These snippets mostly come from August 2020. I miss gathering thoughts together like this, and I plan to create more similar posts.
[From John Gottman and James Murray] Negativity threshold: how annoying someone has to be before they provoke an extreme response in their partner.
The people who have the best chance of long-term [relationship] success are actually the people with low negativity thresholds.
"Minimal non-verbal encouragers": the little relational joining pieces, I hear you, keep going, tell me more.
Tilt: you've let an irrelevant emotion into your thought process.
Less certainty, more inquiry. (Eric Seidel)
In this time of disease and uncertainty, the making of artisanal foodstuffs that many people would previously have left to professionals — buying their bread at a bakery, their pickles from a deli, their kimchi from a Korean grocer — has replaced physical fitness as one sign of aspirational care.
Unfortunately, success is Sisyphean (to mix my Greek myths). The goal can’t be satisfied; most people never feel “successful enough.” The high only lasts a day or two, and then it’s on to the next goal. Psychologists call this the hedonic treadmill, in which satisfaction wears off almost immediately and we must run on to the next reward to avoid the feeling of falling behind. This is why so many studies show that successful people are almost invariably jealous of people who are more successful.
Petrichor is a combination of fragrant chemical compounds. Some are from oils made by plants. The main contributor to petrichor are actinobacteria. These tiny microorganisms can be found in rural and urban areas as well as in marine environments. They decompose dead or decaying organic matter into simple chemical compounds which can then become nutrients for developing plants and other organisms.
Acknowledging risk is when something happens outside of your control that influences outcomes and you realize it might happen again. Acknowledging luck is when something happens outside of our control that influences outcomes and you realize it might not happen again.
But this was still a promotion: for a sweatsuit, the brand’s top seller, a “hero item” in industry speak.
The sweatsuit, made of fabric that Sternberg developed from scratch, feels like the sartorial version of a hug.
In my eight months conducting research on French parenting in Paris, I found that the education of taste begins very early in families and is reinforced in daycare centers, where even two-year-olds are served formal, yet relaxed, four-course lunches with an appetizer, main course, cheese plate and dessert.