From Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness:
There is an element of boredom which is inseparable from the avoidance of too much excitement, and too much excitement not only undermines the health, but dulls the palate for every kind of pleasure, substituting titillations for profound organic satisfactions, cleverness for wisdom, and jagged surprises for beauty. I do not want to push to extremes the objection to excitement. A certain amount of it is wholesome, but, like almost everything else, the matter is quantitative. Too little may produce morbid cravings; too much will produce exhaustion. A certain power of enduring boredom is therefore essential to a happy life, and is one of the things that ought to be taught to the young.
I just took Elwood out for a late/very early walk. I'm back in bed reading and Russell's passage here, in a chapter all about boredom jumps out at me. How smartphones, the internet, and especially social media have largely removed one's ability to be bored except to be such very purposefully. And how doing so floods our brains with dopamine, deadening them just as he wrote.
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Last night I began my second attempt at 'The Three-Body Problem' by Cixin Liu. I have previously attempted it as an audio book and found it too dense to follow. I'm hoping as a physical trade paperback I'll find it more digestible.
And, on my drive to work this morning, I started a new sci-fi audiobook 'Sleeping Giants' by Sylvain Neuvel. I saw someone recommend it on #BookTok and decided to give it a shot since the audiobook was available from the library. 30 minutes in and enjoying it so far, we'll see how it goes.
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On Tolkien and Orwell
A very interesting comparison of two authors who I had no inkling of looking at as comparable.
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Do you believe in God? I know it's a personal question. I do. And I think He was pretty awesome to make relativity a thing, don't you? The faster you go, the less time you experience. It's like He's inviting us to explore the universe, you know?
Religion is not a thing I feel particularly strongly for these days, but I really like this passage from Hail Mary. I've been greatly enjoying the book and am within a stone's throw of finishing it.
PS - Glowbug idea, a growing list of 'auto replacements' for known links. For example, I could add 'Hail Mary' and have it be italicized and linked to the book listing online. Will need to think on it, adding it to the coding backlog.
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I am really enjoying Weir's Hail Mary. I didn't really know what is was about, and I'm glad I went into it dark. It turns out it is one of my favorite subgenres of sci-fi.
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"We have figured this out, yes," said Dimitri. "With lasers. It was very illuminating experiment."
"Was that a pun?"
"It was!"
"Good one!"
We both laughed. Stratt glared at us.
I am reading Hail Mary by Andy Weir finally and this little interchange made me laugh out loud. Honest nerd humor as they geeked out in a part of the story.
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Hank Green's - An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
I just finished the audiobook for Hang Green's latest book. I haven't read any of his other books, but this was overall an enjoyable listen. I won't say it is amazing, it feels for much of the book like a thin veil over the events of 2020 but it is still an enjoyable story. As with most books, I found the finish of the book a bit unsatisfying. I don't know if I simply have too-high expectations for books, if endings are that hard to pull off, or more likely a mixture of both.
I give it a rating of 🤖 🤖 🤖 / 🤖 🤖 🤖 🤖 🤖
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The new reading stack
Stack, in this case, refers to the usage for 'stack' as a package / unit of technology. Used for 'stack' of servers and the technology used by them. I enjoyed this post because it shares some very interesting sites, many I already knew, but I am definitely going to check out readng.co as a replacement for Goodreads.
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Tibetan Book of Proportions for how to draw or display Budda
The Tibetan Book of Proportions is an eighteenth century manual that gives precise iconometric guidelines for depicting the Buddha and Bodhisattva figures
The Tibetan Book of Proportions is an eighteenth century manual that gives precise iconometric guidelines for depicting the Buddha and Bodhisattva figures. A standardized grid with numerical notations is used for both marking the measurements of the figures and for arranging the posture of the figures within a composition. Written in Newari script with Tibetan numerals, the book is likely to have been produced in Nepal for use in Tibet. It is presently held by the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
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