#brainpickings

[slowandsweet]

[z428]

Learned:

As other neuroscientists picked up the thread, they discovered that a barn owl’s brain performs complex mathematical computations to accomplish this spatial specificity, not merely adding and multiplying signals but engaging in a kind of probabilistic statistical calculation known as Bayesian inference.

Owls are amazing.

https://indieweb.social/@mariapopova/112327150097777805

#longread #brainpickings

[thebolg]

So Far So Good by Meernaa

7.6 - Carly Bond’s smooth vocals propel you through a warm velvety quiet storm lit by a slow moving disco ball.

7.9 - Eyes-closed-honey-syrup slow jams will lift you gently to the clouds. -b

[dis-quiet-ude]

was inspired to post after reading this

[viralnews-1]

10 Brain-Picking Zombie Movies To Watch Across All Genres

10 Brain-Picking Zombie Movies To Watch Across All Genres

The undead is a fascinating concept that depicts a subtype of consciousness, exhibiting unique characteristics of an individual neither fully alive nor dead. Arguably first seen in White Zombie in 1932, and reaching a mainstream audience thanks to Night Of The Living Dead in 1968, zombie movies have ticked away at viewers’ brains through various channels. RELATED: 10 Iconic Zombie Tropes And…

[heartography]

// ✸ TAG PAGE ✸ \\

》》》 ✪ tabbed - excerpts from books i am/was currently reading at that time that struck me 》》》 ✑ brainpickings - posts penned by me (analysis, thoughts, etc) 》》》 ❁ excerpts 》》》 ⋈ web weaves 》》》 ⊘ poetry 》》》 ⟎ compilations - multiple pieces in one post 》》》 ❉ bite sized 》》》 ° gallery - art 》》》 -- museum of 》》》 / album / 《《《

[lichiambula]

(brainpicker)

[nobrashfestivity]

Francisco de Holanda, 1573

Portuguese artist, historian, and philosopher , a student of Michelangelo’s, envisions the creation of the Ptolemaic universe by an omnipotent creator. Courtesy of Biblioteca Nacional de España

from the old brainpickings site

[petite-gloom]

regarding finding articles to read - email newsletters have saved me. I recommend longreads (usually US focused but always something interesting), the marginalian (formerly brainpickings), atlas obscura, the public domain review (curiosities of culture now in the public domain - Unidentified Floating Object: Edo Images of Utsuro-bune was a recent fun read for me), undark for science, lithub for reading/book news, and aeon for essays and culture (they have a weekly psychology based newsletter too).

thank you! i used to read aeon but must have lost it somewhere along the way. a quick glance at the homepage tells me im happy to be back 😌 will check out the others too. they sound like what im looking for! many many thanks

[brown-little-robin]

last song listened to: 白波トップウォーター (white-crested top water) by sakanaction!

currently watching: hunter x hunter! going insane over it!! and slowly rewatching mp100, with a friend this time 🥰🥰🥰

currently reading: hunter x hunter manga; The Long Way Home (a favorite batfam fanfiction of mine); and the webcomics My Giant Nerd Boyfriend, City of Blank, and Just a Goblin, as they come out.

currently obsessed with: sleep. and never seeming to get enough of it. <- SO REAL. I am currently obsessed with hunter x hunter, tbh, but I'm also using all my strength holding back an obsession with learning Japanese because I do not have enough brain to really devote myself to learning Japanese and finish my last four weeks of college. but soon...! soon...!

favorite color: It changes all the time, but I'm currently quite partial to a nice pale pink, anywhere in the range from cherry blossom (nearly white) to pink impression tulip. Also, I really like the pink-white combination, it's Simply So Nice.

tagged by: @russenoire (thanks! <3)

for some no-pressure, not-homework (no deadlines, no requirements), mutual brainpicking: @lovesodeepandwideandwell, @isfjmel-phleg, @swinging-stars-from-satellites, @firefletch, @mookybear12404, @called-kept, @earl-grey-crow! and anyone else who sees this and wants to play! just tag me if you steal it, I love seeing these >:3

[sweetdreamsjeff]

Jeff Buckley on Music and Life: A Rare Interview with a Rare Soul

BY MARIA POPOVA

In 1995, while working for an Italian radio station, journalist Luisa Cotardo conducted a candid, soulful, and profound conversation with beloved musician Jeff Buckley (November 17, 1966–May 29, 1997). His only studio album, Grace — which includes Buckley’s now-iconic cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” — had been released a few months earlier and he had just performed in the town of Correggio in Northern Italy as part of his European tour. Less than two years later, at the age of thirty, he would drown by a tragedy of chance while swimming in Tennessee’s Wolf River during a tour. Rolling Stone later proclaimed him one of the 100 greatest singers of all time.

