Hi! I'm Emma. I'm an ideator, optimizer, and personal growth nerd, with a dash of woo and politics. This is my "kitchen sink" blog, where I share random notes from my life, including the various rabbit holes I go down.
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Kurzgesagt: We WILL Fix Climate Change!
This did make me feel hopeful, even if, “We’ve averted the apocalyptic doom scenario and are now just headed for super duper terrible!” is only good news in the technical sense. It does make a good point that climate defeatism is actually a pro-oil position.
WIRED: Accent Expert Gives a Tour of U.S. Accents
Three part series going over all kinds of US accents from various regions, including different ethnic groups and historical reasons. Linguistics is fascinating! See also the Cot-caught merger.
Of Pods, Squads, Crews & Gangs: Small Group Experiments In Radical Belonging
I’m beyond thrilled about this article! This is the kind of social relationships I want: Pods. Small groups of people devoted to growing together.
The article covers different flavors of small groups, the lineage of small groups, and what goes into making them work.
Radical belonging requires shadow work. Why? Because we can’t show up and fully be seen and known without reckoning with the fact that we’re constantly trying to hide!
Capitalism with a Floor and a Ceiling
The basic problem with capitalism is that “the poor get poorer and the rich get richer”. In other words, the two poles are linked through an inverse relationship–as the total pie increases, the share of the pie that the poor get decreases over time, until you reach massive inequality and then have a crisis.
What if instead, there was a ceiling on how much money someone could earn, that was tied to the minimum wage, so to make more money as a CEO, you would have to raise your worker’s pay. And the same for capital gains, which would be progressively taxed and then recycled into a universal floor i.e. a UBI. That way, growing the pie would help everyone evenly. The rich would not be allowed to outpace the rest, but would have to bring everyone with them. The policies would be designed so the proportion of the pie for each segment of society would be fixed, so everyone would be incentivized to increase the total pie, not steal your neighbor’s slice through wage theft, stock buybacks, and inflation.
Nacho Doritos are Addictive Because They Fail to Satisfy Your Taste Buds
Apparently, Nacho Cheese Doritos are designed to have such a well-balanced set of flavors that you don’t reach “sensory specific satiety” and therefore want to keep eating them. You can only eat so much of a strong flavor, but an exciting-but-ambiguous flavor keeps you wanting more. This is a good reminder to check if you are actually satisfied by something you keep doing, or is it the lack of satisfaction that keeps you going back for more to try to find it.
Which spiritual path should I follow?
Short answer: The one that works for you, that you can follow sincerely. And if you find yourself in a wasteland where you are continually seeking but not finding, then you're not following Spirit, you're following ego. But you can always choose again.Joseph Alai: Exhaustive Guide to Manifesting Using Neville Goddard Techniques
Ostensibly about “Manifesting a Specific Person”, but it really goes over the entire technique and answers a lot of questions. Based on a mystical reading of the Bible-as-manifestation-guide combined with Neville. I like this guy, he’s very thorough and precise.
I think it’s OK to be wealthy
It’s weird to write that, but it’s true. It would be contradictory to want to be wealthy and think it’s not OK to be wealthy. And I definitely want to be stinkin’ rich! I just also want nobody to be poor. I want to solve poverty. I want something like capitalism, without poverty and exploitation, while personally being rich AF. I don’t know if that’s possible, but that’s what I want. #goals
ProZD: Why don’t you make skits anymore?
This is a great rebuke against consumers demanding someone create the content they want to watch instead of what the creator wants to create. It seems part of how he can be so strong in not succumbing to the pressure of his millions of subs is that he has a clear idea of what matters most to him: his voice acting career. He does touch on burnout and how he narrowly avoided it at one one point.
The Rock Q&A: Do I hate being famous or love being famous?
Dwayne Johnson tells a beautiful story of learning how to manage his celebrity status from realizing the power he has to make a fan’s day or make them feel really terrible. I was looking for various takes on fame as part of healing my fear of being seen. From watching various videos, some people really find it intrusive, and others like The Rock have learned a kind of humility and grace in the face of it.