fs.blog

Proven, Better, New: Mark Pincus on the Rules of Innovation

He shares lessons from building Zynga, missing the opportunity behind social networking before Facebook took off, navigating platform risk during Zynga's explosive growth, and rebuilding his confidence after major failures.

themarginalian.org

The Only Three Distinctions Between People

Instead of rich and poor, high and low, they are to be classed, — First, by their sorrows... Secondly, all who have the same maladies... Thirdly, all who are guilty of the same sins, whether the world knows them or not; whether they languish in prison, looking forward to the gallows, or walk honored among men, they also form a class. Then proceed to generalize and classify the whole world together, as none can claim utter exemption from either sorrow, sin, or disease; and if they could, yet Death, like a great parent, comes and sweeps all through one darksome portal, — all his children.

theconvivialsociety

Do Not Resign From Life

We've made machines that can fly faster and farther than the swallow-tailed kite, but in no way does it follow that the kite should cease from its flight or that it is somehow diminished because of the advent of flying machines. That there is something else in the world that flies tells us nothing about whether the kite ought to fly.

whyisthisinteresting

The Saturday Selection, Vol. 106

On December 31, 2024, Joe Lynskey was pushed in front of a subway train. He shouldn't have survived. Now, tennis is helping him live.

themarginalian.org

Albert Camus on the Three Antidotes to the Absurdity of Life

Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.

longreads.com

Inside the Shaolin Monastery that Helped Build Victor Wembanyama

"Power comes from inside," he said. "I would look at him and say: You are not a cat; you are a tiger. For power to come out, you have to change the inside first."

notboring.co

Weekly Dose of Optimism #194

The current paradigm, in which human civilization is confined to one planet, exposes humanity to existential threats that are unpredictable and uncontrollable on a planetary scale. By moving beyond the only home we have ever known, we ensure species-level redundancy and that the light of consciousness will not be tied to a single planet subject to the inevitable hazards of a harsh and vast universe.

themarginalian.org

How Evolution Invented Faith: The Patience of the Penguin and the Art of Withstanding Abandonment

The male's stoic, heroic devotion to his duty as incubator and nurse must be unique in nature, involving that almost incredibly long fast under conditions of exposure to intense frost that would kill most other living creatures. It is at last rewarded, while the rookery is still sunless in July, by the return of his mate, fat and full-bellied from her long sojourn amid the krill and small fishes.

longreads.com

‘Nothing Together’

I remember after Sandy Hook, President Barack Obama said that if a tragedy of such enormity didn't change hearts, minds, and legislation, then nothing would. I'm afraid he might have been right.

themarginalian.org

Seneca on Grief and the Key to Resilience in the Face of Loss: An Extraordinary Letter to His Mother

All your sorrows have been wasted on you if you have not yet learned how to be wretched.

longreads.com

Roadside Attraction

But as I sit in my house, so quiet I can hear the blood in my body, the sunset painting the sky a deep, pink hue, I can only think that all of these men are gone and I am still here. I continue, continue, and continue, to still be here. It seems I am in wait, Jodie Foster on the side of the road, letting the world, and the world beyond the world, whisper into my ears.

themarginalian.org

Nick Cave on the Two Pillars of a Meaningful Life

If we truly comprehend and acknowledge that we are all imperfect creatures, we find that we become more tolerant and accepting of others' shortcomings and the world appears less dissonant, less isolating, less threatening.

themarginalian.org

Middle Age and the Art of Self-Renewal: An Extraordinary Letter from Pioneering Education Reformer Elizabeth Peabody

The perilous time for the most highly gifted is not youth. The holy sensibilities of genius — for all the sensibilities of genius are holy — keep their possessor essentially unhurt as long as animal spirits and the idea of being young last; but the perilous season is middle age, when a false wisdom tempts them to doubt the divine origin of the dreams of their youth; when the world comes to them, not with the song of the siren, against which all books warn us, but as a wise old man counselling acquiescence in what is below them.

themarginalian.org

The Enemy Outside and the Enemy Within: Audre Lorde’s Antidote to Despair

I do not have to win in order to know my dreams are valid, I only have to believe in a process of which I am a part. My work kept me alive this past year, my work and the love of women. They are inseparable from each other. In the recognition of the existence of love lies the answer to despair. Work is that recognition given voice and name.

themarginalian.org

Let Your Heart Be Broken

The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering… The miracle is that we create ourselves anew.

