Even though I’d spent the five years since moving to New York designing costumes for Off-Broadway plays and had just been hired by Saturday Night Live, I was nervous, because I was in awe of his talent. I’d seen him in Boogie Nights and Happiness, and he blew me out of the water with his willingness to make himself so vulnerable and to play fucked-up characters with such honesty and heart.

There is way too much tragedy bound up in genius. My theory about this is that a genius has no off switch. They are always on another level, and this is not sustainable. I suspect drugs approximate an off switch and that is why so many artists struggle with addiction.

There is more to saying “uh” and “um” than you think. To be fair, most of you probably never think about these conversational mitigations at all, so that’s not saying much.

My favorite bit is that an “uh” causes no excess delay, and the actual delay is only due to “processing problems.”

I find myself having processing problems on a continual basis. Now I know my brain’s pinwheeling has a sound.

I loved this book. I hope the movie is good, or at least not terrible.

“People were sending me emails like I was dying of cancer,” Cuddy says. “It was like, ‘We send our condolences,’ ‘Holy crap, this is terrible’ and ‘God bless you; we wish we could do something, but obviously we can’t.’ ” She also knew what was coming, a series of events that did, in fact, transpire over time: subsequent scrutiny of other studies she had published, insulting commentary about her work on the field’s Facebook groups, disdainful headlines about the flimsiness of her research.

Very interesting (if long) article that discusses behavioral psychology, the replication crisis, and sexism. There’s a zero percent chance a white male scientist in the same situation with the same background would have been treated the same way as Amy Cuddy was. These themes warrant a longer post, but I’ll have to save further exploration for another day.

[Patrick Stewart] said he’d “embrace” an opportunity to return as the USS Enterprise’s legendary captain should Tarantino’s newly revealed project come together.

!!!

Nothing makes me want to quit my job and just watch movies all day than David Ehrlich’s annual video countdowns of the year’s best movies.

I’m with Jason. Erlich’s video is a work of art in its own right. I am super-out of touch with the film world,¹ but I am still embarrassed to have only heard of 5½ of the 25. I have seen precisely zero of them.²

Safety is part of performance. Over time, putting a weight correctly back on the ground is going to do more for your back health than all of the correctives I can teach you after you haphazardly lower the load and hurt your lower back.¹

Charlie Munger famously² said, “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”

I’m okay just being a little less-dumb today.

Carl emailed me Audible’s Daily Deal, which is Robert Caro’s On Power. It is $1, so you have no excuse for not giving it a try. Caro is my favorite author, and this book is a good sampler you can use to decide whether or not to read his other books.