Musings
A weekly collection of interesting…
Here are some things I’ve been musing about…
Ursula LeGuin died this week. While dying at age 88 is far from a life cut short, it is still a loss for all of us, as she was an amazing woman whose work and wisdom was treasured by many, including me. There are many tributes to her online, but one of my favorites is this one, by lit hub, of a number of quotes from her about life, and a life well lived. Rest in peace, great lady.
http://lithub.com/ursula-k-le-guins-best-life-advice/
I revived an old blog post of mine and put it up on Medium. I still find the idea very useful — hard does not equal complex, and easy does not equal simple.
https://medium.com/mugging-the-muse/the-opposite-of-hard-is-not-simple-3c033c46ec06
When a reader asked an advice columnist “Why am I so lazy?”, she got the best, most passionate answer ever, about How To Adult. This is an article worth reading, even if you have never thought of yourself as lazy.
https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/ask-polly-why-am-i-so-lazy.html
When you’re inspired by something, do you jump immediately into creation, or do you allow yourself a draw-down period? In this excellent article, Ryan Holiday discusses why it’s a good idea to give yourself that waiting period, or draw-down period between getting an idea and diving into working on it; it allows you to make sure that it was a good idea, and worth spending a lot of time and energy on, and it forces you to think it all the way through, make sure that it is a good idea for YOU, rather than a good idea that would be better served by someone else.
I’m one of many people who love the Game of Thrones theme song — it’s a brilliant piece of music. Which is why it has so many covers posted on places like YouTube, on a vast array of instruments, some conventional, some kind of bewildering. Here’s one of my favorites of the second variety — the Game of Thrones theme song, as played on calculators. And if that’s not enough for you, the second link has a list of Time’s top ten covers of the song. I’d argue that the cello group they include in there are better than the original orchestral version…
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-game-of-thrones-theme-sounds-smarter-when-played-on-1821963188
http://time.com/3894017/best-game-of-thrones-theme-song-covers/
What I’m reading:
Fiction:
A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab (link is to trilogy)
I heard about this series of books and that they were good some time ago, but I’ve only just gotten as far as reading them. I should have read them earlier — I haven’t quite finished the first book, but I’ve already ordered the second and third. The world is fascinating, with enough differences from ours to be deeply interesting, but still enough the same to not be disorienting, and the plot just keeps getting twistier as I read. I’m already predicting that these are going to be some of my favorite fiction reads for this year.
Non-Fiction:
Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller
Miller has a fascinating premise to his book — that marketers are wrong, we don’t spend money to show off our wealth, taste and social status, we spend it to show off our personal traits, because that’s what humans have evolved to pay attention to. He makes this argument clearly with plenty of evidence to back it up, and it’s made me look at advertising — and the products people show conspicuously — in a very different way. I would have liked him to spend more time talking about the applied psychology, though, and less time talking about pure personality psychology. He also should have spent much less time talking about possible alternate methods of signaling traits which even he admits are impractical and wouldn’t be accepted by the general public. All in all, though, it’s a book worth reading.
Thanks for reading!
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