Life, I have discovered, is more like a tango than a sprint. Two steps forward, one step back. Toe-heel, toe-heel, turn in a circle. Something something rose in your mouth. Every time I get confident in how far I’ve come, I’ll lose some of what I’ve gained. Sometimes it’s just a little stumble. Other times, I find myself back at the bottom of the hill, dizzy from all the somersaults.

I’m sure you know where I’m going with this. The only solution is to get back up and try again. Trajectory is what matters, more than any one data point.

Now, in completely totally utterly unrelated news, let’s go to the links so I can clear off the 2948723987423 tabs that are open in my browser.

» Overcoming the “One More Year” Syndrome

» After reading this you’ll never want to eat GMO food again (Yep…he’s right)

But of course nobody really knows what the long-term health effects will be once humans start eating “synthetic proteins” on a massive scale.

And once these gene-edited organisms start spreading their genetic material in the wild, it could be a complete and total environmental nightmare.  According to Rebecca Burgess, these food companies are “not considering the future of genetic pollution”…

» Winning the Information War

» After Academia

Peter Thiel has given a uniquely scathing critique of the insanity of this system. He questions whether higher education, as an economic exchange, represents much of an investment anymore—the student defers gratification to reap higher rewards in the future, or the student enjoys a four-year party as a consumption good. Thiel says he originally thought of higher education as consumption masquerading as investment, but now thinks of it as an even crazier combination of concepts: as insurance against failure in life in general, and as a kind of Veblen good that is priced uncompetitively so as to confer status on those who can afford it. This produces a ridiculous situation in which insurance is desirable, not because something disastrous is prudently insured against, but because the disaster would be the ignominy of failing to purchase insurance in the first place. It is effectively a Ponzi scheme. No wonder Thiel calls college administrators subprime mortgage brokers. They get a cut on selling pieces of paper that are only as valuable as we all pretend they are.

» 5-HTTLPR: A POINTED REVIEW [Disclaimer: I haven’t read the whole article yet]

» Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, and that’s great

Red Velvet promo photos are some of my favorites. They have such a sense of humor about their aesthetic.

Tonight, I answer to the descriptors “Sincere, open, playful.”

What about you?

» Defecting from Bethel: Part 1 

» Homeschooled children are far more socially engaged than you might think

» Something something UFOs something something

» Vintage Tradition Tallow Balm

» The 3 to 5 Book Rule

» Elizabeth Holmes may go to trial this summer.

» This interview with Bret Easton Ellis looks interesting, but it’s behind a paywall.

» The Petty Writing Mistake that Drives Me Nuts

“I think the thing that really bugs me is when I’m talking with someone in an informal context who insists on using a formal style all the time. There are so many nuances of tone of voice that can be conveyed with a shift in capitalization or a well-chosen smiley — I wrote a whole book about them! — and to insist on texting as if you’re writing a formal essay tells me that you care more about an arbitrary notion of ‘correctness’ than the actual feelings of the person on the other end of the chat bubble. Let your hair down! Live a little!”

» How to hide from the AI surveillance state

» How new movements, not old media, are driving politics

Trump’s support wasn’t taking its cues from analysts, or taking much interest in the traditional vetting from the mainstream media; they were listening to the man himself, unfiltered on social media and cable news.

» Borrowed power vs. Owned power

“Do not strain for perfection. It will be made plain if you are ready earlier.”
-Abbot Radulfus, Cadfael

» Bristol-Meyers Squibb and Celgene have merged. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I doubt it’s good people when it comes to healthcare.

» An interesting take on the US-Mexico border problem.

» Sarah Wilson has been writing about living with autoimmune disease for years, and her experience was one of the touchstones in my pursuit of health.

I’ve arrived at a point where I know with all my heart I got AI because I needed to. Yes!  I was burn out and over myself. But I couldn’t stop (drinking coffee, knocking back half a bottle of wine each night, working 15-hour days, enduring the nastiest breakup in Christendom, not sleeping, striving and climbing higher because I didn’t think I was enough on my own…). It was a habit I was scared to break. I really wanted to live a different way. But I was worried that if I slowed down, everything would unravel.

