Hermann Hesse : “Action and Suffering”
Action and suffering, which together make up our lives, are a whole; they are one.
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What you call action is a running-away from pain, a not-wanting-to-be-born, a flight from suffering !
21 Strange and Ingenious Uses for WD40
What can you do with a can of WD40? Lubricate M-16s, catch bigger fish, de-ice rod guides, clean turtles, repel pigeons, remove dog poo, make a flame-thrower, and much, much more
The big idea: why relationships are the key to existence
From subatomic particles to human beings, interaction is what shapes reality
Why Do (Some) Humans Love Chili Peppers?
Unthinkable as it may sound today, the cuisines we have come to associate with spiciness—Indian, Thai, Korean, and Chinese, among others—had no chili peppers at all before their introduction in the 16th century onward. Prior to that, those cuisines relied on other spices or aromatics to add heat to dishes, such as ginger, likely native to southern China, or black pepper, native to India.
How did chili peppers become part of the human diet beginning in the Americas an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 years ago? And why were they eventually embraced by the rest of the world?
Europe’s green deception: Forests destroyed for Paris Accord compliance
This reads like a cautionary tale on the Law of Unintended Regulatory Consequences, and to some extent it is. However, it’s just as much a tale of green-movement hypocrisy, as well as yet another lesson on the impact of incentives and artificial market interventions. The New York Times explains in a sideways manner how the EU has attempted to comply with its own Paris Accord targets for carbon-dioxide reduction by, er, wiping out the forests of the continent for conversion to power.
Watching a rather horrifying documentary on Netflix about Woodstock 99.
The 90s was when I lost touch with contemporary rock, so the bands mean nothing to me. They’re mostly angry. Very angry. Loud and tight and tuneless. You look back and wonder: I don’t remember the 90s being this feral. But you get the sense of a youth culture that had completely decoupled from the civilization that gave them life and food and purpose. Just RAAAAHHHHWWWWW dude culture, like the last horrible yawp before the internet fixed them all with a pin and everyone was anesthetized by a gaming console or a phone.
Why You Feel So Tired All the Time
A little over a month ago, I started feeling more fatigued than usual. Just about everything in my life—from getting out of bed to exercising to writing to coaching to reading—required a significant amount of activation energy. All of these activities usually felt smooth and seamless. Now they had turned into a grind. I wasn’t depressed, or even particularly sad. And I didn’t have the sense of stagnation or emptiness associated with languishing. I was simply tired.
Bill Chance 