Till H. Gross

Coming back to life...

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

We hosted an intense 10-week online philosophy seminar at the end of last year. Several participants described it as life-changing.

We just announced the next one.

If you want to study perhaps the greatest novel of the 20th century with one of the most brilliant literary minds of our time, receive rigorous one-on-one tutoring, and have the type of intellectual discussions that are currently missing in your life, this might be for you: https://t.co/Jgj06EOaaF

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

@R_Mohr @scicomm Very cool!

[David Senra @davidsenra]

"No work gets done in the CEO's office."

Strauss Zelnick on what a CEO actually does:

"A good CEO needs to serve his or her team. No work gets done in the CEO's office.

So what do you really do? You agree on the mission, you set the strategy, you agree on the culture, and then you drive daily execution. But you're driving that daily execution through other people.

How do you do that? You have to motivate them. You have to stay informed so you know what's happening, and then you have to motivate them.

On the very rare occasion that a problem can't get solved below my level, you got to solve the problem. On the rare occasion that a decision about an approach or capital allocation isn't obvious or is above someone's approval level, it comes to me.

I'm not writing memos. I'm not doing Excel spreadsheets."

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

@paulswaney3 Paul...have you ever heard of the midwit meme?

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

“And lively older girls have come to ride,
for whom the age of roundabouts and swings
is almost over; those were childish things.
Their eyes are searching and dissatisfied.

A lone white elephant arrives, departs.”

Rilke: The Carousel

[hyz @hyzontopclipx]

Charlize Theron says she gets turned on immediately when a man tells her who he truly is and the she went off on men using dating apps, as she most of the time get p6mped by her friend 👀🔥

“It’s a whole clown show, honestly. Not because I want to date you, but because I’m trying to help you , ditch the Burning Man pics, stop posting with random women like it’s a flex and please spare me the awkward mirror selfies with your hand in your jean pocket. None of that is attractive; it does the exact opposite. And stop calling yourself a CEO when you can’t even explain what you do. No, you don’t own that apartment, and no, you don’t have some mystery empire. It’s all performative. Just be real because the moment a man tells me exactly who he is and owns it? That’s what actually turns me on”👀🔥

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

Randomly in Stockholm for Walpurgis Night.

Brings back memories to reading Faust with @JohannesAchill :

“It pushes and shoves, it rustles and clatters!
It hisses and whirls, it tugs and chatters!
It glitters, sparks, stinks, and burns!
A true witches’ element!”

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

Always be skeptical if a man has hobbies!

[Fates Lover @fateslover]

@AestheticsMens Wrong. Side quests are the last man’s compromise. You’re not bored from a lack of hobbies. You’re bored because nothing in your life commands you. The cure isn’t fifty more quests. It’s one that would cost you everything.

[Atelier Missor @AtelierMissor_]

This 50 ft Prometheus will soon be shipped to the USA.

It costs around 1 million to build.

We want to build larger and larger Prometheus statues everywhere across the West.

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

A simple heuristic for childhood freedom: how many places in your city does your kid know that you don't?

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

Most kids in modern big cities essentially live the life of house pets.

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

Much of the unhappiness many feel is akin to walking into a nicely stocked supermarket, ignoring everything that's there, and despairing over the fact that the one thing they seemingly wanted is sold out.

Opening one's eyes to everything that *is* there, on the other hand, and making the absolute most out of it, often leads to untold joy and beauty.

Not to stretch the metaphor too far, but this approach also often leads to:
- getting the thing you initially wanted but in a surprisingly different way (e.g. you cook something great with the ingredients you do have access to and someone brings the thing you desired to the dinner party you're hosting)
- you realize there are actually many finer things in the store you never paid attention to
- your taste profile becomes much more sophisticated, and the thing you initially wanted seems rather unsophisticated in retrospect

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

@dhh Should be required watching for all European countries!

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

@gietzschean Where is this?

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

The idea of "giving oneself up for one's children" has some fundamental flaws in its logic. If you realize the self is in everything you do and you can never give it up, you can reclaim agency and ownership of your circumstances.

Of course, there are certain things that might be more enjoyable or pleasant to do, which are momentarily at odds with what a good parent would do. But there's still something in you that chooses to be a parent, and thus the whole self can be in it. Realizing that "you"' are in it gives you back agency.

It's simply locating this agency inside of you, which already changes something. Viktor Frankl talked about this as creating meaning through the attitude you have towards suffering.

It's also the first step towards noticing all the ways in which you can actively shape each moment.

[i2cjak @i2cjak]

you absolutely MUST read this book or you’re PERMANENT UNDERCLASS CATTLE

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

So many good things happened because I took a random thing seriously. It was never the inital thing I did that was the interesting or relevant thing, but doing the random thing led to five other things, and it was then the fifth thing that blew up.

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

"What should ideally happen?"

I was unable to answer the question.

However, I was completely unaware of it.

Instead of genuinely asking myself the question and coming up with an answer that reflected an ideal scenario that I envisioned, I could only ever fabricate a watered-down alibi answer that mostly reflected all my unconscious internalized constraints.

Instead of coming up with "what should be" I would come up with "what's the least effortful, most affordable, most frictionless, most likely, quickly achievable thing that could be right now".

A friend repeatedly pointed this out, and I started to force myself to remove all constraints from my thinking and really and seriously ponder "what should be right now?"

Firstly, it became clear that I often had no idea of what I actually wanted or what was desirable. Once I slowly (very slowly) developed a sense for it, it turned out that more often than not, what I aimed for was totally feasible.

It's hard to even fathom how blindly I was living before. The quality of my life (and the lives of basically everyone around me) has transformed fundamentally since this shift started to take shape.

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

“Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius. Send your ships into uncharted seas. Live at war with your peers and yourselves.” Nietzsche in Gay Sciences

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

Too much to die, not enough to live.

Sums up the existential, financial, and romantic situation of most.

Solution: live a bit more dangerously. Risk death, defeat, and rejection to win a life.

[Till H. Gross @TillHGross]

@millerman Time to change the user name to “the quiz guy”