Nobody will remember if your film / book / design was late and over-budget… But everyone will remember if it was bad. Finance for the long term. Yeah, despite the capitalist preference for the short-term quarterly reports. ? Harder? Sure. But worth it in the +
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 +
I remember when Red Hat was still a startup… and me installing our own custom Red Hat Linux 7 Servers in… uhmm… 2001. Now it’s a 34 billion USD purchase by IBM. +
“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. +
The redundancy required by human language-based communication is so inelegant and inefficient. Take attribution for example. The requirements to state “I think that” for each sentence that expresses the opinion of the orator… of course most of the statements are personal opinions, don’t you think? +
Speaking of film market imbalance… The 2018 Cannes film festival and market has seen 12 411 participants from 114 countries, of which: 980 — festival programmers 1 743 — buyers 3 858 — producers +
Saw the premiere in Cannes… A rather weird alternative rendition of an (imagined?) fleeting romance of legendary Russian pop-rock singer Viktor Tsoi in the 1980s Saint Petersburg. Hipsterish B&W, “It Never Happened” announcements, 4th wall pokes, awkward handwriting notes on the screen… I much prefer +
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. ;) +
Projection quality in most cinemas today is, alas, quite bad. If you think seeing a movie on a “big screen” is “the best cinematic experience”… well, sorry to disappoint you. On average, what you see in theaters worldwide, including in supposedly top-notch multiplexes in world +
So… I’m debugging someone else’s JavaScript code… and remembered this quote from somewhere: “Document my code? Why do you think it’s called ‘code’?” Argh… I always document my own code. Cause, even several projects later, which can be as little as 1 month… I can’t +
“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 +
La Prière / The prayer at the Berlin Film Festival is a classically, solidly, well-told story about a French heroin addict who joins a Christian Catholic community of former addicts who live isolated in the Alps mountains and use manual work and prayer as a +
A premiere of “Dovlatov” film at the Berlin Film Festival. 6 days in the 70s life of a Soviet writer Sergei Dovlatov – Сергей Довлатов, an unknown to almost anyone in the USSR until it fell in 1991. And still largely unknown globally. Unfortunately, not +
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 +
The night sky represents the myriad of opportunities you’ll never realize, trillions of galaxies, each containing millions of stars and dozens of places to go and see. A stark reminder of our limits. Speed of light vs speed of life. +
Have finally watched Manchester By The Sea… Not a really wise choice given the recent death in my own family. An extremely sad drama with an almost complete collection of human dysfunctions in American context. Cinema aspects: excellent, stunning acting, just amazing, touches even through +
Success in art is predicated on tolerance: tolerance to stress, tolerance to the unknown, tolerance to failure, tolerance to social pressure. Some of it is built-in, hard-coded with your DNA. Some can be modified and improved with discipline training, emotional awareness / control / sublimation, +
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