Arman's Antics (#063)
The latest from flabby tech gut guy Arman Khodadoost
Hi friend!
Coming to you live from Austin, Texas. Here’s your weekly dose of Arman’s Antics.
Five things I’ve stumbled upon that will make you laugh, think, cry (or a nasty combination of the three!).
Welcome to the eight new subscribers receiving this for the first time (359 total). I respect your inbox and don’t take your attention lightly.
Finally, I hope nobody is reading this, but if you are, please keep it to yourself.
Essay I wrote last week
Scientists are starting to catch up with theologians in recognizing the benefits of fasting.
But why limit this practice to food?
Want to shed that flabby tech belly?
Luddites think all tech is evil. Technophiles think all tech is divine. Both are mistaken. It’s a Faustian bargain, as Neil Postman pointed out three decades ago — technology giveth and technology taketh away.
Book I’m rereading
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
This is definitely the least well-known, and rarely talked about, book from his five book Incerto.
Yet, it contains the most wisdom per page.
It’s a 156 page list of pithy ideas that could all stand alone as viral tweets.
Here’s the description: “The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from the Greek myth of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection, either by stretching them or by cutting their limbs. It represents Taleb’s view of modern civilization’s hubristic side effects — modifying humans to satisfy technology, blaming reality for not fitting economic models, inventing diseases to sell drugs, defining intelligence as what can be tested in a classroom, and convincing people that employment is not slavery. Playful and irreverent, these aphorisms will surprise you by exploring self-delusions you have been living with but never recognized. With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition with the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness.”
Commencement speech I wish I watched sooner
This should be required listening before you begin a creative project.
Neil Gaiman 2012 “Make Good Art”:
“Where’s the fun in making something you knew was going to work?”
“After you find some success, the world conspires to get you to stop doing the thing that made you successful.”
Life is a lot more fragile than you think
My wife and I spent Thanksgiving at our friend’s apartment in Manhattan a few weeks ago.
It was an old building full of love, laughs, and it felt safe.
But just five days later, our friend had to be evacuated out of the building because there were signs that it could collapse at any moment.
It was a great reminder of just how fragile life is.
God laughs at our plans for the future.
Random thought
Here’s a quick dad joke to send you on your way.
I already tested it on a few friends with a 75% success rate.
A guy goes to the doctor for a check up and the doctor says “I’ve got bad news….you’ve got cancer and only have a few weeks left to live."
The guy shouts, “I want a second opinion!”
So the doctor slowly turns to him and whispers in his ear, “OK, I think you’re ugly too.”
That’s it for the 63rd weekly edition of Arman’s Antics. I hope you didn’t make it this far, but if you did, please keep it to yourself. Now back to your regularly scheduled nonstop scrolling.
Have a terrific Tuesday!
Cheers,
Arman
...but was the man really ugly?...
The WPP (wisdom per page) metric is something you ought to coin, or trademark, or promote, or double down on somehow. It's a unique idea, and your own WPP density is always quite high.