The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy

"Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction. A thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation."

You can buy it here

or download it here.

Stories Matter : John Green Style

"It is absolutely exhausting and infuriating and the more I let myself be stuck inside of [my body prison] the less I am able to acknowledge and celebrate the humanity of others or those who are distant from me who are fundamentally "other" the more the problems of people who live far away or live in circumstances that are different than mine feel like they are 'not my problems' . . .

Fiction for me, stories for me, are the only way out of that, out of this prison that I'm stuck inside of.

I can live inside the lives of someone else for a while. . ." 

 

Stories Matter.

One Book Which Changed My Life Forever

Sorry, I couldn’t come up with “50 GREAT READS TO SUPERCHARGE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY.”

Instead, here is the first book which changed my life forever. There have been others, of course, but you never forget the first time.

The book which had the most change on my life was The Bridge to Terabithia.

Picture this — I am a young, nerdy 5th grader walking into a class full of rowdy kids. (Yes, even at age 11, I thought they were rowdy). They stampeded through the hallways. I sat and read.

Our teacher tasked us with a wonderful book about woods and magical creatures. I soaked in the world. I traveled with the two main characters (no, I don’t remember their names, and I’m not going to google them to sound smarter).

This book pulled me in. I can’t remember an earlier experience which so engaged my heart, soul, and mind.

I didn’t just read the book, I was IN the book.

Pure nirvana.

AND THEN.

I read ahead of the chapters for the day. This was not a new thing. I remember flipping over the pages happily, wondering what mischief would happen next.

Here’s what happened next:

The girl died.

SHE DIED.

She crushed her head on a stupid rock, and she died. A needless, pointless, useless tragedy. Later, the boy character ate pancakes or something.

I couldn’t understand — how could she have died? Kids my age don’t die, even in books. They are invincible. If she died, would I die? Would everyone in my classroom die?

I finished the book in a daze. I walked across the room, trying to get to the bathroom.

The teacher grabbed my arm before I could make it out the door.

“Todd, are you okay?”

I wrenched my eyes shut and nodded my head, trying to prevent the inevitable. Then, I dropped my head to my chin and released the raw emotion which had been clawing its way out of my ribs and up my throat for the last hour. There, in front of all my friends and classmates, I squalled like a baby.

A book made me feel this way.

On that day, I learned words have the ability to change the way you think. I learned stories are more powerful, sometimes, than actual experiences. I learned reading ahead is not always the best idea.

Most importantly, I learned art can make you feel. It can make you think. It can create an emotion — not the fleeting emotion of a thought, but one deep enough and strong enough to change a life forever. One so powerful you tell strangers on the Internet about it 16 years later.

Words matter. Stories matter.

And they always will.

— TB

Repost from Todd Brison

These Algerian women were forced to remove their veils to be photographed in 1960

THEIR PORTRAITS ARE PROBLEMATIC, BUT STUNNING

If looks could kill, then a camera aimed at an unwilling subject is an instrument of torture.

Marc Garanger knew this in Algeria, in 1960 when he was tasked by his commanding French army officer with snapping ID photos of their female prisoners. France was six years into supressing a guerrilla war for independence in the north African colony, and Muslim and Berber villagers were being arrested en masse for suspected ties to the insurgent National Liberation Front. As his regiment’s official photographer, Garanger made thousands of portraits of rural women against their will. Many of them were forced to remove their headscarves and veils for the photo, revealing themselves for the first time to the hostile gaze of strange men.

Their observer, Garanger was also their oppressor.

For more of this article and Rian Dundon's work, click here.

The World of Languages in Simple Infographics

THIS CIRCLE WAS CREATED by Alberto Lucas Lopez for the South China Morning Post. It’s an easy way to wrap your head around the 4.1 billion people around the world who speak (as their native tongue) one of 23 of the world’s most-spoken languages.

Isaac Asimov : How to Never Run Out of Ideas . . .

If there’s one word to describe Isaac Asimov, it’s “prolific”.

To match the number of novels, letters, essays and other scribblings Asimov produced in his lifetime, you would have to write a full-length novel every two weeks for 25 years.

Why was Asimov able to have so many good ideas when the rest of us seem to only have 1 or 2 in a lifetime? To find out, I looked into Asimov’s autobiography, It’s Been a Good Life.

Asimov wasn’t born writing 8 hours a day 7 days a week. He tore up pages, he got frustrated and he failed over and over and over again. In his autobiography, Asimov shares the tactics and strategies he developed to never run out of ideas again.

