On 8/23/26
Daily Letter
Png · Design & Objects
Jeweled medieval chess playing robot commissioned by Dries Van Noten
Real one
Meow Fuji
Knowledge · Inspiration & Quotes
I'm doing badly, I'm doing well, whichever you prefer;
IT IS NOT THE CRITIC WHO COUNTS; NOT THE MAN WHO POINTS OUT HOW THE STRONG MAN STUMBLES, OR WHERE THE DOER OF DEEDS COULD HAVE DONE THEM BETTER. THE CREDIT BELONGS TO THE MAN WHO IS ACTUALLY IN THE ARENA, WHOSE FACE IS MARRED BY DUST AND SWEAT AND BLOOD; WHO STRIVES VAL-IANTLY; WHO ERRS, WHO COMES SHORT AGAIN AND AGAIN, BECAUSE THERE IS NO EFFORT WITHOUT ERROR AND SHORTCOMING; BUT WHO DOES ACTUALLY STRIVE TO DO THE DEEDS; WHO KNOWS GREAT ENTHUSIASMS, THE GREAT DEVOTIONS; WHO SPENDS HIMSELF IN A WORTHY CAUSE; WHO AT THE BEST KNOWS IN THE END THE TRIUMPH OF HIGH ACHIEVEMENT, AND WHO AT THE WORST, IF HE FAILS, AT LEAST FAILS WHILE DARING GREATLY, SO THAT HIS PLACE SHALL NEVER BE WITH THOSE COLD AND TIMID SOULS WHO NEITHER KNOW VICTORY NOR DEFEAT
Leave behind that face of hatred, be good now, we were mistaken, we shall begin again.
Optimism bias (also called unrealistic optimism) is the widespread tendency for people to overestimate the likelihood of positive personal outcomes and underestimate the likelihood of negative ones, relative to objective probabilities or relative to other people.
It is one of the most consistent and robust cognitive biases documented in psychology and behavioral economics. It appears in roughly 80% of the population and is notably reduced or absent in people with clinical depression.
There are many paths to enlightenment. Be sure to take the one with a heart.
You were whole before the carving began.
This duality can be pursued further and is related to a duality between past and future and the notions of control and knowledge. Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it.
A plans an excuse for not living today
The king himself rode a horse and shot arrows at a deer. However, the horse stumbled, causing him to fall off, but he was not injured. Looking around, he said, "Do not let the historians know about this. "
There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Nature doesn’t punish or reward. It’s indifferent
Nature does not punish the evil, it punishes the weak.
Greek word σχολή from which we get “scholar” means “leisure” or “free time”
The way to acquire esoteric knowledge is by following your curiosity wherever it leads,
Camus, you never lied
There is nothing more rebellious than finding joy in something that's supposed to be our punishment.
Schopenhauer knew my pain
I am now so old that young girls call me 'sir' without lying. The final cruelty of time.
We don’t negotiate with therapists
Once I went to see a psychiatrist. I was doing something that had become a pattern that I kept repeating in life, and I thought: "Well, I should talk to a psychiatrist." When I entered the office, I asked him: "Do you think this process could affect my creativity in any way?" And the psychiatrist answered me: "Well, David, I have to be honest with you: it could." I shook his hand and left.
People & Society × Design & Objects
But people want meth so we will continue
There is a Japanese practice of owning one very good version of something rather than several adequate ones.
One knife, kept sharp. One pen that writes exactly as you want. One bag chosen carefully and used for years.
This is not minimalism as aesthetic. This is minimalism as relationship.
You learn the object. You know its weight. You know how it responds to your hand.
The object becomes, over time, an extension of you.
That cannot happen with things you do not stay with long enough to know.
Misc
The purpose of a book of meditations is to teach you how to think and not to do your thinking for you.
Consequently if you pick up such a book and simply read it through, you are wasting your time. As soon as any thought stimulates your mind or your heart you can put the book down because your meditation has begun. To think that you are somehow obliged to follow the author of the book to his own particular conclusion would be a great mistake. It may happen that his conclusion does not apply to you. God may want you to end up somewhere else. He may have planned to give you quite a different grace than the one the author suggests you might be needing.
The cosmic joke will continue until laughing at yourself improves
You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.
Flow is the sacred dance of surrender and trust
Intuition is the river of purpose flowing through you and unconsciousness is a dam
Clark's Law:
As production costs near zero, the value of creativity approaches infinity.
You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.