The Deaf experience shows how impoverished hearing people's communication can be
“It’s rude to point,” my friend told me from across the elementary-school cafeteria table. I grasped her words as I read them off her lips. She stared at my index finger, which I held raised in midair, gesturing toward a mutual classmate. “My mom said so.” I was 6
The problem isn’t that we have desires, but that our desires are too small
This week I came across the exact same concept expressed by a Buddhist and a Christian thinker, which was startling enough to seem worth exploring.
“Backchannel”: A crucial element of how conversations flow and people bond
I’m going to tell you about an incredibly useful linguistic concept — one of those things where you’re like “oh there’s a word for that, that’s so useful! Now I have a way talk about it.”
The best way to get a nervous person to try something new
It’s not, “tell them it’s easy and they’ll pick it up no problem”
No FOMO: If you’d bought bitcoin 10 years ago, you wouldn't be rich today
If you’d put $100 into bitcoin back in the day, you’d have sold it when it reached $1000. Maybe $10,000. And holding on to $100,000 in the hopes it’d turn into a million? Come on.
Perfectionists don’t think they’re perfectionists, they think they’re good-enoughists
Perfectionists don't feel like they need things perfect. They're just trying to do the bare minimum, and it’s killing them — because their conception of “the minimum” is badly skewed.
The best way to reheat pizza
The easiest method that still turns out good, and the only slightly more complicated method that turns out great.
You’re allowed to do the fun organisation tasks even if you haven’t done the boring ones
People get excited about fun organisation tasks — making a pegboard or putting all your spices in mason jars, or something pretty and fun — but feel like they can't do them when the floor hasn’t been vacuumed.
Why videogame music is perfect focus music
Videogame music is specifically designed to get you into a rhythmic flow. It’s intended to be a background to a focused task.
A better question than ‘what do you do?’
What you want is something that a) sounds pretty normal, you’re not going too far off social script and b) has a range of possible interpretations, so they can dodge any uncomfortable topics.