Worth — Discover

Holly Wren Spaulding reflects on making art: “These acts originate in my commitment, my pact with myself, to pay attention to life — my one and only life — and the little world I inhabit.”

via Worth — Discover

Can your biome make you fat? — ideas.ted.com

Is there a correlation between your biome and your BMI? In her new book, Why Diets Make Us Fat, neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt sheds light on this tangled, cryptic relationship. There seems to be little doubt that the diet book of 2016 is Sandra Aamodt’s Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession with…

via Can your biome make you fat? — ideas.ted.com

What To Say When You Find Out Your Kid’s A Rapist

Inspired by a book on silence, a director set out kko explore and capture its many manifestations on film. The problem? Silence is much more slippery than he realized. Even before the omnipresent cacophony of modern life, people were seeking, pondering and preaching the elusive refuge of silence. It’s a key component of virtually every…

via Putting silence under the microscope — ideas.ted.com

Catharsis of Mundanity

In the spring, my family opens up our summer house in Edgartown. There’s much to do, some of it simple–turning on the wifi, calling the cable company, putting the screens on the windows…

Source: Catharsis of Mundanity

The Humanities Are Not “Frivolous” — Discover

At Zócalo Public Square, Irina Dumitrescu argues against the notion that a liberal arts education is a luxury, sharing stories of political prisoners whose knowledge of languages and poetry proved crucial to their survival.

via The Humanities Are Not “Frivolous” — Discover

I am not your monkey: on motherhood, art, and presumptuous bullshit

Natalia A.

The other day it happened again.

I was talking to a friend about the eternal issue of having kids/not having kids, when the friend said something like,

“I guess I just care too much about art and changing society for the better. Who has time for that when they have a child?”

**beat**

“I mean, I guess you do, Natalia. Well, sort of, right? I assume you’d be able to do so much more with your life if you weren’t a mother.”

**beat**

“I mean, there’s no harm in admitting it. Right? You don’t have to admit it publicly. You can admit it to me. Yes?”

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Abandon hope

The Trailhead

Chimpanzee contemplates nature of life, thinks “Well, shit.”

My mother is always the first to notice when I’m not writing. “February 5 was your last post,” she pointed out during lunch last week. I appreciate this. She notices.

In that vein, I want to dispense with one issue upfront: It has been suggested (not by my mother) that the occasional long gaps between my posts indicate I’m insufficiently “serious” about writing. I always despaired a little at that, because it felt unfair. At the same time, I always feared it was true.

But I’ve found that when we interrogate the assumptions behind our fears, and follow the what-if trail to its conclusion, we can find clarity. And I’ve realized it is true. There are many things I take more seriously than writing. Understanding, feeling, processing, life, and honesty are all more important to me than simply stringing words together. These things…

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of downward dogs and life lessons

chanyado

The Lion

I am five years old. My mum has gone mad. Sitting on her heels, fingers splayed out on each knee, her eyes bulge out, pupils rolling back into her head. Her mouth is wide open, so wide I am worried her skin may start to rip at the corners. Her tongue sticks out as if she is trying to catch raindrops. She breathes in. When she breathes out, a long aggressive ‘haaaaaaa’ comes out of her mouth. I am terrified. This is my first introduction to yoga.

Kapalbathi

My grandfather spends several minutes everyday sitting cross-legged on the floor doing a series of breathing exercises. He forcefully thrusts his stomach out and extends it as if he is mimicking being pregnant. And then all of a sudden it snaps all the way back in disappearing into his spine. His tummy undulates like a rippling fleshy wave, in and…

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Why women still get killed for love — ideas.ted.com

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, who won the 2016 Oscar for Best Documentary Short, explains why she feels it’s her duty to focus on topics others shy away from … like honor killings. Film has a way of revealing the soul of each person you see onscreen, giving a human face to issues that might otherwise only…

via Why women still get killed for love — ideas.ted.com