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I found this Mastodon post by user Danie Ware, where she mentions her pet peeve about book reviews quite interesting:

Pet peeve:

A book review is a review of the book. You read the book, and you write down whether you liked it or not.

It is not:

Whether the postman bought it on time
How it was packaged
If it was left out in the rain
Whether your local store had it in stock
The publisher’s selling policy
What kind of paper the pages were…

Etc.

Why is this a difficult concept?

It instantly got me thinking how I both totally agree and disagree with her opinion at the same time.

On the one hand, one’s thoughts about the storyline, the characters and the writer’s ability to give you the next page turner or the worst thing you’ve ever read is exactly what the core of a written book review is, and that’s the kind of informed opinion I’m after whenever I feel like reading a new book. I look for confirmations and, in that sense, want to know how far my expectations could go if I read a new book.

But, on the other hand, I simply cannot think of a book disregarding its handling and packaging. The quality of its cover, its printing, the fonts used and its adaptation to my language, for instance, if I’m reading a translated work. I mean, how could I fully enjoy my experience with the best plot ever in my hands if the font is horrible or there are typos, translation or printing errors? How less amazing would it be to read a new book when it’s torn or crumpled? I don’t know. Just like driving the fastest car ever made while it is all dirty?

Don’t get me wrong. I totally understand Danie’s point of view. I just guess a book’s review should be split in two parts, say, the story part, plot, writing and author originality included; and the user experience part, embracing shipping, delivery, quality and anything else related.

As (almost) everything must be paid for twice, it is only fair to be able to evaluate both these parts. After all, no matter how well written and innovative a book is, you might not be able to pay the second time for it, that is, engage in the effort and the initiative required to collect the benefits one would have after the reading is done something already hard in itself, only turned even harder due to any book mistreatment.

But this is only my pet peeve, and you’re free to disagree — or not.

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Only recently I was able to come across a very interesting article, discussing that everything you buy actually needs to be paid for twice, otherwise that’ll be wasted money — and that this should be a finance lesson taught to anyone in school.

And I couldn’t agree more, even though this made me reflect very deeply on how many things I buy but don’t pay the second price for.

There’s the first price, usually paid in money. This is the usual price you have to pay if you wish to gain possession of whatever that is that you desire to have, be it a book, a new software or a game.

But the thing is, only after we pay the second price will we see any return on the first one. And this second price consists of all the initiative and effort required to gain its benefits — a price that could prove to be much higher than the first one.

In that sense, I quote this passage from the article:

A new novel, for example, might require twenty dollars for its first price — and ten hours of dedicated reading time for its second. Only once the second price is being paid do you see any return on the first one. Paying only the first price is about the same as throwing money in the garbage.

I had never in my life seen things this way. This has made me feel bad and terrible ever since, because — taking only books as an example — I have bought many, many, many of them during my life yet I haven’t had time to read half… no, a quarter of them, and this is all my fault. I know I have linked this post many times here, but, yes, tsundoku. That is an addiction, and maybe I’ll have to live and deal with it, because I love books, even those I haven’t read yet, although bought.

But wait, there’s more. After reading this one article I stopped to think how many streaming services I pay for monthly, even yearly, only to go weeks in a row without watching a single movie or series episode. How many online courses have I bought at Udemy, Coursera or the likes of them, without ever finishing them — without ever starting some. How many games did I buy in Steam and never played (the number would have you scared) only because I thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of their semiannual sale, never finding the will to start a single match.

This is me examining my own conscience aloud. This is a public confession, where I state that I should do different from now on: enjoy what is there to be enjoyed, yes, but cancel services, subscriptions and recurrent expenses whenever although paying for them I’m unable to reap the full benefits because the time to pay for the second price never comes, never presents itself.

I hope I can remember this self analysis later in my life and then be able to say that I’m paying twice for more of the things I wish to possess.

Have you ever considered this? Have you been paying for your acquisitions twice?

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Eu adoro colecionar citações. Prova disso é a coleção delas que, aos poucos, vou alimentando neste humilde site à medida que as encontro e gosto delas o suficiente para registro.

Mas devo admitir que, sempre que encontro uma citação interessante, tento investigar ao máximo se foi de fato o autor a quem atribuem a frase aquele que de fato disse a frase. Ele pode ter feito isso em um discurso, em um livro, em um ensaio, peça de teatro, enfim. E se não encontro nada que relacione autor e citação, fico muito incomodado.

Uma das minhas citações favoritas, que aliás, encabeça meu perfil do Mastodon, por exemplo, é “I’m not young enough to know everything”, frase que, depois de pesquisar um pouco, consegui verificar que foi escrita por J.M. Barrie, autor inglês responsável pela criação do personagem Peter Pan.

Outra citação da qual eu gosto muito é “Daria tudo que sei pela metade do que ignoro”, que, embora seja amplamente atribuída ao filósofo francês René Descartes, nunca foi dita por ele, ao menos literalmente, com essas exatas palavras.

