Attention-craving, Tree-hugging and Tennis-hating
Howdy and happy Friday!
After fully unplugging in the backcountry of Yosemite last week, I have a few things I thought were worth sharing...
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt posted a Ted Talk just a week ago, titled: How craving attention makes you less creative. It already has almost 1 million views but who's counting "attention" these days anyway, right? Check it out - it's 13 minutes well-spent.
- Continuing on the "we-should-be-aware-of-technology's-power" train, I stumbled upon an interview of a - as they joke in the conversation - "former" YouTuber, Casey Neistat. After doing daily vlogs for almost 3 years straight, millions of followers on social media, he has decided to basically drop social media (at least on his mobile device). If you fast-forward 28 minutes into the interview, it gets really fascinating. Casey says, "when something extraordinary happens to me, I do something great, I experience something brand new... I now take immense pleasure in not sharing it".
- Finally got around to reading Andre Agassi's Autobiography (it has been on my "Books to Read" Evernote for at least a year+). I really can't recommend it enough. He has a wild story! At an early age, his father forced him to play 6 hours of tennis a day on their home court, then, finding stardom young, he rubbed shoulders with tons of famous people, and finally, later in his career, he would somewhat settle into tennis, although throughout the book he constantly and vehemently states that he has always hated tennis. I listened to it while hiking a 85-mile section of the JMT (John Muir Trail) for 6 days last week, which, by the way, was the perfect journey of: swirling thoughts for 2 days, then nothingness and meditation for 2 days, then pointed/focused thinking about a few subjects for the last 2 days.
- Speaking of nature... yesterday, Amazon officially pledged to help save it! Amazon Co-founded what they're calling "The Climate Pledge", which is setting the goal to meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early! Reminder: the US is the only country currently opposed to the Paris Agreement Pact. Their two goals are to be carbon neutral by 2040 and 100% renewable by 2030.
- If you want to get a little paranoid about a recession, I read a great scary and quick response to the imminence of a recession, on Quora. His prediction: politics will play a much larger role, and "Recovery from the Great Recession was the slowest on record. The next recovery will be even slower." Brace yourselves...
Hope to see you next week!
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Cheers,
Brendan J Short