💖 June Favourites 2023
Life Paths, Life Stories, Life Spans, Life Expectancies, and Life Urgency
🍿 My Favourite Movie of the Month
Life or Something Like It
📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month
Beef
Good Trouble
🖥 My Favourite Website of the Month
Space Elevator 🔗 / Dense Discovery Issue 243 / Space Elevator /
“The newest neal.fun project takes you on a ride up to space and explores Earth’s atmosphere, wildlife and planes along the way. As with all of Neal’s projects, it’s highly educational and skillfully executed.”
🛠️ My Favourite Tools of the Month
TwitterGPT 🔗 / TwitterGTP.com /
Give TwitterGPT a Twitter username and it’ll give you a mini report about what that user is into.
I plugged my Twitter handle into it and the part of its analysis that I thought was the most interesting was the final paragraph where it suggests a gift that I would like:
“If you were going to get @lamarelimbo a gift, you should consider getting them the book "The Architecture of Happiness" by Alain de Botton. This book explores the relationship between architecture and human well-being, which aligns with @lamarelimbo's interest in the impact of spaces on individuals.”
Sounds super interesting, so I quickly added that to my Bookshelf.
I love how the implications of AI are going to have world bending impacts and I’m just amazed at the idea that it’ll make gift giving easier for me 🤷🏽♂️
💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month
The Liar’s Curse 🔗 / George Bernard Shaw /
“The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.”
Helped, Heard, Hugged 🔗 / Tweet /
The Impact of Acts of Kindness 🔗 / Tweet /
Acts of Commitment 🔗 / Tweet /
Introversion Definition
I really like this definition of introversion I came across: “someone who mostly builds and directs energy internally”.
Financial Security 🔗 / Ali Abdaal Podcast with Sahil Bloom / 1:00:37 /
Financial security vs financial confidence. Where financial security is having a safety net, financial confidence is knowing that regardless of what happens, you have the skills needed to make money.
Energizing Responses 🔗 / Ali Abdaal Podcast with Jemma Sbeghen / 48:21 /
If someone shares news with us, there are 4 ways to respond:
Active Constructive: Encouraging them to build off of what they said
Active Destructive: Discouraging them to build off of what they said
Passive Constructive: Neutral “oh that’s cool” response
Passive Destructive: Switching the attention onto yourself
Scepticism of the ‘Eat Local’ Movement 🔗 / Dense Discovery Issue 241 /
“While local (food) economies are great in theory, there is extreme inequality in the numbers: only around a quarter of the world’s people can be fed within 100 km of where they live. Global food security can not be solved by ‘going local’.”
How is My Environment Influencing My Reality? 🔗 / Sahil Bloom’s Newsletter /
Every so often it’s worth looking around and asking ourselves: Is my environment actually in sync with the reality I want to create?
Reality of Our Creation 🔗 / Sahil Bloom’s Newsletter /
A question worth asking ourselves: How am I complicit in creating the conditions that I don’t want?
💡 My Favourite Fun Fact of the Month
Ecosystems
The earth has 103 ecosystems and 84 can be found in Peru
Lifespan vs Life Expectancy
I’m a little embarrassed that up until a couple weeks ago, I believed that the majority of people in “the olden days” were likely to die at like 40 years old or some similar young age.
I learned recently that this is a common belief because we tend to confuse the terms lifespan and life expectancy.
“Sometimes, when we tell kids “the life expectancy was 48 in 1900,” they think that means that at age 48, people were old and decrepit instead of understanding that 48 was an average, and the high child mortality brought that average way down.
Consider the example of our Founding Fathers. When they were born in the 18th century, life expectancy was below 40. Yet the average lifespan of the 56 signers to the Declaration of Independence was 66 years, and a quarter of them (including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben Franklin) lived to 80 or older.”
🔗 / Article /
🧨 My Favourite Sparks of Motivation & Inspiration
Cover More Surface Area
A piece of advice that I find a ton of motivation in is: When you don’t know exactly what path to take in life, do a lot of different things.