Let’s steal everything we can.

1. NEVER STOP LEARNING

Asimov wasn’t just a science fiction writer. He had a PhD in chemistry from Columbia. He wrote on physics. He wrote on ancient history. Hell, he even wrote a book on the Bible.

Why was he able to write so widely in an age of myopic specialization?

Unlike modern day “professionals”, Asimov’s learning didn’t end with a degree—

“I couldn’t possibly write the variety of books I manage to do out of the knowledge I had gained in school alone. I had to keep a program of self-education in process. My library of reference books grew and I found I had to sweat over them in my constant fear that I might misunderstand a point that to someone knowledgeable in the subject would be a ludicrously simple one.”

To have good ideas, we need to consume good ideas too. The diploma isn’t the end. If anything, it’s the beginning.

Growing up, Asimov read everything —

“All this incredibly miscellaneous reading, the result of lack of guidance, left its indelible mark. My interest was aroused in twenty different directions and all those interests remained. I have written books on mythology, on the Bible, on Shakespeare, on history, on science, and so on.”

Read widely. Follow your curiosity. Never stop investing in yourself.

2. DON’T FIGHT THE STUCK

It’s refreshing to know that, like myself, Asimov often got stuck —

Frequently, when I am at work on a science-fiction novel, I find myself heartily sick of it and unable to write another word.

Getting stuck is normal. It’s what happens next, our reaction, that separates the professional from the amateur.

Asimov didn’t let getting stuck stop him. Over the years, he developed a strategy…

I don’t stare at blank sheets of paper. I don’t spend days and nights cudgeling a head that is empty of ideas. Instead, I simply leave the novel and go on to any of the dozen other projects that are on tap. I write an editorial, or an essay, or a short story, or work on one of my nonfiction books. By the time I’ve grown tired of these things, my mind has been able to do its proper work and fill up again. I return to my novel and find myself able to write easily once more.

When writing this article, I got so frustrated that I dropped it and worked on other projects for 2 weeks. Now that I’ve created space, everything feels much, much easier.

The brain works in mysterious ways. By stepping aside, finding other projects and actively ignoring something, our subconscious creates space for ideas to grow.

3. BEWARE THE RESISTANCE

All creatives — be they entrepreneurs, writers or artists — know the fear of giving shape to ideas. Once we bring something into the world, it’s forever naked to rejection and criticism by millions of angry eyes.

Sometimes, after publishing an article, I am so afraid that I will actively avoid all comments and email correspondence…

This fear is the creative’s greatest enemy. In the The War of Art, Steven Pressfield gives the fear a name.

He calls it Resistance.

Asimov knows the Resistance too —

The ordinary writer is bound to be assailed by insecurities as he writes. Is the sentence he has just created a sensible one? Is it expressed as well as it might be? Would it sound better if it were written differently? The ordinary writer is therefore always revising, always chopping and changing, always trying on different ways of expressing himself, and, for all I know, never being entirely satisfied.

Self-doubt is the mind-killer.

I am a relentless editor. I’ve probably tweaked and re-tweaked this article a dozen times. It still looks like shit. But I must stop now, or I’ll never publish at all.

The fear of rejection makes us into “perfectionists”. But that perfectionism is just a shell. We draw into it when times are hard. It gives us safety… The safety of a lie.

The truth is, all of us have ideas. Little seeds of creativity waft in through the windowsills of the mind. The difference between Asimov and the rest of us is that we reject our ideas before giving them a chance.

After all, never having ideas means never having to fail.

4. LOWER YOUR STANDARDS

Asimov was fully against the pursuit of perfectionism. Trying to get everything right the first time, he says, is a big mistake.

Instead, get the basics down first —

Think of yourself as an artist making a sketch to get the composition clear in his mind, the blocks of color, the balance, and the rest. With that done, you can worry about the fine points.

Don’t try to paint the Mona Lisa on round one. Lower your standards. Make a test product, a temporary sketch or a rough draft.

At the same time, Asimov stresses self-assurance —

[A writer] can’t sit around doubting the quality of his writing. Rather, he has to love his own writing. I do.

Believe in your creations. This doesn’t mean you have to make the best in the world on every try. True confidence is about pushing boundaries, failing miserably, and having the strength to stand back up again.

We fail. We struggle. And that is why we succeed.

