crash

The men were soaked and freezing, and Shackleton doled out bits of food from their dwindling rations to keep them conscious. On May 10th, nearly a year and a half after departing from South Georgia Island, they stumbled upon its shores again. They looked like the survivors of an apocalypse. Shackleton then took Worsley and another crew member and trekked north for twenty-six miles, climbing over uncharted glaciers, to get to a whaling station on the island’s opposite coast, where they could summon help. During the journey, Shackleton said, he felt a divine presence—a “fourth man”—guiding them.

— David Grann “The White Darkness: A solitary journey across Antarctica” The New Yorker 

Typically, by doing what comes naturally to us, we fail to account for our weaknesses, which leads us to crash. What happens after we crash is most important.Successful people change in ways that allow them to continue to take advantage of their strengths while compensating for their weaknesses and unsuccessful people don’t.

— Ray Dalio Principles

flavor

I also feared boredom and mediocrity much more than I feared failure. For me, great is better than terrible, and terrible is better than mediocre, because terrible at least gives life flavor.

— Ray Dalio Principles

yourself

It was Ms. Brennan’s mother who suggested that she pursue a career in television news.

“My mom said, ‘You should try that out,’” Ms. Brennan recalled. “‘You’re always talking to the TV screen, that they didn’t give the context on this or that. Why don’t you try to do it yourself?’”

— Michael M. Grynbaum “Margaret Brennan Named Host of ‘Face the Nation’ on CBS” The New York Times

auction

His fascination with Shackleton, meanwhile, seemed to deepen. He spent hours at antique shops and auction houses, in search of what he called Shackletonia: autographed books and photographs and diaries and correspondence and other memorabilia. “Henry lost a fortune on it all,” Joanna recalled. At one auction, he bid feverishly on a first edition of Shackleton’s book about the Endurance expedition, “South,” in which Shackleton had inscribed a message to his parents: “With Love from Ernest, Xmas 1919.” Every time Worsley made an offer, a person bidding anonymously over the telephone countered him, and finally made off with the prize, at a price of seven thousand dollars. Weeks later, on his tenth wedding anniversary, Joanna gave him a present: the inscribed book. Each had been unaware that the other was the rival bidder. He considered the gift to be his “most treasured possession of all.”

— David Grann “The white darkness: a solitary journey across Antarctica” The New Yorker

venture

In the future, there will be no more pizza. We abused our pizza privileges for one too many generations, and so it will cease to exist. You will still be able to get food that is pizza flavored, but pizza flavoring will taste less and less like pizza and more and more like the way vomit smells.

There will still be burritos, though, because, in the future, our burrito standards will drop to “I don’t know—just wrap a food in a different food?”

— Mia Mercado “What Will Food Be Like in the Future?” The New Yorker

“I got everything ready for the Olympics, hired some more part-time help,” he said, flicking ash from his cigarette. “And then: nothing.”

Many restaurant owners here echoed that refrain: For a lot of businesses, it has felt as if the Games were not even going on. Visitors don’t seem to be venturing outside the Olympic bubble, they said.

I was determined not to be that sort of visitor. So I’ve swanned into press boxes with pork broth practically dripping off my clothes. I’ve interviewed some of the world’s top athletes with raw garlic on my breath. I am beginning to sense some of my colleagues growing alarmed with my behavior. But I can’t stop.

— Andrew Keh “An Olympic Challenge: Eat All the Korean Food That Visitors Won’t” The New York Times

 

not all right

Too many boys are trapped in the same suffocating, outdated model of masculinity, where manhood is measured in strength, where there is no way to be vulnerable without being emasculated, where manliness is about having power over others. They are trapped, and they don’t even have the language to talk about how they feel about being trapped, because the language that exists to discuss the full range of human emotion is still viewed as sensitive and feminine.

Men feel isolated, confused and conflicted about their natures. Many feel that the very qualities that used to define them — their strength, aggression and competitiveness — are no longer wanted or needed; many others never felt strong or aggressive or competitive to begin with. We don’t know how to be, and we’re terrified.

But to even admit our terror is to be reduced, because we don’t have a model of masculinity that allows for fear or grief or tenderness or the day-to-day sadness that sometimes overtakes us all.

— Michael Ian Black “The Boys Are Not All Right” The New York Times

risk

“She needed to go for it a little bit more,’’ he said. “She needed to risk more.’’

Where on the slope?

“Between the start and the finish,’’ Kildow replied with a grin.

“Just little, little spots,’’ he added. “Just not quite risking enough. Not straightening the line out, just the ski was little … not quite carving in some places like it should have. But a great result. A great result.’’

— Josh Peter “Lindsey Vonn’s father after her bronze medal in downhill: ‘She needed to risk more‘”USA Today

intangible

To bring the intangible to life, the action is continuous, the set is not supposed to be realistic, and the characters are left mysterious, not fully clarified.

— The Morgan Library & Museum “Tennessee Williams: No Refuge but Writing”

dissolving

If this is what American freedom means, if this is what the Constitution entails, if this is where prayer gets us, then it’s easy to understand why millennials — the first generation to be raised on a steady stream of schoolhouse slaughter — barely believe in anything, democracy, American-style liberty, America’s future and organized religion included.

Regular mass gun violence is a particularly American phenomenon, and it’s dissolving society in a particularly American way.

–Elizabeth Bruenig “The latest schoolhouse slaughter shows we have been defeated” The Washington Post

complexity

Action to be successful must rest in the fewest number of hands possible. Nevertheless, now that we are working in the closest partnership with the United States and have also to consider our alliances with Russia and with China, as well as the bonds which unite us with the rest of the 26 United Nations and with our Dominions, it is evident that our system must become far more complex than heretofore.

— Winston Churchill