Some various threads I collected yesterday. Maybe some will be woven together into something else in the future, or maybe they will remain the detritus of intellectual woolgathering.

Who eats first?
-Seth Godin on Status Roles

Adrian Quesada, of Black Pumas fame, sharing a sentiment I totally understand ( the MPC2000 is a music sampler that was pivotal to hip-hop):

Because of the sound of the drums of an MPC2000, that’s how I want drums to sound all the time. As much as I used to listen to Guns n' Roses when I was a kid, I don’t hear the drums like that. I hear the drums like Pete Rock… The drums, I want them to sound like a hip-hop drummer.

Wisdom from poet Ron Padgett’s How to Be Perfect:

Make eye contact with a tree.
…
Don’t expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want to.
…
Meditate on the spiritual. Then go a little further, if you feel like it.
What is out (in) there?
…
Contemplate everything’s opposite.
…
Keep your childish self alive.
…
In later life, become a mystic.

Want more poetry? Try these Selected Legends of Andre the Giant. Or this Poem.

Ido Portal’s Squat Challenge: spend 30 minutes a day in a full squat position. No weights. Not (necessarily) all at one time. Just hang out down there for a bit a few times a day.

We are in the midst of an epidemic of appearance anxiety (likely due to the visual obsession of our culture). Cosmetic surgery, and other cosmetic procedures, is on the rise. The British Association of Plastic Surgeons attributes this rise to reality shows (like Love Island and athleisure wear. “So you have your cosmetic surgery to get the body that looks good in the clothes that you wear to go to the gym.” via Clare Chambers on the Philosophy Bites podcast.

From The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch 📚:

“AN OLD Camorri proverb has it that the only constant in the soul of man is inconstancy;

Fancy a joke? And this interview with my new guitar obsession: Derek Bailey.