Stuff About Things #16

(Jimmy, I'm gonna be a dad! Advice?) "Yeah, you can ignore anyone who says nothing really changes. I bet those people never had kids. Because everything changes. Listen to people who know, starting with your parents. They'll have plenty of stories, believe you me, about what a little... uh, angel you were. And guess what? They can help. Trust me, you'll need it. Oh, and you hear how quiet it is? Savor that."
     — Jimmy the Bartender, Men's Health magazine

"I still check on her in the middle of the night and put my fingers under her nose just to make sure she's still breathing. Is that insane? I feel like it might be a little bit insane."
     — Ryan Reynolds, referring to his daughter, 2016

"I learned discipline from my father. Not in terms of corporal punishment, but being determined in whatever you do."
     — Ryan Reynolds

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
     — Carl Sagan

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality, it is a profound source of spirituality."
     — Carl Sagan

"Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe, with a fine understanding of human fallibility."
     — Carl Sagan

"Do the work. (Stephen) Curry puts up at least 100 shots before each game 'to see the ball go in and build some confidence. There's really no way to cheat the system,' he says. 'You either put the work in and reap the benefits of what you're doing, or you try to take shortcuts and think you're going to be all right. But it doesn't work that way. The guys who put in the most reps are usually the ones who are most successful.'"
     — Men's Health magazine

"Find your mantra. No pregame tuns for (Stephen) Curry. 'My line is Lock In. That's how I focus,' Curry says. 'I say it to myself over and over: Time to go. Lock in and get ready to play. It's a mentality. Focus on what you need to do to lead your team. A hundred percent focus on the game.'"
     — Men's Health magazine

"If you're the best version of yourself, things will work out. You might have to be more patient, but hard work will be rewarded."
     — Stephen Curry

"Constant training and regular deployments further develop SEALs' tolerance for adversity. And they have a strong support network within their tight-knit community, a factor that, research suggests, can be more powerful than genetics."
     — Pacific Standard magazine

"Meditation reduces heart rate and lowers blood pressure, and it strengthens the brain's neural pathways, improving the flow of information. Specifically, meditation has been shown to increase gray-matter volume and bolster synapses in the brain's pre-frontal cortex, which hones attention and helps put an event in context, rather than letting the amygdala, the brain's fight-or-flight center, hijack the body's reaction to stressful situations."
     — Pacific Standard magazine

"Your thoughts are secondary. That's just chatter. Your attention and awareness are primary."
     — Pacific Standard magazine

"She's a diligent writer of thank-you notes.... She still refuses to pay a lot for clothes.... She has an evolving relationship with money, coming from none.... (Brie) Larson's hardscrabble upbringing has imbued her with a humility that has earned her the admiration of some of the industry's biggest talents. 'Brie's a bright, unaffected young woman who is in a wonderfully corrosive business that would ruin most people,' says Samuel L. Jackson. 'But it's not going to ruin her.' Like Samuel L. Jackson, (Naomi) Watts marveled at Larson's humility and earnestness. 'Brie is totally down to earth, charming, and unspoiled,' Watts says. 'She's already surpassed that precarious thing that can transpire after winning an Oscar.... She's balancing it well. For God's sake, she just directed a film."
     — Vanity Fair magazine

"An avid reader and journal keeper, (Brie) Larson has saved her diaries from her youth. 'I've gone back to the ones when I was really young, and those were really funny because you realize that no matter what age you are, no matter where you are in your life, you're just going to have problems."
     — Vanity Fair magazine

"Walking around with our Pleistocene-epoch genes can be tough, especially on a college campus. The average freshman sees more attractive females in a single day that our hominid ancestors saw in an entire lifetime. Combine this with social media and dating apps and mate choices seems limitless.... Today's 20-somethings are showing anxiety.... There's this pressure to pick the perfect person who will make them happy and fulfilled for the remainder of their lives.... (But) research has found that the more premarriage partners people have, the lower the sexual quality, communication, and relationship stability is during marriage.... Skills like communication and compromise aren't developed. (And too many partners) can lead to the 'comparison effect.'"
     — Men's Health magazine

