A rose is a rose

Suppose, to suppose, suppose a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
To suppose, we suppose that there arose here and there that here
and there there arose and instance of knowing that there are
here and there that there are there that they will prepare, that
they do care to come again.
Are they to come again.

Gertrude Stein

Vídeo Youtube: Пионеры модерна - 1900е - Loie Fuller

Relying on predictions

"You can't predict in general, but you can predict that those who rely on predictions are taking more risks, will have some trouble, perhaps even go bust. Why? Someone who predicts will be fragile to prediction errors. And numerical prediction leads people to take more risks."
Nassim Taleb, in Antifragile

Moises and technology

On speaking out

" we, as women, have been devalued artistically to an indecent state, to the point where the film industry stopped making an effort to find out what female audiences wanted to see and what stories we wanted to tell."
Salma Hayek on Harvey Weinstein, here

da objectificação

"There is a deep sadness when I witness a man that can’t recognize the emptiness he feels when he objectifies himself as a bank and truly believes he can buy love with things and status. It is painful to witness the betrayal when a woman takes him up on that offer."

Jada Pinkett-Smith: “The War on Men Through the Degradation of Women”
Aqui.

On Takatoshi Kato's predictions / suit-and-tie-wearing hotshots

"These were days before I decided to climb up the mountain, speak slowly and in a priestly tone, and try shaming people rather than insulting them. Listening to Kato's presentation, I could not control myself and flew into a rage in front of two thousand Koreans – I was so angry that I almost started shouting in French, forgetting that I was in Korea. I ran to the podium and told the audience that the next time someone in a suit and tie gave them projections for some dates in the future, they should ask him to show what he had projected in the past – in this case, what he had been forecasting for 2008 and 2009 (the crisis years) two to five years earlier, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. They would then verify that highly Venerable Kato-san and his colleagues are, to put it mildly, not very good at this predictionizing business. And it is not just Mr. Kato: our track record in figuring out significant rare events in politics and economics is not so close to zero; it is zero."

"What was getting me in that state of anger was my realization that forecasting was not neutral. It is all in the iatrogenics. Forecasting can be downright injurious to risk-takers – no different from giving people snake oil medicine in place of cancer treatment, or bleeding, as in the story of Geaorge Washington. And there was evidence. Danny Kahneman – rightfully – kept admonishing me for my fits of anger and outbursts at respectable members of the establishment (respectable for now), deeming such behavior to be unbecoming of the wise member of the intelligentsia I was supposed to be. Yet he stoked my frustration and sense of outrage the most by showing me the evidence of iatrogenics. There are ample empirical findings to the effect that providing someone with a random numerical forecast increases his risk taking, even if the person knows the projections are random.
All I hear is complaints about forecasters, when the next step is obvious yet rarely taken: avoidance of iatrogenics from forecasting. We understand childproofing, but not forecaster-hubris-proofing."

The financier Warren Buffett states that he tries to invest in businesses that are "so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will."
Nassim Taleb, in Antifragile

Are you a body with a mind?

Earth as Humpty Dumpty

Elizabeth Hadly

Film: "Demain"

Quando a incompetência ajuda

"The famine in China that killed 30 million people between 1959 and 1961 can enlighten us about the effect of the state "trying hard." Xin Meng, Nancy Qian, and Pierre Yared examined its variations between areas, looking into how the famine was distributed. They discovered that famine was more severe in areas with higher food production in the period before the famine began, meaning that it was government policy of food distribution that was behind much of the problem, owing to the inflexibility in the procurement system. And indeed, a larger than expected share of famine over the past century has occured in economies with central planning.
But often it is the state's incompetence that can help save us from the grip of statism and modernity – inverse iatrogenics. The insightful author Dmitri Orlov showed how calamities were avoided after the breakdown of the Soviet state because food production was inefficient and full of unintentional redundancies, which ended up working in favor of stability. Stalin played with agriculture, causing his share of famine. But he and his successors never managed to get agriculture to become "efficient," that is, centralized and optimized as it is today in America, so every town had the staples growing around it. This was costlier, as they did not get benefits of specialization, but this local lack of specialization allowed people to have access to all varieties of food in spite of the severe breakdown of institutions. In the United States, we burn twelve calories in transportation for every calorie of nutrition; in Soviet Russia, it was one to one. One can imagine what could happen to the United States (or Europe) in the event of food disruptions. Further, because of the inefficiency of housing in the Soviet state, people had been living in close quarters for three generations, and had tight bonds that ensured – as in the Lebanese war – that they stayed close to each other and lent to each other. People had real links, unlike in social networks, and fed their hungry friends, expecting that some friend (most likely another one) would help them should they get in dire circumstances.
And the top-down state is not necessarily the one that has the reputation of being so."
Nassim Taleb, in Antifragile

Fórum of the Future 2017

Avoiding black swans and becoming more antifragile

"Knowledge has not improved massively. We do not have advanced knowledge. read Seneca and you'll see that in world sciences and in a lot of fields we have not advanced that much. In the complex domain we have not advanced that much. So, being a generalist as people were 500 years ago, is still feasible." [NT]


"Why is it, that we humans denigrate the systems ability to correct themselves on their own? We act as if we were necessary for things to take place. And that's a big problem. We always tend to think that we're smarter than Nature. We have that bias. So this is the problem I'm working on. Is how to mitigate that. How to replace the instinct with something that's not as harmful." [NT]

In praise of procrastinantion

"The true hero in the Black Swan world is someone who prevents a calamity and, naturally, because the calamity did not take place, does not get recognition – or a bonus – for it. [...]
A very intelligent group of revolutionary fellows in the United Kingdom created a political movement called the Fabian Society, named after the Cunctator, based on opportunistically delaying the revolution. The society included George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Ramsay MacDonald, and even Bertrand Russell for a moment. In retrospect, it turned out to be a very effective strategy, not so much as a way to achieve their objectives, but rather to accommodate the fact that these objectives are moving targets. Procrastination turned out to be a way to let events take their course and give the activists the chance to change their minds before committing to irreversible policies. And of course members did change their minds after seeing the failures and horrors of Stalinism and similar regimes.
There is a latin expression festina lente, "make haste slowly." The Romans were not the only ancients to respect the act of voluntary omission. The Chinese thinker Lao Tzu coined the doctrine of wu-wei, "passive achievement."
Nassim Taleb, in "Antifragile"

...

