Tim Ferriss once said that he had initially avoided meditation for fear it would bliss him out and diminish his drive. In my case, I fear that it’s true.
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Meditation Killed My Motivation
Posted in Observation, Reading, Real Men, Statement of intention, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Alain De Botton, Blade Runner, Buddha, How Proust Can Change Your Life, In Search of Lost Time, Luke David, Marcus Aurelius, Nietzsche, Osho, Proust, Roy Batty, Scott Moncrieff, Tim Ferriss on December 1, 2022 by Jarrod Boyle
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story
Posted in Netflix, Observation, True Crime with tags American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis, Jeffrey Dahmer, Netflix on October 23, 2022 by Jarrod Boyle
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is one of those things that fits in the, ‘Good, but I don’t like it’ category of film and television, which at the very least, pushes it beyond the odious definition of film and television as entertainment.
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‘Sorry, Not Beautiful.’
Posted in Observation with tags diet, discipline, Jordan Peterson, Kim Kardashian, obesity, Philip K. Dick, Sports Illustrated, Yumi Nu on July 2, 2022 by Jarrod Boyle
2.
It is not necessary to be a professional athlete training twice a day, for four hours a day, to achieve these outcomes.
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‘Sorry, Not Beautiful.’
Posted in Observation with tags body image, diet, Exercise, Jordan Peterson, Naomi Wolff, plus size, Sports Illustrated, The Beauty Myth, Yumi Nu on June 22, 2022 by Jarrod Boyle
No doubt we were all amused this week by the back-and-forth between Sports Illustrated cover model Yumi Nu and Jordan Peterson.
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Thomas Hardy: Character is Fate in ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’
Posted in Fiction, Observation, Reading with tags Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Donald Farfrae, Michael Henchard, Narcissus, Phillip Pirrip, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy on May 31, 2022 by Jarrod Boyle
‘Character is fate, said Novalis, and Farfrae’s character was just the reverse of Henchard’s, who might not be inaptly described as Faust has been described – as a vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar men without light to guide him on a better way.’
Thomas Hardy,
The Mayor of Casterbridge,
P. 131
While reading The Mayor of Casterbridge this morning, I saw something that I did not like: myself.
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Stolen Focus: Recovering the Sense of Flow
Posted in Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Bari Weiss, Honestly Podcast, Instagram, Johann Hari, Messenger, Stolen Focus on May 1, 2022 by Jarrod Boyle
I’ve been reading a bit about the effect of the smart phone on the attention span, and I must confess, I recognise a number of Johann Hari’s observations in my own behaviour.
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Brave New World: Beware the Philosopher
Posted in Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading with tags 1984, Aldous Huxley, Artificial intelligence, Brave New World, George Orwell, Yuval Noah Harari on December 26, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
“I think Brave New World is the best science fiction book ever, definitely the most prescient. Huxley was writing in the early 1930’s with Stalin and Hitler around, but what he was envisioning was our present.
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The Dark Side of Unconditional Love
Posted in Observation with tags love, unconditional love on April 8, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
Anyone who has been abused by a family member, or a partner, understands unconditional love.
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Flannery O’Connor Hates You
Posted in Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Dante, Flannery O'Connor, Franz Kafka, Huberty Selby Junior, Inferno, The Ramones, Virgil on March 20, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
I’d never read Flannery O’Connor until lockdown. I’d seen her listed as one of the outstanding writers of the twentieth century, specifically in terms of her short stories. I had time on my hands, so I bought her collected works.
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The Devils – A User’s Guide
Posted in Fiction, Observation, Reading with tags Dostoyevsky, Martin Scorsese, Pyramids, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The Devils on August 26, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
What’s it about?
What amounts to a terrorist cell in mid-nineteenth century Russia and its effect on a small fictional town of Dostoyevsky’s invention.
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Theme Park at its Darkest 