Week of Monday, February 09 to Sunday, February 15
Micro-post from @zellski on Threads:
Summaries are so seductive to so many people. The illusion of understanding without effort. AI didn’t create that fallacy but damn it’s like crack to the most vulnerable. Ironically (slightly) it’s just as easy to use AI the other way – make it build you a stern quiz for every research paper you read, for example.
Video from @_glassmuseum on Instagram, on being discerning with your input
In an age of algorithms, most of us are consuming the same content filtered through systems designed by tech oligarchs with their own incentives. That's how we get trite Instagram poetry that recycles the same themes. Because everyone gets inspired by the same viral source. Everything that gets created in the wake of that inspiration feels hacky.
Video from @franciscokento on Instagram
If Freud and Jung said you're cooked because of your past and future, Alfred Adler says you're cooked because you're avoiding the present.
Video from @ryliejouett on Instagram
- No annotations on this one, really. It just goes onto my Mary Magdalene syllabus draft.
The problem is when it comes to executing, it becomes a bit more like staring at a cliff edge. Emotions flood your system, you can sense the risks, the danger, the fear of failure. All of this makes it difficult to think clearly. You're in a performance state which is not just something for athletes, musicians and other professionals. You can be in this state when you work on anything meaningful.
Your Strategist [self] is somewhere at Level 9 or above, while your Performer [self] is somewhere down. Your progress depends on both.
Video from @thegardeningtheologian on Instagram
The first sin was critical thinking.
Adam and Eve remind us that a paradise that doesn't allow for critical thinking is actually a prison. In many ways, Eve is our first liberator, not Jesus, because she rejected a framework of God that required her subservience.
Video from @plantbasedrio on Instagram, on "burnout is cognitive overload"
Burnout is cognitive overload. Cognitive overload leads to cognitive lag which leads to physical fatigue. I need you to understand this.
Every time we have an idea, a thought, we open a brain loop and if we don't close it, those brain loops continue to circle back and send information and continue to try to problem-solve while we're not even consciously thinking about it.
Micro-post from @nadeenhui on Threads
Rabbit holes worth falling down:
- how writing systems shape thinking: alphabets vs syllabaries vs logographs; what gets "easy" to express
- ancient texts that contradict history: discoveries no one can explain, ancient lost civilizations, discrepancies between religion and recorded history
- the science of taste: why bitterness is complicated, why spice "isn't a taste," why we crave crunch
- gravitational time dilation near black holes: how time and energy is perceived in space vs our Earth-brain perception
- matrilineal descent and inheritance: in some societies, property and clan identity pass through mothers, not fathers
Micro-post from @queercatholicmystic
- Too complex for annotations, but this is a list of original resources for building a "folk Catholic grimoire" by a queer Catholic mystic.
One common phrase you’ll hear in Silicon Valley is, “I want to change the world.” In contrast, I’ve never heard my sociology students say that. What I have heard them say (often, and without irony) is, “I want to help people.”
The ambition to “change the world” assumes distance from it. It imagines scale, disruption, systems. It’s animated by a universalizing moral register—one oriented toward abstract humanity, optimization, efficiency, transformation.
“I want to help people,” by contrast, is relational. It presumes proximity. It starts from concrete others—clients, students, patients, neighbors. It reflects a morality rooted in social bonds organized around care, dignity, and recognition rather than disruption or scale.
Hope it's been a lovely, thoughtful February for you so far, {name}.
Lovingly,
Apple