The importance of developing skills

"The first thing about developing skills for ordinary craftworkers – people who work in what we don't think of as the elite sort of jobs, people who do everyday kinds of, both manual and service work – is that getting a skill in the craft is slow and long. One measure of the time it takes to become skilled in the practice of a craft is what's called 'The ten thousand hour rule'. And this rough number (but a good one) translates into practicing, for  instance, three or four hours a day, for five to seven years. The time that's needed to gain mastery whether one is learning piano technique, glass blowing, sport or surgery."
Richard Sennet

"Best-practice is a form of 'de-skilling'"

"Craftsmanship, says Richard Sennett, names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. The computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen all engage in a craftsman’s work. In this thought-provoking book, Sennett explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world.

The Craftsman engages the many dimensions of skill—from the technical demands to the obsessive energy required to do good work. Craftsmanship leads Sennett across time and space, from ancient Roman brickmakers to Renaissance goldsmiths to the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris and the factories of industrial London; in the modern world he explores what experiences of good work are shared by computer programmers, nurses and doctors, musicians, glassblowers, and cooks. Unique in the scope of his thinking, Sennett expands previous notions of crafts and craftsmen and apprises us of the surprising extent to which we can learn about ourselves through the labor of making physical things." Aqui

Richard Sennett: "The Decline of the Skills Society" (youtube)

O bem-estar infantil nos países desenvolvidos

Segundo estudo feito pela UNICEF, aqui.

Political annealing e o Princípio de Peter

"It has been hard to explain to real people that stressors and uncertainty have their role in life — so you can imagine what it would be like to explain it to politicians. Yet this is where a certain amount of randomness is needed the most.

I was once shown the script of a film based on a parable of a city completely ruled by randomness — very Borgesian. At set intervals, the ruler randomly assigns to the denizens a new role in the city. Say the butcher would become a baker, and the baker a prisoner, etc. At the end, people end up rebelling against the ruler, asking for stability as their inalienable right.

I immediately thought that perhaps the opposite parable should be written: instead of having the rulers randomize the jobs of citizens, we should have citizens randomize the jobs of rulers, naming them by raffles and removing them at random as well. That is similar to simulated annealing — and it happens to be no less effective. It turned out that the ancients — again, those ancients! — were chosen by lot, a method meant to protect the system from degeneracy. Luckily, this effect has been investigated with modern political systems. In a computer simulation, Alessandro Pluchino and his colleagues showed how adding a certain number of randomly selected politicians to the process can improve the functioning of the parlementary system."
Nassim Taleb, in Antifragile

Entrevista a Philippe Starck

Comprou uma propriedade perto de Grândola. Chamou-lhe Figueira Feliz. O que pretende fazer lá?

Vou pela primeira vez na vida fazer uma casa que não é uma casa moderna. Sempre construí casas de vanguarda, mas quando cheguei às planícies de Grândola, encontrei de tal forma um local de harmonia absoluta — as proporções, a luz, a temperatura, a vibração... — que percebi que não podia fazer nada que não saísse naturalmente do solo. Quero construir uma quinta com arquitetura alentejana. É a primeira vez que o faço, não sei o que pensar. Será que estou a ficar velho? Vou fazer vinho evidentemente biodinâmico, biológico, não filtrado e sem sulfito, o vinho perfeito. E vou fazer também azeite com uma empresa que tenho em Espanha. De resto, não sei. Vou inventar, vou ver.

Aqui

Suprema sofisticação

Aqui

ou

Aqui

by Pedra Líquida

The most British Japanese, or shall I say, the most Japanese British

"Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day. After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished. [...] Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it, it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in – particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth."
Kazuo Ishiguro, in The Remains of the Day

Memórias de território

O corpo, um território com memórias (cicatrizes), histórias...
E a distância óptima será definida pelas histórias que ele encerra (o corpo).
Arrisco dizer...

Shifting the paradigm, changing the mindset

Video: entrevista com George Cooper, 'Economics is a broken science': Dr George Cooper on his new book Money, Blood and Revolution.

"In a series of disarmingly simple arguments financial market analyst George Cooper challenges the core principles of today's economic orthodoxy and explains how we have created an economy that is inherently unstable and crisis prone. With great skill, he examines the very foundations of today's economic philosophy and adds a compelling analysis of the forces behind economic crisis. His goal is nothing less than preventing the seemingly endless procession of damaging boom-bust cycles, unsustainable economic bubbles, crippling credit crunches, and debilitating inflation. His direct, conscientious, and honest approach will captivate any reader and is an invaluable aid in understanding today's economy."

Aqui.

RIP Hugh Hefner

A revista Playboy, não serviu apenas para alimentar os sonhos [legítimos] mais 'selvagens' [wild] do género masculino da época.

