#learntounderstand

I am so tired of men thinking women are gods gift to them. An object to be cast aside and ridiculed solely because they are a woman. The fact that when a women says no to sex they are answered with “do you know who I am?” And “ you missed your shot”. No honey, I dodged a bullet with you. I am not the one that is fake because I decided that sex with you wouldn’t be healthy. You are the fake one. You are the one who made me think you could be a good guy but in fact you fall into a stereotype all of your own. I am sorry for you. I am sorry that you grew up believing a person is there to only please you. I am sorry that you don’t understand how you don’t have a right to my body. I am NOT sorry that I popped this bubble for you. I am NOT sorry that I put my own wishes and self-love over pleasing you with what’s between my legs. I hope you grow.

Happy Friday!

I hope that you have had a wonderful week and are looking forward to the weekend. My father’s birthday was this past Wednesday, and we are celebrating this Saturday! I am extremely grateful to be able to work alongside my father and to learn from him. He is a man of integrity, compassion, hope, and constant learning. And I love him deeply.

I have a fun list of people, music, helpful bits and even some photos for your weekend.

Enjoy!

People

·      Liza Minnelli, the one and only - YouTube, Liza Minnelli just seems like such a fascinating lady. This was such a neat, short interview with her and Jane Pauley.

·      David McCullough, award-winning writer and ‘voice of American history,’ dies at 89 (msn.com), “So many people have been led to believe — often, unfortunately, by the experience of dreary teaching — that ‘history’ and ‘boring’ are synonymous,” Mr. McCullough said in a 2005 Globe interview. “To me, it’s the reverse. The wonderful thing about almost any subject in history is, if you scratch the surface, you find life. It’s all around us.” Do yourself a favor and check out any of his books, so enjoyable and well done. My personal favorite is John Adams, which the HBO series was based upon. Here is another lovely article on his life’s work.

·      Motown songwriter Lamont Dozier has died at age 81 : NPR, Mr. Dozier was part of the songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland who was mostly responsible for the sound of Motown. Here’s a short list of some of their most well-known hits:

o   Martha Reeves & The Vandellas ~ Heat Wave (1963) - YouTube

o   The Supremes - Stop! In The Name of Love [The Hollywood Palace - 1965] - YouTube

o   Four Tops - Reach Out (I'll Be There) (1967) HD 0815007 - YouTube

o   Supremes - Baby Love 1964 - YouTube

o   The Supremes: You Can't Hurry Love - Original (Take 1) - YouTube

o   Locking Up My Heart - Marvelettes - YouTube

 Fun

·      DelMarVa: little gray squirrels born July 25, 2022 to Hana the squirrel 🇺🇸🎗🇺🇦 - YouTube, watch these tiny little baby squirrels!

Music

·      This is an amazing cover of Metallica "NOTHING ELSE MATTERS" | 12-String Acoustic Guitar Cover - YouTube, this guy is so enjoyable to watch. And, just in case you need the original, here you go Metallica: Nothing Else Matters (Official Music Video) - YouTube

·      Wagakki Band / Bring Me To Life with Amy Lee of EVANESCENCE - YouTube, I have long enjoyed Amy Lee’s incredibly powerful voice. Here she is doing Evanescence’s most well known song with Wagakki Band, a Japanese band that combines rock with traditional Japanese musical instruments, it’s beautiful!

·      Ludovico Einaudi: Tiny Desk Concert - YouTube, I find Ludovico’s music to be inquisitive, joyful, thought provoking, and at times mournful. This 21 minute tiny desk concert is perfect for infusing your day with peaceful joy.

Helpful

·      Apple Notes: Power User Tips & Hidden Features - YouTube, I am 100% not great at utilizing my phone to actually help me. So, I had no clue that Apple Notes had so many capabilities until my dad let me know. Check out this short video on how to best use it.

I have gathered some bits and bobs of history and music for you today. I hope that you enjoy and maybe find out something you hadn’t known before!

 I have always found the idea that history progresses on an upward trajectory to be a fascinating yet highly misleading concept. By all accounts it is an ever-changing line that dips and soars and dips and stays level…so judging a different period of time upon our own, is unwise and leads to confusion. Researchers still don’t know the exact way that the Egyptians built the pyramids and it’s been almost 5,000 years since the first one was built. They do have some ideas of how those enormous blocks of limestone were perfectly cut and placed into the shape that creates a pyramid, but not a one and done this is it idea.

All of that paragraph to show you this fascinating article from the BBC titled, “Stonehenge: Did ancient ‘machine’ move stones from Wales?” A Denbighshire man, Steven Tasker, is a lover of Ancient Egypt and was looking to explain how the pyramids were built. At the same time he realized that it could also easily explain how Stonehenge as well as other similar sites were built. It is a fascinating concept, one that hasn’t been proven, yet from an engineering point of view appears reasonable. Tasker has even built a prototype that you can see in the article.

"Steve's experiments give a different perspective into how ancient people were able to plan paths of least resistance, and to manipulate natural forces," he added.”  

All My Life by K-Ci & JoJo is in my top 100 favorite music list. It’s one song that I can listen to on repeat and not tire of it. Korean Soul is currently on America’s Got Talent and they performed this song for their audition. And it is a beautiful cover, the harmonization is amazing. Both versions are worth checking out!

This almost two-minute video of New York City in the late 1920s is amazing! You can see a lot of the architecture and all of the people and vendors on the street, in a lot of ways it seems to stay the same.

I may be late to the game, which would not surprise me at all. But I just found out that Martin Scorsese is making a film version of “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Tantoo Cardinal plays Lizzie in the film and her acting is always impeccable.

