Golden Books™

2022-11-07 17:35:51 He knew he was supposed to move on. Recover. Put it behind him. His few stray friends and few stray relatives had said as much, and he knew that if he were on the outside looking in, he would tell that other Teddy to buck up and suck in your gut and get on with the rest of your life.
But to do that, he'd have to find a way to put Dolores on a shelf, to allow her to gather dust in the hope that enough dust would accumulate to soften his memory of her. Mute her image. Until one day she'd be less a person who had lived and more the dream of one.

They say, Get over her, you have to get over her, but get over to what? To this fucking life? How am I going to get you out of my mind? It hasn't worked so far, so how am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to let you go, that's all I'm asking. I want to hold you again, smell you, and, yes too, I just want you to fade. To please, please fade...

Shutter Island,
Dennis Lehane ክፈት / አስተያየት ይስጡ

2022-11-01 18:10:37 ‘I predict a bad end for your race,’ Zoltan said grimly.

‘Every rational creature in this world, when they fall into poverty, misery and unhappiness, commonly join with their kinsmen, because among them it is easier to survive the bad times, because they help each other. But among you humans, each of you looks at only how to make something out of misfortune. If hungry, then food is not distributed, the weakest is devoured. Such a procedure makes sense for wolves, allowing the individual to survive healthier and stronger. But among intelligent races such selection usually allows the dominant and biggest bastards to survive. Analyze this how you want.’

Baptism of Fire
The Witcher 5 - Andrzej Sapkowski ክፈት / አስተያየት ይስጡ

2022-10-25 20:21:56 ‘Do you belong to those, who caused it?’, said a voice.
Dandelion sharply turned around.
The dryad leaning on the pine had hair the color of silver, he could see that even in twilight.

‘An unpleasant view,’ she said and crossed her hands on her chest. ‘The one, who lost everything. It is interesting, bard, because I once thought that one can never lose everything, that something always has to remain. Always. Even in the times of contempt, where naivety can take revenge in the cruelest way, one cannot lose everything. And he... He lost a lot of blood, the option of healthy walking, partial movement of his left hand, a witcher's sword, the woman he loves, the daughter he miraculously found, confidence, faith... I told myself, that there had to be something he had not lost. But I was wrong, he has nothing, not even that razor.’

Dandelion didn't say anything, The dryad didn't move.

‘I asked, if you also took part in it.’ she said after a while. ‘Perhaps my question was pointless. Obviously, it is also your fault. If someone has friends, but still loses everything, they are also guilty. For what they did, or did not. Guilty for not knowing, what they had to do.’
‘What could I have done ?’ he whispered silently. ‘What could I have changed?’
‘I don't know,’ answered the dryad.
‘I didn't tell him everything...’
‘That I know.’
‘I'm not guilty.’
‘But you are.’

Time of Contempt
The Witcher 4 - Andrzej Sapkowski ክፈት / አስተያየት ይስጡ

2022-10-03 19:54:01 One of the most basic delusions of our time is that home life takes care of itself naturally, and that the best strategy for dealing with it is to relax and let it take its course. Men especially like to comfort themselves with this notion. They know how hard it is to succeed on the job, how much effort they have to put into their careers. So at home they just want to unwind, and feel that any serious demand from the family is unwarranted. They often have an almost superstitious faith in the integrity of the home. Only when it is too late—when the wife has become dependent on alcohol, when the children have turned into cold strangers—do many men wake up to the fact that the family, like any other joint enterprise, needs constant investments of psychic energy to assure its existence.

To play the trumpet well, a musician cannot let more than a few days pass without practicing. An athlete who does not run regularly will soon be out of shape, and will no longer enjoy running. Any manager knows that his company will start falling apart if his attention wanders. In each case, without concentration, a complex activity breaks down into chaos. Why should the family be different? Unconditional acceptance, the complete trust family members ought to have for one another, is meaningful only when it is accompanied by an unstinting investment of attention. Otherwise it is just an empty gesture, a hypocritical pretense indistinguishable from disinterest.

Flow in the Family
Mihaly Csikszentmihaly ክፈት / አስተያየት ይስጡ

2022-09-29 07:15:40 ". . . you will observe with concern how long a useful truth may be known and exist before it is generally received and practiced on."

Benjamin Franklin ክፈት / አስተያየት ይስጡ

2022-09-25 09:41:07 ‘‘The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention” – Kevin Kelly in ‘Wired’

In Computer Science, there is a condition called Memory Leak, where a Program, after using a chunk of Memory, doesn't properly free and return it to the Computer. The result will be pieces of memory scattered throughout the RAM inaccessible to the system and dominated by garbage Objects left by the ill-behaved program.

The human brain faces the same issue everyday.
When you have conscious or unconscious cognitive activity about something that you have stopped working on, and definitely are not supposed to think about now, you're experiencing memory leak. That something has taken a cognitive space in your limited attention that it had to return to you.

And there is a term for it, Attention Residue.
More formally Attention Residue, according to Sophie Leroy of University of Minnesota, is the persistence of cognitive activity about Task A even though one stopped working on Task A and currently performs a Task B.
Dr. Leroy conducted a research on a total of 162 individuals on two different studies to find out what factors affect the smooth transition while switching between tasks.
The proposed factors to have an impact on the process are:
- Task Completion
- Time Pressure

The study confirmed the proposition that, apart from finishing Task A before starting Task B, completing the task under high time pressure( limited time window) can play a role to reduce attention residue and attain cognitive closure (the end of cognitive processing obtained through psychological resolve after reaching an end point subjectively evaluated as satisfactory).
In addition, finishing a task, especially in high time pressure, improved the performance on the given task at hand, and resulted in elevated confidence. This confidence can then influence the performance on subsequent tasks.

What this possibly could indicate is, according to Dr. Leroy's own word, that unfinished, and or interrupted tasks are dangerous because they can easily turn to residue beyond our control. And the role of social media and cellphones is a prominent factor that doesn't even need to be explained in this sense. But attention, despite how we ignore its scarcity, is one of the treasures that can shape as much as the personal identity of a person, and by being so, requires a great deal of care.

Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residuewhen switching between work tasks
Sophie Leroy ክፈት / አስተያየት ይስጡ

2022-08-30 08:03:15 Instagram ክፈት / አስተያየት ይስጡ

2022-08-26 21:50:46 Happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.

Yet we cannot reach happiness by consciously searching for it. “Ask yourself whether you are happy,” said J. S. Mill, “and you cease to be so.”
It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly. Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychologist, summarized it beautifully in the preface to his book Man’s Search for Meaning: “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended sideeffect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”

Flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ክፈት / አስተያየት ይስጡ

2022-08-17 22:23:56 Never make the same mistake, little girl,” he murmured, indicating the wagon with his eyes. “If someone shows you compassion, sympathy and dedication, if they surprise you with integrity of character, value it but don’t mistake it for . . . something else." ክፈት / አስተያየት ይስጡ

2022-08-03 21:03:54 Intolerance and superstition has always been the domain of the more stupid amongst the common folk and, I conjecture, will never be uprooted, for they are as eternal as stupidity itself. There, where mountains tower today, one day there will be seas; there where today seas surge, will one day be deserts. But stupidity will remain stupidity.

Blood of Elves - The Witcher Series ክፈት / አስተያየት ይስጡ