Elizabeth Spiers for the NY Times on how to apologize (given the recent spate of celebrity non-apologies): I Have a Question for the Famous People Who Have Tried to Apologize.
The first step in a good apology is acknowledging harm. The second is expressing genuine regret, and where possible, acknowledging our shortcoming. Our intentions are not always good. Sometimes we're selfish. Sometimes we don't know what we're doing, and sometimes we fail to consider the consequences. If we can admit these things, it helps repair trust.
Then we vow, in good faith, to not perpetuate the same harm again.
The last step is repair. This means directly addressing the harm done — not via self-flagellation on YouTube nor with any expectation of forgiveness.
I posted about how to apologize a few years ago after reading Katie Heaney's piece on, wait for it, celebrity non-apologies:
Here are the six components of an apology from Beth Polin:
1. An expression of regret — this, usually, is the actual "I'm sorry."
2. An explanation (but, importantly, not a justification).
3. An acknowledgment of responsibility.
4. A declaration of repentance.
5. An offer of repair.
6. A request for forgiveness.
I think about these components whenever giving or receiving apologies — it's a great framework to keep in mind.
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A short TED-Ed video on the flow state of creativity and how you might enter it more easily.
Flow is more than just concentrating or paying attention; it's a unique mental state of effortless engagement. And those who more frequently experience flow report higher levels of positive emotions, creativity, and feelings of accomplishment. But what exactly is flow? And how can we find it in our daily lives? Explore steps you can take to increase your chances of finding flow.
While I am not feeling particularly in the groove today, over the past several weeks I've been in the flow state a lot, working on a couple of projects for the site. It's been a long time since I've had that feeling for more than a couple of hours every few months and booooooy does it feel good. There is almost nothing that fills me with as much joy as the "effortless engagement" of being in the flow state. I'm very glad it's back in my life — I'd been afraid it was gone forever. (via open culture)
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You've probably seen the work of animation pioneer Max Fleischer; he made the old Popeye, Superman, Betty Boop, and Koko the Clown cartoons waaaay back in the early-to-mid 20th century. Films from back then are often not well-preserved, so when a copy is discovered in a film library or private collection, great care must be exercised in restoring the film for future generations to enjoy.
This video follows the restoration process of Fleischer's 1924 Koko the Clown film Birthday, from scanning a 35mm print from 1930 to the digital retouching. The fully restored print doesn't seem to be online anywhere, but you can see a couple of before-and-after comparisons here and here.
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Tchiks is a luthier from Belgium who, after his daughter outgrew her crib, turned it and a bunch of other Ikea products into a guitar.
The guitar started out as a joke. I remember going upstairs and telling my wife "I'm gonna make a guitar out of Zoé's old bed". She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and asked me "why". Then I immediately thought "This is the way".
It sounds good! Like any good craftspeople, luthiers can get a little fussy about their materials and the specs list for the Ikea guitar at the end of the video pokes some gentle fun at that:
Body: baby crib, chair, shelf
Neck: baby crib
Fretboard: photo ledge
Knob: chopping board
(via linkfest)
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This is fascinating: an instructional video from 1988 for British Royal Military Police personnel to watch before travelling the 103 miles of autobahn across East Germany to West Berlin. (A Cold War refresher: West Berlin was completely surrounded by East Germany — the city was not on the border.) Those in transit had to follow many rules:
Approach the Soviet sentry who will be standing close to the small hut on the left of the road. He will salute you. You must, irrespective of your sex, status, or form of dress, return his salute.
They also couldn't stop anywhere but a few designated areas, could only deal with Soviet personnel (and not East German personnel), were forbidden from speaking Russian, and obviously couldn't take photos. What a time capsule!
See also this video that reconstructs that journey, from someone who was stationed in West Germany in the late 80s. (via open culture)
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So, here's how they make vinyl records at Third Man Records in Detroit. As you might expect, the process is a bit less automated than what you'd imagine for digital music media — those records are human-handled dozens of times before they are finally placed into their jackets.
Vinyl is in the real world. It's not something that exists only on your computer or your phone, it's three-dimensional. Your nervous system is designed to take in the sound. It heals you. It's a nutrient. It's like vitamins. You feel it. It's like getting a massage or eating a beautiful sandwich.
See also this slow-motion video of a vinyl record playing, recorded with an electron microscope. You can see how the soundwaves are encoded in the grooves. (via open culture)
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The cover story of the current issue of New York magazine is a collection of tips, rules, and etiquette for how to behave in contemporary society (ok, urban east coast society). It's a good list for the most part, if unnecessarily provocative in places — gotta sell those magazines and rile up whoever remains on Twitter. I snipped out several of the rules and gently annotated them with my opinionated thoughts below. Just like bloggers used to do in the olden days. Quaint!
