I heard a rumor I’ll be writing about this costume design soon

This time of year—whatever the “dog days” of winter are called—I like to curl up in the evenings with a nice cup of heartwarming k-drama. I’ve been catching up on Touch Your Heart this weekend, which reunites the B-storyline couple from 2016’s Goblin. (FINALLY.) Lee Dong Wook plays a lawyer (he played Death, literally, in Goblin), with Yoo In Na as actress who is a delightful bundle of emotions. I can’t decide what I like best about this drama: the chemistry between the leads, the costume design, the playful sound effects/audio engineering, or the pacing/comedic timing of the supporting cast. The tone of the show lurches from fluffy rom-com to serious legal procedural, as reflected by the lead characters. It’s fun to watch.

» Guru Anaerobic’s book, Gang Fit, is out!

» Classic Cook’s Illustrated Pot Roast recipe, coming soon to my oven.

» The Babylon Bee is an absolute gem. They’ve outdone themselves with their coverage of the Jussie Smollet situation.

» Nicholas from Covington Catholic is suing the Washington Post. Good.

» Maybe it’s time to start growing and raising our own food.

» The Brits have pulled out major visual rhetoric opposing no-deal Brexit

» Reclaiming our Cognitive Sovereignty 

Here’s a personal example of how strongly the procedural memories — the mental grooves — are cut into our brains by the combination of our smartphone’s hyper-rewarding nature and reinforcing behavioral factors. After I’d come to the conclusions espoused in this essay, and had mostly migrated to my flip phone, I was working in my office and had my iPhone out to manually transfer some contact information over to my new flip phone. The next morning, I realized that somehow my smartphone — my precious iPhone — had ended up in my pocket.

Soon after, as I was transferring things from a pocket in one pair of pants to another, I found myself picking up my iPhone and saying, “Well, instead of going to the living room to check my newly deployed Amazon Fire, I’ll just look at my calendar on my phone to see what’s on the schedule for today.”

Ten seconds later I was checking my email, and next I was hitting the Reuters newswire. My very supportive wife then called out, “Hey, Jim, what are you doing?” At that point the “spell” was broken, and I carried my iPhone back upstairs to my office, where it belongs, plugged it in, and put it on the shelf. I’m guessing, though, that without her intervention, I would have wasted 20 minutes flipping through various sites chock-full of trivialities appealing to my nonconscious desires and my conditioned need for artificial immediacy.

Perhaps you remember Gandalf the Grey saying to Bilbo Baggins, near the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, “Bilbo, the ring is still in your pocket.” Bilbo was supposed to have left his precious behind, but somehow, like my smartphone, it was just too hard to resist and it found a way into the nearest pocket.