"Study after study suggests that physical fitness and muscle strength decline less with age than previously believed, and that a committed exercise program can drastically slow this decline well into your seventies."
     — Men's Health magazine

"The key to happiness is maximizing each day. So if you're unhappy, here's a simple prescription: Live harder."
     — Laird Hamilton

(Some paraphrasing) "The promise and peril of A.I. are deeply intertwined.... The list of things humans can do better than computers is getting smaller and smaller. But we create these tools to extend our long reach. Just as, two hundred million years ago, mammalian brains developed a neocortex that eventually enabled humans to invent language and science and art and technology, by the 2030s, we're going to be connected to simulated neocortices in the cloud, giving us access within our own nervous systems. We will be smarter, funnier, more musical, wiser.... It's going to enhance us. It does already. Who can do their work without these brain extenders that we have today (smartphones, the internet)? And that's going to continue to be the case.... But the goal is to reap the promise and control the peril. There are no simple algorithms. There's no little sub-routine that we can put into our AIs to make them all benign. Intelligence is inherently uncontrollable. My strategy, which is not fool-proof, is to practice - in the collaborative development guiding of A.I. - the kind of ethics and morality and values we'd like to see in the world in our own human society. Because the future society is not some invasion from Mars of intelligent machines. It is emerging from our civilization today. It's going to be an enhancement of who we are. So if we're practicing the kind of values that we cherish in our world today, that's the best strategy to have a world in the future that embodies those values.... With these new technologies, it's not hard to come up with scenarios where they could be highly destructive and destroy all of humanity. Biotechnology for example. We have the ability to reprogram biology away from disease. Immunotherapy, which is a very exciting breakthrough in cancer—I think it's going to be quite revolutionary, it's just getting started—it's reprogramming the immune system to go after cancer, which it normally doesn't do. But bioterrorists could reprogram a virus to be more deadly and more communicable and more stealthy and create a superweapon.... Technology is always going to be a double-edged sword."
     — Ray Kurzwel

"I've been accused of being an optimist, and you have to be an optimist to be an entrepreneur because if you knew all the problems you'd encounter you'd probably never start any project."
     — Ray Kurzwel

"Without suffering. No beauty."
     — French saying

"Not long ago, biologists examining a dead bowhead found old harpoon fragments buried in its flesh. Research revealed that the harpoon was of a kind last manufactured in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in the 19th century. The scientists conjectured that bowheads can live for up to 200 years. In other words, some of the whales still undulating through the icy waters off Alaska may have already been fully grown by the time Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick."
     — Men's Journal magazine, 2016

"If I could invite someone to dinner for a fantastic discussion I would put the following on par: Leonardo - the genius, Jesus - the enigma, Socrates - the philosopher."
     — Brunello Cucinelli

"I'm not a very smart guy. But I learned from everybody around me. When I was a waiter, I learned from the busboy how to quickly clear tables. I paid attention to the businessmen's lunch conversations. I've always been a scavenger for education. The world is full of education if you choose to open your eyes and ears to it."
     — Robert Herjavec

"Gratitude is the most powerful connection you have to your higher self. You always, always, want to start your day connected to this higher self."
     — I wish I could remember who said or wrote this, because they deserve credit; wise words

"In the frantic pace of life to do more and be more, we hardly think about the importance of focus. That's why, for those free-spirited, creative thinkers and entrepreneurs chasing after their dreams, this prophetic quote by Steve Jobs 21 years ago hits the nail on the head even more so today: 'People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.' ...Without focus, your very ability to think, reason, communicate, problem solve, and make decisions will naturally suffer. You just can't maximize your efficiency or go into a state of flow if your mind is wandering off into multitask land. They key to better focus? Give up multitasking. The reality is, we multitask everything. You're probably multitasking right now as you read this...."
     — Inc. magazine

"The common characteristic of people (I interviewed) who had the most time and the highest income is the ability to single-task."
     — Tim Ferriss