james choice

he's unquestionably the greatest athlete of all time. the guy even has an olympic gold medal.

his national team career is by far better than messi's and c. ronaldo's.

a film that ties together the stories of two women in different times, running parallel to virginia woolf's beautiful life. it was extremely moving. for a very long time american-made films have felt shallow and lacking in depth to me. i think after a long time it became one of those films that sticks with me and affects me. a woman is another woman's homeland. that she is. sometimes she becomes inspiration through the books she wrote.. a hundred years later, no less. to her sisters, for whom even a room of one's own is still a luxury.. just like in the film. she draws out the mrs. dalloway inside her.

--spoiler--
in one of the entries someone called it the story of three spoiled broads. how much it wears people down, the way shallow people belittle mental matters, labeling those who perceive the world differently as fragile, spoiled, pathetic. this perception is actually funny, because that's the film's core issue too. virginia woolf, clarissa, and laura are people who struggle to turn chameleon.. but when the matter is womanhood, those who define themselves as outside womanhood think the burdens are part of woman's existence. some shoulder those things handed to them later on and don't make a sound. some can't bear it.. they either pretend to bear it, or construct another fiction, or write.. once again a room of one's own came to my mind. woolf had a very strong stance, it seems. the film chose to reflect that stance a little quietly.

i'm not sure woolf was really as flat a character as this. because we hear a pretty strong voice and presence both in her fiction and in her essays. we do see in the film, though, that woolf brought out everything she witnessed and couldn't make sense of through fiction. the flow of the fiction, and the fact that this flow is actually the pattern in both woolf's life and the other women's lives too..

one morning mrs. dalloway decides she'll buy flowers for herself today. but what about the times when everything is normal yet inwardly doesn't sit right? going into an endless role and captivity.. truth be told, the structure of society has always counseled us toward this. at the slightest conflict the woman is set apart and branded. that's why even if you're bleeding inside, your outside absolutely must smile.. just like laura's smile, the most pain-filled smile i've ever seen.. let her smile, that's enough, because even if she's hurting nobody cares.. while watching the film i often wondered how it would have been if woolf too had known her illness* and maybe had been able to access modern medicine. would she still have walked into that river? maybe she wouldn't have, who knows.. woolf left this world just one year after the discovery of the first modern bipolar medication.

the laura character was, in my opinion, the most heart-piercing side of the film. the fiction transformed the fact that laura, just like virginia, would be heading toward her own death. and laura chose to leave behind and run from a life that was perhaps never asked of her, that she never even asked of herself.. while watching, of course you feel sad. richard's running after his mother, but the woman not being able to breathe in that life either.. a part of you that wants to judge wants to attack easily. just like the way someone who sees laura at the end of the film says, is she the monster.. but what about the monster's story? the film does exactly this, actually.. it lays out before our eyes both the monster's story and the victim's story. the rest is left to our own depth. just like it was said in the entries above, spoiled broads or real broads.. it's left to us to think about that too.

lastly, the jackass who's laura's husband. man, how can a person be this blind. turns out they can, but there you go.. let me go and buy myself a flower from back home too. and let's live. like mrs. dalloway and laura..
--spoiler--

it's unheard of for a company with an annual revenue of $18.67 billion, one that operates at a loss and will keep operating at a loss for years, to reach a valuation of $1.77 trillion. i can't say what'll happen in the short term, but in the long term i'm certain the people investing in it are going to get slapped.

the most underrated tv series. it's on hbo max

anyone who gets on the waiting list for one of these, and anyone who brags about making the list and scoring a watch, is a straight-up sucker. period. because all those waiting lists they run worldwide are fake. they're just manufactured "situations," artificially created so that demand, mystery, or whatever you want to call it keeps climbing.

let me tell you what that so-called "list" actually is. there is no official list kept anywhere, in any central database, least of all over in switzerland or wherever. think of it as nothing more than getting your name added to the dinky little contact list of whatever sales rep happens to be working that one boutique in your area, because you're an eager buyer who isn't quite vip enough.

rolex makes plenty of watches, but the authorized dealers are out here inventing imaginary lists to fake a shortage and juice the demand. dig a little and they'll tell you your spot on the list, or the reason you couldn't just buy the watch you wanted and got dumped onto some junk list instead, comes down to your "purchase history." meaning you've gotta build a relationship with that sales rep and buy other watches from them first. all of this, of course, assuming you're not vip enough :))

these lists are such a joke that a guy i know who got "added" to the list here in turkey ended up picking up the exact same watch within a few days while on a vacation in some european city.

okay, say you do make the list. don't go thinking there's some system ticking along like clockwork (no pun intended). think of it more like waiting in line at the bank, except people who show up after you, the ones richer than you, a little more prestigious, or who've already bought a few watches, just walk right past you. they get their watches in a matter of months while you look up and realize you've been sitting on that list for 2-3 years.
man, this is an entry/mid-level luxury watch at the end of the day, what waiting list? the way they act you'd think they were selling me antimatter.

anyone who laughs at people wearing this watch must be living with their head in the sand. speaking as a civil engineer, i can tell you the g-shock is my single biggest lifesaver on the job site. it takes a beating in concrete, it doesn't flinch from the vibration of a hilti, it never loses time, it just does its job flawlessly. turning your nose up at a watch built to military grade toughness is nothing more than proof you didn't do your homework. talking trash about a g-shock does nothing but announce to the world that you don't understand the first thing about engineering, technology, or durability.

