I keep returning to a line from Simon Schama’s “The Power of Art.” It is the book’s first sentence: “great art has dreadful manners.” Schama, a historian at Columbia University, tells us that art is a “thug,” “merciless and wily.” It will “grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your sense of reality.”
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Your Most Improbable Life
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In the same way as cards, the self-improving system of life re-arranges random atoms in the universe into very improbable shapes we call proteins and amino acids. The same system arranges these unexpected molecules into very improbable organs, which are arranged into very improbable bodies. So long as they are alive, life maintains that improbable arrangement, keeping the whole body far from the dull sameness of entropy. That suspended relief from entropy is removed upon death, when the atoms in a dead body quickly revert to randomness.
From: https://kevinkelly.substack.com/p/your-most-improbable-life
[Read today] Approaches to writing two-sentence journal entries
I'm a technical writer by day (a great career path if you want to pursue it), which means that work days are often spent tethered to my desk while I scrutinize documents on a computer monitor. When my eyes need a break from the screen – or my brain needs a respite from whatever task I'm completing – I spend a minute or two on my journal.
Read this detailed Approaches to writing two-sentence journal entries