Elements of a Good Life, Skyscraper Scramble, Kill Bill Uncut, etc.
In which there is dignity in failure, especially prolonged failure.
💙 Spent the most beautiful weekend back home with some of my favorite people. So grateful for days like these. Nothing beats the calm of the lake and the feeling of being where it all began.
🙏 “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make,” said the late-Jane Goodall, subject of an upcoming docuseries.
📺 CNN is getting pulled from HBO Max in favor of its own streaming service, which is exactly what the people were clamoring for, right?
🍿 What I’m clamoring for.
🎧 (34/50) Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness: From gentle piano pieces to explosive guitar anthems, Mellon Collie is a sprawling, timeless exploration of loss and fleeting youth. The wistful “1979” captures suburban nostalgia, “Thirty-Three” reflects quiet faith, “Tonight, Tonight” soars with orchestral hope, and “Zero,” “Bodies,” “Jellybelly,” “Tales of a Scorched Earth,” and “X.Y.U.” rock. Hard.
🏃♂️ At Shenzhen’s 70-story SEG Plaza, long elevator waits spawned a “gig within a gig.” Teens and retirees like 16-year-old Li Linxing act as “delivery stand-ins,” carrying food upstairs for drivers who pay them two yuan per trip (about a quarter).
🍫 “From sugar shortages to military contracts, World War II helped make M&Ms and Hershey’s bars into symbols of American abundance.”
🍜 Hot soup or iced coffee? “A new study from San Diego State University suggests that what’s hot or cold on your plate or in your cup may influence both your mental wellbeing and your digestive system.”
😔 Terry Kupers explains that a lack of social contact severely harms the brain. Isolation (especially forced) spikes stress hormones, distorts reality, and leads to depression, hallucinations, and physical symptoms. Humans need social connection for mental health.
🖋️ Vonnegut was 47 when he wrote Slaughterhouse Five. “By the logic of our culture, he should have given up. Instead, he wrote the book that only someone with his scars, his age, and his accumulated oddities could have produced.”
🌱 Openness to experience, living in the moment and self-trust. Carl Rogers argues that a “good life” emerges from these three interconnected qualities. “To be a true person is to be entirely oneself in every circumstance, with all the courage and vulnerability this requires… a promise to own every part of yourself, even those that challenge your preferred self-image.”
✌️ It’s time we got back. Keep the Hoping Machine running.
Love,
Luke
