Nicholas Bate with a couple of helpful reminders

Remembering the past need not dictate the future. Your genes are just one factor in your health. Educational qualifications are not good indicators of earnings. Love is a verb. You manage your destiny, not your corporate personal development plan.

Adam Frank, who is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester, writes a few thoughts on the uptick in UFOs in  The New York Times.

There are also common-sense objections. If we are being frequently visited by aliens, why don’t they just land on the White House lawn and announce themselves? There is a recurring narrative, perhaps best exemplified by the TV show The X-Files, that these creatures have some mysterious reason to remain hidden from us. But if the mission of these aliens calls for stealth, they seem surprisingly incompetent. You would think that creatures technologically capable of traversing the mind-boggling distances between the stars would also know how to turn off their high beams at night and to elude our primitive infrared cameras.

The line “turn off their high beams” is genius. It’s just common sense and the fact that there are so many people willing to think these things are aliens is mind-blowing. Then again, common sense isn’t so common.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold — built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art.

There are many days I see myself as a broken piece of pottery. Cracked dreams. Things are broken. It hurts. It should.

However, sometimes the broken things do come back stronger. The world was broken for a while. I think it might be coming back a little stronger and a little wiser. I don’t know. I hope so.

The broken things can be repaired. Perhaps, the world will find a better, more unshakable foundation.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Adam Chitwood, writing for Collider, has an article that has Star Wars fans in an uproar. Chitwood simply asked if the last Star Wars trilogy would have benefitted from having a plan from the very beginning?

“I’ve been involved in a number of projects that have been — in most cases, series — that have ideas that begin the thing where you feel like you know where it’s gonna go, and sometimes it’s an actor who comes in, other times it’s a relationship that as-written doesn’t quite work, and things that you think are gonna just be so well-received just crash and burn and other things that you think like, ‘Oh that’s a small moment’ or ‘That’s a one-episode character’ suddenly become a hugely important part of the story. I feel like what I’ve learned as a lesson a few times now, and it’s something that especially in this pandemic year working with writers [has become clear], the lesson is that you have to plan things as best you can, and you always need to be able to respond to the unexpected. And the unexpected can come in all sorts of forms, and I do think that there’s nothing more important than knowing where you’re going.”You just never really know, but having a plan I have learned — in some cases the hard way — is the most critical thing, because otherwise you don’t know what you’re setting up. You don’t know what to emphasize. Because if you don’t know the inevitable of the story, you’re just as good as your last sequence or effect or joke or whatever, but you want to be leading to something inevitable.”

Um, no shit?

I know exactly who to blame for this, and I’m flabbergasted this person is still in the employ of Lucasfilm/Disney. Abrams did his level best, but the lack of overall direction for the three films showcases why not having a proper vision and visionary at the helm hurts the films creatively. There is a lot of good stuff going on in the films, and they are cast really, really well. However, they could have been so much better.

I believe Disney has recognized the error and corrected it with who they’ve named as the new Executive Creative Director.

Have you ever had a good idea, and you say to yourself, “That’s good. I’ll remember it.”

What happens next? You forget it, right. The solution is simple. Write. It. Down.

Find a scrap of paper and a pen or open your notes app on your phone and write it down. Whatever the kernel of an idea you have… write it down without thinking any more about it. Now is not the time to try and figure out what to do with it. Now is the time to get it out of your head and into a place where you can then figure out what to do with it.

Get it out of your head and write it down. Use a pen and your hand. Use the proverbial napkin. I don’t recommend using one’s own blood, but to each their own. Then put it in an idea folder.

In Notion, I have a page that is a list of my ideas. It’s where they live. I go back and look at it occasionally. It is vitally important to review and see if something else is sparked by the act of looking at old ideas. It happens all the time.

The more often you do, the better something will spark. Something will catch your eye, and you won’t be able to let go of the idea.

What should you do? Write. It. Down.