If you’ve never read David Grann’s book “Killers of the Flower Moon, The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” it would be well worth your time. It resides on my shelf of “favorite” books. This is an important story, one that should be told and understood in its complexity. The very true story contains a fascinating cast of characters involved in a devastating tale. Here’s an excerpt from the book jacket, if this doesn’t spur you to want to read it, I don’t know what will! “In the 1920’s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. One by one the Osage began to be killed off, with the family of one Osage woman becoming the prime target. As the death toll climbed to more than 24, the relatively new FBI took over. It was one of the organization’s first major homicide cases but the bureau badly bungled the investigation. J. Edgar Hoover turned to a former Texas Ranger to put together an undercover team, including an American Indian agent in the bureau. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.”

Studying history and the juxtaposition of evil and greed often residing right along with hope and love has always drawn me to the stories of those who came before us. If you would like to learn more about the Osage Nation, you can check out their website here and their IG here.

Regarding habits, I have found and or been sent several really good articles recently about habits. And I thought that I would share a few with you. The first is “How the Stages of Change Model Helps to Change Your Habits.” This tagline from the article was enough to get me to read it, “The Stages of Change Model explains the science behind personal transformation. You’ll discover how and why some changes stick, while others don’t last, and how long it takes to build new habits.” The second was in titled, “4 Habits of Truly Self-Aware People.” Being self aware is not simply a personality trait, like many things it is a trait that can be learned and grown. “Why the Illusion of Control is Hurting Your Goals,” is one that I found helpful. The article goes into explaining the fallacy of the illusion of control and better ways to circumvent that.

Bad Company’s Shooting Star has been on repeat, something about that beat and the story. In my personal opinion, one can never go wrong with The Rolling Stones and Paint it Black is one of my favorites. And one more classic for your weekend, Steve Winwood’s Back in the High Life Again.  

I don’t know about you but I have a running conversation in my head at all times. At times, the conversation is good and beneficial. At other times though, it becomes all-encompassing and useless. Words matter, words that we speak to others have power and I would say what we speak to ourselves has equal power.

Jon Acuff released a book last week titled, “Soundtracks, The Surprising Solution to Overthinking.” On the book jacket the second sentence caught me, “ It’s (overthinking) the sneakiest form of fear.” This resonates with me because I have been working to combat fear in my own life since 2019 and it is long, arduous work. I haven’t begun the book, I am waiting to go on a trip this week and use that time to read it. Here is one more quote from the book that I find imperative, “Replacing your soundtracks is about identifying what soundtracks you’ve been listening to and then owning the responsibility of changing them.” If you’ve read the book or plan to, I would enjoy hearing your thoughts and what you’ve learned from changing the soundtracks you have on repeat.   

 I am including four videos of music:

 1.    Siúil a Rúin (feat. The O’Neill Sisters | The Hound + The Fox

 2.    The Legend of Ashitaka / Princess Mononoke (Shakuhachi / Piano Cover)

 3.    The Rocky Road to Dublin – The Ramparts

 4.    DISNEY goes HEAVY ROCK | with Our Last Night

 Three videos of live bird feeds:

 1.    Live HD – Hornbill, Wood hoopoes, Coucal, Loeries, Bushbaby, Genet, Fruit Bat and more (50+ Species)

 2.    Redding California Eagles Live Nest Webcam

 3.    Live Allen’s Hummingbird Nest Cam: Hummingbird Babies from Hatch to Fledge

 AND

Three short (5 minutes) videos from TED-Ed on YouTube:

 1.    Which type of milk is best for you? – Jonathan J. O’Sullivan & Grace E. Cunningham

 2.    The surprising secrets of hummingbird flight – Kristiina J. Hurme and Alejandro Rico-Guevara

 3.    Why should you read Edgar Allan Poe? – Scott Peeples

In a very round-about sort of way I found this article on distraction yesterday…perhaps because I was actually distracted.  “Indistractable. Stop blaming technology - distraction starts within. Manage your inner triggers to enjoy greater focus and a fuller life.”

It isn’t merely a piece on the evils of technology and how distracting it is…blah, blah, blah. It’s a piece that delves into the root causes of distraction and how we can “easily” combat our distraction. Nir even has a guide on the side of what you “need to know,” “what to do,” “key point,” “learn more,” and “links & books.”  

Here are some quotes from the article that I found particularly helpful:

o   Distraction, in other words, is a symptom of a problem – not the problem itself.

o   The good news is that there’s something paradoxical about discomfort: it’s actually the best tool we have for evolving and developing as a species. (This I believe wholeheartedly, I have seen it at work in my own life.)

o   Writing in 2001, the American psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues observed: ‘If satisfaction and pleasure were permanent, there might be little incentive to continue seeking further benefits or advances.’ If we didn’t feel bad, in other words, we’d never achieve good.

o   10-minute rule; The point is to anticipate the internal trigger and then intercept it with a new routine rather than allowing yourself to slink away into doing something you didn’t intend to do. Reframe, reframe, reframe.

o   The issue, as I’ve pointed out before, isn’t principally the technology itself or social media. It’s getting to the root causes of what leads us to be distracted in the first place.

Also, here are the key points from Nir’s article, that are all worth reading more in-depth:

o   Master your internal triggers

o   Make time for traction

o   Hack back external triggers

o   Prevent distractions with pacts

How well do you know strangers?

 The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight is the belief that I know you inside and out, all of your dreams, hopes, fears, weird tics, how you really want to be able to dance like Patrick Swayze, etc. but, you don’t know me at all, I am too nuanced of a human for you to peg down. You probably even think my favorite color is pink.

Better explained,” It is “the conviction that we know others better…