🎲 growing old.

welcome to sam’s brain drain, a weekly collection of thumb-stopping things to tap, read, & watch.

Oct 07, 2019

🥴 hola.

72 hours in san francisco & i’m straight back home. jetlagged hops between timezones have really melted my brain this week—and so, just a short & sweet email this monday.

here’s an iphone view of iceland’s spectacular volcanic topography from 35,000 feet:

next monday’s newsletter will be coming to you live from barcelona 🇪🇸.

on the agenda this week: senescence, 100 blocks of time & going dutch.

⚡️ tag me on instagram or twitter if you enjoy this week's brain drain!

👂 earworm:

låpsley’s ep ‘understudy’ from 2015 floated it’s way into my eardrums this week.

fletcher is a master of blank space, using it in perfect measure with her pervasive vocals and delicate instrumentation; no bar feels too sparse and no chorus is left too bland. some might see it as a discredit, constantly referring back to låpsley’s elementary status. if anything, though, it should be a gesture towards things to come; from pitch shifting to spotless synths, ‘understudy’ is an ep constructed with confidence and exactitude – who knows what she could come up with next.

📚 word of the week

“senescence”:

1: the state of being old or the process of becoming old.
2: the growth phase in a plant or plant part (such as a leaf) from full maturity to death.

until we're all brain patterns on computers, there are still forces that do not bend to our wants, including senescence and death. (you'll talk like this, too, when you hit 40).

- john hodgman, the new york times, 21 dec. 2018.

🤪 mildly humorous:

outtakes from the twitter-sphere.

mo @moprobIems

“Why tattoos? You wouldn’t put stickers on a nice car.” Ma’am I am at best a 2001 Corolla

Delia Cai @delia_cai

fall weekends need to be like 4 days long: 1 day to get your shit together, 1 to catch up on reading & tv, 1 to wander around outside eating stew out of a cup, 1 to lie in bed and contemplate bird migration

Aoḋán @AodhanDonnelly

Irish people: I don't know about reintroducing wolves, couldn't that create more problems than it solves? Me: It was British colonial policies that caused the extermination of wolves here in the first place Irish people: THE MACTÍRE MUST ROAM THE LANDS OF ÉIRE ONCE AGAIN

🧠 brain candy

🎲 100 blocks a day:

most people sleep about seven or eight hours a night. that leaves 16 or 17 hours awake each day. or about 1,000 minutes.

let’s think about those 1,000 minutes as 100 10-minute blocks. that’s what you wake up with every day.

it’s always good to step back and think about how we’re using those 100 blocks we get each day. how many of them are put towards making your future better, and how many of them are just there to be enjoyed? how many of them are spent with other people, and how many are for time by yourself? how many are used to create something, and how many are used to consume something? how many of the blocks are focused on your body, how many on your mind, and how many on neither one in particular? which are your favorite blocks of the day, and which are your least favorite?

imagine these blocks laid out on a grid. what if you had to label each one with a purpose?

you’d have to think about everything you might spend your time doing in the context of its worth in blocks. cooking dinner requires three blocks, while ordering in requires zero—is cooking dinner worth three blocks to you? is 10 minutes of meditation a day important enough to dedicate a block to it? reading 20 minutes a night allows you to read 15 additional books a year—is that worth two blocks?

🇳🇱 going dutch:

the dutch government has decided to stop describing itself as holland and will instead use only its real name – the netherlands – as part of an attempted update of its global image.
the national rebranding, which has been signed up to by business leaders, the tourist board and central government, will be rolled out later this year.
ministers want to shift the international focus from certain aspects of national life with which the country is commonly associated, such as its recreational drug culture and the red-light district of amsterdam.
as part of the new strategy, the netherlands will be the official brand at the eurovision song contest, which takes place in rotterdam next may, and during the olympic games in tokyo in 2020.