February 2020 Favorites

Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others.

Videos

• The most important skill for improving your life – How to learn to concentrate.
• Should social media platforms censor hate speech?
• How Parasite (And Every Bong Joon-ho Film) Critiques Class
• The Skill You’re Slowly Losing – How to learn critical thinking and solving problems on your own.
• Jonathan Pie’s HARD BREXIT – Jonathan Pies reports on the Brexit protests and gets entangled in a big Twitter-storm.
• PIE NET ZERO – Jonathan Pie goes to the seaside to investigate climate change.
• The CIA’s 638 Attempts to Assassinate Castro
• This Productivity System Will Save Your Life – The answer is checklists. If they are good enough for doctors, pilots, or NASA engineers, they are good enough for you.
• Joe Rogan Experience #1423 - Andrew Doyle – Interview with the hilarious comedian behind the social justice Twitter handle @TitaniaMcGrath.
• Design Systems with Brad Frost - The State of the Web
• Timeline of the Next 80 Years – Two alternative future scenarios.
• 2017 Personality 09: Freud and the Dynamic Unconscious – Lecture by Jordan B Peterson about Sigmund Freud.
• Meat: Grows the Brain or Rusts the Body?
• Joe Rogan Experience #1109 - Matthew Walker – Interview with Matthew Walker, the author of the book Why We Sleep.
• A Viral Video Takes a Dark Turn – Modern-day witch hunt and the bad consequences.
• How China Built a Hospital in 10 Days
• A Guide to Digital Minimalism
• Why it Used to be Legal to Mail Babies
• Japanese Historian Describes First Contact With Europeans, Teppo-ki, 16th cent.
• How to Make a Kurzgesagt Video in 1200 Hours
• Asteroids Size Comparison – Nice video for all The Expanse fans.
• The Real Implications Of Ex Machina’s Turing Test
• The Best Way to Reset: The Bill Gates Method
• Casually Explained: Stand-up Comedy
• Free Speech vs Theocracy
• BOOKFACE | Corpus Libris
• Ryan Holiday — Turning the Tables | The Tim Ferriss Show
• 3 Ways to Write Better
• A Quirky Mindfulness Practice (That Will Change Your Life) – A mindfulness practice from Japanese train drivers can help you to focus.
• fourweeksgood – A series of 12 short travel videos by Seraina Silja and Simon Ammann who worked and lived for one month in each city. For example: Berlin, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Vienna or Melbourne.
• Alan Watts ~ The Story of the Chinese Farmer
• A Response to Matt D’Avella’s Productivity System Video
• Vue.js: The Documentary – A short documentary about the origins of the popular JavaScript framework Vue.js and its creator Evan You.
• Why You Should Re-Read, Not Just Read Books | Ryan Holiday | Daily Stoic
• Bloom – Nadine, depressed and alone, has been living her life in the dark. A gift from a friendly neighbor gives Nadine something to live for. With a new life, Nadine has a chance to pay it forward.
• Dirty Machines - “The End of History” – A piece of speculative content for an intellectual property about time travel.
• Satisfaction: Mug – British director Nick Bennett ‘s latest film is a portrait of Wales-based studio potters James and Tilla Waters, at work in their Carmarthenshire studio.

TV Shows

• SpongeBob [4] [P]
• Vikings [6] [P] – The first half of the last season is finished. I hope they soon air the last half.
• The Big Bang Theory [12] [N] – This show was funny until the last season.
• SpongeBob [5] [N]
• Easy [2] [N]
• La Casa de Papel [3] [N] – I hadn’t started Season 3 for a while, because I thought it might not live up to the first two seasons. I was so wrong. I can’t wait for Season 4 in April.

Movies

• I Lost My Body [N] – A french movie about a severed hand searching for its owner
• Ready Player One [N] – A really nice 3D animation movie about a Virtual Reality.

Music & Podcasts

• Schiller, Jan Blomqvist: In Between
• Schiller: Aurora
• Cyrus Reynolds: End of Days – Orchestral Session
• Selena Gomez, ASAP Rocky: Good For You
• Poets of the Fall: War (Alexander Theatre Sessions)
• JRE Podcast #1109 - Matthew Walker
• Delicious Ella, Season 3, Episode 7: Why We Sleep with Matthew Walker

Books

• Why We Sleep (Amazon) – A really fantastic book. Since I started reading this book I changed my sleep habits from 6-7 hours to 7-8 hours.
• The Daily Stoic (Amazon) – I re-read this book a third time.