So I was forced to.

My body ground to a halt so I couldn’t go any further until I’d woken up. It collapsed in a heap, effectively saying to me, “Well, if you won’t stop, I will. And I’ll collapse right here, in the middle of everything and prevent you from going any further down this path until you get a grip of yourself”.

The lifestyle changes I’ve had to make have changed my life. I’m happy these days. And clear. And for this I’m glad.

» Conservatives need to start taking art seriously

» The battle isn’t right vs left, it’s statism vs individualism

» Google gets scarier by the day

» Julian Assange as sacrificial lamb

It’s been a good weekend. Yesterday, I tried out a new style of yoga: yin yoga. It incorporates elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine with the aurvedic core of yoga, and targets fascia and connective tissue instead of muscles. Afterward, I hung out with my parents as we sunbathed in their driveway. The yard may have been covered with snow, and people may have been walking by wearing puffer hats and beanies, but dangit—the sun was out.

» Former Nickelodeon Star Jennette McCurdy Opens Up About Her Eating Disorder

» How to shut down Hollywood

» Lost to fashion history: Madeleine Vionnet

» HOLY SMOKE: Amazing Photos Show Devastating church fire doesn’t burn a single Bible or Cross

» Fairy Tales Could Be Older Than You Ever Imagined

» Personal tennis instructor for Michelle Obama, her daughters charged in bribery scheme

» If you have an MIT Tech Review account, this looks like an interesting read: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same

Owen Cyclops

It’s been a week, y’all. I got nothing for this section.

» Facebook’s 10 Year Challenge is Just a Harmless Meme, Right?

Humans are the connective link between the physical and digital worlds. Human interactions are the majority of what makes the Internet of Things interesting. Our data is the fuel that makes businesses smarter and more profitable.

We should demand that businesses treat our data with due respect, by all means. But we also need to treat our own data with respect.

» Conspiracy theory updates: IRL edition and K-pop edition.

» What the Right can learn from the Left

That’s what movements are about: gaining power. Movements don’t just happen. And they’re not the product of orders from on high, or rent-a-protestors paid out of somebody’s checkbook. They’re the product of a lot of people doing a lot of hard work over a very long time.

Righties don’t want to believe that. Thus, the same old horseshit: “oh it’s all George Soros.” “Oh we don’t get turnout for protests because we all have jobs.” “Oh we’d win a Second Civil War in five minutes anyway because the Lefties are wusses and we’ve got all the guns.”

It can’t possibly be that there’s work we need to do, work that we’ve been neglecting because we don’t understand how it works and we’re lazy. That’s unthinkable.

Well, think it. Because it’s true.

» If you thought the Academy was still about preserving disciplinary knowledge…nope.

To the best of my recollection, no one on the SCS panel ever used the word “diversity.” No one on the panel talked about diversity (however it might be defined), or affirmative action, or mentoring, or encouraging all students. They did not talk about teaching or students, or classes or courses, or the challenges facing teachers, or helping scholars get published; nor did they discuss the Classics, or Classics as an academic discipline (beyond what I have stated), or even the future of the field. This isn’t surprising because the panel wasn’t really about any of that, or even ultimately about race, but rather about how to destroy Classics.

» This will make you cringe, but pairs well with the article below: The New 30-Something

» Work as a religion?

There is something slyly dystopian about an economic system that has convinced the most indebted generation in American history to put purpose over paycheck. Indeed, if you were designing a Black Mirror labor force that encouraged overwork without higher wages, what might you do? Perhaps you’d persuade educated young people that income comes second; that no job is just a job; and that the only real reward from work is the ineffable glow of purpose. It is a diabolical game that creates a prize so tantalizing yet rare that almost nobody wins, but everybody feels obligated to play forever.

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.