Commonplace June 27, 2014

"Because someone stumbles, loses their way, does not mean that they are lot forever" - Charles Xavier

Rosa is Not Black

They sounded like your shoes
Heading in my direction so I looked up
It's a tall black lady

Commonplace June 24, 2014

"It's incredibly difficult in that situation to express mutual gratitude, because it's an inherently heightened and unnatural dynamic in which it's very difficult for either of us to imagine the other as a complicated human being going through all the things that complicated humans go through." - John Green (reddit post by John Green responding to a woman who hugged him at a musical and then felt bad because she heard third-hand that John Green hated it, which he did not)

It's very difficult for either of us to imagine the other as a complicated human being going through all the things that complicated humans go through.

Commonplace June 22, 2014

Can I be excited about the work that I'm doing, can I be excited about every day?

"Who goes to work Monday morning with a grin?" ... "It's just that they look so lost," she says. "Like they were all dead. Like a funeral procession."Then she puts both feet down and leaves them there. - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

Maybe we need to pick them up again and move on. Whether that's in a different direction, in the same but forward, perhaps even steps backwards to see the big picture a little wiser, in whatever direction, perhaps we just need to move.

Commonplace June 20, 2014

the objections inside our mind - that aren't really based on any real threat or reason - hinder us from going forward in life.

http://www.kasperiapell.com/3-how-jumping-into-cold-water-every-morning-taught-me-to-minimize-mental-sloppiness

"The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go Away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away. Puzzling." - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An inquiry into values

Commonplace June 11, 2014

Science is a blade that's always getting sharper - /u/archimedesone

Commonplace June 10, 2014

If the order doesn't matter it is a combination, if the order does matter, it is a permutation; ergo combination locks should really be called permutation locks.

June 8, 2014 Commonplace

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief. - Kafka

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." 
  -Aristotle

Commonplace June 4, 2014

• "If you are more fortunate than others, it's better to build a longer table than a taller fence." - /u/161803399
• Tupac's Take

Commonplace June 4, 2014

• Countries go to war, not people