Have gotten comments from gen z questioning the point of the American greeting ritual. I used to feel the same way in my first service jobs. I thought it was "fake," performative, extractive, "emotional labor" (though we didn't have that phrase). Here's how I changed my mind

https://twitter.com/lauren_wilford/status/1930002483952398473

As a child, I sensed that many adults wanted a performance of dutiful cheerfulness from children, and felt rebellious about this. From early on, I was a deep and sensitive kid, and felt like social scripts required people to "put on a mask" for each other

in general, gen z culture doesn’t have a norm for greeting/acknowledging people they don’t already know. Their custom is headphones/eyes down until engagement is required. It’s a “don’t speak unless spoken to” culture. This of course feels dehumanizing to anyone older

https://twitter.com/pbprot/status/1929872248795435422

I think this comes from a combination of screen-habituation (chronically staring at something that never “looks back” at you), social anxiety from lack of practice in the public square, and a new norm around not “bothering people” (inserting yourself into anyone’s social space)

I think the concept of "introversion" impeded my development as a young person, and I think we need to do away with the introvert/extrovert distinction. It made me feel like socializing and social graces were the province of a certain kind of person that I was not they used to frame it (maybe they still do) as whether you "get energy" from other people or from being alone. That either being alone was draining and being with others was life-giving, or being with others was draining and being alone is life-giving

one thing I wasn’t expecting for my mid-30s was for the 1994 Little Women to hit like an absolute freight train, as if I were just now understanding it for the first time. Saw it projected on film on Christmas Day and felt something shift


I used to identify with Jo in a straightforward way; now I feel like I see the whole picture. I said on the way out, half-joking, “Little Women is The Brothers Karamazov for girls.” Each sister represents an archetype/worldview but also warring impulses in a young woman’s life

20th century acting manuals are often full of great advice for anyone looking to live an emotionally alert, embodied, thoughtful life. Uta Hagen is one of my favorites


good stuff on the importance of the imagination in engaging with history

SMOOTHIE THOUGHTS: I’ve made a smoothie ~4x a week for 5 years now and have been in better health in that time than I was before, so I think it’s probably doing something. Here are my smoothie recommendations: You want frozen greens as the base. I think spinach blends up smoother and is more neutral in flavor than any other so that’s what I use. You can buy it frozen. If you want a 16oz smoothie then pile the spinach loosely into the first 8oz of the blender

big secret to happiness is just liking stuff. finding more stuff to like. finding ways to like stuff you didn’t before. recognizing what it feels like to like something and doubling down on that. what feels frivolous is actually the whole ballgame recently decided to like mowing the lawn. gets you outside. literally touching grass. making nice patterns. extremely straightforward. meditative like doing a prayer labyrinth

have benefitted lately from a practice I've been calling "reality day," which is basically a media fast. My rules: no social media, video apps, tv, news, spotify, podcasts, or headphones. the idea is forcing yourself to stay engaged with the actual circumstances of your own life not a revolutionary idea but something that was very revealing in practice. noticed almost instantly that my head became a lot less cluttered, that I didn't feel so many external voices rattling around, and that I could "see in front of me" much better

SOME DUNE ADAPTATION THOUGHTS:
the way I interpreted the book, Paul is the Kwisatz Haderach because he is both Mentat (super-analytical) and Bene Gesserit (super-intuitive). He has been trained in these “masculine” and “feminine” skills and unites them in an unprecedented way

Both Mentat skill (analysis) and Bene Gesserit skill (intuition) allow someone to “see the future” by reading information about the present with a high degree of detail and accuracy. the psychedelic accelerants (spice, the water of life) just heighten what’s already there

my main relationship/marriage advice is to engineer a life where the two of you have leisurely conversations regularly. Like, 5-10 hours a week of good conversation. This is how you make sure you’re changing in tandem rather than growing apart if this tweet went viral I imagine people would fight about how that sounds like an insane amount of time. but it’s an investment that pays off for, ideally, your whole life, every day

one of the worst things you can do when trying to write about something is logging on to see what everyone else has already said about that thing "for research" or "context." totally jams the creative process and stifles the impulse to explore it for yourself I notice a lot of Substacks are basically just glorified link roundups, where the writer proves that they've seen what everyone else has had to say about something (so we know they're sophisticated & not being redundant) and just adds a couple comments. I do not want to do this

seems like the desire for "digital content to blend seamlessly with your physical space" is predicated on having a "physical space" that's clean and airy and Apple-aestheticized. everyone in the Apple Vision Pro demo had a huge, clean room to "project" it into I don't think anyone's going to be too excited about "seamlessly blending" their spreadsheets with their piles of laundry or Amazon boxes. I think that's why we look at the screen, a discrete object in physical space, that we can divert our attention toward and away from at will

just had my best customer service experience in a while: ~25 year old guy at the Post Office counter was giving out postal tips and tricks to every single customer. remembering regulars. navigating everyone’s problems and confusion with total grace. weirdly inspiring it’s good that we’re acknowledging that service work is hard and usually underpaid and it sucks to do corporate-enforced smiling. but man, if that’s your life (&it’s mine), finding a way to do it with some aplomb & trying to actually offer something to your fellow man does matter

you can try to narrowly protect the category of things you have to be interested in, or you can let yourself find everything interesting. used to do the former thinking the latter would exhaust me, but you waste more energy conserving your interest. curiosity generates energy you do expend more total energy learning when you allow yourself to feel curious than when you’re trying to protect your right not to know, but it feels better

it’s like eating a lot and exercising a lot versus dieting and trying not to move much

I think millennials killed the “I hate my spouse” genre of humor and honestly I’m proud of us. this used to be like half of all jokes love imagining young people just being straight-up confused about the cliches

“you know, the old ball and chain” “the old what and what?”

bachelor’s degrees in Creative Writing are a scam and universities shouldn’t offer them obviously lots of 19-year-olds want to “be a writer” but I think we should be making clear that the prerequisite for “being a writer” is having a perspective and something to say, not latching onto an artistic identity too early and diddling around with “craft”