5. MAKE MORE STUFF

Interestingly, Asimov also recommends making MORE things as a cure for perfectionism —

By the time a particular book is published, the [writer] hasn’t much time to worry about how it will be received or how it will sell. By then he has already sold several others and is working on still others and it is these that concern him. This intensifies the peace and calm of his life.

If you have a new product coming out every few weeks, you simply don’t have time to dwell on failure.

This is why I try to write multiple articles a week instead of focusing on one “perfect” piece. It hurts less when something flops. Diversity is insurance of the mind.

6. THE SECRET SAUCE

A struggling writer friend of Asimov’s once asked him, “Where do you get your ideas?”

Asimov replied, “By thinking and thinking and thinking till I’m ready to kill myself. […] Did you ever think it was easy to get a good idea?”

Many of his nights were spent alone with his mind —

I couldn’t sleep last night so I lay awake thinking of an article to write and I’d think and think and cry at the sad parts. I had a wonderful night.

Nobody ever said having ideas was going to be easy.

If it were, it wouldn’t be worth doing.

REPOST FROM CHARLES CHU

Lunch Atop a Skyscraper

"As part of Time magazine’s recent selection of the 100 most influential photos of all time, art historian Christine Roussel talks about the story behind the iconic Lunch Atop a Skyscraper photograph of a group of construction workers on their lunch break. Interestingly, no one knows for sure who the workers were and who actually took the photograph."

A REPOST FROM KOTTKE.ORG

How to be brave: some stories about courage

Laura Olin runs the Everything Changes mailing list for The Awl and she asked her readers “about a time they’d been brave” (or perhaps when they’d wished they had been). Here are some of their answers.

I was raised in a pretty abusive household. When I was 14, I found a boarding school three thousand miles away, applied in secret, got a full scholarship, and left home. I haven’t lived at home since and have made it ten years later fully supporting myself in a city I love, a job I love, friends/community that I love. I sometimes think about that now, packing up everything and moving across the country without any support and building a new life for myself through a lot of luck and other people’s help, and know I probably couldn’t do it again. I left the worse place for paradise, both handed-out and self-made, and there’s nothing I’m prouder of.

Some regretted not having courage at times:

A few months ago, some coworkers made some antisemitic jokes in a team chat channel. I quit the channel and started looking for (and since found) a new job, but I didn’t say anything. I’ve thought about that time I didn’t say anything literally every day since. I wish I had been a better person.

Repost from Jason Kottke  

2016, The Year in Photos

Brexit, climate change, Trump, Syria, white nationalism, Turkey, racism and police violence, the Flint water crisis, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, drowned migrants. I was tempted to just post a photo of a burning dumpster or the this is fine dog and leave it at that. But professional photographers and the agencies & publications that employ them are essential in bearing witness to the atrocities and injustices and triumphs and breakthroughs of the world and helping us understand what’s happening out there. It’s worth seeking out what they saw this year.

Several sites, publications, and agencies have published lists of the best and most newsworthy photos of the year. Among them are In Focus’ Top 25 News Photos of 2016as well as their three-part 2016: The Year in Photos (part 1, part 2, part 3), National Geographic’s The 52 Best Photographs of 2016, Time’s Top 100 Photos of the Year 2016, AFP’s Pictures of the Year (part 1, part 2, part 3), 2016: The Year in Photos from CNN, Pictures of the Year 2016 from Reuters, the AP’s Top Photos of 2016, some of the top images from the World Press Photo exhibition, which “highlights the best photojournalism of the year”, The Top Photos of 2016 from Maclean’s, and The Best Weird and Wonderful Photos of 2016 from totallycoolpix.com.

I’ve selected five of my favorite photos from these lists and included them above. From top to bottom, the photographers are Jonathan Bachman, Brent Stirton, Kai Pfaffenbach, Anuar Patjane Floriuk, and Mahmoud Raslan. The top photo, by Bachman, pictures the arrest of Ieshia Evans while protesting the death of Alton Sterling by the Baton Rouge police and is just flat-out amazing. In a piece for The Guardian, Evans wrote:

When the armored officers rushed at me, I had no fear. I wasn’t afraid. I was just wondering: “How do these people sleep at night?” Then they put me in a van and drove me away. Only hours later did someone explain that I was arrested for obstructing a highway.

There’s so much fear in that photo — institutional fear, racial fear, societal fear — but none of it is coming from Evans. Total hero.

Update: Buzzfeed shares The 46 Most Powerful Photos of 2016 and the BBC has the 15 finalists in the 2016 Art of Building architectural photography competition.

A REPOST FROM KOTTKE.ORG