Weekend Thoughts - 10.28.17

Image by Mydhili Bayyapunedi, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. A big change is coming soon to New York City's Metro: the MetroCard will be replaced with a more modern way to pay transit fares. The new payment options will support Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay in addition to "contactless cards" (credit and debit cards that use near-field communication technology). Not only will this be a more seamless method of paying for a ride on the Metro, it will also be more secure than traditional credit and debit cards, which do not use the same level of encryption as the modern forms of payments do.

2. If you're looking for some guidance in your own self-reflection practice, it may be worth checking out these thought-provoking questions from clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson. The goal is to spend some time thinking about your own answers for each question, thus becoming more in touch with the person that you currently are and the ideal version of yourself that you would like to strive to become. 

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 9.9.17

Image by Waywuwei, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Elon Musk is a busy man. He's involved in the SpaceX project, Tesla Inc., SolarCity, and much more. Over Labor Day Weekend he tweetstormed his prediction that artificial intelligence (not North Korea) will be the cause of World War III. It's not a long read—probably only a minute or two—but it's worth considering, as it's something that could potentially affect us all in the near future.

2. I was featured in a roundup post on Self Development Secrets this past week that covered The Best Self-Help Books that you might like to check out. My choice was What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard N. Bolles, which I found very helpful for my career and personal life when I first read it three years ago. If you've never heard of it before, give it a shot—I really enjoyed the "Flower Exercise" chapter which has several exercises that are designed to help the reader identify their favorite fields of interest, preferred kinds of people to work with, transferable skills, preferred salary range and desired level of responsibility, preferred places to live, and personalized goal, purpose, or mission in life. Thank you to Self Development Secrets for reaching out to me and asking me to write a blurb for their post!

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 8.19.17

Image by neonow, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Earlier this year I wrote about the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets that were found orbiting an ultra-cool star. At the time, three of the planets were thought to live in a habitable zone, which meant that they might have oceans of their own that could have harbored life. However, new evidence shows that the TRAPPIST-1 star-system may be too old to have life, after all. The age isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself, but it increases the chance that any habitable planets would have lost their atmospheres and water to high-energy radiation that would've pummeled them for billions of years. As I wrote back in February, the search for life outside our own solar system continues...

2. Creative people face a unique set of toxic habits that can harm their creative process. This article is a good reminder of how to deal with these habits and keep being creative!

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 8.5.17

Image by bernissimo, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. All's not well in the world of Bitcoin. A recent community feud split the cryptocurrency in two—the original Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. At the core of the argument was the decision of how to handle the increasing amount of transactions that Bitcoin needs to handle to continue growing. Bitcoin Cash may or may not stick around for the long haul—this will be one to keep an eye on.

2. Confirmation bias is the phenomenon in which humans seek out evidence to confirm what they already believe, while ignoring information that would discredit those beliefs. As a way of countering that, this article suggests an exercise that we can all do that will have us assessing our thoughts, beliefs, and more so that we can work to become the best version of ourselves that we can possibly be. Give it a try!

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Book Review - Decomposing The Shadow

After seeing James W. Jesso's byline on several articles on the web and stumbling across his podcast Adventures Through The Mind (highly recommended, by the way!), I decided to check out his book Decomposing The Shadow: Lessons from the Psilocybin Mushroom. I went into my reading experience with little understanding about what the book is all about, but from Jesso's descriptions of the book in the early podcast episodes, I knew that he considers psilocybin mushrooms to be his primary plant teacher and that the book is an attempt to develop a conceptual framework that can be used to better put into language the psychedelic experience.

The first part of the book covers his personal experiences with psychedelics, including a strong focus on the relationship that he has developed with psilocybin mushrooms. Jesso then goes into an brief explanation of magic mushrooms and a concise history of psychedelics, covering topics like Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna, the Good Friday Experiment, Ram Dass, and the psychedelic sixties. The middle section of the book is titled A Conceptual Framework, and it attempts to build a vocabulary of terms that can be used to define various aspects of the psychedelic experience. This section is definitely valuable, but it was a bit too academically-oriented for me and didn't hold my interest the same way a truly captivating piece of writing does. However, I did find it to be helpful for understanding various parts of a psychedelic experience and may incorporate some of the defined terms into my own psychedelic language. Ultimately, this particular section just felt a bit too textbook-like to me. The last few sections of the book focus on obtaining value from one's experiences and miscellaneous commentary about psychedelic-related topics, including an intriguing analogy between the psychedelic experience and the Dagobah scene from Empire Strikes Back that I quite enjoyed.

So—should you read this book? If you're interested in learning new terms to describe your psychedelic experiences, the history of psychedelics, spiritual work, or the formative psychedelic experiences that the author had, then the answer is yes. However, if you're not into any of those things then you may not get much out of this one. Ultimately, I found it to be a really well-written book and I'll definitely be checking out the rest of the author's works.

4/5 stars. 154 pages.