581–590 of 591 posts
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I see these as one in the same actually. Clarity I think comes from being “part” of the world or some specific part of it. While many and most “live” through it, the Artist sees the inverse of a sorts of it - the “big picture within some lens”. Then, tries to process and communicate the unseen truths in whatever medium they are accustomed.
These statements could leave more room for lousy artists.
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Steven Pressfield is an amazing writer. I think he's the one who wrote about the Spartans and how ridiculously tough they were. I encountered the book as a paperback left in a bin for soldiers to take and read during some dumb deployment. Not that one, but a small one to Poland. This was 2002.
Bret Deveraux is a PHD historian and a critic of Pressfield. He picks apart his argument for "universal warrior" and concludes it has an ideology behind it. The ideology is fascism. https://acoup.blog/2021/02/19/collections-the-universal-warr... edit: the earlier version of my post used the word "agenda" instead of "ideology", but that was a bit unfair given Bret himself gives Pressfield benefit of doubt. This articl…
For anyone that hasn’t read gates of fire I highly recommend it. It is historical fiction and a thrilling journey.
You can make up your own mind about supposed hidden agendas, or …just enjoy a great story.
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If you really work hard at your day job you just don’t have enough energy at the end of the day if you have also a family to care about. It’s a great advice for when you are young, it’s pretty much useless when you value the time that you spend with the people that you love much more than any amount of money.
If you have no energy at the end of the day, the answer is to find time in the morning. Get up earlier, go to bed earlier. If you find your time in the afternoon isn't productive but you find it fulfilling to be around the people you love and that's enough for you, then you don't need productivity advice and this kind of reading isn't for you.
I'm taking a course on how to build and grow a YouTube channel. The main advice they give is "just commit to making a video once a week, every week, for 2 years, and you're life will change." It's a tautology, no guarantees on how well your channel will do, but it's such a simple idea, and nice motivator to build momentum and keep going.
The Matt D’Avella course?
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Tom Scott's 3-part series (on YouTube) a few years back on "How to be popular on the Internet"[0] has similar advice. There are higher-cost and lower-cost ideas, but given the amount of randomness inherent to getting popular, quantity tends to be the more important factor. He of course says it much better than I can. [0] URL of first part here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0AMaW4XRCI
It can also be really hard to judge quality (or at least popularity) a priori. I write for various publications that track traffic. Invariably I'll have posts I think are unique and interesting, which I really like. And they get middling views. So it often makes sense to not tilt too far into finely-crafting a low volume of work. Then I'll slap something together a "5 things people get wrong when doing $X." It's not…
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Someone blew my mind describing why some artists are not appreciated until they are dead. The theory as it went is that most artists aren’t “ahead of their time”, it’s that they see Now in a way that nobody else will understand for years. Eventually, with the aid of the lens of nostalgia we see that they really “get us”, as we now understand ourselves. Being out in the world is how they “get” us. It’s material, not f…
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Any artistic people I've worked/associated with have a certain "clarity" about the world around them, that I think most people don't. Artists delve into culture and social things that are not easily recognized by people who aren't paying particular attention, I guess you could say. Not in all cases, and I think it depends on the type of creativity, but yeah... That's my simplistic…
I've written two books over the past decade as well as learning some other skills and hobbies and this is absolutely the most vital lesson I've learned. There is an incredible power in simply pouring a little time into something every day over a long period of time. It feels like a superpower when you see it start compounding. The Grand Canyon was created by little drops of water bouncing off rocks for millenia. Cons…
The grand canyon was likely not the result of little drops but rather huge deluges - over time.
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Not to take away from your point, but from what I have read, the Grand Canyon was most likely not formed by little drops of water, but instead by occasional torrents of water. There is ~70 feet of boulders and detritus at the bottom of the Colorado River. Only a flood powerful enough to get all that material moving at once will erode the bottom of the river bed and carve the canyon deeper. The slopes and walls probab…
That's not true. You might be thinking of the Missoula floods that carved out the channeled scablands of Eastern Washington. But the Grand Canyon's river is generally the same size it always has been, and slow erosion forces created it.
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Bret Deveraux is a PHD historian and a critic of Pressfield. He picks apart his argument for "universal warrior" and concludes it has an ideology behind it. The ideology is fascism. https://acoup.blog/2021/02/19/collections-the-universal-warr... edit: the earlier version of my post used the word "agenda" instead of "ideology", but that was a bit unfair given Bret himself gives Pressfield benefit of doubt. This articl…
What a tiring rant. For anyone that hasn’t read gates of fire I highly recommend it. It is historical fiction and a thrilling journey. You can make up your own mind about supposed hidden agendas, or …just enjoy a great story.
No more zero days. https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_ju...