Love's advice to his younger self

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Robert Love offers this advice to his 16-year-old self in The Week magazine:

Dear Bob: Would you like some advice from the older you? Turn the volume down to 10 and the SPF up to 30. Be patient with yourself and those who cross your path. Cherish your friends and family; you will miss them soon enough. Don’t feel too bad if you never seem to understand the girl in your life. There are mysteries that will never be solved. Most of all, never lose your curiosity. It will guide you to a career and a calling and bring you into the company of others who are wildly curious about the world and how it works. Believe me, there is no better place to be.

Looking for the ‘Right One’

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While looking for someone who will encourage you to "be yourself", go beyond self-expression and acceptance to content and growth: Look for someone who will help the process of more clearly defining yourself. That is, someone who will not only give you "space" or room to "do your own thing” but someone who spark a chemistry, a back-and-forth, a give-and-take that produces something about you that couldn't have come up with alone. It works the other way around, too. You should spur your beloved’s growth as a person. The two of you should be able to look at the seeds inside the other and visualize the fully formed tasty fruit that could emerge.

Stephen Goforth

Be your imperfectly perfect self

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In this crazy world that’s trying to make you like everyone else, find the courage to keep being your awesome self. And when they laugh at you for being different, laugh back at them for being the same. Spend more time with those who make you smile and less time with those who you feel pressured to impress. 

Marc & Angel Chernoff

Test your Online Security Setup

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Answer a few simple questions from Security.org to find out whether you are staying safe online.

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Two Ways to Understand the World

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The psychologist Jerome Bruner has argued that human beings understand the world in two very different ways. The first he calls the “paradigmatic mode” of thought. In the paradigmatic mode, we seek to comprehend our experience in terms of tightly reasoned analyses, logical proof, and empirical observation. In the second, “narrative mode” of thought, we are concerned with human wants, needs and goals. This is the mode of stories, wherein we deal with “the vicissitudes of human intention” organized in time. 

Masters of the Heritage Matic mode try to “say no more than they mean.” Examples are scientists or logicians seeking to determine cause-and-effect relationships in order to explain events and help predict and control reality. Their explanations are constructed in such a way as to block the triggering of presuppositions.

By contrast, good poets and novelists are masters of the narrative mode. Their stories are especially effective when, in Bruner’s words, they “mean more than they can say.” A good story triggers presuppositions. Good stories give birth to many different meanings, generating “children” of meaning in their own image.

Dan McAdams, The Stories We Live By

Does money make us happier? Here's what the research says

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Money only makes you happier if you live below the poverty line and you can’t put food on your table and then you can afford to. Whether getting superrich actually affects different aspects of your well-being? There’s a lot of evidence it doesn’t affect your positive emotion too much.

There was a recent paper by Matt Killingsworth where he was trying to make the claim that happiness continues as you get to higher incomes. And yeah, he’s right, but if you plot it, it’s like if you change your income from $100,000 to $600,000 your happiness goes up from, like, a 64 out of 100 to a 65. For the amount of work you have to put in to sextuple your income, you could instead just write in a gratitude journal, you could sleep an extra hour.

Yale cognitive scientist Laurie Santos, quoted in the New York Times

A new 988 number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

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A new 988 number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline goes into service on July 16. It will accept texts and live chat is available. Unfortunately, according to the Wall Street Journal, it relies on call centers that are already overstretched. Annual call volumes to the current 10-digit line increased by 92% from 2016 to 2021. Of more than nine million calls to the hotline from 2016 to 2021, 1.5 million were abandoned before they were answered. Read more about the new service in the Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed News and the Associated Press.

8 Password Managers

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1Password*
This popular password manager stores them in your Web browser, allowing users to only have one master password to access them all. Makes good use of the cloud to keep it in sync with all your devices. Starts at $36. 14 day free trial option.

Bitwarden*
The free version of this open source password manager is one of the best but it bare bones so if you want more and are willing to pay you’ll find better. User experience not as intuitive as other options. $10 a year for more options though storage is limited.

Dashline
A solid password manager with VPN service. Strong interface. $60 a year.

DataVault
Password manager to protect your data. Can sync through Dropbox. $10 for any operating system.

eWallet
Password manager to protect your data. Nice look, customizable. The Windows version is $20, others $10.

KeePassXC
Open source password manager. Purposely no cloud option. All passwords are stored locally. Free.

Keeper
Password manager. Well-designed interface. Free plan is limited. Paid starts at $34.99 a year.

Lastpass
Generates and saves passwords. Strong cross-platform experience. The company has had some past security issues. Free version is limited. Paid is $36 a year.

More Tech Tools

The Key to happiness in our later years

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Each of us has something like a “Happiness 401(k)” that we invest in when we are young, and that we get to enjoy when we are old. And just as financial planners advise their clients to engage in specific behaviors—make your saving automatic; think twice before buying that boat—we can all teach ourselves to do some very specific things at any age to make our last decades much, much happier.

According to a Harvard study, the single most important trait of happy-well elders is healthy relationships. As Robert Waldinger, who directs the study, told me in an email, “Well-being can be built—and the best building blocks are good, warm relationships.” 

Arthur C. Brooks, writing in The Atlantic

He Dropped Out to Become a Poet. Now He’s Won the top award for Mathematics

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June Huh has been awarded the Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics, for his ability to wander through mathematical landscapes. One might say the same of his path into mathematics itself: that it was characterized by much wandering and a series of small miracles. When he was younger, Huh had no desire to be a mathematician. He was indifferent to the subject, and he dropped out of high school to become a poet. That poetic detour has since proved crucial to his mathematical breakthroughs. His artistry, according to his colleagues, is evident in the way he uncovers those just-right objects at the center of his work, and in the way he seeks a deeper significance in everything he does. “Mathematicians are a lot like artists in that really we’re looking for beauty,” said Federico Ardila-Mantilla, a mathematician at San Francisco State University and one of Huh’s collaborators. “But I think in his case, it’s really pronounced. And I just really like his taste. He makes beautiful things.”       

Jordana Cepelewicz writing in Quanta Magazine