Não vou, obviamente, referir-me a Hugh Hefner à luz da mais comum e divulgada perspectiva machista e reforçadora dos valores do patriarcado, que tem corrido nas redes sociais desde a notícia da sua morte, pois essa perspectiva é redutora e desrespeitadora no que toca a mulheres e homens e, portanto, não posso nem a quero subscrever, mesmo que seja capaz de me rir de todas as anedotas e notícias e comentários 'divertidos' que por aqui proliferam.

A acção de Hugh Hefner [também] teve um impacto positivo na cultura ocidental, na medida em que ajudou a dar voz a questões ligadas aos direitos de minorias e contribuiu para que questões ligadas `sexualidade e à emancipação das mulheres pudessem ser debatidas abertamente.

da relevância da liberdade

A sentence that still shocks me when I think about it [civil war in Lebanon] was voiced by one of my grandfather's friends, a wealthy Aleppine merchant who fled the Baath regime. When my grandfather asked his friend during the Lebanese war why he did not go back to Aleppo, his answer was categorical: "We people of Aleppo prefer war to prison." I thought that he meant that they were going to put him in jail, but then I realized that by "prison" he meant the loss of political and economic freedoms.
Economic life, too, seems to prefer war to prison. Lebanon and Northern Syria had very similar wealth per individual (what economists call gross Domestic Product) about a century ago – and had identical cultures, language, ethnicities, food, and even jokes. Everything was the same except for the rule of the "modernizing" Baath Party in Syria compared to the totally benign state in Lebanon. In spite of a civil war that decimated the population, causing an acute brain drain and setting wealth back by several decades, in addition to every possible form of chaos that rocked the place, today Lebanon has considerably higher standard of living – between three and six times the wealth of Syria.
Nor did the point escape Machiavelli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, citing him: "It seemed, wrote Machiavelli, that in the midst of murders and civil wars, our republic became stronger [and] its citizens infused with virtues... A little bit of agitation gives resources to souls and what makes the species prosper isn't peace, but freedom.
Nassim Taleb, in Antifragile

Proud to be weird

Sobre Ralph Steadman

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

Documentário sobre Hunter Stockton Thompson

Aqui.

Antifragile

"Consider this in terms of economic and institutional life. If nature ran the economy, it would not continuously bail out its living members to make them live forever. Nor would it have permanent administrations and forecasting departments that try to outsmart the future – it would not let the scam artists of the United States Office of Management and Budget make such mistakes of epistemic arrogance.
If one looks at history as a complex system similar to nature, then, like nature, it won't let a single empire dominate the planet forever – even if every superpower from the Babylonians to the Egyptians to the Persians to the Romans to modern America has believed in permanence of its domination and managed to produce historians to theorize to that effect. Systems subjected to randomness – and unpredictability – build a mechanism beyond the robust to opportunistically reinvent themselves each generation, with continuous change of population and species.
[...] Let us look at how evolution benefits from randomness and volatility (in some dose, of course). The more noise and disturbances in the system, up to a point, barring those extreme shocks that lead to extinction of a species, the more effect of reproduction of the fittest and that of random mutations will play a role in defining the properties of the next generation. Say an organism produces ten offspring. If the environment is perfectly stable, all ten will be able to reproduce. But if there is instability, pushing aside five of these descendants (likely to be on average weaker than their surviving siblings), then those that evolution considers (on balance) tha better ones will reproduce, making the gene undergo some fitness. Likewise, if there is variability among the offspring, thanks to occasional random spontaneous mutation, a sort of copying mistake in the genetic code, then the best should reproduce, increasing the fitness of the species. So evolution benefits from randomness by two different routes: randomness in the mutations, and randomness in the environment – both act in a similar way to cause changes in the traits of the surviving next generations."
Nassim Taleb, in Antifragile

Design - Natureza - Arte

Sobre Heloisa Crocco

Mais vídeo, aqui

Mindfulness poetry

Touched Nature

The Anthropocene

A loucura do Antropoceno

"À medida que o trabalho de Morton se estende para lá dos hierofantes culturais como Björk e entra nas páginas dos maiores órgãos de informação, ele está talvez a transformar-se no nosso mais popular guia para a nova época. Sim, é verdade que ele tem algumas ideias que parecem muito loucas acerca do que significa estar vivo nos tempos actuais – mas o que significa estar vivo exactamente agora, no Antropoceno, é efectivamente muito louco."



"Morton compara esta consciencialização com as histórias de detectives em que o perseguidor percebe que se está a perseguir a si próprio (os seus exemplos favoritos são Blade Runner e Édipo Rei). “Nem todos nós estamos preparados para ficarmos suficientemente assustados [com esta epifania]”, declara. Mas existe outra reviravolta: apesar de os seres humanos terem causado o Antropoceno, não podemos controlá-lo. “Oh, meu Deus”, exclamou Morton ante mim a certa altura, fingindo estar horrorizado. “A minha tentativa de escapar da teia do destino era a teia do destino.”

Mais aqui.

What is falling in love

Sobre Michael Guy Thompson

Wish list

A stunning exploration of the relation between desire and psychopathology, The Death of Desire is a unique synthesis of the work of Laing, Freud, Nietzsche, and Heidegger that renders their often difficult concepts brilliantly accessible to and usable by psychotherapists of all persuasions. In bridging a critical gap between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, M. Guy Thompson, one of the leading existential psychoanalysts of our time, firmly re-situates the unconscious – what Freud called "the lost continent of repressed desires" – in phenomenology. In so doing, he provides us with the richest, most compelling phenomenological treatment of the unconscious to date and also makes Freud’s theory of the unconscious newly comprehensible.

