Various and Sundry

Re-visiting the Four-Day Workweek

Part of the silver lining of experiencing a horrendous global pandemic has been people re-examining how they do things. I referenced Joe Pinsker’s article for The Atlantic last year, which is well worth a read if you haven’t checked it out already. Well, Alex Christian over at the BBC has an article exploring what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and some of the challenges of moving to a four-day workweek. The main issue is making…

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Producing Writing

Fast. Cheap. Good. Pick Two.

Many of you have seen the sentiment expressed in the title above, but it’s always worth remembering… and remembering we, as a species, will likely figure out how to go faster than the speed of light before we break the above constraints. A post by writer Mark Evanier reminded me of how these constraints can often come into play in the writing world, which led to a good musing on his part: How does one…

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Various and Sundry

Hobbies: Only by Imperial Decree

Hobbies, those interests to pursue without it being a “side gig” and often without the need to be at all expert at them, were something I started focusing on, ironically, in the Before Times. I believed (and still believe), it’s very healthy to have some pursuit that is not monetized, potentially not judged and evaluated like job performance might, and perhaps free of some of the wacky things outside of your control that one can’t…

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Various and Sundry

Satisfaction & Stepping Off the World’s Treadmill

Monday posts have been about motivations and resolutions and worldviews so far this year, so why stop now? From that standpoint, Arthur Brooks’ piece for The Atlantic was a welcome read (or, if you so desire, a 41-minute listen). What I appreciated was the time Brooks took in defining why we human animals are on this neverending treadmill for satisfaction. The societal pressures are, I would hope to most people, rather self-evident. The evolutionary arguments…

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Various and Sundry

Spaceguard is On the Case

When I watched the recent film Don’t Look Up — as a great deal of other Netflix subscribers appeared to– they mentioned the very real Planetary Defense Coordination Office which made me think instantly of Spaceguard, which isn’t an official overall terms, but dangit, I’m not alone in thinking of it. In fact, overall efforts appear to be inspired by that vision of science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, visions that have born fruit over…

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Various and Sundry

What’s the Deal with the Groundhog?

All of a sudden, it’s Groundhog Day… again. And in case you’re wondering why this is the case, Danny Lewis in the Smithsonian Magazine goes deep into the historical record. And in case you don’t want the Smithsonian, but still want something plausible, perhaps with a theater reference, well here ya go. And if you were reading Danny Lewis’ article above and were thinking “hmm, what about a horror film where the groundhogs in Groundhog…

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Various and Sundry

For When You Want Wonky with your New Year’s Resolutions

So, for the past few Mondays (see 1/3, 1/10, and 1/24), I’ve done posts about New Year’s Resolutions and similar life goals on both the micro and macro goal. But what if you want something a bit more wonky? What if you want to track your progress in such a way that friends and family may recoil in horror as if you asked them to watch a paint-drying marathon on HGTV? Meredith Dietz over at…

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Various and Sundry

Historical Gold from the Silver Screen

As I’ve mentioned various times, my dad made sure we saw many of the classic and not so classic films from bygone ages. I mean, I’ve seen pre-Russian Revolution films using stop-action animation of insects for crying out loud! Now, besides such curiosities and rattling good stories, these films provided de facto period pieces: they were recording the here and now of an era long past –in human terms– with details quite unknown to me.…

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