Hi friends,
Greetings from Cincinnati!
Updates From Me
Air Show (🛩)
Last weekend, I (along w/ my family) drove up to Cleveland to visit my sister. We saw an Air Show, which serve to entertain and showcase military gadgets. Fighter jets (eg. F-22s) are LOUD. Since the speed of light > speed of sound, you hear the plane a few seconds after it has gone by. If I were an enemy, I'd think of fighter jets as pesky little bees. Military transport planes (eg. C-5) are surprisingly small (1-tank width apart). And night vision goggles turn everything black-and-white and lets you see infrared light.
Curated Ideas For You
120 Years Lived (💡)
Last chip, I promise.
Famous last words.
When I was in scarcity, I’d eat healthier than when I was in abundance. At home, I'd splurge on an all-you-can-eat buffet of snacks, fruits, and protein bars. Succumbed to the temptations of convenience, I rapidly gained 6lbs. I felt gross. I felt the fat on my belly, face, neck, and wrists.
I began to re-consider my thoughts on personal health. What if instead, I can build a body that can last 120 years old? After all, that is where we're headed towards...
By all appearances, it seems like a person born today will live to be about 120 years old. Obviously, our society hasn't caught up to this fact. What do you think will change as we adapt to this new reality?
The Panopticon (💡)
Awaiting in line at a hair salon, I overheard a conversation on installing security cameras on school buses. Lady receptionist said: “Kids will behave; as they know they’re being watched.”
Before security cameras, Jeremy Bentham coined Panopticon, a hypothetical prison architecture. It's a circular prison with a central one-way watchtower, where a single guard can surveil all the prisoners, but each prisoner never knows if they’re being watched. Under 24/7 threat of being punished, prisoners are incentivized to be on best behavior.
Unfortunately, the Panopticon results in inmates being continuously afraid. To liberate the human spirit, Nelson Mandela suggests the opposite: “Live life as though nobody is watching, and express yourself as though everyone is listening.”
Conversations That Made You Sing (💡)
John asks:
“The question is, when is the last time that you had a great conversation? A conversation which wasn’t just two intersecting monologues, which is what passes for conversation a lot in this culture. But when had you last a great conversation in which you overheard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew, that you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you thought you had lost, and a sense of an event of a conversation that brought the two of you onto a different plane, and then fourthly, a conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterwards? And I’ve had some of them recently, and it’s just absolutely amazing. They’re like, as we would say at home, they are food and drink for the soul.”
When was the last time you had a conversation that "continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterward"? What was the context and what was it about?
Have a great week!
Leo A
Love the quote from "john", but John who?