Articles

• How Japan Has Almost Eradicated Gun Crime
• How ‘reading the air’ keeps Japan running – In “high-context” countries where communication is indirect and messages are inferred – like Japan – situational awareness is king.
• Work—the Tragedy of Our Age
• Confucius Got It Right: Giving in to ‘Bias’ Is Part of Living an Ethical Life
• The Timeless Art of Journaling: How To Start Journaling, Benefits of Journaling, and More
• Interview: Venezuelan Refugees Surrounded by Their Belongings – The new project Undaily Bread, following Gregg Segals series Daily Bread tells the story of women and children from Middle America who have been forced to flee their countries.
• The dangers of just this once – Why it’s easier to follow principles 100% of the time that 98% of the time.
• Give it five minutes – Why it’s better to wait 5 minutes before pushing back an idea you don’t like.
• It Can Take As Little As Thirty Seconds, Seriously – Learn to be a good citizen and fight fake news in less than 30 seconds.
• Rethinking Creativity
• Japan’s Lost-and-Found System Is Insanely Good
• A Quirky Mindfulness Practice Inspired By Japanese Train Conductors – The story behind the mindfulness practice of “Pointing and Calling” used by the Japanese rail industry.
• Do Yourself a Favor Today… and Go For a Walk – The benefits of walking.
• The Three Points System – A way to explore your town for an hour as if it was a long-lost kingdom.
• A Quiet Place – Carving out quietness in a world full of noise.
• Better Questions – Asking better questions leads to better answers.
• This Page Left Intentionally Blank – The world pushes us to add, but the secret is to focus on subtracting.
• Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech – Altering the internet’s economic and digital infrastructure to promote free speech.

Inspiration

• mnmllistlisting – all things minimal
• My Little Commonplace Book – A nice minimalist project listing minimal resources grouped by categories.
• Sketchnotes for Thinking Things Through
• Minimalism Life – Short articles, essays, and wallpapers.
• Stunning Aerial Photos Capture Rare Sight of Icelandic Highlands When Thawed
• Welcome to Winona – A nice website about Winona (advertising by Squarespace).
• Harnessing the Charm Of Wabi-Sabi In Interior Design
• Panamæra

Stuff & Things

• Stencil – A nice JavaScript library to build Design Systems with Web Components.
• The GitHub CLI
• Matrix – An open network for secure, decentralized communication. I like the concept of decentralizing the web again.
• Riot.im – The official chat client for Matrix.
• levels.fyi – Compare salaries in engineering jobs.
• Internet Archive – This website exists forever now, most people know the Wayback Machine. But I just recently discovered the Open Library that holds a nearly unlimited amount of books, videos, images, audio files, and software. Everything is free to download.
• Neverthink: Handpicked videos – YouTube videos sorted by groups.
• Hardly Everything – A nice minimalist project for remembering websites to visit regularly. The data is stored in the browser and can be exported.
• Breaker Browser – Another cool project for the decentralized web: A web browser for a peer-to-peer web. It’s possible to create a website in seconds, stored on your computer, distributed by others around the network. Still an early concept but I like it!
• Fish: a tap essay – A fantastic short tap essay about the difference between liking something on the internet and loving something on the internet.
• Affinity 1.8 – The new version of my favorite design suite was just released.
• Smithsonian Open Access – The Smithsonian opened their archives and released 3 million 2D and 3D digital items for everybody for free.

Quotes

I was once fond of saying: Sleep is the third pillar of good health, alongside diet and exercise. I have changed my tune. Sleep is more than a pillar; it is the foundation on which the other two health bastions sit. Take away the bedrock of sleep, or weaken it just a little, and careful eating or physical exercise become less than effective.

You want to eat fish? Eat fish. You want to eat seafood? Eat seafood. You want to eat some lean meat? Do. You want to eat eggs? Do. You want to eat dairy? Do. But the bulk of your diet should be vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, and seeds. This is true all around the world where people do the best.

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish.

I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.

You should always let people underestimate you. Because when people misappraise your intelligence and abilities, they’re merely pointing out their own vulnerabilities–the gaping holes in their judgment that need to stay open if you want to cartwheel through later on a flaming horse, correcting the record with your sword of justice.

Ultimately, saying that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.