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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • You’re likely thinking of this quote from a 1981 BBC interview in the series The Pleasure of Finding Things Out:

    “I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say, ‘Look how beautiful it is,’ and I’ll agree. Then he says, ‘I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.’

    I think he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.

    At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at a smaller dimension.

    The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting — it means that insects can see the color.

    It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds.

    I don’t understand how it subtracts.”















  • Network in person as much as possible. Not just traditional networking events, but if you can do things around your hobbies and interests, but mention to folks what your career / job targets are that’s a way to find “ins.”

    I got a great job in tech strategy because of a public speaking course. I made sure my speech topics leaned towards my career interests and chatted with a fellow student who was an exec assistant which led to the job.

    I know it can feel like a crap shoot, but if you speak up around people who feel connected to you, it’s likely at least some of them will want to help.





  • You might want to revisit it. She does provide a number of different ways to try dealing with them (including distancing yourself as one approach), and your own relationship tendencies. That’s what the last couple chapters are all about, actionable next steps. I personally walked away with a few new mental and behavioral approaches to try.

    Nor does she characterize them (us?) into two groups, in fact she goes out of her way to explain that nearly every person this applies to has a mix of traits of differing degrees from internalizing and externalizing attributes. She also provides a number of exercises for helping to self-identify where you (and your parents) fall in the mix of various experiences, attributes, and behaviors. I didn’t take away any “good” / “bad” connotations, but rather various examples throughout the spectrum (including the extremes) of how abuse and reactions thereafter can vary greatly.

    I interpreted it as her personal experience comes from her professional training, and treating many others. Granted she doesn’t say anything about her own parents, but honestly that would seem unprofessional to me if she had made it about herself.

    I’m not sure what form it would take, in terms of sympathy from a psychology book, but she didn’t seem unsympathetic to me, just straightforward and sticking to facts.

    Granted, I spent $0 on it since it was a library book. $35 does seem steep. I’d say like $15 would be appropriate.