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.

1. Book review: Video book review of Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time, The Last of the Soviets (An Oral History).

2. 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.

3. New read: At the Existentialist Cafe — Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails.

4. Do you need certainty to be influential?

5. 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!?”

6. 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.

7. Study: Cultural effects of patience and risk-taking on student achievement.

Until next week,

Ani