Well well, this is the issue 28th. 28 is the number I use when I want to exaggerate something. Maybe I have told you this 28 times in this newsletter. I have seen this movies 28 times, I ate 28 Oreo in one sitting etc. Do you know why? I have no idea. I think it is about pronunciation (yirmisekiz in Turkish). Maybe it is because it is not that much of a big number. It is easy to believe that I have tried 28 times. Silly isn’t it? I love silly things, I thing wisdom is overrated. You are going to perish anyway. Why not have fun staying silly?
We are back to business. Curation is an underrated business I say. It is as important as creating. What is the point of creation if it is not found? Hell is other people, you need people to pay attention to your creation. Am I right or what?
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🐦4 Tweet Threads
I have lost myself in this thread. This is the information you are going to forget absolutely but it is so much fun.
My fav:
There is a prime number called Belphegor's prime: it is the palindromic prime number 1000000000000066600000000000001, (1, 13x0’s, 666, 13x0’s & a 1) a number which reads the same both backwards and forwards and is only divisible by itself and one.
I am wondering if you are also doing this. Whenever I am bored I look at paintings, good photos or architecture. It gives me awe. I adore the creativity behind it and it soothes my nerves. This tweet is a good compilation of quality architecture.
My fav:
We have discussed mimetic theory before in this newsletter. I think it is a concept every person needs to know.
I know right, mental models? Again? Dude, you need to step up your game you say? Listen to me. The more you read it, the easier it is for you to implement them. Here Dickie added some twists to models.
My fav:
No one cares about you. Please stop thinking that, you narcissist you.
📘 1 Book Summary:
Jean Paul Sartre - Nausea
I have re-read the Nausea, again. Only the highlighted sentences and the ones around them. I think as Naval said it best :” Read the best 100 books over and over again.” There is no need for your rush to find your next best reading. Just stick to the great ones.
Weekdays? Nothing, just took some breaths and got some work done. This is not living, it is surviving. You cannot describe the absurdity of existence in a shorter sentence. Nothing. Existed. I hope I existed and someone noticed.
“Tuesday:
Nothing. Existed.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
How do you know you existed? You think. You think you exist, you are the very reason for your existence.
“My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.”
Then again…
“I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!”
Give up the urge to agree on something. Let the differences enhance your being. You are less than one. With differences brought from outside you are more than two. Use that.
“I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together. ”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
This sentence puts a smile on my face every time. 3 pm. Too late or too early for every plan you might have. Agggh the authenticity of this observation. Brilliant.
“Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
There is no rhyme or reason to this life. It’s days like today scattered among the rest.
— Marcus, John Wick
“Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
Feeling that you never belong to anywhere? Maybe you do not need a place, maybe the only thing you need to do is to stop searching. Sometimes you cannot find answers running, you need to be still.
“I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in . . . but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.”
The feeling that you feel in your stomach when you ask yourself in the middle of the day “what the hell am I doing here"? Yes exactly it is nausea, it is absolute nonsense you are existing.
“I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.”
To this very moment, nothing less nothing more.
“I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me,
and I have followed the source of rivers towards their
source or plunged into forests, always making for other
cities. I have had women, I have fought with men ; and
I could never turn back any more than a record can spin
in reverse. And all that was leading me where ?
To this very moment.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
📝 2 Articles:
We need some rituals. I have read Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey and remembered this: No exact formula for creativity and genius. You need to find your own rhyme and rituals.
My highlights:
It turns out, even great writers like Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf found writing to be an arduous task. What made the work a little bit easier, he discovered, was their commitment to a daily ritual.
In Zen monasteries, even ordinary activities, like bathing and eating, are ritualized and given the complete attention of practitioners. This encourages a mindful approach to basic tasks, imbuing them with a transformational ethos. It can be as simple as taking a walk at a certain time of day, baking bread, or cleaning your space.
A ritual might not always produce the participant’s sought-after effect, especially with their first few attempts. For Zen Buddhists, the repetitive nature of ritual action conditions the body so that the desired mental state will follow. Southworth offers a more fluid, beginner-friendly approach for casual ritualists. “Think of it as a way of letting go of the everyday,” she said. “A ritual is like a poem. There’s no wrong or right way.”
This article made me stare at the wall for a while. Everything you do can be the last time you do it. It is like Memento Mori, or Remember the Death. Kind of a meditation, not an anxiety-inducing one. It aims to bring your full being into the task at hand. It can be your last time washing that dishes. Try to enjoy it.
