greg

online dating is kind of broken in opposite directions.

a lot of women get more attention than they want.

a lot of men get less attention than they want.

one side is filtering through noise. the other is trying to be noticed.

somehow both leave exhausted.

i leant upon a coppice gate
when frost was spectre-grey,
and winter's dregs made desolate
the weakening eye of day.
the tangled bine-stems scored the sky
like strings of broken lyres,
and all mankind that haunted nigh
had sought their household fires.

the land's sharp features seemed to be
the century's corpse outleant,
his crypt the cloudy canopy,
the wind his death-lament.
the ancient pulse of germ and birth
was shrunken hard and dry,
and every spirit upon earth
seemed fervourless as i.

at once a voice arose among
the bleak twigs overhead
in a full-hearted evensong
of joy illimited;
an aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
in blast-beruffled plume,
had chosen thus to fling his soul
upon the growing gloom.

so little cause for carolings
of such ecstatic sound
was written on terrestrial things
afar or nigh around,
that i could think there trembled through
his happy good-night air
some blessed hope, whereof he knew
and i was unaware

thomas hardy the darkling thrush

lead singer of popular band panic! at the disco. also known lovingly as beebo. pretty much the most beautiful man alive.

the most fascinating aspect of human history

what is something about me you noticed before i noticed it myself?

what is one thing you wish people understood about you?

the general rule of the universe is that, over time, everything wants to reach minimum energy and maximum disorder.

(see: entropy)

since it's a universal show, they were forced to shoot a final season in keeping with the fundamental rule of the universe. game of thrones isn't just a show, it's a work of natural art, in my opinion. like a lake, like a mountain, like a waterfall.

a temporary state of being thrown into a world you did not choose, given a body you did not design, surrounded by people you cannot fully understand, and then asked to somehow make meaning out of all of it.

one of those rare people who somehow managed to spend his life thinking about the most abstract questions imaginable while constantly getting involved in very real political fights.

he helped build the foundations of modern analytic philosophy and mathematical logic, coauthored principia mathematica, won the nobel prize in literature, went to prison for his antiwar activism, and later became one of the loudest intellectual voices against nuclear weapons.

what i find most interesting about russell is that he never treated intelligence as an excuse to become detached from the world.

he could spend years asking whether mathematics could be reduced to logic, then turn around and argue about war, education, religion, freedom, sex, marriage, and how people should actually live.

basically, the kind of philosopher who refused to stay in the philosophy department.

karolina olsson went to bed in sweden in 1876 at 14 years old and, according to the historical record, did not properly wake again until 1908, 32 years later. what makes the story even stranger is that after waking she could still read and write, remembered what she had learned before the episode, and was later described as mentally intact.

the part i find most fascinating is that we still do not really know what those 32 years were. sleep, catatonia, an unusual psychiatric condition, something partly performed, or some combination of things? even contemporary accounts left major questions unanswered. there is something deeply unsettling about a life containing three decades that nobody, including the person who lived them, can fully explain.

making a foldable phone and not calling it ifold is a complete lack of vision.

i decided to look a little more closely at norway, since it is one of those countries we seem to envy for almost everything.

i was honestly stunned. the story is almost too good.

norway had been in a union with sweden until 1905, when it broke away and became fully independent.

the norwegians wanted to remain a monarchy, but there was one small problem. they had no king and no royal family of their own.

so they literally went looking for a king.

yes, looking for a king. it sounds ridiculous, but that is basically what happened.

their first choice was the swedish royal family they had just separated from. norway essentially asked whether sweden might spare one of its princes so they could make him king. sweden declined.

so they turned to denmark.

there they found a suitable candidate, prince carl of denmark. he was scandinavian, had naval training, was young, and already had a son.

when the offer reached him, he did not simply jump at the chance. he insisted that he would only accept the crown if the norwegian people actually wanted him.

a referendum was held in november 1905, and the monarchy was approved by a large majority. prince carl accepted the throne and took the name haakon vii, reviving the name of earlier norwegian kings and tying the new monarchy to the country's older traditions.

and norway later discovered that it had chosen an extraordinary king.

during world war ii, haakon vii refused to submit to nazi germany and became one of the great symbols of norwegian resistance. this man had essentially been invited in from another country to become king, yet when norway faced its darkest moment, he stood by it completely.

you could not ask for much more from a monarch.

he also strongly respected norway's parliamentary system and became a lasting symbol of constitutional monarchy during the development of the modern norwegian state.

the kind of movie you can’t watch while eating chips or popcorn. the dialogue is so valuable that if even a single word gets lost under the rustling of a bag or any other noise, you end up rewinding because you’re convinced you missed something important. definitely one of the movies that affected me the most. hats off to everyone behind it.

--spoiler--
the idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving. it saves on introductions and goodbyes.
--spoiler--