Hackneyed

Lacking significance through having been overused; unoriginal and trite.
Hackneyed

Hackneyed

Lacking significance through having been overused; unoriginal and trite.

On Reading

Still deleting/sorting old bookmarks. Found several related to reading.

Which is something I need to do more of.  One day I’ll read books and not just buy them. 

Farnam Street recommends trying to get through 25 pages per day. They see this as a clear path to completing works that might otherwise seem daunting:

Then I thought about all of the other great works I wanted to get to in my lifetime. Caro has four (eventually five) books about LBJ that are masterpieces on 20th century American politics. I want to read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I want to read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and War and Peace. I want to read Boswell’s Johnson. Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. More of Ron Chernow’s biographies.

Let’s say that two days out of each month, you probably won’t have time to read. Plus Christmas. That gives you 340 days a year of solid reading time. 25 pages a day for 340 days is 8,500 pages. 8,500. What I have also found is that, when I commit to a minimum of 25 pages, I almost always read more. So let’s call the 8,500 pages 10,000. (I only need to extend that 25 pages into 30 to get there.)

With 10,000 pages a year, at a general pace of 25/day, what can we get done?

Well, The Power Broker is 1,100 pages. The four LBJ books are collectively 3,552 pages. Tolstoy’s two masterpieces come in at a combined 2,160. Gibbons is six volumes and runs to about 3,660 pages. That’s 10,472 pages.

Bill Gates thinks you should dedicate an hour at a time to reading and has some pretty good thoughts on how to read.

Austin Kleon also has good advice, including carrying a book with you at all times and keeping a stack to read nearby.

And throwing your phone in the ocean.

 

“I loved without memory.”

Masha Ivashintsova was born in Russia in 1942. When the Leningrad native passed away in 2000, they left behind over 30,000 photographs that had never been seen by anyone.

As Ivashintsova’s daughter explains:

My mother, Masha Ivashintsova, was heavily engaged in the Leningrad poetic and photography underground movement of the 1960−80s. She was a lover of three geniuses of the time: Photographer Boris Smelov, Poet Viktor Krivulin and Linguist Melvar Melkumyan, who is also my father. Her love for these three men, who could not be more different, defined her life, consumed her fully, but also tore her apart. She sincerely believed that she paled next to them and consequently never showed her photography works, her diaries and poetry to anyone during her life. As she put herself in her diary:

“I loved without memory: is that not an epigraph to the book, which does not exist? I never had a memory for myself, but always for others.”

Unsolicited Advice

Been slowly making my way through old bookmarks. Here’s a good one: John Perry Barlow’s list of twenty-five principles of adult behavior.

From the recently deceased Silicon visionary/occasional Grateful Dead lyricist’s mouth: “I don’t expect the perfect attainment of these principles. However, I post them as a standard for my conduct as an adult. Should any of my friends or colleagues catch me violating one of them, bust me.” Wholeheartedly echo this sentiment.

1. Be patient. No matter what.
2. Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, never blame. Say nothing behind another’s back you’d be unwilling to say, in exactly the same tone and language, to his face.
3. Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.
4. Expand your sense of the possible.
5. Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change.
6. Expect no more of anyone than you yourself can deliver.
7. Tolerate ambiguity.
8. Laugh at yourself frequently.
9. Concern yourself with what is right rather than who is right.
10. Never forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.
11. Give up blood sports.
12. Remember that your life belongs to others as well. Do not endanger it frivolously. And never endanger the life of another.
13. Never lie to anyone for any reason. (Lies of omission are sometimes exempt.)
14. Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
15. Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that.
16. Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun.
17. Praise at least as often as you disparage.
18. Never let your errors pass without admission.
19. Become less suspicious of joy.
20. Understand humility.
21. Forgive.
22. Foster dignity.
23. Live memorably.
24. Love yourself.
25. Endure.

Darren Brown: The Push

Trying to figure out how to never have to agree to anything ever again. Afraid getting dinner with someone is only a few steps away from committing a crime.