 In this revised and updated second edition to the original published in 1985, M. Guy Thompson takes us inside his soul-searching seven-year apprenticeship with radical psychiatrist R. D. Laing and his cohorts as it unfolded in counterculture London of the 1970s. This rite de passage culminates with a four-year sojourn inside one of Laing’s post-Kingsley Hall asylums, where Laing’s unorthodox conception of treatment dispenses with conventional boundaries between "doctor" and "patient." In this unprecedented exploration, Thompson reveals the secret to Laing’s astonishing alternative to the conventional psychiatric and psychoanalytic treatment schemes.

 Movingly written and deeply personal, Thompson shows why the very concept of "mental illness" is a misnomer and why sanity and madness should be understood instead as inherently puzzling stratagems that we devise in order to protect ourselves from intolerable mental anguish. The Death of Desire offers a provocative and challenging reappraisal of depth psychotherapy from an existential perspective that will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, philosophers, social scientists, and students of the human condition.
Aqui

Sobre o autor: aqui

Pré - Conceitos

"When you hold preconceived thought and beliefs this can manifest itself in sometimes ugly ways and at the very least can skew your judgement. I think at some stage in our lives we have all been guilty of holding unjust prejudices against people for no particular reason other than something we have been told about them."




"A photograph is shaped more by the person behind the camera, than by what is in front of it"


Muito interessante, quando quem observa é influenciado por aquilo que lhe contam. Por aquilo em que acreditam. Sem conhecerem, de facto, a pessoa... O problema é quando esta situação se transpõe para a vida real, e quando se elaboram juízos de valor e se emitem opiniões mal informadas...

Aqui

"In a different voice"

"Gabriela was a character so close to who I am. I would like if women could be just the way we are. Not the way need to be."
Sónia Braga

Grande mulher, grande actriz, grande filme: Aquarius

Cidade visível

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Sigmund e Anna – Um pai que não podia tolerar ninguém acima de si.

"As pessoas estarão cientes de que Anna foi analisada pelo pai? A partir de 1918, quando manifestou o desejo de se tornar também analista, deitou-se no divã, todos os dias. Na época, eu não via nisso mais do que um favor que ele lhe fazia. Mais um favor. Mas muito em breve me interroguei. Ela vivia com ele e, além disso, confidenciava-lhe o que não se diz a ninguém. Os pensamentos secretos, os desejos mais vergonhosos. Pensamentos, desejos esses, que lhe diziam respeito a ele, essencialmente. Sigmund publicara, 1919, um artigo intitulado "Uma criança é espancada". Anna, pelo seu lado, no Congresso de Berlim, em 1922, proferiu uma conferência que incidia sobre os fantasmas da fustigação numa rapariga, exactamente sobre o mesmo tema. Naquela altura, ela ainda não tinha doentes e, portanto, não podia falar senão de si mesma. Ora, tratava-se de fantasmas incestuosos entre pai e filha. Tudo era trazido para a praça pública, numa exibição que não enganou ninguém. Talvez uma maneira de afrontar as críticas, de as antecipar. Ou, então, estavam os dois de tal forma cegos que não viam que se podiam achar aí motivo de censura? Aliás, não houve ninguém que ousasse levantar a menor reserva, em todo o caso.
Sigmund era já sagrado e, havia muito, intocável.

Para mim, não é esse, contudo, o ponto essencial. Não percebo como pôde ele aceitar, daquela mulher nova, que se deixasse aprisionar em definitivo por essa psicanálise, sabendo que Anna tinha consigo uma relação de amor exclusivo e excessivo. Por mais que fosse um génio, como era capaz de evitar que aquele laço, no qual estava tão implicado quanto ela, não se consolidasse assim para sempre? Estou certa de que tal passo, em lugar de exercer um papel libertador, apenas fez estreitar mais os nós que os ligavam. O resultado foi visível. Anna jamais largou o pai, tornou-se na sua única colaboradora, na sua voz nos congressos, na sua herdeira espiritual. Foi a sua guarda na doença – mais próxima do seu corpo do que de qualquer outra pessoa.

Em 1925, Sigmund ofereceu-lhe um cão, um pastor-alemão que a devia defender durante os seus passeios. O Wolf.

Para ambos, o animal assemelhava-se a um filho. Davam-lhe de comer à mesa, cúmplices num jogo que me era insuportável. Cúmplices em tudo. O mesmo se passou com a amizade que particular que Anna estreitou com Dorothy, no ano em causa. Sigmund tudo fez para que esta se desenrolasse perto de si, quase debaixo dos seus olhos, na mesma teia das relações amorosas, familiares e analíticas. Aliás, foi Dorothy que lhe ofereceu o seu primeiro cão, o seu primeiro chow-chow. Não existia qualquer fronteira, qualquer limite. O magma. Para que jamais se separassem.

Sem dúvida, as pessoas julgam que a minha filha beneficiou daquela singular situação. Claro que tinha prestígio por causa do nome do pai e do adubamento com que ele a gratificou oficialmente, em vida. Mas bastava olhá-la para se perceber que não se achava à altura de tal destino. A identificação com o pai é uma impostura que não pode passar despercebida a ninguém. Anna é inteligente, sem dúvida, mas pobre e sem génio. Que criou ela? Na análise de crianças, de que retira a glória de ser fundadora, acho bem mais interessante o trabalho de Melanie Klein, sua rival, que não se limita a uma pedagogia vagamente tingida de psicanálise. Anna não fez mais do que aplicar, escolarmente, as teorias do pai. Como é que ninguém se dá conta?

