Secondhand time, certainty, metro-museum, ancestry and AI, and more
Secondhand time, certainty, metro-museum, ancestry and AI, and more
Seven links to worthwhile thin(g/k)s
Hello dear reader,
A friend had recently posted a quote worth consideration from Carl Jung: “Kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” Cheers to that. May we kindle our inner light, and in doing so, also stand as a lighthouse to those around us.
Here are seven links to bits of the world I have been exploring this week, shared with the hope that you will find them to be an inspiring springboard for deeper thinking.
Book review: Video book review of Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time, The Last of the Soviets (An Oral History).
Music: I have no idea how I got to this polyphonic on Pink Floyd but my goodness am I glad I did. Here’s the inspo — Echoes by Pink Floyd. I don’t think I’ve come across a song such as this — simultaneously so distant in time and place, and yet so timeless.
New read: At the Existentialist Cafe — Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails.
A question we’re all up in the middle of the night trying to find the answer to (hm, just me? really?): Why are Moscow’s Metro stations so grandiose and ornate? My mom, accustomed to Moscow’s metro-museums, every once in a while likes to caution people who proclaim their love affair with New York, “Never mind the rats. Have you seen NYC’s fungus-growing subway ceilings!?”
DeepNostalgia: Technology that animates your ancestors using photographs of them. This is thoroughly creepy; I myself won’t be uploading any photographs onto the AI-powered site and caution you to be wary of doing so, but thought I’d pass this along in case anyone is interested in browsing through the already uploaded images.
Study: Cultural effects of patience and risk-taking on student achievement.
Until next week,
Ani