Eric.

𝘈𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘶𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘢 𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰

[Laura El @iamlaurael]

Unofficial New Yorker cover concepts. Not actual covers, just a dream I'm chasing.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

There's a physicist at Stanford named Safi Bahcall who modeled this exact principle and the math is wild.

He calls it "phase transitions in human networks." When you're stationary, your probability of a lucky event is limited to your existing surface area: the people you already know, the places you already go, the ideas you've already been exposed to. Your opportunity window is fixed.

When you move, your collision rate with new nodes in a network increases nonlinearly. Double your movement (new conversations, new cities, new projects) and your probability of a serendipitous encounter doesn't double. It roughly quadruples. Because each new node connects you to their entire network, not just to them.

Richard Wiseman ran a 10-year study at the University of Hertfordshire tracking self-described "lucky" and "unlucky" people. The single biggest differentiator wasn't IQ, education, or family money. Lucky people scored significantly higher on one trait: openness to experience. They talked to strangers more, varied their routines more, and said yes to invitations at nearly twice the rate.

The "unlucky" group followed the same routes, ate at the same restaurants, and talked to the same 5 people. Their networks were closed loops. No new inputs, no new collisions.

Luck isn't random. Luck is surface area. And surface area is a function of movement.

The lobster emoji is doing more work than most people realize. Lobsters grow by shedding their shell when it gets too tight. The growth requires a period of total vulnerability. No protection, no armor, soft body exposed to the ocean.

That's the cost of movement nobody posts about. You have to be uncomfortable first. The new shell only hardens after you've already moved.

[Jay Alto @theJayAlto]

you pity the moth confusing a lamp for the moon, yet here you are confusing a screen for the world

[Natural Philosophy @Naturalphilosy]

"The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again."

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

[Dylan O'Sullivan @DylanoA4]

— Franz Kafka, 1912

[Natural Philosophy @Naturalphilosy]

“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.”

― Sylvia Plath

[Philosophy Quotes @philosophors]

“You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power—he's free again.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[Man of Myth @Mythos_Man]

“He who voluntarily confronts tremendous odds must have very great internal resources to draw upon.”

— Thucydides

[Natural Philosophy @Naturalphilosy]

“You’re on earth. There’s no cure for that.”

— Samuel Beckett

[Natural Philosophy @Naturalphilosy]

“People are strange: they are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”

— Charles Bukowski

[Art or Other Things @ArtorOtherThing]

The Walnut Tree in Benevento (The Witches Sabbath), 1822-6 by Giuseppe Pietro Bagetti (Italian, 1764--1831)

[Natural Philosophy @Naturalphilosy]

“To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.”

― Henry Miller

[love drops @lovedropx]

Sip

[🍂 @Lovandfear]

— Homer, The lliad

[Saganism @Saganismm]

"And what does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity."

- William S. Burroughs

[Prof. Feynman @ProfFeynman]

Embrace the uncertainty.

[. @batmancurated]

background art for batman the animated series

[𝐬𝐨𝐯 ᯓ ✈︎ @sovietsoleri]

Centraal Beheer office building, in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, 1972. Designer Herman Hertzberger.