- There are good reasons you always feel 20 percent younger than your actual age.
One postulated that it is the age when his “major life questions/ statuses reached the resolutions/ conditions in which they’ve since remained.” This made sense to me, the “me” who sees herself as being in her early 30s. - I’ve been listening to more electronic music lately, and googled what do DJs do, marvelled at how much the Scottish electronic music industry is worth, read about how house exploded in Scotland. Which then made me want to go back to Glasgow.
-
Not the traditional style, but I do like Wu Jizhen’s calligraphy.
A thumbs up to the mango. -
Britain has endured a decade of early deaths. Why?
“in the early 2010s, life expectancy stalled in Britain compared with long-run trends and other countries. This slowdown in life expectancy struck all age groups, not just the elderly. And it disproportionately affected the poor.” -
Gender equality will take 300 years
An eye-watering headline. And the wage gap widened in 2021. -
What is the middle way?
A path in between extreme asceticism and sensual indulgence. -
What is a champagne socialist?
I read it while it was used as an insult (i.e. meaning no. 2). It raises an interesting question: what is the rich egalitarian to do? - Was finding out more about slow games, and learned about keepsake games and patient gamers. Bought The Return of Obra Dinn in the end and spent a few hours a little too engrossed.
- Ultramarathons sound very painful to me but Gary Cantrell’s use of books in race organisation amuses me:
“A master map of the locations is provided by Cantrell. To prove they’ve run the course correctly, runners must find each book and present a page from each, correspondent to their bib numbers. This is done every loop with the help of a compass. They have 60 hours to complete five.”
In my head: is the page torn, is it glued back later, oh my goodness. -
More on ambient music: How Japanese Ambient Music Became a Thing in America
There are masters, and pioneers, and then there are umm, screensavers.
Monthly Archives: March 2023
📖 Narcissus and Goldmund
“One knew nothing. One lived and walked about on the earth or rode through the forests, and so many things looked at one with such challenge and promise, rousing such longing: an evening star, a bluebell, a lake green with reeds, the eye of a human being or of a cow, and at times it seemed as if the very next moment something never seen but long yearned for must happen, as if a veil must drop from everything. But then it passed, and nothing happened, and the riddle was not solved, nor was the secret spell lifted, and finally one became old and looked as shrewd as Father Anselm or as wise as Abbot Daniel, and perhaps one still knew nothing, would still be waiting and listening.”
―
Hermann Hesse
Narcissus and Goldmund
//
I love the writing and for the first few chapters, I was absorbed. There was a sense of not wanting to move forward, because the story may move such that I don’t get to enjoy the writing anymore. This not wanting to let it go, is a form of relishing.
Then, I went to other books, and came back again. Into the book I went; suddenly the story sped up and I was caught up in Goldmund’s travels, and Hesse manages to use this young man as a foil, teasing out the deeper questions of life, and yet, there is never an answer. Because life carries on, and meaning may or may not arrive.
It is clear that Hesse has insight into the human condition, and the way he described the natural world, it conveys a zest for life, an understanding of the importance of the simpler things in life. I read and re-read the first paragraph of the book. Goldmund is such a character – an aimless wayfarer – and Narcissus is so intellectual, perhaps overly so, but I love them both, and their differences perhaps reflect the different extremes one may struggle with, within oneself.
I am reading this in my 40s. I wonder if I would have loved this book as much if I had read it as a younger human. Would I have tasted the same sense of wisdom?
Highly recommended.
Links from the past weeks
- We started watching Girls5eva and “New York Lonely Boy” is an awesome song.
- Quirky slides from Softbank’s 2020 earnings call
Slides in my industry are umm, more academic but I am always up for inspiration. -
I almost bought Marcin Wichary’s book on keyboards, but instead, I soothed myself with a 2018 article he wrote: Bigger in Japan.
(The Kickstarter page is here.) -
After reading this MacStories piece about how there is a remake of the classic version of Angry Birds, I went and paid my $0.99.
It is a simple game and very enjoyable, but it was made stupid in later years, when it became saddled with mechanisms aimed to get you to make recurring in-app purchases. - Reading The Art of War, and bemoaning the lack of the Chinese text in my copy. Not that being able to read the characters mean you understand the text, but well, I would like to refer to it and pretend my education hasn’t been wasted.
-
Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
I really love this piece of journalism. Not so great for those involved in the Singaporean project. - This is a little against my desire to stop using music as background, but I read somewhere about slow radio and went looking for the BBC Radio podcast.
- Apparently, Chinese youths are referring to themselves as rats. It is a self-deprecating way to refer to themselves while describing their struggles. The article also touches on other memes, and includes the Chinese characters and Hanyuan pinyin to help one understand the wordplay.
- Another day, another artificial sweetener to be careful about.