Acho-a sobretudo alienada, esterelizada, sob todos os pontos de vista, pelo que o pai lhe impôs. A força do seu próprio desejo. Ele chamava-lhe a sua Antígona, esperando sublinhar assim o heroísmo que mostrava a seu favor. De facto, ele desvelava a origem incestuosa daquele amor: Antígona, filha de Édipo... Pergunto-me, às vezes, porque o inventor do extraordinário utensílio de libertação que é a psicanálise não se conseguiu aproveitar dele pessoalmente. No que se chama a sua auto-análise, ele parou, forçosamente, num limite que desconhecia. Acho uma pena que não tenha podido continuar a experiência mais tarde, com um dos seus alunos. Com certeza era impossível, de tal modo estes estavam aterrorizados pelo monstro em que ele se tornara, a seus olhos. Um deus vivo. A maneira como se conduziam com ele dá uma ideia daquele terror. Também teria faltado, por parte do Sigmund, uma humildade que estava longe de possuir. Agarrava-se ao seu estatuto de pai da psicanálise. Um pai que não podia tolerar ninguém acima de si.

Nicolle Rosen, in Martha Freud

How to be kind when you're upset with your partner

"A relationship is the concerted effort of two people who mindfully and enthusiastically work towards a shared vision. Despite the difficulties of daily life, partners are in charge of their own behaviour. While a couple grows together, they are not precluded from growing as individuals as well – in fact they must evolve as individuals to continually bring their “best selves” to their partner."
Mais aqui.

Freud e Fausto

"Perguntava-me então se o Sigmund, sem o confessar nem a si mesmo, não acabava de introduzir na psicanálise uma nova dimensão que fazia parte do desconhecido, do inconhecível. Do limite no qual o humano se fere. Daquilo que o ultrapassa.

Ele estava em posição de dizer que se mantinha sempre dentro das fronteiras da ciência, mas eu não estava certa de ele não invocar, naquela nova elaboração da teoria, talvez até a contragosto, o tal além de que as religiões testemunham, cada qual à sua maneira. Sem dúvida era essa a razão pela qual os mais racionalistas dos seus alunos se tinham oposto com furor à nova concepção das coisas.

E talvez fosse por isso que o Sigmund se via obrigado, para se defender deles, a repetir os seus ataques à religião. Talvez acabasse de se ter ferido naquilo que sempre se negara a admitir, que a psicanálise, a sua criação, tinha limites.

Penso numa citação que, numa carta ao Stefan Zweig — de que eu soube recentemente —, fora buscar ao Fausto, de Goethe. Escrevera, a propósito da fuga do Joseph Breuer perante a gravidez nervosa de Bertha Pappenheim: Tinha na mão a chave que nos teria aberto as Portas das Mães, mas deixou-a cair. Apesar dos seus grandes dons, não havia nele nada de faustiano. Aquela referência não me era estranha. Goethe fora sempre um dos meus autores preferidos — eu lera e relera o seu Fausto. Mas não conseguia descobrir o local onde se falava naquelas enigmáticas "Portas das Mães" para compreender a que se referia ele. Tratava-se do Segundo Fausto em que Mefistófeles evoca as deusas capazes de fazer aparecer Helena e Páris, bem como o sítio onde elas residem. Tirei o livro da estante e reencontrei estes versos magníficos:

Majestosas, as deusas reinam na solidão; Em torno de si não há lugar, e ainda menos tempo; Falar delas é perturbante; São as Mães.

E a Fausto, que lhe pergunta qual o caminho para as encontrar, ele responde: Não há caminho! É no trilhado, no que nenhum pode calcar; um caminho para o indesejado, para o inacessível. Estás pronto? Nem fechaduras nem ferrolhos a abrir; vaguearás nas solidões. Tens ideia do vazio, da solidão?

Aquele texto sempre me impressionara pela sua beleza imponente e a língua admirável do poeta. Mas o mais emocionante era o que fazia ressoar de mistério, de desconhecido, o que evocava dum alhures inacessível onde se acharia, escondida, a explicação derradeira dos enigmas que o homem defronta. Aquele texto era místico, não restavam quaisquer dúvidas, e fiquei admirada por o meu marido, o notório ateu, o racionalista intratável, se referir a ele. Mas, talvez, disseram-me na época, não fosse senão uma das suas citações literárias em que era useiro e vezeiro.

Hoje não estou assim tão certa disso. Se o Breuer não era faustiano', o Sigmund, esse, não me restam dúvidas, teve sempre a ambição de o ser. Muito novo, via-se como um expugnador, um conquistador, como ele dizia, um homem que enfrentaria todos os perigos para descobrir terras ignotas. E não o foi? Não era o herói intrépido que vencera todas as provas para descobrir os segredos dissimulados no mais profundo do ser humano? Não era, tal como Édipo, aquele que havia resolvido o enigma da Esfinge? Não tivera de lutar com os seus próprios demónios, ultrapassar as suas angústias, bater-se com a adversidade, para aceder a um lugar de que nenhum outro ousara pisar o limiar? Não tinha lançado um desafio à ordem reinante, aos pais moralizadores, ao próprio Deus, e não se sentia, como todos os fundadores, investido duma missão que o colocava acima dos outros homens, que o levava a vaguear, como diz o poeta, nas solidões?

Mas, num certo momento da sua vida, chegara a um ponto onde o não trilhado, o indesejado, o inacessível, se revelaram mais inquietantes do que os arcanos do inconsciente. Não se tratava já, pura e simplesmente, dos mistérios, afinal bem anódinos, da sexualidade, mas daqueles que o homem enfrenta quando se trata da sua morte. E devo dizer que, pela primeira vez, me senti em profundo acordo com a sua pesquisa.

Nicolle Rosen, in Martha Freud

of complacency

"... the series’ contemporary sequences concentrate on the tipping points, when we realise that something uninspected has suddenly gone much too far."
aqui

Please DO stick around.