longreads.com

ISpyForGood

When I started paying my own rent and utilities, I frequently lied to the landlord and the gas company, saying the check was on its way when it wasn't. I didn't believe that scamming, or any illicit activity, even if done correctly, could ever be fruitful enough to get me or anyone else out of poverty—though it could easily attract the police or people of ill intent, who would make life worse.

longreads.com

All My Dad’s Sons

Dad heard about a team at a youth prison in West Virginia that was supposed to be better than us. He loaded us into the van one morning and we drove two hundred miles to play them. This was a maximum-security facility for juveniles, up in Salem. We had to be buzzed in through a thick steel door and then through another one and another, but they wouldn't let us into the gym. We could hear someone in there screaming. Then it was silent, and the door opened. On one end of the court, the other team was about to warm up, and on our end—where we were supposed to warm up—a kid was mopping a puddle of blood.

themarginalian.org

Consolation for Sorrow from King Arthur’s Court: Merlyn’s Advice on What to Do When the World Gets You Down

The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn.

themarginalian.org

Mary Oliver on the Measure of a Life Well Lived and How to Magnify Your Aliveness

I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you're in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over.

lennysnewsletter.com

Why cultivating agency matters more than cultivating skills in the AI era | Max Schoening (Head of Product, Notion)

agency—not skills—is the thing that separates people who thrive from those who fall behind

jefftweedy

Left of the Dial (Replacements cover)

As an addict, you have to remind yourself that you're still an addict, even when you aren't doing things that are terrible for you.

themarginalian.org

The Wildest Bet Is the Winning Bet

We place life's bets by countless calculations of probability, conscious and unconscious, only to discover over and over how short they fall of the wildest reaches of the possible, which always includes but exceeds the probable. It helps to remember that we ourselves are children of improbability, that everything we treasure exists not because it had to, not because it was likely or necessary, but because the universe took a gamble against the staggering odds otherwise.

themarginalian.org

The Black Robin and the Power of Tenacious Tenderness: How a Single Mother Brought an Entire Species Back from the Brink of Extinction

All the black robins in the world today, numbering around 250, are fractal emissaries of her genes — a winged reminder that immensities of harm can be undone by a single act of tenacious tenderness.

longreads.com

My Absolutely Chaotic Adventures at Sea During the Summer of 1984

Printer wrestles with the person his chaotic childhood has trained him to be—and what pieces of himself he can salvage from the wreckage.

whyisthisinteresting

The Ukemi Edition

Your first judo class involves none of that whatsoever. Instead, you spend the overwhelming majority of your time falling down. You fall on your back and your side. You roll into a fall. You get reprimanded for sticking your arm out or not keeping your chin tucked. You are learning ukemi, the art of breakfalling. It is the foundational skillset that has allowed me, as a 41-year-old, to show up to the dojo multiple times a week and get thrown onto my back with full force by friends and strangers, and head home after to toss my kids around, carry the groceries, and do plenty of other things I'd struggle to do if I'd hurt myself.

themarginalian.org

How to Make the Impossible Possible: Cristina Campo on the Crucial Difference Between Hope and Trust

Hope and trust must not be confused. They are different things, as the expectation of fortune here on earth is different from the second theological virtue. He who blindly, obstinately repeats "let us hope" does not trust; he is really only hoping for a lucky break in the momentarily propitious game governed by the law of necessity. Those who trust, on the other hand, do not count on particular events, for they are sure there is an economy that encompasses all events and surpasses their meaning the way a tapestry, a symbolic carpet, surpasses the flowers and animals that compose it.

lennysnewsletter.com

Listen: A visual guide to getting out of a creative slump

Why it's necessary to create work that might feel embarrassing The simple mindset shift that stops stalling and gets you to just start How to reframe scorn as a positive signal The thought process that can help you move out of a state of rumination How to treat failed ideas as seeds for future breakthroughs

wired.com

A Single Strike Won’t Shut Off the Gulf’s Desalination System

The Gulf's water system is built with layers of backup, but it relies on continuous operation to hold.

themarginalian.org

Michael Rosen’s Sad Book: A Beautiful Anatomy of Loss, Illustrated by Quentin Blake

What emerges is a breathtaking bow before the central paradox of the human experience — the awareness that the heart's enormous capacity for love is matched with an equal capacity for pain, and yet we love anyway and somehow find fragments of that love even amid the ruins of loss.

longreads.com

Opposing ICE Might Save the Country. It Could Also Ruin Your Life.

In that time, he also lost his job, racked up a range of tech costs, and suffered through hacks and harassment, all stressors on his mental health.