imagined what advice she might give to students at a commencement. It starts like this: “Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97: Wear sunscreen.”
The commonsense advice that followed included tidbits like, “Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts” and “Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.” The message was intensified when it was set to music, renamed Everybody’s Free (To WearSunscreen) and released on an album by an Australian film director. One of Brazil’s biggest advertising agencies added video.
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