World War 1 / Your 2nd Brain / The value of crying
There’s a lot going on. Superpowers are pumping their chests like monkeys. The financial world is revealing its fragility. Question marks around AI are getting bigger by the day. Hopefully you can find some relent from the news, insight about AI or emotional advice in this edition.
Have a good one,
PJ
You need to see this
If you click on a single link from this post, make it this one. OpenAi is deploying their GPTs faster than we can take it. The impact is already being felt and will be visible in the next few months. Google’s business model is under threat, as are many apps which will be replaced by asking questions to an internet-connected ChatGPT. See in this video how to do research, book restaurants or edit video.
World War 101
The Ukrainian conflict has no resolution in sight and the word nuclear is now casually mentioned in the news. It’s a good time to remind ourselves how suddenly war can erupt and what better example than the escalation that led us to World War I? The documentary Apocalypse reveals the day-by-day series of events that led countries and continents into war. The reasons that motivated WW1 look primitive but in no way different than today’s. Frontiers, allegiances and bored armies are thrown onto a casino roulette with no conscience of the pain underway. Putting this footage together was an achievement in itself (some was retrieved through diplomatic briefcases) and the result is relatable, thanks to painstaking research and frame-by-frame cleaning and colouring. No history class or museum can achieve this level of familiarity, unless hearing the story from direct witnesses. From its writer, Isabelle Clarke: “It’s an extreme live-action approach to archival work”.
“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” Edmund Burke
My 2nd brain
I have been through countless note-taking apps, ever since I could log my thoughts digitally: Evernote, Google Keep, Apple Note, you name it, I’ve tried it. The best system for me are nested-bullet-points structures like Workflowy’s. Whatever my mind dives into, I can just upgrade any bullet into a new nest of subsequent bullets, effortlessly. It’s fast, pared down and functional. That’s all I ask. As a result, I can search every bit of information I’ve mined.
Something I want to try is rewind.ai, which literally records and searches everything you’ve ever seen or heard on your screen. Very much like creating your personal covert listening program?
Crying is underrated
I was quite sleep-deprived last week and reading this poem made me cry for the first time in years. I’ve always had trouble crying when I needed it the most. Raised in a household where I seldom saw my father cry twice, flushing out tears is not a skill. Why is crying not experienced as often as laughing? It has a cathartic effect:
"Sometimes you have to go through something painful and deep in order to break through to the other side, and tears are a river that can take you there.”
Under anger, there is always sadness. I believe men need to cry so they don’t end up tearing up in anger or violence.
The Whale
I was quite reluctant to watch a movie about someone afflicted with extreme obesity. Of course I was wrong. After Mother and Requiem for a dream, each of Darren Aronofsky’s movie is a LSD trip without taking drugs. This one immerses you into the daily struggle of man who has lost his sense of reality and all control. As a remote literature teacher, he urges his students to write something real they can feel, because he no longer feels anything. Brendan Fraser earned a well-deserved Oscar: he achieves making himself monstrous yet loveable. He shows how, given a specific sequence of events, this could happen to anyone.
A quote I’m often thinking about
One of my recent mantras is: “Joy is found on the other end of sleep.”