6. Never wake up your significant other on purpose, ever.
And don't turn on the lights when they're asleep. Jet-lagged and want to talk? Don't do it. Think someone is coming in to kill you? Work it out yourself.
Huh? I think it's the "ever" that bugs me here. Don't get me wrong, I love my sleep and if I don't get 7-8 solid hours, I'm more or less worthless the next day. But if you actually need me at 3am, by all means, wake me up. (I feel like the person who wrote this doesn't have children? Getting woken up in the middle of the night is de rigueur w/ kids around, so your partner rousing you in the middle of the night bc they're, for instance, having a panic attack or are sick & wondering if they need to go to the ER not only isn't a big deal but is part of the reason you've partnered up in the first place.)
27. The proper response to being told something you already know isn't "I know." It's "You're right."
I would like to tattoo this on my son's arm for reference; I hear "I know" from him like 90 times a day when what he really means is, "That's right" or "Thanks for the reminder".
30. When casually asked how you are, say "Good!"
It's neutral and doesn't force someone to endure a trauma dump or a spiel on how "the world is up in flames."
I have some trouble with this one. Even when the grocery store cashier is just being polite, I sometimes answer them like my therapist is asking.
33. If you bring up astrology and it isn't met enthusiastically, change the topic.
Not everyone believes in your made-up star bullshit.
"Made-up star bullshit": thank you. Religion too. But this probably goes for anything — if your conversational partner isn't digging it, move along to something else.
47. Listening is not the time for you to silently rehearse what you want to say next.
We can see your eyes glazing over.
I know what they're trying to get at here — listening, really listening, is important! — but this isn't great advice for folks who aren't neurotypical... Some people simply cannot participate in conversations without being extremely in their own heads about how to respond to what is being said, especially when they don't know their convo partner well.
50. If your burger is becoming a salad, your restaurant-order modifications have gone too far.
You're allowed to ask for things based on allergies and preferences. But when your dish transforms into another dish, you're a problem.
Yes, exactly. This is the dunderheaded "the customer is always right" run amok.
59. The correct number of slices of pizza to order for a group of X people is 2X + X/3.
Any fewer is for misers; any more risks catatonia. N.B.: This rule holds for "classic" New York-style pizza.
I'd never heard this rule of thumb before. Let's see if it checks out. For 3 people, you'd get 7 slices. For 8 people, you'd get 19 slices. Everyone gets two slices, plus one out of three people gets an extra slice. I feel like this might fail sometimes with smaller groups but with larger ones, things will tend to average out more (some ppl will eat more, some less).
78. Don't talk about a movie when leaving the theater.
You never know who might overhear you raving about the big twist or panning an actor's overhyped performance. At a certain point, people have to accept that they're going to hear spoilers for the film, but not three minutes before seeing it.
Yes! I am always very quiet when leaving the theater, aside from non-specific utterances like, "that was great!" It's easy to wait like 30 seconds for when you make it to your car or out on the street.
83. Go on, take the last bite.
Nobody wants to be the person who swipes that lone, lingering croquette or slurps down the final oyster from a communal seafood tower. Are you selfish? A glutton? All of the above? No. You are sparing everyone — your guests, yourself, your server — from the limbo of leaving one last bite on a shared plate. Letting something sit on the table uneaten while the bussers wonder whether they should clear the dish: That's not polite. It's annoying. Eat the food! That's why it's there.
Oh man. As a midwesterner who went to sooooo many potlucks and church picnics as a kid, this has been a tough habit to shake — taking the last morsel of something might as well be a felony in some parts of rural Wisconsin. But I've learned that if you're paying attention (which is the key to many points of etiquette), you can tell when it's alright to take the final bite of something, when to leave it for someone else, and when to urge someone you noticed enjoying a particular dish to grab the last bit of it.
94. It's okay to email, text, or DM anyone at any hour.
There's nothing worse than being woken up at 2:30 a.m. with a dumb text or a Slack notification. So why did you do that to yourself? Phones and computers have great tools now to manage your time away, including setting working hours and muting types of notifications. We're responsible for which flashing lights and noises we let into our lives. Because of that, anyone should feel free to text a friend or message a co-worker at any hour. We can't successfully move into the future unless we recognize that the onus is on the receiver, not the sender.
No. I get that other people's notification strategies should not be your problem, but sending work-related emails and messages at all hours may generate a corresponding pressure in recipients to be awake to respond to them and normalizes the sense that you should be on the clock 24/7/365, which is no way at all to live and should be discouraged at every turn.
108. Don't try to help a stranger parallel park.
People should be allowed the grace to park alone without being perceived. If you are walking down the street and see that a stranger is parallel parking, avert your eyes. "What if they need my help?" you ask. You are allowed to help only if you are directly and explicitly asked to by the driver. Otherwise, keep walking — it's what's best for everyone.
