Ignore the negative people. Instead of whining and complaining, focus your time and energy on living. Focus it on actually doing or creating something. That's a far better use of your time and energy. And you'll be a better person for it.
Love this. This is similar to what Jocko Willink said in his book Discipline Equals Freedom — ignore and outperform. Love it.
The Facebook Dilemma is a two part documentary from Frontline. Here is a description of the documentary from their website:
The promise of Facebook was to create a more open and connected world. But from the company’s failure to protect millions of users’ data, to the proliferation of “fake news” and disinformation, mounting crises have raised the question: Is Facebook more harmful than helpful? This major, two-night event investigates a series of warnings to Facebook as the company grew from Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room to a global empire. With dozens of original interviews and rare footage, The Facebook Dilemma examines the powerful social media platform’s impact on privacy and democracy in the U.S. and around the world.
Overall, it was a pretty good documentary. They weren't lying about the original interviews and rare footage. It reveals insights into company culture — why Facebook is the way it is now and how they got there.
It has been a stressful week for reasons I don't want to elaborate on. But there was good news yesterday and that's all that matters right now. What a coincidence it is, that yet again, these are the kind of songs I have lined up for today. Anyway, it's time for another music log Friday.
The first track today is perhaps my best discovery last year. It is the song “Shine” by Mondo Cozmo. I do not remember where I heard it from. It was probably from the Top 50 Rock Songs of 2019 countdown. Honestly, not the song I expected to hear from an artist who does folk rock/indie rock music. But either way, this is a great song. It is about trusting in Jesus and living life the best you can, without telling others how to live their lives. It reminds me of something I read in the Word on Fire Bible — that each one of us is responsible for our own salvation. Stop looking at what other people are doing and focus instead on what you should be doing.
This song has some really good lyrics too. It starts out with this:
Stick with me Jesus through the comin' storm
I've come to you in search of something I have lost
Shine down a light on me and show a path
I promise you I will return if you take me back
Then on the bridge there's the lyrics below. It nearly brought tears to my eyes when I first heard them. This is such a good song.
Come with me Mary through these modern lines
Stick with me Jesus til' the end of time
Shine down a light on me and let me know
And take me in your arms and never let me go
Finished reading the book An Echo of Things to Come by James Islington a few weeks ago, here are my thoughts on it.
Why did I pick up this book?
This is the second book in the Licanius Trilogy. The first book ended in such a crazy cliffhanger that I couldn't not pick up this second book.
What did I like about this book?
It continues the story of Caeden, Davian and the rest of the crew. A good part of the second book is Caeden uncovering his memories of the past. At first it starts out slow, but once it picked up, I couldn't wait to read more of his flashbacks.
Another Friday, another music log. I have two songs today from The Piano Guys. Let's get started.
First one is this beautiful, beautiful piano cover of Ed Sheeran's “Perfect”. It's so good I can listen to it all day. Just like the song title, it is perfect.
Another great, informative and fun read from Mark Manson. I always learn something new from his writings. It is well researched too. He adds references in the footnotes section of his post as proof.
Our aversion to pain and struggle in any capacity has become so ingrained in everything we do that it’s compromising our ability to learn, grow, and function as healthy and stable adults. It shocks and appalls me that companies and products that are supposed to help this issue are only making it worse.
You don’t build psychological resilience by feeling good all the time. You build psychological resilience by getting better at feeling bad.
There he goes again with his counter-intuitive logic. Except, it does make sense to me.
It's been awhile since I wrote a music log entry. I had a number of excuses ready to type up, but I'll skip those. Let's just get one up shall we?
The first song for today is a rather unpopular song by My Chemical Romance. Unpopular in the sense that, I don't think it is one of their hits. I just happened to come across it as a song recommendation. Whether it was from Pandora or Spotify, I don't remember anymore. But the important bit, is that this song rocks! So here is “Ambulance” by My Chemical Romance.
A great read on why reputation matters so much now. Especially in light of how much information is available to the public nowadays. Plus some light history lesson on where the “Moon Landing” conspiracy theory came from.
In the average-case scenario, you trust newspapers, magazines or TV channels that endorse a political view which supports scientific research to summarise its findings for you. In this latter case, you are twice-removed from the sources: you trust other people’s trust in reputable science.
Huh, I actually didn't think of it that way, but that's true though.
So, do we now have to fact check everything we read or see online? No, that would take absurd amounts of our time. Not to mention, we probably won't come up with the correct answers doing our own research. Instead, we should ask the questions the author presented in the article, that I quoted below. It can act as sort of a checklist or framework for quickly verifying the accuracy of new information.
Whenever we are at the point of accepting or rejecting new information, we should ask ourselves: Where does it come from? Does the source have a good reputation? Who are the authorities who believe it? What are my reasons for deferring to these authorities? Such questions will help us to get a better grip on reality than trying to check directly the reliability of the information at issue.
