Matt Gold

[Matt Gold @GoldWhat]

@JoyceCarolOates What makes the novel so good is that both takes have a toe in the truth. We bring ourselves into it, just like Stoner brings himself into his own situation. He only knows that way to act. Is it weak to accept things as they are? Perhaps!

[Matt Gold @GoldWhat]

@bernardtjoy How does one clean old books? I have some that seem to forever have a mildew smell that I’ve just gotten used to. Is that the way?

[Gurwinder @G_S_Bhogal]

Picasso’s reply when asked for his thoughts on computers in 1964 is more relevant than ever:

[Philip Bunn @PhilipDBunn]

"My standards are not speed, ease, and quantity" is a sentence I find myself unintentionally quoting almost every day. Ever time I post a photo of books, some unimpressive scoffer comes along to tell me how "inefficient" my "workflow" is. Pfft.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Your brain has a circuit that doesn't know you live in a city. Its only job is to monitor whether birds are still singing. Right now, in this room, it is on.

The circuit predates primates. Mammals have been using ambient soundscape continuity as a predator-detection system for roughly 200 million years. Birds stop singing when something larger moves through their territory. For most of mammalian history, a forest full of song meant no large predator was nearby, and the cessation of sound was the warning. Your nervous system never updated this software.

The Max Planck Institute tested the inverse in 2022 with 295 participants. Six minutes of birdsong dropped anxiety with a medium effect size. Six minutes of traffic noise raised depression with the same. The effect worked on subjects who lived in dense urban environments and had no regular contact with nature. The brain still ran the check.

Birdsong sits in the 1,000 to 8,000 Hz range. Your brainstem reads continuous patterns in that band as a signal that nothing dangerous is currently moving through the environment. EEG data shows birdsong at 45 to 50 decibels boosts alpha wave activity by 14.1% relative to silence. Alpha is the brainwave signature of relaxed alertness. Push the same birdsong above 60 decibels and the response flips. Stress markers rise 29%. The circuit only trusts the signal at the volume of quiet conversation, which is exactly the volume birds sing at from a typical distance.

Three things happen simultaneously when the brain registers ambient safety. The amygdala downregulates. The parasympathetic nervous system takes over from the sympathetic. Heart rate variability rises, cortisol drops. The posterior cingulate cortex, which sits at the center of the rumination circuit, quiets down. King's College London tracked this through a smartphone study with over 1,200 participants and found the mood lift lasted hours after the sound stopped. People diagnosed with depression got the same response as healthy controls.

Most of what gets labeled mental fatigue is hypervigilance running in the background. Birdsong tells the circuit it can stand down, and the brain reallocates the freed compute everywhere else.

A quiet park feels different from a quiet office because the parks have sentinels.

[The Book Land @the_book_land]

'I owe my soul to Shakespeare, to Spenser and to Blake, perhaps to William Morris, and to the English language in which I think, speak, and write, . . . everything I love has come to me through English.'

W. B. Yeats

[Matt Gold @GoldWhat]

@SketchesbyBoze My classroom is filled with books about science and social studies like this and the kids love them.

[Jash Dholani @oldbooksguy]

This quote has been stuck in my head for hours

[Matt Gold @GoldWhat]

@SketchesbyBoze @hamandcheese e. e. Cummings taught me dithyramb and anent this week.

[Matt Gold @GoldWhat]

@JTacosh @ryanhammer09 Myopic.

[Matt Gold @GoldWhat]

@AmericanGwyn I think people that say/think this view everything through a political lens so it is all they see.

[sigfig @sigfig]

people misunderstand the icarus story. the problem was not that he flew too high. it's that the wings were made of beeswax, which offered very little resistance to heating. with modern materials he would have had no problems. we can fly as close to the sun as we want now

[Bret van den Brink @BretVDB]

“The purpose of reading a Shakespeare play in high school is not to know more about Shakespeare, but to drop a seed of great vision into the mind in the hope of stimulating the growth of that mind as a whole.”

—Northrop Frye, “Education and the Humanities”

[Matt Gold @GoldWhat]

@DangerousThinkg Currently reading Galileo’s Error by @philip_goff and the joke from 0:22 - 0:30 sounds like Combination Problem. I thought of this clip immediately.

[Kelley Owens @kelleylowens]

Every educator needs to keep this Flannery O'Connor gem in a back pocket for the next time a student complains about the relevance or boringness of an older book...

“And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.”

[Matt Gold @GoldWhat]

@bernardtjoy Harrison Bergeron stood out.

[Fixing Education @FixingEducation]

If a parent asks how they can help their child succeed in school, please start with the BASICS:

•𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩…8-10 hours

•𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐍𝐮𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧…must limit sugar

•𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐦…let them fail without quickly trying to save them

•𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐀𝐭 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 30 𝐦𝐢𝐧/𝐝𝐚𝐲…preferably something they want to read! 📖

•𝐄𝐱𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐞/𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲…helps kids with several life skills including problem solving & sharing

[Neeraja Deshpande @neerajadeshp]

Whole essay is worth reading, but I really liked this paragraph in particular:

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

But, it’s not wrong that that occurs.

[Matt Gold @GoldWhat]

@AmericanGwyn @nealjclark1 Surprised you haven’t read this even if I do not agree with the original take