Yes! This is related to a current pet peeve of mine here in VT: people who wave at you or flash their lights for you to turn across traffic in front of them, even though you don't have the right of way. I get why people do this: traffic is "heavy", they have a clearer view of oncoming traffic than you do, and/or they are trying to be nice. But in reality, it creates a dangerous situation for you: you feel rushed into accepting their offer of help and move into the intersection before you've checked if it's safe. Or someone behind them gets antsy and passes them on the right and suddenly they're in the intersection when you're pulling out. It's just safer and better if everyone just takes their turn when they have the right of way.
111. It's perfectly fine to walk through someone's scene.
Whether it's Marty Scorsese or someone filming an outfit-of-the-day TikTok, they don't own the sidewalk.
Absolutely. Especially with people on busy streets taking photos with digital cameras, just walk in front of them...they can always take another one.
139. Post like the wind.
On Instagram, where best practices are unspoken but nearly universal, the conventional wisdom is that you should post on your main feed no more than once a day. Infrequent posting is perfectly in line with Instagram's social mechanisms — it maximizes likes on each post, prioritizes the consumer, and lends itself to a tasteful, optimized feed where only the best-of-the-best pics make the cut. But if you're going to participate in social media, the only way to have any fun with it is by consciously defying the incentives it dangles in front of you. Post excessively, indulgently, tastelessly. Maybe even take some shots with the in-app camera and post them as-is (it only seems unimaginable because you're not thinking big enough). The curated photo-dump carousel, polite and unintrusive, is dead; posting 15 individual photos to your main grid in one day is what freedom feels like.
Ha, I like this advice! But I do not do it. Curators gonna curate, so my social media is pretty metered and controlled and all that jazz. Gonna think about letting loose a bit more often.
140. Don't post RIPs for celebrities.
"Only the most moronic amongst us post photos of famous people seconds after they die," Keith McNally recently wrote on Instagram. "It's not a form of respect for the dead, but an attempt to sycophantically associate themselves with the famous. It's their 15 minutes of fame, the necrophiliac bastards." We tend to agree: Unless David Crosby was your actual uncle, or cousin, or whatever, refrain.
Huh? No. The public displays by strangers of remembrance, condolence, and, yes, even grief in the wake of a beloved celebrity's death is one of the best things about social media. What this point should have been instead: If the dead were monstrous, go ahead and speak ill of them after they die. When Dick Cheney finally goes, I want to hear all about how he helped fuck America up for decades to come, please and thank you.
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Here's Kurzgesagt on the deceptively simple way we can make changes in our life: build new routines and turn them into habits.
If you are like most people, there is a gap between the person you are and the person you wish to be. There are little things you think you should do and big things you ought to achieve — from working out regularly, eating healthy, learning a language, working on your novel, reading more or simply actually doing your hobby instead of browsing Reddit.
But it can seem that to achieve your goals, you have to become a different person. Someone who is consistent, puts in more effort, has discipline and willpower. Maybe you have tried your hardest to be like that. And it worked! For a while. Until you find yourself slipping back into your old ways. In the end, you always seem to fail. And with every failed attempt, you become more and more frustrated and annoyed with yourself.
If you believe "success and hustle" internet, it is all your own fault: if you don't succeed, you just didn't want it enough and the failure is all you. But change is actually hard. But as with most things in life, understanding why makes things easier.
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After an absence of more than two years, John Plant has returned to the wilderness to build a thatched workshop. Plant is the sole proprietor behind the Primitive Technology YouTube channel, where he uploads deftly-edited videos of himself silently crafting tools, huts, weapons, and other Stone Age technologies in the forests of North Queensland, Australia. About the hut, he writes:
I built a thatched workshop as an area to do future projects in out of the rain and weather. The structure was a 4 x 4 m square covered with a gabled thatched roof where the lowest point was 2 m above the ground and the highest point was 4 m. This is the largest hut I've built to date taking 5 weeks to build. The structure sheds rain quite well and being open and without walls allows smoke to exit without issue.
If you're unfamiliar with Plant, his videos are really well-done and quite meditative to watch. In a 2016 post, I wrote:
The way he shoots & edits these videos is so good...packing, what, dozens or even hundreds of years of technological evolution into a minute or two of wordless video.
So yeah, check these out if you have some time today to sit still and observe someone doing something they love. (via @nielsmann)
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Castles across Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages were all pretty different, but by looking at the trends over a period of several centuries, you can determine how to build the perfect castle.
We trace the origins of the castle in the feudal system that emerged in France c.900 CE, and look at the early motte-and-bailey castle, used by the Normans to subjugate England and Wales in the 11th century. We then look at how castle's became stronger and more sophisticated, with the addition of stone curtain walls, massive keeps, towers (square, round and D-shaped), as well as powerful gatehouses, barbicans, machicolations and moats.
(FYI: The sponsorship in this video for a medieval role-playing game is a little annoying but easily skippable and ultimately doesn't detract from how interesting & educational the video is.)
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