What excellence is Learn what excellence is, how to identify it...This is not a big reading assignment – excellence is scarce, lognormal, long-tailed. Acting on this knowledge is liberating, freeing oneself from vast piles of triviality, knock-offs, petty connoisseurship, over-publishing, and the short-sighted, trendy, greedy. Excellence is long-term knowledge, even forever knowledge. Excellence, like good taste, is perhaps a universal quality. Analytical thinking is about the relationship between evidence and conclusions, and is fundamental to all empirical work, regardless of field, discipline, specialty. Thus it is possible at times to assess credibility of nonfiction work without being a content expert. Thinking eyes may well have an eye for excellence, regardless of field or discipline. Edward Tufte, Seeing With Fresh Eyes Tetlock and the Taliban qualitygenius
Both models are completely useless In your head, you'll probably find two models for writing. One is the familiar model taught in high school and college—a matter of outlines and drafts and transitions and topic sentences and argument. The other model is its antithesis—the way poets and novelists are often thought to write. Words used to describe this second model include "genius", "inspiration", "flow", and "natural", sometimes even "organic". Both models are useless. I should qualify that sentence. Both models are completely useless. Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing genius
Florence and Milan You can see how powerful cities are from something I wrote about earlier: the case of the Milanese Leonardo. Practically every fifteenth century Italian painter you've heard of was from Florence, even though Milan was just as big. People in Florence weren't genetically different, so you have to assume there was someone born in Milan with as much natural ability as Leonardo. What happened to him? Paul Graham, Cities and Ambition genius
On the Link Between Great Thinking and Obsessive Walking An Article by Jeremy DeSilva lithub.com You are undoubtedly familiar with this situation: You’re struggling with a problem—a tough work or school assignment, a complicated relationship, the prospects of a career change—and you cannot figure out what to do. So you decide to take a walk, and somewhere along that trek, the answer comes to you. walkingthinkinggenius
Scenius A Definition by Brian Eno kk.org Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius. The Small GroupMutual appreciationTossing an idea around culturegeniuscreativitycollaboration
The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami Who I was supposed to beQuittingA regular wind-up toy world this is
Who I was supposed to be Probably, the seed of a schism had been there all along, however microscopic. But in time the gap widened, eventually taking me out of sight of who I was supposed to be. In terms of the solar system, if you will, I should by now have reached somewhere between Saturn and Uranus. A little bit farther and I ought to be seeing Pluto. And beyond that—let’s see—was there anything after that?
Quitting But stay on I didn’t. I don’t know exactly why I up and quit. Didn’t even have any clear goals or prospects of what to do after quitting.
A regular wind-up toy world this is A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. life