EP

[blue @bluewmist]

I'm finally reading Dune. This quote, which is in the first few pages, hits hard:

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

[First Doctor @FirstDoctor]

Never take for granted a body that wakes up and functions without a medical crisis attached to it. That is grace.

[عبدالله عوض @Abdullah_1639]

الحصان الذي يعرف وجهته، لا تُشتته الغابة.

[Butters @contendwithx]

Korea is ahead of the curve on everything. If you wanted to see where our society was going to be today, just go to Seoul 10 years ago. Every single trend, from looksmaxxing to salaryman margin gambling to jailing former presidents started there first.

They are speed running the end of history, and possibly, whatever comes next, they will be at the beginning.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Winston Churchill fought his depression with bricks. He'd lay them for hours at his country home in Kent. He joined the bricklayers' union. And in 1921 he wrote about why it worked. It took psychology another 75 years to catch up.

He called his depression the "Black Dog." It followed him for decades. His method for fighting it back was as basic as it sounds: laying brick after brick, hour after hour.

Churchill spelled out his theory in a long essay for The Strand Magazine. People who think for a living, he wrote, can't fix a tired brain just by resting it. They have to use a different part of themselves. The part that moves the eyes and the hands. Woodworking, chemistry, bookbinding, bricklaying, painting. Anything that drags the body into a problem the mind can't solve by itself.

Modern psychology now calls this behavioral activation. It's one of the most-studied depression treatments out there. Depression sets a behavior trap. You feel bad, so you stop doing things, and doing less means less to feel good about. Feeling worse makes you do even less. The loop tightens until you can't breathe inside it.

Behavioral activation breaks the loop from the action side. You schedule the activity first, even when every part of you doesn't want to. Doing it produces small rewards: a wall gets straighter, a painting fills in, a messy room gets clean. Those small rewards slowly rewire the brain. Action comes first, and the feeling follows.

Researchers at the University of Washington put this to the test in 2006. They studied 241 adults with major depression and compared three treatments: behavioral activation, regular talk therapy, and antidepressants. For the people who were most severely depressed, behavioral activation matched the drugs. It beat the talk therapy. A 2014 review of more than 1,500 patients across 26 trials backed up the result.

Physical work like bricklaying does something extra on top of this. It crowds out rumination, the looping bad thoughts that grind people down during the worst stretches of depression. Bricklaying needs both hands and gives feedback brick by brick: each one is straight or crooked. After an hour you can see exactly how much wall you built. No room left for the mental chewing.

The line George Mack used in his post, "depression hates a moving target," is good poetry. The science behind it is sharper. Depression hates a brain that has somewhere else to be.

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

Full grown adults who can’t vacation, take a gap year, have hobbies, play an instrument, speak multiple languages, swim, cycle, skate, or backpack. Just a lifetime of hustling and trying to escape survival mode. These are subtle poverty metrics no one really talks about.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

“A man is what he thinks about all day.”—Emerson

[George Mack @george__mack]

Winston Churchill used to lay 200 bricks per day to keep his mind busy when feeling down. Depression hates a moving target.

[Robert Greene @RobertGreene]

You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. Since nothing seems urgent to you, you are only half involved in what you do. The only way to change is through action and outside pressure.

[Machiavelli Bot @UnmodernmanBot]

Every man eventually discovers that competence is the only real stabilizer of self-esteem; no amount of praise, affirmation, or philosophical comfort can replace the confidence that comes from knowing you can produce results even when conditions are hostile.

[maddie rune🪰 @themaddierune]

Literature is humanity’s longest conversation with itself about what it means to be alive. It has been going on for thousands of years. You are not late, you are not unqualified, you are not too much or too little or too broken. Pull up a chair. This conversation was always about you.

[Steve Skojec @SteveSkojec]

He’s dead on.

[FEAR GOD @FEARGODMINDSET]

Dostoevsky saw through human nature like glass

[meatball times @meatballtimes]

hiring is impossible BECAUSE it's so easy to apply

finding a relationship is impossible BECAUSE new dates are a swipe away

getting into university is hard BECAUSE you can CommonApp apply to 50 at once

convenience is washing away friction that actually carried a lot of signal

[EP @HonorisVia]

@R0bMacDonald @roastbeastdiner @MarcMencha98 👍

[✒️ @Literariium]

Dostoevsky wrote this after nearly being executed:

“When I look back at my life, I feel pain not because of suffering, but because of wasted time. I see how carelessly I lived, how often I ignored the quiet voice of my soul, how rarely I understood the value of a single moment. Only when death stood before me did I realize that life is not merely existence—it is a miracle. Every minute is a treasure, and in every breath, there is the possibility of happiness.”

[Aristo @aristomarinetti]

The greatest gift you can give to God is to be pleased with what he has created for you.

[Geiger Capital @Geiger_Capital]

Just 100 years ago, England was the greatest empire the world had ever seen.

A few generations later, they are a deindustrialized welfare zone unable to stop third world men from invading on rubber boats.

Decline happens fast.
Weak leaders and suicidal empathy.

[Clash Report @clashreport]

German Chancellor Merz:

We are simply no longer productive enough. Each individual may say, “I already do quite a lot.” And that may be true.

But when you return from China, ladies and gentlemen, you see things more clearly.

With work-life balance and a four-day week, long-term prosperity in our country cannot be maintained. We will simply have to do a bit more.

[Nicholas Fabiano, MD @NTFabiano]

Addiction to short-form videos reduces brain activity in the frontal lobe weakening the ability to focus.