“There are no rules — if you’re a boy. If you’re a girl, you have to play the game. What is that game? You are allowed to be pretty and cute and sexy. But don’t act too smart. Don’t have an opinion. Don’t have an opinion that is out of line with the status quo, at least. You are allowed to be objectified by men and dress like a slut, but don’t own your sluttiness. And do not, I repeat, do not, share your own sexual fantasies with the world.
“Be what men want you to be. But more importantly, be what women feel comfortable with you being around other men. And finally, do not age. Because to age is a sin. You will be criticized, you will be vilified, and you will definitely not be played on the radio.”

Full transcript of the speech, here.

The Lobster

"One day, as he was playing golf, he thought that it is more difficult to pretend that you do have feelings when you don't, than to pretend you don't have feelings when you do."
The Lobster

Ways of Seeing

“I'm an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I'm in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horse's mouth. I fall and rise with the falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, manoeuvring in the chaotic movements, recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations. Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you.”
Dziga Vertov

 

A Life of Storytelling

"men are conditioned to be something that is no longer needed"

"[...] And it’s easier for awkward young men to find likeminded communities of angry, isolated people online than it is for them to forge meaningful relationships in the real world. “The appalling ubiquity of online sexist and racist abuse speaks of lonely, angry men,” he writes. “If we don’t teach them emotional literacy, they might well end up living lonely, unhealthy, shorter lives. [...] All the laughing at offensive jokes, all the pumping iron, all the drinking, competing, all the suppressed pain and hiding of sadness, all the colluding in sexist office politics, all the coping alone, all the diseases diagnosed too late, all the hours of boredom talking about sport, all of it, all of it—for what? To keep up the act to be a foot soldier for an imaginary leader who sits in the top corner office of our unconscious.”
Aqui.

"Grayson Perry has been thinking about masculinity - what it is, how it operates, why little boys are thought to be made of slugs and snails - since he was a boy. Now, in this funny and necessary book, he turns round to look at men with a clear eye and ask, what sort of men would make the world a better place, for everyone? What would happen if we rethought the old, macho, outdated version of manhood, and embraced a different idea of what makes a man? Apart from giving up the coronary-inducing stress of always being 'right' and the vast new wardrobe options, the real benefit might be that a newly fitted masculinity will allow men to have better relationships - and that's happiness, right? Grayson Perry admits he's not immune from the stereotypes himself - as the psychoanalysts say, 'if you spot it, you've got it' - and his thoughts on everything from power to physical appearance, from emotions to a brand new Manifesto for Men, are shot through with honesty, tenderness and the belief that, for everyone to benefit, upgrading masculinity has to be something men decide to do themselves. They have nothing to lose but their hang-ups" [Amazon]

Toxic masculinity

aqui

How To Price Design Services

3:40 Why logos are worth more to some companies than others?
5:40 Price the client not the job
7:45 What does Blind charge to design a logo?
8:25 How do you quantify/justify the hours to a client?
9:45 Paula Scher's approach 
11:40 Pricing role play
13:20 Most entrepreneurs value time. Symmetry of logic.
21:20 Clients don't choose the best option. They choose the least risky option.


O artigo: aqui

Up your's bro!

The Expectation of Submissiveness:
A Common Challenge For Women in Leadership
Aqui

Age is the biggest predictor of early disease onset

Could your thoughts make you age faster?
"Researchers are finding that your mental patterns could be harming your telomeres — essential parts of the cell’s DNA — and affecting your life and health. Nobel-winning scientist Elizabeth Blackburn and health psychologist Elissa Epel explain." Aqui

Evidentely Chicken Town

The bloody cops are bloody keen
To bloody keep it bloody clean
The bloody chief's a bloody swine
Who bloody draws a bloody line
At bloody fun and bloody games
The bloody kids he bloody blames
Are nowehere to be bloody found
Anywhere in chicken town

The bloody scene is bloody sad
The bloody news is bloody bad
The bloody weed is bloody turf
The bloody speed is bloody surf
The bloody folks are bloody daft
Don't make me bloody laugh
It bloody hurts to look around
Everywhere in chicken town
The bloody train is bloody late
You bloody wait you bloody wait
You're bloody lost and bloody found
Stuck in fucking chicken town

The bloody view is bloody vile
For bloody miles and bloody miles
The bloody babies bloody cry
The bloody flowers bloody die
The bloody food is bloody muck
The bloody drains are bloody fucked
The colour scheme is bloody brown
Everywhere in chicken town

The bloody pubs are bloody dull
The bloody clubs are bloody full
Of bloody girls and bloody guys
With bloody murder in their eyes
A bloody bloke is bloody stabbed
Waiting for a bloody cab
You bloody stay at bloody home
The bloody neighbors bloody moan
Keep the bloody racket down
This is bloody chicken town

The bloody pies are bloody old
The bloody chips are bloody cold
The bloody beer is bloody flat
The bloody flats have bloody rats
The bloody clocks are bloody wrong
The bloody days are bloody long
It bloody gets you bloody down
Evidently chicken town
The bloody train is bloody late
You bloody wait you bloody wait
You're bloody lost and bloody found
Stuck in fucking chicken town

Living Under Scarcity

Will you marry me?

Well-Being is a Skill

Build an igloo... Can't be arsed!

For survivalists, hippies and general outdoor types, the igloo is also something natural and therefore obviously better than anything man-made like a nylon tent. You can´t find loads of websites devoted to the construction of igloos and I'm quoting honestly one of them:

'Building an igloo is easy and fun; much warmer than a tent and can be built just about anywhere. It will take between three and six hours.'

I don't know where to begin with that statement.
'Warmer than a tent'? Yeah, maybe, but not warm enough for me. I bet my house with the heating on full is miles warmer.

