Fire & Motion 32

Fleeting Quote

心底的記憶會抹去不好的回憶和加深美好的回憶，正因為如此，我們得以承受人生的過往。
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生活是一萬個值得。
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Best is good. Better is best.

Reading

📕多年後我憶起台北

我沒有全心全意愛這裡。我跳入的是別人的台北。這個好像把我弄得體體面面的城市。我的體體面面是不堪一擊的。一下就粉碎了。可我很快又把自己組合起來。因為我是局外人。你無法摧毀我。我沒有根。你拔不到我。

我已經遠遠地落後同齡人。什麼都落後了。只是寫了一些沒多少人看的東西而已。我還笨拙地卡在台北老公寓裡。要去和那些棺材人一較高下。我還把石頭丟過去砸他們的腳。當然他們不知道是我丟的。你寫什麼台北冰箱。你早就沒有臉了。臉沒洗。我毫不客氣和他們說我是詩人。讓他們看不起我。

有一些事我管不了。管了生煙。燒自己。

我似乎逐漸能懂「把台北生活剝開見骨見肉，是可以的嗎？」的微小恐懼：日常的台北肯定不是美夢，但我們總是太有禮貌，因此悲傷與絕望一口口地吞了下去。讀馬尼尼維的文字，是借她的筆一字一句地吐出來。

📕再一次，把清邁放口袋

「這才是我要的！」一個人旅行多回，已經慢慢可以理出要親炙名店的法則，其中一個我最喜歡執行的方式，就是在一開店時就報到，只要在此刻搶得先機，就算十分鐘也好，就有蠻大的機會能見到一間名店最迷人可親的模樣。

📕Renegades: Born in the USA

You are tied in, historically, to the good and the bad things that have happened, not just in our little town, but in our country, and, as an active player in this moment in time, you have some power to acknowledge these things and perhaps do something about them in some small way.

At some point, no matter how much self-invention you are doing, you have to plant a flag. And stand your ground and allow people to see you as you are, but also judge you in terms of how well you are living by that code that you've made for yourself. How much consistency can you show? Can you finish a task? Can you deliver on a commitment? All those things that, at the end of the day, are a different kind of satisfaction, but are what it means to grow up. Because, you know, contrary to the song of a great American master, we're generally not born to run. Most of us are born to run a little bit and go back home.

No matter how creative your approach is, you still have to set some standards in your term, and let others judge you accordingly. Am I interpreting it right? I might just view it from a sadder perspective.

[...] but the income inequality felt so much less pronounced. My parents lived hand-to-mouth. They spent all the money they had this week until they had money next week and then spent all of that. We all lived that way. But we never thought of ourselves as struggling. We were clothed, we had food, we had a roof over our heads. Our home was pretty funky, but it sat there in the midst of other homes, and it wasn't that dramatically different.

It vraiment struck me that how people perceive "money, wealth, and fulfilment" has changed dramatically over time. When does the materialism start? And when do we start to fiercely compare ourselves with other people? There was a better default before, but we forget that.

You can track your economic status over the years through your vacations with your spouse. Michelle and I could almost see every place that we had stayed, but the pleasure of it was reminding ourselves that we were just as happy in each of those places. The constant was our time together, and the setting really had not made any difference.

No matter how luxurious the hotel is, the true pleasure lies on how many pairs of slippers can we sneak out. (as an Asian, probably lol.)

📕過得還不錯的一年

整體而言，雖然我從未達到自己所企盼的完美，而且遠為不足，但藉著這些努力和嘗試，我才能成為一個更好、更快樂的人。

絕對要成為更好的人！

後來我就把密碼改成我要努力的目標，或是我想達到的成就。密碼成為一個持續地提醒紙條，讓我別忘記我的目標、我的夢想，以及我想達到的成就。

很務實的一項指引，這個月來更動幾個常用的密碼！

快樂的時候，要當好人比較容易。

選擇快樂毋須感到罪惡，快樂是完全利他的。

📄Vision Pro

I’m also unconvinced by the idea that the future of productivity software is more and bigger screens. I don’t think the future of financial analysis is seeing more columns at once in Excel - I think the future is an AI system that makes the model for you. More abstraction, not bigger screens.

Apple’s privacy positioning, of course, has new strategic value now that it’s selling a device you wear that’s covered in cameras.

which yields more ways to track.

Some people have an instinctive reaction to the Vision as with all VR headsets - that they don’t want to wear something on their face, and to be cut off from the world around like, no matter how good the technology. I don’t think we can know this - we all do lots of things that ‘no-one would ever do’ - but it might be correct. Meanwhile Apple itself clearly doesn’t think you’ll walk down the road wearing this. So it might be that a wearable screen of any kind, no matter how good, is just another staging post - the summit of a foothill on the way to the top of Everest. Maybe the real Reality device is glasses, or contact lenses projecting onto your retina, or some kind of neural connection, all of which might be a decade or decades away again, and the piece of glass in our pocket remains the right device all the way through.

Counter article from Prof. G

"Covid didn’t cause social distancing, the tech industry did. We are mammals, and mammals suffer when we are not in the physical presence of other mammals — whether you are an orca isolated in a tank, a dog left at home alone, or a consumer sequestered behind your latest expensive gadget. Real grief, rejection, joy, eroticism, victory, and love are experienced in the presence of others. Headsets render us nauseous, uncomfortable, and alone. Worse, they make us less human."

📄Insights into The Neuroscience of Decision-Making from Split-Brain Patients

We make up an explanation to justify it after the fact. We interpret our behaviour in a way that makes it seem like a logical decision all along, when in fact, our true motivations are unknown.

When we think we're deciding, we may just be interpreting. 

📄Eastern philosophy says there is no “self.” Science agrees

Put another way, it is the process of thinking that creates the self, rather than there being a self having any independent existence separate from thought. The self is more like a verb than a noun. To take it a step further, the implication is that without thought, the self does not, in fact, exist. In the same way that walking only exists while one is walking, the self only exists while there are thoughts about it.

Most of us live our lives under the direction of the interpreter, and that makes the mind our master, and we are not even aware of this. We may become angry, offended, sexually aroused, happy, or fearful, and we do not question the authenticity of these thoughts and experiences. While it is clear that these experiences are happening to us, we somehow retain the idea that we are still in charge of it all.

Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself — and there isn’t one.”

📄Richard Powers, The Art of Fiction No. 175

Reading is the last act of secular prayer. Even if you’re reading in an airport, you’re making a womb unto yourself—you’re blocking the end results of information and communication long enough to be in a kind of stationary, meditative aspect. A book is a done deal and nothing you do is going to alter the content, and that’s antithetical to the idea that drives our society right now, which is about changing the future, being an agent, getting and taking charge of your destiny and altering it. The destiny of a written narrative is outside the realm of the time. For so long as you are reading, you are also outside the realm of the time.

Watching

🎥Asteroid City

You can't wake up if you don't fall asleep.

Outside Interest!

🔗Why do you want to squeeze cute things?