[Patrick Rhone](a href=“https://www.patrickrhone.net/faith-vs-facts-vs-fear/) wrote something on facts, faith, and fear that I fundamentally think is pure and utter bullshit. It is agreeable bullshit. It is well-written bullshit. However, it is absolute and total bullshit nonetheless.

I will refute it thusly.

You can’t fight faith with facts. Faith will always win. Despite your evidence. Regardless of your proof. Faith will beat facts every time.

You can’t argue with the faithful by using facts. However, in the end, facts and evidence do win. Reality always wins.

Facts are impersonal. We can’t control them. They don’t easily change. When they do change it makes us question them further.

When facts change, it is because more knowledge has been found. You don’t like change, so when facts change, you get scared.

Faith is personal. Faith can grow and evolve. Faith can roll with the changes. We rarely question our faith.

Faith can evolve and roll with the changes but is rarely questioned? That makes no sense, and you know it. Faith never changes… that’s why it’s called faith.

It’s hard-wired into us; this need to believe. Why? Because faith is better at fighting fear. And, far too often the facts are frightening. The facts are the very thing that is the source of the fear. Therefore, faith is used to to fight that fear.

I follow the logic, but it’s stupid. Do you know what stops fear? More knowledge, experience, and diversity. Yes, facts are frightening. Reality isn’t perfect.

Example: The fact is that we are all going to die. All available facts say that’s it. The end. There is nothing more. That’s frightening.

Yes. The unknown is frightening but making up stories to make one feel better is a waste of time and energy.

Faith tells us it can’t be true. There is everlasting life or reincarnation or a spirit world or… Something more. That gives us solace and peace. That soothes our fear. No amount of facts will fight that fear the way faith does.

Why does this soothe your fear? Do you now want to die? No? Because children’s stories about life after death don’t change a damn thing. You say it gives you peace, but you are in no hurry to die, so it really doesn’t. It’s just something you say.

There is only one way that facts can win over faith: One must have faith in the facts without fear.

“Faith in facts?” Facts are facts. They are true whether you believe them or not. Reality is reality. You can try to live in a bubble and ignore reality and you might even succeed for a while, but reality doesn’t give a shit about your unreality. I don’t need to gaslight myself. Why should anyone else?

One must be convinced that the truth is worth having faith in, no matter how frightening. That believing in the truth will best equip them to navigate the world as it is — not as one wishes it to be. That facts are the only thing one can solidly hang their hat on. And that some faith is OK too, if it’s not hurting anyone. If it helps one sleep better at night or approach the unknown with courage. But, faith is not fact and isn’t intended to be. That there is, and needs to be, a place for both.

I like where you are going here, but the faith part is a middle manager that needs to be fired. Just get rid of it. Truth is the best way to navigate the world. You don’t need to have faith in it. Just understand that it is true. Faith is ok if it’s not hurting anyone… but faith hurts people every day. There are millions of people fighting and arguing over which imaginary supreme being is the “bestest one evahh.” Facts and truth are the only way to live. Faith is an imaginary construct to “help one sleep better” like a baby. I’m not a baby.

The world would be immediately better if all faith were washed away and replaced with facts, the truth, and reality. We might actually get some real progress made on a whole host of things.

By the by, I think Patrick is smart, funny, a wonderful husband and father, and someone I wish I knew personally. I just think he’s off here.

For years, I would walk into the local Barnes and Noble and buy a book or two. The employee checking me out always asked for my email address. I always said no. I don’t want more sales offers and pitches in my email. I already filter what I do get and most times I delete them without looking.

I wondered how many people actually said yes?

When email was new and exciting it was awesome to get a new message. “You’ve Got Mail!” echoed and it was cool. Now, everyone’s email has far too much spam.

What if Barnes and Noble’s employees told customers they had just won a $10 gift certificate? They could say, “Congratulations! You just won a $10 gift certificate. Can I email it to you? Your email will be entered to win more gift certificates each month.”

