“An approximate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem.”
— John Tukey
Statistician known for: exploratory data analysis, box plot, coining the term ‘bit’
I have been familiar with ruins too long to dislike desolation. —
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Anonymous :
what's your dream job/career? :)Ideally?
Tenured professor of Technology and Innovation Managementand/or Strategic Management who occasionally works as a strategy consultant /collaborates on big business transformation projects.
……. But that’s a very long term vision (which could change!) and honestly I’m much more excited about the path I’ll have to take to get there, the first step of which is to get a job (to some degree related to what I want to do, with adecent pay, in one of my preferred locations) and then focus on getting into grad school
(and even before that: write a thesis & graduate, which is what currently dictates my day-to-day activities)
W. L. Sheldon
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
Detail of pillars and walls carved with figures and hieroglyphs. Medinet Habu, Mortuary temple of Ramesses III.
Anonymous :
what’s your workout routine like? xx3x week (every other day, with a day of rest) I do a slightly modified Ballet Beautiful total body workout - I skip the cardio exercise at the end (instead I bike to university everyday; when it’s not freezing, that is) and I don’t always do four reps (for the outer thighs, I collapse at two because my muscles are very weak and the whole point of barre is that you work your muscles to exhaustion, so it doesn’t have to be a fixed number of sets in my opinion) & typically once a week I do an extended stretch session mostly based on Get Bendy.
Collection - new year edition:
“(you) will still not have completed a single step because you keep going back over the same (one). What are you unable to abandon?” — Luce Irigaray, in Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche.
“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” — Joan Didion, on self respect.
“For everyone a moment comes in which he or she must utter this ‘I can,’ which does not refer to any certainty or specific capacity but is, nevertheless, absolutely demanding. Beyond all faculties, this ‘I can’ does not mean anything–yet it marks what is, for each of us, perhaps the hardest and bitterest experience possible: the experience of potentiality.” — Giorgio Agamben, On Potentiality.
“I have become what I have always been and it has taken a lifetime, all of my own life, to reach this point where it is as if I know finally that I am alive and that I am here, right now.” — Tobias Schneebaum, Keep the River on your Right.
i don’t really wanna die i just don’t wanna like…. occupy a body anymore. having a physical form??….not feelin it
Julio Larraz (Cuban, b. 1944), Flash, The Queen of Hearts, 2011. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in.
via dream-realm
Ryder Carroll, The Bullet Journal Method
Knowing what we can change begins with defining what’s in our control.
Exterior facade of the Vatican Library, facing into the Cortile del Belvedere.
I started reading Tacitus’ Germania in the original Latin, because I miss it, and the Germania is easy, not too long, and I own an annotated copy. Here are some Thoughts on Ch I-II:
- I want to try a different approach, where I don’t focus on translating but on understanding the meaning i.e. learning it as a language rather than as a dead language.
- « quis porro, praeter pericuum horridi et ignoti maris, Asia aut Africa aut Italia relicta, Germaniam peteret, informem terris, asperam caelo, tristem cultu aspectuque, nisi si patria sit? » is so fucking funny because #tru #same #oh boy i get it (also yeah, indeed, back then the world was just Asia, Africa and Italy)
- Apparently Tacitus is the sole source on the figure of Mannus whose etymology could be the protogermatic *mannaz i.e. ‘man’ – think of languages and the inherent difficulty of understanding each other and misinterpreting and mishearing and miscommunication, and really it could be that no god named Mannus was worshipped and, no matter how much ‘scientific’ (an improper a posteriori definition) Tacitus tries to be, he can’t be faultless
- And indeed « ut in licentia vetustatis » is an acknowledgment of how historiography and retracing ancient times is always an imperfect art. Yet he undoubtedly does try to be accurate and report different versions.
- On a side note – in The Craft (1996) I believe that the spirit they invoke is called Manus? Interesting.
- Verbs that stand out: orior (to arise, to be born, to begin), haurio (to swallow)
