Can birds think about flying while they’re flying?

I was reading The Sand Wolf by Åsa Lind to the kids tonight, and we reached a section called “Thinking Exercise”. In it, Zackarina asks the Sandwolf whether birds can think about flying while they’re flying. The …

Communication bandwidth

I have had this quirky idea for some time. Here it is: The amount of information we are expected to learn keeps expanding. Yet our primary channels of learning and communication remain constrained by the bandwidth …

Uncovering the threads of meaning

I am watching episode 7 of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, where John Vervaeke discusses mindfulness as a psychotechnology that helps us uncover the threads of meaning in our lives. He discusses India’s …

The more he saw the more he saw there was to see

At the end of the 40th anniversary edition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the correspondence between Pirsig and his editor is included. In it, Pirsig tells the editor that the book is finished. That …

First principles thinking

I was reading this article, Mental Models In Product Design by Teresa Man and she wrote this about first principles thinking: One way to avoid functional fixedness is to abstract a problem and think in First …

Conversation as a way to explore connections

I like thinking of conversations from the perspective of connections. When I’m talking, I’m pulling together the ideas that have been on my mind, ordering them in a way that might make sense to you, and sharing …

Questions open up space for answers

The episode from Hurry Slowly, titled Nothing Important Comes With Instructions, starts with a quote from Clay Christensen: Questions are what opens up space in your mind for answers. If you don’t ask the question …

Acute perception of something immense and yet very delicate at the same time

I am reading When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, and he writes about the French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, describing his ability to concentrate for long hours: He could begin …

Building knowledge around central themes

I am reading Julie Bogart’s book, The Brave Learner. The central theme of the book is to make learning a magical, enchanted experience. To find the joy in learning. She suggests to start with putting the interest …

A worldview where everything doesn’t exist for us

I’m reading How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, and she mentions the German philosopher Martin Buber and his book I and Thou. For Buber, there are two ways of looking at the world: I–It In the I–It way of looking, I …

Posting a memory forward to a distant future

I am reading The Overstory by Richard Powers, and in the book Patricia tells her botany students (emphasis mine): “Billions of years ago, a single, fluke, self-copying cell learned how to turn a barren ball of …

Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on books

I read this quote From Walter Benjamin online: Und heute schon ist das Buch, wie die aktuelle wissenschaftliche Produktionsweise lehrt, eine veraltete Vermittlung zwischen zwei verschiedenen Kartotheksystemen. …

What do you want to capture

I am reading How I Take Photographs by Daido Moriyama, and he says something that I myself am not sure how to answer. Emphasis mine: I see so many young people—I guess they’re photography students—with cameras in …

Printing articles as A5 booklets

I find it difficult to read long articles on a screen. One alternative I’ve grown to enjoy is printing them as small A5 booklets and carrying them in my backpack. This is super easy on iOS, but with the right …

Sauron and von Neumann

I am reading The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut. In his description of von Neumann (Johnny), in the chapter narrated by Oskar Morgenstern, Morgenstern reminisces about how they got to work on game theory, how it was …

This is how thinking is done

I am playing Disco Elysium, where certain topics that arise in the story become available as “thoughts” in what the game calls the Thought Cabinet. The main character can hold several thoughts at once. To …

Going back to stone

I am watching a short video on Isamu Noguchi by SFMoMA and I particularly found his remarks on the limitations of the industry relevant. If you want to live and work in an industrialized situation, you have to use …

You do not talk about the subject of your work or it vanishes

I am reading Joan Didion’s book Let Me Tell You What I Mean and she wrote about the subject in creative work: This business of the subject is tricky. Whether they are painters or photographers or composers or …

A way of looking but not joining

I am reading Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion and in this essay titled Last Words, she has written about Hemingway: The very grammar of a Hemingway sentence dictated, or was dictated by, a certain way of …

The “we-ness” of being an octopus

I’m reading The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, and there’s a section where he writes about Tibetan Maintenance Drones, the degree of independence built into them, and what it feels like to command them. You …