My highlights:
Predictably, dining on this last-ever night makes for a much richer experience than almost all the other times you’ve eaten at that restaurant, but it’s not because the food, décor, or service is any different than usual. It’s better because you know it’s the last time, so you’re apt to savor everything you can about it, right down to the worn menus and tacky napkin rings. You’re unlikely to let any mistakes or imperfections bother you, and in fact you might find them endearing.
Irvine uses mowing the lawn as an example, a task he doesn’t love doing. If you imagine that this is the last time you’ll mow the lawn, rather than consider it a good riddance, you might realize that there will be a time when you’ve mown your last lawn, and that there were a lot of great things about living in your lawn-mowing, bungalow-maintaining heyday. A few seconds later, it dawns on you that you still are.
For ninety-nine percent of these last times, you will have no idea that that’s what it is. It will seem like another of the many middle times, with a lot more to come. If you knew it was the last-ever time you spoke to a certain person or did a certain activity, you’d probably make a point of appreciating it, like a planned last visit to Salvatore’s Pizzeria.
📺 2 Videos:
I have summarized the book of Celeste here. This video is a great sumup of her content. There are so many people communicating only on surface level. Please be more.
Every one of us has some kind of trauma. Small or big. Who decides the weight of it? There are good ways to heal trauma instead of medication.
Everything is an experiment. “Healing from trauma is an experiment.”
Psychotherapy
EMDR
Yoga
Theatre and Movement
Neural feedback
Psychedelics
📽️ 1 SERIES / FILM or DOCUMENTARY:
This time it is Druk. I have watched it 1.5 times. Mikkelsen is one of my fav actors.
Druk tells very similar story with very authentic way of telling.
You must accept yourself as fallible in order to love others and life.
☃️How about some fun?
I have read 3 books of Charlie Brown recently and they all will be excerpted in coming episodes. Good old childhood.
This piece is masterpiece. And the guy in the orange t-shirt? You are magnificent.
Now the second subscriber profile will be of course my lovely wife. She is queen to my kingdom. This was way more fun than I thought it would be. The answers are getting interesting every time I ask a different person. Love questioning, it enhances the boring life of mortals and proving again that words are useless in our need to express ourselves fully.
What is your biggest fear in life?
Loneliness.
What is one thing you never get bored of doing?
Touching, feeling, hugging and all the thing that include the sense of touch
If you could get a sentence as a tattoo on your arm, what sentence would it be?
“Do not be afraid of being afraid.”
What is the thing you regret the most that you didn't do/try?
Choosing another career instead of medicine.
Who would you like to have dinner with and talk about life?
Elizabeth II. She is hell of a woman.
You have one wish, you can do anything, what's the first thing you'll do?
I would want to control thoughts. Mine and everyone’s. I would like to delete any thought I want and think about anything I desire.
If money wasn't a problem for you, what would you be doing?
I would establish my own community, a village, the people I love, the city and the nature, a safe peaceful village with the beloved people and animals.
Who is your favorite superhero and why?
Shrek. He is strong, ugly and happy. Not caring about anything.
Who is your idol?
Phoebe Buffay. Smelly cat smelly cat what are they feedig youuuu?
What is something that people are obsessed with but you just don’t get the point of?
It is the obsession with luxury or certain brands. I would buy 5 different t-shirts instead of buying 1 from a luxury or expensive place. Also, I do not understand the obsession with brushing teeth before going to sleep. Who taught us that?
If you had the chance, what would be the city and time you like to be born and live in?
Istanbul around 60s and 70s.
If you had to listen to 10 songs until you die, which 10 would it be?
Check out the Spotify playlist. Use this link to add your 10 , please no more than 10 :)
If you can recommend only 10 books to your loved ones, which 10 would it be?
Celal Kadri Kınoğlu - Armağan (No English version)
What is the one movie you keep re-watching?
Not have a film but I would say Friends to this question. Eat drink sleep Friends. Eat drink sleep Friends.
If you would like to add something to the questions, hit reply to this email.
📜 2 Quotes:
Therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things. Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy. Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don’t. No one does. You shouldn’t be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren’t real and they were created by other people, not you. There is no explicit path I’m following, and I’m not walking in anyone else’s footsteps. I’m making it up as I go.
― Charlie Hoehn
“What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, 1972-1990