The people most alarmed about the coronavirus seem to be people accustomed to thinking exponentially — people in tech, finance, and science. People least alarmed are those used to thinking about problems linearly. The problem isn’t the virus itself. It’s the under-provisioned healthcare systems and +
Work? 35 hours a week, with counselling and coaching. Travel? Only to pre-approved and reviewed AirBnBs. Sex? Only with inclusive, body-positive people who’ll repeat how gorgeous you are. Not too physical, though. Heart rate below 90 BPM. Drugs? Only comfortable to use, safe to buy, +
The French art the vivre? Sure. For yourself. Not your clients. That’s one the main reasons why so many American companies win in Europe. Amazon, Netflix, Apple, 3M, Starbucks, Tesla, UPS… bust their asses to serve. +
Judging by the popularity of movie / series franchises, humanity is stuck in the middle ages. Swords, magic, religious sects… Marvel’s super-heroes with gems, hammers, bows and arrows; Star Wars / Mandalorian; Harry Potter; Game of Thrones; The Witcher; Lord of the Rings. The futuresque +
The UK General Election shows us, yet again, and unlike in the EU Referendum, without any remaining doubt, that the populations most at risk vote for their own masochistic downfall. The people who stand to lose the most from the complete dismantlement of government health +
A team at the University of Virginia’s Department of Psychology meta-analysed 11 studies, and “found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much +
We view death countless times on screens, daily. People exploding, shot, bleeding-out, run-over, cut to pieces in so many “creative” ways. And yet, how many of us think about the inescapable fact that at some point in the future, possibly very near future, we’ll be +
Fake food. Sugar and salt and glutamates. Fake faces. Make-up, lighting and Photoshop. Fake breasts. Silicone-gel. Fake diplomas. For the rich. Fake furniture. Veneered particle boards. Fake vacations. Staged and edited for Instagram. Fake feelings. Benzodiazepines and SSRIs. Fake songs. Auto-tuned studio and live recordings. +
We could cut recycling costs significantly if we taught and encouraged kids to disassemble stuff. DIY and engineering hands-on education as as bonus. Girls and boys. Requires better collection points, but otherwise, nothing fancy. +
People love cyclic and regenerating universes — reincarnation, royal / superhero families of father to son, extreme quantum fluctuation initiating a new Big Bang, etc. — because they appeal to our sense of narrative. They also appeal to our intuition for causality seen in most phenomena +
Maybe the only method to “upgrade” the human civilization is to implement mandatory annual reasoning, understanding and culture tests… worldwide? Each year, your understanding of the standard physics model, basic math, logic, chemistry, biology, psychology and economics are tested. With terrible, terrible consequences if you +
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are platforms run by multi-billion-dollar companies with near infinite resources, best research and development teams, top neuroscientists and unscrupulous user interface designers. Huge companies working to make your experience on social media as sticky and addictive as possible. To take over +
For all practical purposes, we, as a species, already possess all the information needed for health, beauty, self-realization, spiritual growth, social harmony… And yet, how many of us are healthy / happy / grown-up / self-realized? Less than 0,05%? Why? Is it lack of access +
“Humans have this remarkable ability to know and not to know at the same time. Or more correctly, they can know something when they really think about it, but most of the time they don’t think about it, so they don’t know it. If you +
People rely on celebrities for personality templates, which is why celebrity deaths hit them so hard. +
Remember the “married people are happier on average than singles” stat? Well, it could be that the direction of causation is actually reversed: happiness _causes_ marriage. Higher levels of serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin bring about and maintain a marriage. ;) +
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.” — the American Declaration of Independence translated into biological terms +
If you care about my opinion about the Berlin Film Festival line-up and awards — except the very, very worthy La Prière — it’s a perfect image of the mentally sick asylum which is our current, past and future global society. I chose to quit +
Sitting down, closing your eyes and focusing on your breath is… relaxation. Which is fine. The point of meditation is to move beyond the confines of the illusory separate self into a stabilized state of maximum awareness (and eventually enlightenment) where you experience the cessation +
That “live in the present moment” thing? Well, you know what, it’ll become a “dead in the past forever” thing in 100 years max. Ignore human-scale time at your own risk. Oh, and the “God only knows the Plan” thing… that’s so you follow someone +
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