The wind up is the movement you make to get ready before you swing to hit a ball/nail/object/target. A good wind up puts you in position, primed and ready to release your energy in the right place, at the right time, in the right direction and with the right amount of power – and then to recover so that you…
DC hit 8,000 views on 3rd August 2020! July was our best month so far,* with an average of 28 views per day, even with no significant twitter retweets (as was the case for May and June). Conclusion: DC is slowly building momentum, which might be the best way. Thanks as ever for coming. *Not including the Tyler Cowen spike,…
[For those who came in late… Start with Not long ago, or Little by little (1)] Not long ago, in a place not far away and directly connected to you, something like this was happening… A village in Suffolk [in the east of England], circa 1900: There were seven children at home and father’s wages had been reduced to 10…
[Not long ago, or Little by little (1)] Not long ago, in a place not far away and directly connected to you, something like this was happening, little by little: It’s the Chinese city of Kunming in 1980: Li Kunwa and Phillipe Ôtié’s A Chinese Life is an amazing memoir – a lens into sixty years of struggle and upheaval…
Not long ago, in a place not far away and directly connected to you, something like this was happening, little by little: It’s London in 1930. Ethel has left her work as a lady’s maid; Ernest is a milkman. Raymond Briggs’ Ethel and Ernest is a brilliant book – very funny, very poignant. I share it here as an example…
Picking up Tuesday’s post about transactional reading and contemplation, here’s something interesting that goes a little further in thinking about how we might immerse ourselves in books or other texts. Today’s gem comes from Andy Matuschak (former leader of the R&D group at Khan Academy and all-round interesting fellow), who’s working on developing more effective tools for thought and learning.…
This is a really interesting interview with Max Roser, founder and editor of Our World in Data. Recommend. The idea of development is to make progress against problems. If we go back into our history, humanity has always battled the same problems: kids died early, people remained hungry for much of the year, lived in poor conditions, and lived in…
How long does it need to be? What would be different if, rather than being paid by the word, you were paying?
Ezra Klein: If you can get the argument of a book – through book reviews or book essays or a Wikipedia page or something – that actually isn’t what the book can do for you primarily. Getting the main argument of a book is very easy. It’s the time you spend in in it, where you begin to make connections…
[Public service announcement for email subscribers: sorry for the unfinished post you may have received out of the weekend – I was having issues with the WordPress app.] Innovation is different from invention. Invention means coming up with a new thing; innovation means making that new thing available, affordable and reliable in such a way that people actually go out…