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“Planning. Short-term memory. Attention. At first glance, these three frontal lobe functions can seem like diverse activities that just happen to be packed into the same brain region. But on closer inspection it turns out that they are facets of the same basic phenomenon of 'restraint'. Planning restrains our brains from wandering from a chosen path of activity. Short-term memory retrains sensory cortex from moving on to different imagery. Attention constrains the kind of sensory data admitted to sensory cortex.”
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“Trees live in symbiosis with hyphae (fungus/mold roots). A tea spoon of dirt contains kilometers of these roots. One species can spread throughout entire forests over centuries. They exchange nutrients with trees, along with information about insects, drought and other dangers. It's like a 'wood wide web'.”
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“We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.”
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“Do you know what the most fun moments are? When recent graduates visit us as part of their training. They were taught exactly what the industry wants. They expect a bunch of long haired dreamers who say 'peace'. But on the first evening with them we start with calculating the profits of their models and compare it to our model. Then they realize that what they learned at school is nothing compared to what there is to know.”
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“We are a species and a culture that, through our attention habits, carry past wounds that cause anger, fear, longing, and sorrow. These affect our lives far more deeply than we realize. We see the world through an imperfect lens, which deeply colors our perceptions, making us more angry, fearful, sorrowful, and overwhelmed than we need to be. Our attention habits, and the emotions they repress, keep us separate from the world, from feeling part of it; they prevent us from fully sensing what is around us and participating in it. As a result, we are unable to fully engage the here and now. The cruel irony is that because we have no other frame of reference, because we do not pay attention to how we pay attention, we think we are seeing the world as it is.”
― The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
― The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
Dirk’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Dirk’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
218 books
|
44 friends
624 books
|
386 friends
766 books
|
76 friends
176 books
|
37 friends
667 books
|
27 friends
218 books
|
50 friends
2,430 books
|
136 friends
96 books
|
19 friends
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