'Can be built just about anywhere'? Right, there is at least a metre's depth of snow so hard that you have to cut it with a special snow saw. My, it's so convenient, it's like setting up a deckchair.

But here's the killer:
'Building an igloo is easy and fun... It will take between three and six hours.' Well, somebody stop me! I'm putting on my thermals right now. I can't believe people aren't building igloos all the time! Six hours in subzero temperatures cutting up snow with a saw? While the other guy with the nylon tent has not only erected it, he's cooked a three-course meal, had a good night's sleep and got up again for breakfast. The only person I've ever seen comfortable in an igloo is Pingu.

Building a teepee (also, obviously, much better than a nylon tent) is pretty much the same kind of back-breaking labour involving a dozen or so thirteen-foot poles and three miles of canvas. Don't forget to include smoke flaps and all joins must be hand stitched – oh, dear, it's raining.

People don't need to live in tents, there are houses and flats purpose-built for living in. Camping has never appealed to me apart from the cheapness – I like that about it – and you can do it in England, but if you must make things difficult for yourself by living where there's no running water or electricity, why make the process of tent building so laborious? Even the Native Americans don't bother to live in tents these days.

The TV presenter Bear Grylls is the kind of person who loves building tents out of canvas or houses out of snow, or beds out of stoat droppings but only because he can make money out of it through TV shows that dreamy fantasists will watch. And bear Grylls isn't stupid; he doesn't stay in the tent – after a day's filming he goes back to a hotel.

By building stuff like igloos and teepees you are supposed to become more like those deeply spiritual and wise people who used to live in them and whom the white, liberal middle classes, exploited years before we were born. The telltale sign of the aspiring Arapaho or wannabe Wappinger, who would perhaps rather be running with wolves on a hillside than running a family saloon, is the Dreamcatcher in the bedroom. So let's add this to the list...
Richard Wilson, in Can't Be Arsed

Gender and brain... Beware of speculation elevated to the status of facts!

"Then consider female ambition. In the 50s women appeared to have fewer ambitions beyond the confines of the home. When they got married, they quit their jobs. But as the barriers have come down, women have stampeded into the workplace, they've stampeded into previously male domains and they've worked hard to succeed there and they have succeeded there despite often having to put up with family unfriendly workplace policies and exhausting second shift of child care and house work, less pay than their counterparts, unconscious discrimination and in some cases work environments that are openly hostile to women.

Now this extraordinary social change in women's ambitions has presumably taken place in the absence of any such remarkable changes in their hardwiring."

Cordelia Fine

The Six Main Arcs in Storytelling

"Fairytale Castle" by Mikalojus Konstantinus Ciurlionis (1909)

Fantástico artigo, aqui

The emotional arcs of stories are dominated by six basic shapes: aqui

Hedonometer (medidor de felicidade): aqui

Hedonometer - medidor de felicidade

It’s what most people say they want. So how do we know how happy people are? You can’t improve or understand what you can’t measure. In a blow to happiness, we’re very good at measuring economic indices and this means we tend to focus on them. With hedonometer.org we’ve created an instrument that measures the happiness of large populations in real time.

Aqui

The shapes of stories

When we hold space, we release control and we honour differences

HOLDING SPACE

"It means that we are willing to walk alongside another person in whatever journey they’re on without judging them, making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them, or trying to impact the outcome. When we hold space for other people, we open our hearts, offer unconditional support, and let go of judgement and control. [...] To truly support people in their own growth, transformation, grief, etc., we can’t do it by taking their power away (ie. trying to fix their problems), shaming them (ie. implying that they should know more than they do), or overwhelming them (ie. giving them more information than they’re ready for). We have to be prepared to step to the side so that they can make their own choices, offer them unconditional love and support, give gentle guidance when it’s needed, and make them feel safe even when they make mistakes. [...] Keep your own ego out of it. This is a big one. We all get caught in that trap now and then – when we begin to believe that someone else’s success is dependent on our intervention, or when we think that their failure reflects poorly on us, or when we’re convinced that whatever emotions they choose to unload on us are about us instead of them."

Mais aqui. 

The Honest Body Project

Mais aqui

Drive at 100mph

Not that much of a tall order nowadays, as this can quite easily be achieved through sheer carelessness. Modern cars can touch a hundred at the involuntary twitch of a right knee.

But 'toning up' used to be something to brag about, like losing your virginity. The needle nudging up to 100 used to be so scary it made you wobble your steering wheel in disbelief.

These days 130 is probably the target; that, I think, is progress for you.

It was different in Aldous Huxley's day: traveling in a car at 60mph had such an inebriating effect on him that he declared speed 'a new type of drug… an efficient and less harmful substitute for alcohol and cocaine'. Ah, Aldous, you poor fool, on this as on so many things: totally wrong. Never mind the 'less harmful' bit, nothing is ever a substitute for alcohol. It just joins it in the mix, as the hundreds of thousands of people, whose lives have been ruined by drunk drivers since Huxley wrote those words, will testify.

However, it is true there is something intoxicating about a minor infringement of the law, like breaking a speed limit, which makes you feel outrageous for a moment. There's a wonderful scene in the shit-but-still-watchable Roger Moore film, The Man Who Haunted Himself. Roger, an uptight city gent, is on his regular 30mph drive home to Weybridge when he gets a funny look in his eye. The famous eyebrow goes up and the foot goes down. Soon, Rog is doing seventy and appears to be morphing into a different person, and the eyebrow keeps ascending as he accelerates until he smashes his Rover 3-litre into some road works. The car disintegrates, his soul divides in two and another version of himself, more wild and daring and exciting than his old one, usurps his job, wife, house and family. Come on, it could happen. Somewhere out there could be another version of Richard Hammond who says to Jeremy Clarkson, 'piss off, it's your turn to drive the rocket'.