Cotardo has kindly shared with me her recording of this rare and remarkably rich interview, in which Buckley discusses with great openness and grace his philosophy on music and life. Transcribed highlights below.

On why he chose not to include lyrics in the album booklet, a deliberate effort to honor music as a deeply personal experience interpreted and inhabited differently by each listener:

So that instead of people being compelled to read through the blueprint of the songs — instead of them looking at the dance steps ahead of time, they would just go through the dance. So that they would let the songs happen to them. Later on, they will find out what the meaning is, but for now — I mean, you know, we’re just meeting for the first time and it’s better… It’s better to grab your own reality from it right now instead of like, you know, read.

On what he seeks to communicate with his music, echoing composer Aaron Copland’s conviction about the interplay of emotion and intellect in great music:

[What I want to communicate] doesn’t have a language with which I can communicate it. The things that I want to communicate are simply self-evident, emotional things. And the gifts of those things are that they bring both intellectual and emotional gifts — understanding. But I don’t really have a major message that I want to bring to the world through my music. The music can tell people everything they need to know about being human beings. It’s not my information, it’s not mine. I didn’t make it. I just discovered it.

On the problem with Western charity efforts like LiveAid:

I would like for the starvation and oppression to end in Africa. I like for money from concerned people to go there, you know, to go to Africa, to aid. But … the real solution will come from Africa ruling Africa and not Britain ruling Africa, not America ruling Africa — it’s the only real key. If Africa rules Africa, that’s the only way that pattern of oppression from the outside can be stopped — not money, not only money. Money is a tool and it can be, I don’t know, I really don’t… It’s great that Mandela came out and took office in Africa. I think that’s the real revolution.

On place and what constitutes home and belonging for a global nomad like himself:

I don’t know what belonging means… I can only use my brain and intellectualize. I really wouldn’t able to tell you from the heart what belonging means… My memories of that place are my link to the place — memories of your experience in a place is your link… All people belong to the world. There is no exclusivity in that… The soil from America can differ from the soil in Malaysia, but its soil, it’s still the same. And the color of people’s skin can differ from place to place but it’s still skin. And, in that regard, there is no difference. People must belong to the earth and a traveller must belong to world somehow and the world must belong to her or him somehow. But, you know, then there’s the social level — that’s just the archetypal level, people usually live in the social level.

Echoing what Jackson Pollock’s father so poetically told his son in 1928, Buckley parlays this into his humble yet wonderfully wise advice on being in the world:

I have no advice for anybody except to, you know, be awake enough to see where you are at any given time and how that is beautiful and has poetry inside, even in places you hate.

On one’s journey of self-actualization and the organic letting go of dreams that no longer fit that journey:

It’s part of maturity, to project upon your life goals and project upon your life realized dreams and a result that you want. It’s part of becoming whole … just like a childish game. It’s honest — it’s an honest game, because … you want your life to hold hope and possibility. It’s just that, when you get to the real meat of life, is that life has its own rhythm and you cannot impose your own structure upon it — you have to listen to what it tells you, and you have to listen to what your path tells you. It’s not earth that you move with a tractor — life is not like that. Life is more like earth that you learn about and plant seeds in… It’s something you have to have a relationship with in order to experience — you can’t mold it — you can’t control it…

[lazylittledude]

All human lives are too various and alive with contradiction to be neatly classed into the categories in which we try to contain the chaos of life, and yet we spend so much of our own unclassifiable lives classing the lives of others.

[thingsworthsaving]

TO THE YOUNG WHO WANT TO DIE by Gwendolyn Brooks

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale. The gun will wait. The lake will wait. The tall gall in the small seductive vial will wait will wait: will wait a week: will wait through April. You do not have to die this certain day. Death will abide, will pamper your postponement. I assure you death will wait. Death has a lot of time. Death can attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is just down the street; is most obliging neighbor; can meet you any moment.

You need not die today. Stay here — through pout or pain or peskyness. Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.

Graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

[t-underneaththeradardancing]

(via Mary Oliver reads "Wild Geese")