“a japanese art based on repairing broken objects with gold in order to make them more beautiful and valuable than before”

just so you know, it doesn’t work on broken people.

tested it myself.

a new use case for ai i recently discovered.

the other day, i started reading a classic russian novel, but it had so many different characters, and throughout the book people kept referring to them with different names and nicknames. every character had like 4 or 5 different variations of their name. just figuring out who was who took effort.

so i opened google gemini and said: “list every character in this book with all of their nicknames and alternate names, explain who they are, but absolutely do not spoil the story.”

and it actually did an amazing job. it listed all the characters with their general traits and nicknames without giving away spoilers.

now i keep the list next to me as a guide while reading, and i never get confused anymore.

an almost mystical mountain that climbers consider the mountain of mountains. most people know the himalayas, but not many know k2, the second highest mountain in the world at 8,611 meters.

i've had a special fascination with mountains ever since i was a kid. living there may be difficult, but the gifts they offer are just as beautiful. what's interesting is that every mountain has its own unique ecosystem.

as for k2, it's considered the most difficult mountain in the world to climb. there are countless climbers who attempt it knowing they could die. call it obsession, passion, or the inability to resist the thrill, but even the mountain's sharp triangular shape looks like the mountain drawings we used to make as children.

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meeting people is one thing. but after a certain age, it becomes hard to truly let someone into your life as a real friend. friendship and deep connection require shared experiences and time. there are exceptions of course, but after 30, most friendships tend to exist within certain boundaries and around certain needs. that’s why you stop feeling the need to chase or force connections with people.

when it comes to relationships and dating, clarity and directness become essential after a certain age too. unlike when you’re younger, you no longer feel the need to chase someone or prove yourself to them. only if there’s openness and clarity can something meaningful really happen.

if your goal is simply networking or building professional connections, the motivation to meet people never really ends. but for someone to truly enter your life, you have to feel that they’re genuinely special.

i read the new financial times article. in most of the world's 195 countries, fertility rates have fallen below 2.1. the article argues that smartphones, mobile internet, and social media have made people less social, less likely to date, and therefore less likely to form relationships.

in the us and uk, the first places where birth rates started falling were the same regions where 4g was introduced earliest. birth rates stayed relatively stable in the us, uk, and australia until 2007. in france and poland until 2009. in mexico and indonesia until 2012. and in ghana, nigeria, and senegal until around 2013 to 2015. these dates overlap with the mass spread of smartphones and are seen as the beginning of the shift.

in south korea, socializing among young people has declined, and the birth rate has dropped by 50% over the last 20 years. the article also mentions sexual dysfunction becoming more common among heavy social media users.

ai wasn't included in the article. but the number of people becoming completely absorbed in ai and withdrawing from real social interaction is also starting to grow. that's probably something that needs to be examined too.

there’s a song on nirvana’s 1993 album in utero called “pennyroyal tea.” it’s one of the darkest and most inward looking tracks on the record. in it, kurt cobain writes the lines: “give me a leonard cohen afterworld / so i can sigh eternally.”

that same year, during the tour for his album the future, leonard cohen played a concert in seattle. the members of nirvana attended. two generations, two different kinds of darkness, meeting in the same room.

after kurt cobain’s death in april 1994, someone told cohen about this connection. cohen responded: “i wish i could have spoken with him. at our monastery, there are young men who come close to the edge like he did. there are ways of reaching them, not psychological ways, but essential ways. i don’t think i could have changed much. it’s just one of those endless ‘if onlys.’”

cohen never positioned himself as a savior. he never claimed that his poetry, his music, or that night at the concert would necessarily change anything. but the fact that cobain wanted cohen’s songs in his afterlife, and cohen later saying “i wish i could have spoken to him,” hangs in history like the echo of a conversation that never happened.

emil michel cioran once said, “music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.” the songs these two artists left behind continue to be a refuge in our mostly futile search for happiness.

not moving on from what doesn't serves me sooner. places, people, jobs, etc.

"the one who speaks tenderly during a breakup is the one who isn't in love."

marcel proust