"Recent" Reads, Climbing Trees, Iceland's Work Week, etc.
In which it feels as if someone has saved a baby.
📚 Wrote about what I’ve been reading.
🥗 …and eating.
🐶 Been waiting for this video my whole life: all the dogs, explained.
🌳 Let your kid climb the tree. It could actually make them safer. Not only that: “81 percent of adolescents worldwide do not get enough physical activity, noting that rates of sedentary behavior in young people tend to rise as their country develops economically.”
⏰ Since union-led trials in 2015–2019 cut Iceland’s workweek from 40 to 35–36 hours without reducing pay. Stress and burnout have apparently dropped sharply, and job satisfaction and work–life balance have surged, while productivity remained steady or even improved. “As a result, close on 90% of the country’s working population now work shorter hours or have the right to shorten their working week.”
🔪 An argument that revenge operates in the brain much like a drug addiction, harnessing the same pain and reward centers. Forgiveness is the potent neurobiological antidote. (See also: a new study on addiction and the brain.)
🧠 And also, “dopamine isn't ‘all or nothing’ but precisely dealt out to different parts of the brain.”
📽️ Sign ‘O The Times is making its way to IMAX, August 29th.
🎧 (27/50) Radiohead, OK Computer: The album I got lost in the most through the headphones of my adolescence. Its sprawling soundscapes, cryptic lyrics, and eerie beauty seemed to echo everything I couldn’t yet articulate. “Paranoid Android” felt like a nervous breakdown set to music, “Karma Police” a surreal anthem of quiet rebellion. But two tracks forever haunt me: “No Surprises,” its lullaby sweetness barely masking a profound sadness I felt I understood at far too early of an age. And “Exit Music (For a Film)”—that slow, crushing swell—felt like the end of the world being whispered directly into my ears.
❤️ Was reminded of a poem I read at a friend’s wedding not that long ago.
This is how she makes me feel.
Like I will live forever. Like there is nothing that can possibly harm me.
Like this body will somehow stay so young, so perfect.
There are cities growing inside my chest.
The cities all look like New York in the fifties.
Every building is tall enough to touch a cloud.
Every automobile is a convertible.
All the men wear hats and neckties.
The women all have beautiful shapes of colour upon them.
Someone has saved a baby. There is a parade.
Someone has saved every baby – there is the biggest parade moving through my streets.
The sky explodes with ticker tape, strangers kiss on every corner.
Their kisses are what make me live forever.
This is how she makes me feel.
Like honey and trombones.
Like honey and trombones.
✌️ Keep the Hoping Machine running.
Love,
Luke
