Weekly bookmarks #1

Recently I rewrote my blog publishing system from scratch, named it Oxypogon and returned to the idea of blogging regularly. But what about should I write if no great article is finished yet but there’s blog, and it is waiting? Certainly about things that are worth reading, seeing and knowing about.

To read

• The subtle art of not giving a fuck. This is a rather rude but still pretty straightforward and honest writing on a very interesting subject of paying attention and chosing an object for it, written by Mark Manson. I personally think that not giving a fuck to unimportant matters makes the essential base of feeling happy and living a life with a purpose.

• How to self-promote your opensource project. An accidental piece of somebody’s thoughts on subject which I came to while searching the web for ways to make Oxypogon have at least 10 stars on github (you definitely can help by starring it!). The author tells us about promotion, networking and sharing experiences in social networks and other well-known truths of modern world that I tend to think about too seldom.

• How do you know you’re not living in a computer simulation. A small discourse about the close-mindness and limits of human beings’ cosciousness to the physical feelings that, obviously, can be falsified with ease and cause the mind to be fooled with just a model of reality. It is very superficial, but yet interesting because of Descartes’s famous “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) citation.

• About conditional relationships. Another one Mark Manson’s article. Frighteningly and suddenly it made me thinking about different relationships in my life (and I’m neither 15 nor even 20!). If you’ve ever had a relationship that hadn’t met your expectations by some reason, this article has a relatively big chance to give you something to think about.

• In defense of being average. Mark is my hero for the last week! This topic makes the most important one of my deliberate fears for many-many years: almost animal fear of being average or even looking average. If you have anything similar to this mental-social disease (and I think, chances are you have) then read it rapidly, then read it thoughtfully, then tell your friends, argue for it, hate it and repeat the whole thing twice. Being an average seems to be a good result, claims Mark, and in his article he describes why.

Mark Manson’s site can be a remarkably interesting for any English learner (like me) because of his natural language with slang and moreover, the audio versions available for all of the articles.

To watch

I often used to say “I don’t like movies because they’re just loss of time“, but there are so many ways to lose time and much less ways to feel thoughtful (like with the first movie) or playful (like with the second one).

• Pi, by Darren Aronofsky. Director who’s name I even cannot write correctly in English started his career with a movie about paranoid matematician searching for a system in the outside world that can predict the future. It looks very interesting to me, especially after the mainstream bullshit like “Dead Pool” or “Batman vs Superman” (sorry Darren for this awful comparison).

• Café Society, by Woody Allen. The more movies by W. Allen I watch, the more I like them (and him personally). Glorious characters, perfect dialogs, great music and picture combined with a lightweight story make the perfect watch. It’s such a pity his movies are not endless! However, if there would be no end, eventually anyone would find himself in a Woody Allen’s simulation of life just sitting there and watching the story happens.

Why did I publish this list

I’m learning English, and unfortunately I cannot understand spoken language well enough yet to see feature movies with original audio without constantly staring at the subtitles. My writing skills are also lame in both legs, therefore I hope those bookmarks will not only help you to find something worthy but also serve me in practicing writing.