Now it’s about the customer getting something instead of Barnes and Noble. That feels like Marketing 101.

Dave Perell, in his Monday Musings newsletter, described something I was also thinking about in the back of my head.

I’ve long believed that we’re experiencing a decline in advanced literacy.

On this topic, I don’t really care what the statistics say because they’re misleading. Official literacy rates measure what I call “Street Sign Literacy,” which is the ability to read signs and basic articles, and we are undoubtedly getting better at it.

But we are getting worse at Library Literacy, which gives you the ability to understand logic and think about ideas abstractly. It’s what you learn when you read dense fiction or difficult philosophy, and we don’t really measure it.

In short, you need Street Sign Literacy to live, but you need Library Literacy to think.

The ability to think abstractly and logically seems like a lost art to the world today with conspiracy theories and anti-intellectualism running rampant.

Daniel Kreps, writing for Rolling Stone, has the story on this new Pearl Jam archive.

Pearl Jam are offering fans an immersive plunge into the band’s live archives with their newly announced Deep, a digital collection of nearly 200 Pearl Jam concerts spanning from 2000 to 2013.

The just-launched Deep hub on Pearl Jam’s official site allows visitors to access 186 bootlegs and 5,404 tracks from the past two decades, with each gig accompanied by show descriptions written by members of the band’s Ten Club fan club.

This is pretty amazing. I wish I was a bigger Pearl Jam fan.

I’m not much of a bootlegger either, so finding cool bootlegs in shady record stores never was my scene. I would imagine it’s a dream for the average Pearl Jam fan.

Now, if Gene and Paul would do this for the KISS catalog that would get me to pay attention. Yes, I know there’s a new Off the Soundboard series coming.  Maybe this sort of thing will come out once the End of the Road tour plays its last show.

Rebecca Toh answers what it means to live a beautiful life.

A beautiful picture of your life isn’t the same as a beautiful life.

A beautiful life isn’t about loving yourself or loving others but loving both yourself and others.

A beautiful life looks like a vase with scars on it because it was once broken but someone took time and effort to patch the pieces back together.

A beautiful life cannot be planned or executed perfectly but can be experienced fully.

A beautiful life is honest. But honesty isn’t possible until you learn to see and acknowledge and tear down all the walls you have built up in order to protect yourself.

A beautiful life is one lived awake, or one lived trying to be awake. A beautiful life is full of “trying.”

A beautiful life is beautiful despite cancer, business failures, the loss of a marriage, financial mistakes.

A beautiful life is knowing you are nothing and everything.

A beautiful life is something you’re already living.

Enjoy every moment of it.

A perfect list of beautiful sentiments. I wish I could live up to them.

The Los Angeles Angels are releasing future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols today, per sources. Pujols is in the final year of his 10-year, $253 million contract.

— Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) May 6, 2021

This is incredible news. While not totally unexpected, the timing is weird and the question remains if the release also releases him from the 10 year post-playing days contract. Apparently, that contract is only worth a million a year so it is possible Pujols just gets that in a lump sum and he’s free to go become the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals like I want.

I hope he finds himself in Cardinals red real soon.

Writing for The Atlantic, Derek Thompson wondered about all these batshit crazy people refusing to get the vaccine.

What are they thinking, these vaccine-hesitant, vaccine-resistant, and COVID-apathetic? I wanted to know. So I posted an invitation on Twitter for anybody who wasn’t planning to get vaccinated to email me and explain why. In the past few days, I spoke or corresponded with more than a dozen such people. I told them that I was staunchly pro-vaccine, but this wouldn’t be a takedown piece. I wanted to produce an ethnography of a position I didn’t really understand. […]

This is the no-vaxxer deep story in a nutshell: I trust my own cells more than I trust pharmaceutical goop; I trust my own mind more than I trust liberal elites.

Dear no-vaxxers,

You have misplaced your trust. You are stupid.