With today's cars, as any incarnation of Richard Hammond will tell you, how fast they go is not an issue, it's how resistant they are to flipping over and breaking up, like Roger Moore's 3-litre. But what is so appealing to humans about speed? Why is it like a drug? Why are we programmed to want to go faster?

I suppose it must have been good news for turnip delivery man in, say, 1930 when he discovered he could get his turnips from Grantham to King's Lynn in less than a week, thanks to his new-fangled motor van. But when sugar-beet man overtook turnip man in his brand new Root Vegetable Van mark II, the envy kicked in.

The problem with speed is that, technology being as it is, someone will always go faster than you. It's a metaphor for the whole of this book. What motivates people to cram their lives full of ever more amazing experiences is their all-consuming desire to have a richer life than anyone else they know. But the law of progress means there will always be a quicker way of doing something around the corner. look at one of the greatest labour-saving devices ever — the lift, or elevator, if this book should turn up in an American remainder bin.

Imagine a box you can walk into that will lift you hundreds of feet in the air to save you walking up some stairs! Even with such time-saving devices as lifts people cannot bear to wait an extra second. Otis Elevators employ dedicated experts in the field of time delays and waiting experiences — they have discovered that even a three-second 'door-dwell' (delay between pressing the door-close button and the doors actually closing) can be too much for some. There is so much unnecessary pressing of the door-close button in Japan and South Korea that building managers have, unbeknownst to the passengers, disabled the door-close function, so its users are pressing it for nothing. They leave the redundant button in place because pressing it makes people feel better.

I used to own a 2CV — a masterpiece of French design. Its size and shape was dictated by the brief to transport a hat-wearing farmer together with his wife and a tray of eggs across a ploughed field. Suffice to say I loved everything about it, especially when heavy motorway traffic allowed me to trundle past various high-performance cars stuck in the outside lane. Very few things have given me greater pleasure than the look on the Porsche driver's face as I crawled by his window.

Unfortunately there must have been another element in the design brief of the 2CV which ensures it rusts through and breaks in half after five years. So now I have a bicycle and, believe me, the effect on other drivers is just the same, if not better than the 2CV. The added beauty being not only can a bike freewheel past slow-moving traffic, it can jump red lights, go the wrong way down one-way streets, cut in front of buses and ride on pavements. Car drivers often rather stupidly ask, why is it that cyclists always jump red light? The answer is simple: because we can and you can't. Your anger brings us joy.

Fortunately, there is now a 'slow movement' afoot in Europe; it rejects haste and impatience and over-stimulation. It began in Italy and has now established a set of conditions (a bit like those for joining the Euro) that towns and cities must fulfill if they want to join. Appropriately, Ludlow in Shropshire and Diss in Norfolk are already in. Why not lobby for your town to join today?

Richard Wilson, in Can't Be Arsed

Relações

Question = What are the core reasons or the core things you see over and over, that either end or make a relationship challenging to be in. What are the challenges that come up over and over that you see?

Answer = There is always three questions, right?

 — What's a thriving relationship?

 — What can go wrong?

 — How do you fix it?

I think there are a number of things in a relationship that become corner stones of the demise. I'm not going to list them in order but they are all part of each other.

— INDIFFERENCE

— CONTEMPT

— NEGLET

— VIOLENCE

These are probably the four most important. I'm not talking about big violence. Micro aggressions are plenty. 

Indifference: when you start to feel like the other person fundamentally is not really caring about you or you don't care about them. What they feel, what they think, what they're about. It's more than losing of interest. It's also when you are indifferent you degrade the other person. They are less important to you. They don't matter. And ultimately what we feel in relationships is that we matter. It's the essential reason for connecting to people. We are creatures of meaning: "I matter to you, to some one. You care about me. You want my well being. You're proud of me. You want good for me. You're benevolent". All of that.

When you are indifferent, the whole thing goes. Then you start to taste that cold that creeps in. That sense of estrangement, that complete disconnect.

Neglet: when people just basically take each other for granted. They take more care of their car than of their partner, or their dog, or their yard, their business. Anything. Everything gets priority. Everything gets reviewed, evaluated, attended to… People have this idea that they put it all in when they were dating and then once they seal the knot, it's like now they don't have to do squat anymore. And they go into this complete sense of complacency, laziness. It's amazing, they just think this thing is going to live on it's own. Like a cactus.

Violence: the abuse, the level of disrespect. Most people talk nicer to anybody else than their partner when a relationship degrades. Because you can get away with it. Because if you talk like this at work you're gone! Because if you talk like this to the police you're gone! Because if you talk like this on the street you're being punched!

But with your partner you've got that sense that they're gonna be there anyway. They're just gonna take it because it's family. And family is this kind of thing that doesn´t dissolve so easily. So you can just lash out at them and talk to them with a tone, and a dismissal. That is phenomenal. I'm not talking about physical violence and those big things.

Contempt: I think contempt is the top one. Contempt is the killer of them all. because in contempt there the degradation: "you're nothing, nothing. I can kill you with that one gaze, with that one eyebrow that goes up… With, what the fuck do you think you are?". And that's it. You're done.

Rethinking infidelity ... a talk for anyone who has ever loved

Life While You Wait

"Reality is that which doesn't go away even if you don't believe in it", some one said.
"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.", some one else said.

Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it's mine. I can't exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play's all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can't conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can't take back,
stars you'll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run ?
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven't seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn't even clear my throat offstage).

You'd be wrong to think that it's just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I'm standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there's no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I've done.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

(Poems New and Collected 1957-1997,

trans. S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh)