There is proper authentic Mexican food in Windsor! Tonight’s dinner was chile rellenos at Mi Casita on Wyandotte Street.
From my lunch break on the Windsor waterfront earlier today.
Finished reading: Learn Like a Pro by Barbara Oakley PhD 📚
This was a really practical book that I’ll be putting to use in my own learning and teaching. I first found out about Barbara Oakley’s work on Ben Owden’s Why Lead? podcast. Highly recommended.
Currently reading: Brain Power by Catherine de Lange 📚
Currently reading: Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi 📚
A small cafe in Tokyo has a single time-traveling chair, but there are several rules which must be observed…
RIP Daniel Kahneman.
Had a fun morning teaching an adult piano student. The 4th through 7th Goldberg Variations, then Brahms' arrangement of the Bach Chaconne for the left hand. 🎵 🎹
Some Suno AI tunes shared on Facebook in the last day:
In der Weihnachtsbäckerei is the most 2024 thing I’ve heard so far: an AI-generated Japanese pop song, in German, about a Christmas bakery. 🎵
Espresso, a quick breakfast, shower, and then 8 hours of teaching piano students.
Rebecca Toh on how narrow points of focus can be the secret of this universe:
Having the discipline to sit down every day for a few hours to write can make all the difference between someone who manages to write a book and someone who doesn’t.
Let’s hear it for simple and boring systems.
Props go out to @heyloura for her Lillihub client for Micro.blog. Things I like so far include the layout of threaded conversations and mentions as well as the Discover area at the very top of the interface next to Timeline. There’s something really satisfying about using opinionated software that easily plugs into open standards formats.
I still miss the days when you could post, view conversations, and comment on both Facebook and Twitter from the Friendfeed interface.
Four years ago on March 21, 2020, a recital I did with mezzo soprano Krisztina Szabó at Tapestry Opera was the last concert of the season in Toronto before everything shut down for the pandemic. Tapestry has made the recital public for one week, and you can watch it below:
We’re not here to crack any mysteries. We’re here to roll around in life and experience its peaks and troughs and make discoveries and pick up things and poke at things and create things that express our ignorance and awe at all this mystery and beauty.
Rebecca Toh: 04: photography as a result of life
This morning I’m grateful for the experience of browsing Micro.blog, which largely involves visiting elegantly designed blogs with zero clutter and reading interesting articles, most of which generously invite further thought. Back to my espresso.
Your ikigai can be found in small daily rituals, side projects, and deep conversations. It can be found in moments of silence and idleness, or in moments of creative flow.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: Rediscovering Ikigai: What We Got Wrong and How to Find Meaning in Life
Hussein Kesvani’s Guardian article about Reddit becoming rubbish in the lead-up to its IPO paints a rather bleak picture of the internet in 2024. All the more reason to embrace microblogging, which might already be a dark forest of the internet
Embedding YouTube Links in Micro.blog
TIL You can embed YouTube videos in Micro.blog. Here are the steps:
- Install the YouTube Embed Shortcut Plugin.
- From the YouTube video you want to embed, find the ID from the url of the YouTube page, NOT from the Share link (this caused me 30 minutes of frustration this morning).
- Create the embed code within curly brackets:
yt "YOUTUBE_SHORTCODE"
The full embedded video will show up on your blog, but appear as a link on the Micro.blog timeline.
So let’s get the day started with a set of roots and dancehall reggae with Last of the Lions:
There is no rulebook in this world that says we have to toughen up and be thick like hide. This is the sort of insidious narrative that is causing so much unnecessary suffering in this world, because we are all afraid to be our true selves openly in this world. So we suppress and repress, and we knowingly and unknowingly hurt each other like this. In my opinion, it is better to be a weak buttercup that is mindful of the presence of the other buttercups in this world. That to me, is strength.
Winnie Lim, my first hate comment
Christopher Isham on Closer to Truth looks at the question of whether time is fundamental:
How deep goes time? Is time bedrock reality, part of the fundamental fabric of reality? Or is time an emergent thing, generated by deeper truths of existence? What is the place of time in deep physical laws like relativity and quantum mechanics? Can we get to the bottom of time?