Scientists and doctors are smarter than you about this subject. You are ignorant of this subject. Do not think your ignorance is better or just as good as others with knowledge, experience, and intelligence.

It is not.

You are being stupid. Stupid people get others killed.

Have your tried not being stupid?

It’s Star Wars Day!

Alex Damon and Mollie Damon of Star Wars Explained have updated their Complete Canon Timeline for the Star Wars saga for 2021, just in time for May the 4th, using every item of reference they could find to explain everything that ever happened in a galaxy far, far away in one hour-long video.

This is the entire history of the Star Wars canon as of May 3, 2021. The Star Wars films, TV shows, books, comics, video games, and short stories are all summarized into the most important moments in galactic history!

I’m surprised how much this video gave me chills. Excellent work.

Sunday, for me, means preparing for the upcoming week. Sometimes it’s simply mentally preparing. Sometimes it’s listing out everything that needs to get done.

The thing is, I’ll never get everything done that needs to be done. I won’t get on top of my to-do list. It is always updating.

What I can do is choose to do the things that matter most. Work or personal… what is most important to me.

I make my lists with the goal of eliminating the unimportant.

My wife has a better understanding of what drains her of energy and time. I’m still learning.

I write in my journal to focus on what’s important. I don’t always succeed, but I’m trying.

Maybe someday, I’ll have my ability to focus fine-tuned enough that I won’t ever have to write a reminder.

Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday.

Alex Roarty and Adam Wollner, reporting for McClatchy on Joe Biden’s popularity:

Sarah Longwell, a former GOP operative and founder of the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Project, said her studies of voters who supported Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020 show they are “the most optimistic group in the history of focus groups I’ve done.”

She said that has been due to the perceived chaos of the Trump administration coming to a close and a sense that the coronavirus pandemic situation is finally improving.

“Now there’s a sense of relief,” Longwell said. “Imagine there’s a car alarm that’s been going off for a long time and suddenly it’s quiet.”

Insert the Billy Eilish, “Duh” here.

On his blog, Greg Morris asks a pretty important question about upgrading and wanting more.

Upgraded my phone, tablet, computer, and anything I could get my hands on almost constantly in a search for something better. When in fact it wasn’t better it was looking for, it was an answer.

He realized he was trying to fill a hole with tech purchases, but that wasn’t working.

I wanted something to fill another hole in myself. It didn’t matter what the hole was, but I filled it with buying tech. Simply because I thought it made me look cool on the internet. Although every upgrade offered me something, these things are not what I needed. What I, and load of people like me, needed was to get to the root of what I really wanted. What was I trying to mask and fill with buying things?

I strive to find the right kind of minimalism, but curating my collections is difficult. I have outdated technology I should sell, comics I will never read again that should find new homes, and more.

All the season highlights of a year like no other.

What an incredible basketball program. I think this is just the beginning.

Scott Seiss made me laugh pretty hard with his honest answers to inane questions from customers as a seasonal employee of IKEA.

I think this one is my favorite:

Customer: I’d like to speak to your manager

Seiss: I’d like to speak to your mother. Tell her she should be embarrassed she raised someone to act like a baby in public. You want to speak to the manager? Please. The manager doesn’t know what’s going on. Haven’t you ever worked anywhere before?

I hope he never stops doing these.

Adam Grant, writing for The New York Times, explains the not quite post-pandemic feeling we are all experiencing. 

At first, I didn’t recognize the symptoms that we all had in common. Friends mentioned that they were having trouble concentrating. Colleagues reported that even with vaccines on the horizon, they weren’t excited about 2021. A family member was staying up late to watch “National Treasure” again even though she knows the movie by heart. And instead of bouncing out of bed at 6 a.m., I was lying there until 7, playing Words with Friends.

It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.

Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021.

“Languishing” is such a perfectly descriptive word. My wife and I often have discussions about our emotions and how we are feeling. Languishing is exactly how I’ve been feeling for months.