Recently, I was reintroduced to the most creative depiction of psychic powers I’ve ever seen, in this clip of Nicolas Cage’s character in the movie Next.
[Mild spoilers]
I think it’s a fun visual interpretation of the “cover more surface area” advice. Each new path we experiment with, opens up a bunch of new branches to explore.
Inspiration Mimicry
A question I’ve been asking myself lately: What content do I wish I had created?
Sometimes I’ll come across a brilliant and creative YouTube video and think to myself: “damn, I would’ve loved to have made that”. Or, if I’m in a spicy mood: “damn, I could’ve made that.”
I’m realizing more and more how motivating it can be to have a specific model to look to and mimic for each new subject we’re interested in .
🖼️ My Favourite Visuals of the Month
🔗 / Rich Webber’s Instagram /
🔗 / Instagram Post 1 / 🔗 / Instagram Post 2 / 🔗 / Instagram Post 3 /
🤔 My Favourite Reflections of the Month
Valued Compliments
I think that a good strategy to uncover our values is to ask ourselves: What compliments do I want to optimize for?
Life Urgency
What if for one week every year, we lived it as though it was our last?
💪🏽 My Favourite Experiments of the Month
Using AI to Write My Life Story
🔗 / Perplexity.ai Profile /
A fun experiment to try: head over to Perplexity.ai’s profile section, answer their prompts, and then you can then ask it to write a story based on you.
I tested it out and it gave me a peek into a potential future career path I could be interested in and some of the steps I could take to get there.
Here’s my experiment if you’re curious 👇
Prompts
“Write a story based on me”
Title: A New Path: From Software Developer to Architectural Psychologist
Once there was a frontend software developer at a wellness startup in Toronto. He had always been fascinated by the subliminal influences of different spaces on human psychology. He spent his free time crafting creative and affordable interior designs, imagining hypothetical worlds, and pondering the potential of mixed reality in blending fantasy and reality.
One day, he stumbled upon an article discussing the impact of architecture and interior design on human behaviour and emotions. This sparked a desire to pivot his career towards architectural and environmental psychology, focusing on designing spaces that positively influence people's thoughts, feelings, and actions.
The journey began with extensive research on architectural psychology, reading books and articles that explored the interaction between people and their surroundings. He also attended conferences and workshops, learning from experts in the field. One such event was the NABShow 2022, where he discovered the rapidly evolving world-building opportunities for mixed reality in live broadcast productions.
Inspired by his newfound knowledge, he started experimenting with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies to create immersive environments that could influence human behaviour. He began sharing his creations on Instagram, showcasing his unique design style and the stories behind his projects. This attracted the attention of like-minded individuals and potential clients, gradually building a reputation in the industry.
As his expertise grew, he was invited to collaborate on various projects, ranging from designing therapeutic spaces for mental health facilities to creating immersive mixed reality experiences for live events. He even started consulting on the design of virtual worlds, blending his background in software development with his passion for architectural and environmental psychology.
Over time, he established himself as an expert in the field, attracting high-profile clients and speaking at international conferences. He also founded a research-based lab that conducted experiments on the effect of surroundings on human psychology, fulfilling his long-term goal.
In the end, our protagonist successfully pivoted from a career in software development to one in architectural and environmental psychology. His dedication to understanding the impact of spaces on human emotions and behaviour led him to create innovative and transformative environments, both in the physical and virtual worlds.
🎙️ My Favourite Podcast of the Month
🔗 / Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman /
Inner Cosmos explores the relationship between our brain and our experiences by tackling unusual questions that illuminate novel facets of our lives and our realities.
Does time really run in slow motion when you’re in a car accident?
Can we create new senses for humans?
What does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet?
Why did you eat that cookie even though you’re trying to diet?
What do you do when someone breaks the law because of a brain tumor?
What’s the real reason hunters wear orange?
Why is everyone with a different political opinion from yours misinformed?
Why did Pythagoras think numbers had genders and personalities?
Will you perceive the event that kills you?
…and dozens more
🎥 My Favourite YouTuber of the Month
🔗 / Dodford /