Quote I appreciated this week:
Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”
Jules Verne
Knowledge is a privilege to be shared: Great perspective on why it’s important, a gift really, to write things down, especially in our work.
“Tribal knowledge concentrates power in the hands of a privileged few. Privilege is a currency to be spent and shared, not hoarded jealousy against old age.” — Riona MacNamara, Senior Technical Writer @Google
https://medium.com/@yasmary.hernandez/documentation-is-key-for-inclusion-725b4929f69b
The continued legacy of Martin Luther King:
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. quoted Theodore Parker: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
But it’s not bending itself. And it’s not waiting for someone from away to bend it either.
It’s on us.
This reminded me of a favorite quote from Paulo Coehlo:
The word is changed by your action, not by your opinion.
Paulo Coehlo
Scotland’s most remote pub: This doesn’t seem north enough to count as the most remote, but those islands and peninsulas can be pretty isolated.
Getting into nature feels like a miracle in the wilderness-starved United Kingdom. It counts as one of the most crowded countries on earth. It has a population of 66 million on a landmass a little smaller than Wyoming, much of it paved, farmed, trammeled. In the context of Great Britain, the Scottish Highlands is a corner of wilderness and also a wilderness cornered, edged as it is into the northernmost part of the island. Still, there are roads and towns, tourists looking for their fix of Hogwarts and the Loch Ness Monster. There are places where you can get Uber Eats delivery.
The Knoydart peninsula is not one of them.
HT to Ben Tamblyn.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2406629/old-forge-pub-scotland-highlands-uk#close
Book excerpt I’ve been thinking about:
“I am often asked what will replace organized religion. The answer, I believe, is nothing and everything. Nothing need replace its ludicrous and divisive doctrines—such as the idea that Jesus will return to earth and hurl unbelievers into a lake of fire, or that death in defense of Islam is the highest good. These are terrifying and debasing fictions. But what about love, compassion, moral goodness, and self-transcendence? Many people still imagine that religion is the true repository of these virtues. To change this, we must talk about the full range of human experience in a way that is as free of dogma as the best science already is.” (Sam Harris, Waking Up)
A good method of avoiding writer’s block: Write all your ideas down, no matter how dumb!
The world is going to see more plastic before we see less: We need to be done with single-use plastic.
https://www.wired.com/story/a-surge-of-new-plastic-is-about-to-hit-the-planet
David Foster Wallace on leadership: Came across this somehow during my week and really liked it.
In other words, a real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.
A premium, no-ads-paid-only news service that’s doing well: Increasingly annoyed by ESPN and finding it hard to keep track of sports news from a distance, I’ve given this service a shot. So far, I’m liking it. Great writing and almost everything is interesting and worth reading, the inverse of most sports news in my experience.
Things that I am grateful for:
These tiny moments with the kids.
Exploring the wonders of Amsterdam with a long-time friend.
Lastly, check out what we’re up to now.
Comments welcome!