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Doodles while listening to this video on the brain and quantum physics

"So you navigate your life with the help of others who held mirrors up for you. People praised your good qualities and criticised your bad habits, and these perspectives -often surprising to you - helped you to guide your life. " - David Eagleman

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A portrait in blood vessels. Magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) is a specialised medical imaging technique used to visualise blood vessels. Here, tangled white tubes represent the major blood vessels of the head, neck and upper thorax. Looking at the uppermost portion of the image, one can see the silhouette of the brain whilst the aortic arch takes the center bottom. All these vessels are hard at work beneath your skin, even as you read this post. 

Wake up babe new aperiodic tiling dropped

Aperiodic tiling with only one tile!

I feel like a lot of people don't realize how much power and control they actually have over their lives. Just learning about how we function, our instincts, habbits, and sensory experiences helped me see the world and my existence in such a different way.

All we have is our perception of the world, which more often than not is taken for a fact, when in fact, we can decide if we want to see an event as good or bad or just happening outside of our control.

If I experience a chain of bad things happening to me, If I happen to fall off my bike and break my arm, I won't think I have bad luck, or that my whole life sucks and I shouldn't even try. Rather, I try to separate the events that are out of my control, not good or bad, not personal but a flow of things that is natural and unpredictable. The thing that is within my control is how I choose to react to it. Instinctively I would get upset, curse ect. but taking a step back, looking at the situation separate from my current feelings gives me a much better perspective on things. What we feel isn't always the best way to deal with things, it's just what we have done the longest.

Anyways, I'm not sure where I was going with this except that it's within your control how you see and react to things.

The books I'm reading at the moment.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - I love this book. It puts you in the perspective of the time and space you occupy, I found a lot of my own thinking and feelings within the pages of this book. A guy born in AD 121 has very clear view on life that is still relevant today.

Great Adaptations by Kenneth Catania - A professor of biological sciences takes you on a journey with him while he studies various animals adaptive abilities. Star nosed moles, electric eels, tentacled snakes... Very interesting insight in how these creatures evolved and adapted.

What we cannot know by Marcus du Sautoy - Explains concepts from the ground up, I like the illustrations that accompany the text and practical examples. Lays foundations to the known and wonders into the future of research and the possibilities that come with it as well as limitations. Covering themes from quantum physics and cosmology to sensory perception and neuroscience.

Labyrinths of reason by William Poundstone - "Blue sky, sunshine, deja vu glazed with dread." How do you know this isn't all a dream? Is anything certain? Ontology, logic, mathematics, deduction, epistemology, memory formation, paradoxes and puzzles.

A brain for numbers by Andreas Nieder - Humans' understanding of numbers is intuitive. How are infants able to perceive numbers even before they learn the words for them? How do our brains process numbers? Can animals count? He shows how it is an adaptive ability and that plenty of animals have the number sense too. There is a variety of research and supporting evidence mentioned which I really like.

Today I found a good video about merging tubes with different angles, ellipses, phase shift of sine waves, featuring sculptures by Frank Smullin.

This video is exceptionally comprehensive.

[Shared by hardm.ix on instagram: Text says: "A little more on the analytic constructivist sculpture of Frank Smullin, a professor of mine at Duke University who combined art and engineering in a way that reminded me a little of Kenneth Snelson and Tensegrity or Buckminster Fuller and geodesic domes."]

“You look at trees and called them ‘trees,’ and probably you do not think twice about the word. You call a star a ‘star,’ and think nothing more of it. But you must remember that these words, ‘tree,’ ‘star,’ were (in their original forms) names given to these objects by people with very different views from yours. To you, a tree is simply a vegetable organism, and a star simply a ball of inanimate matter moving along a mathematical course. But the first men to talk of ‘trees’ and ‘stars’ saw things very differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings. They saw the stars as living silver, bursting into flame in answer to the eternal music. They saw the sky as a jeweled tent, and the earth as the womb whence all living things have come. To them, the whole of creation was ‘myth-woven and elf patterned’.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien, from ‘Mythopoeia’

nothing is as tender as annotating your favourite books. it’s like leaving a piece of your heart on the pages for somebody else to find.