Até onde eu fui capaz de descobrir, a citação, da forma como se tornou popular, pode ser um resumo das ideias da filosofia de Descartes, que sempre enfatizou as limitações do conhecimento humano, cheio de limitações e de falhas, e a importância de questionar e reavaliar constantemente nossas crenças. Descartes, assim como eu — que ouso me comparar a ele —, acreditava que sempre há mais para se aprender, sobre o mundo e sobre nós.

Haverão aqueles que dirão que não há nada de errado com uma citação que resuma as palavras de alguém, mas me incomodam o fato de colocar o nome do autor abaixo de um resumo de suas ideias, já que a pessoa não disse aquilo literalmente, e o fato de tantas bases de dados de citações on-line, facilmente consultáveis, atribuírem frases às pessoas sem se darem ao mínimo trabalho de citar referências que comprovem a autoria.

Vivemos numa era onde isso é típico. As pessoas mal verificam as fontes das notícias que lêem (algumas lêem apenas as manchetes, aliás), então têm menos motivos ainda para verificar a exatidão das frases que foram supostamente ditas por alguém. É o cenário perfeito para o fenômeno batizado pelo autor Corey Robin em um artigo escrito por ele em 2013 de WAS, ou Wrongly Attributed Statement, algo como Declaração Falsamente Atribuída.

O problema que eu tenho com a tal declaração falsamente atribuída é que acabo sendo vítima dela muitas vezes: seja quando vou escrever um texto que vai parar aqui no site ou quando quero citar algo pra um amigo ou alguém da família porque na minha cabeça aquela determinada frase serve como uma luva naquele instante, bate a dúvida: quem foi mesmo que disse isso? Para quem, como eu, se importa com esses detalhes, uma declaração facilmente atribuída pode ser um verdadeiro campo de batalha.

Existem citações, como esta do meu exemplo acima, que surgem como adaptações ou composições das declarações de alguém famoso, neste caso os ensaios de Descartes sobre filosofia.

Existem também as frases que, ditas por alguém que geralmente não é famoso, ou mesmo completamente inventadas, acabam sendo atribuídas a pessoas famosas. Nesta categoria estão as inúmeras frases que circulam na internet brasileira como tendo sido de autoria de Luís Fernando Veríssimo, quem aliás, em 2018, brincou com o fato, dizendo em entrevista que já foi muito elogiado por aquilo que nunca escreveu:

Os dois [Veríssimo e Clarice Lispector] costumam ter frases, análises, pensamentos e avaliações compartilhados a torto e a direito pela rede. Grande parte delas, contudo, não foram, de fato, escritas pelos autores. “Não há o que fazer, que eu saiba, contra esse tipo de coisa. Já fui muito elogiado pelo que nunca escrevi, não estou me queixando. Chato vai ser quando um falso texto meu difamar alguém.”

Não faz muito tempo que uma citação que me cheirou a declaração falsamente atribuída cruzou meu caminho. Há cerca de duas semanas me deparei com a frase “It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read”, que me chamou a atenção porque ela está estampada em uma camiseta minha. Eu acreditava até então que a frase, muito aplicável a mim e à minha paixão por leitura, era uma criação anônima.

Amarrotada, mas ainda assim com uma frase muito legal

Quando me deparei com a frase, notei que ela tinha sido atribuída a Daniel Handler, autor americano que, assinando como Lemony Snicket, criou a série de livros “A Series of Unfortunate Events”. E por gostar muito da frase, fui investigar se ela de fato foi dita pelo autor.

Assim como no caso da frase de Descartes, a internet está cheia de referências a Lemony Snicket, mas em nenhum lugar é possível encontrar um trecho de livro em que o autor tenha escrito a frase como fala de um de seus personagens.

Cheguei a encontrar pessoas citando que o autor teria dito a frase em uma entrevista que concedeu ao USA Today em 2003. Mas na única que eu encontrei, ele não chega nem perto de dizer algo parecido. Ou seja, claramente um caso de declaração falsamente atribuída, já que será impossível precisar ao certo, pelo menos levando em conta o meu conhecimento, se a frase é mesmo de autoria dele ou não.

A questão é que estou fadado a sempre me perguntar “quem foi mesmo que disse isso?” sempre que encontrar uma citação. Será que sou o único a pensar nisso?

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“Ei, você acha que a mamãe quer que a gente saia do ninho?”

Acabei lendo uma notícia hoje, sobre o que se deve fazer com filhotes de passarinho que a gente encontra caídos no chão, que me remeteu à lembrar instantaneamente de uma experiência prática que tivemos com o assunto, aqui em casa, alguns anos atrás.

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Em março de 2016 eu cheguei em casa do trabalho e o meu filho veio me contar sobre um filhotinho de passarinho que ele tinha achado, caído na calçada, aqui na frente de casa. O bichinho parecia machucado, não me lembro agora se nos pés ou na asa, mas o fato é que a debilitação estava ali, e ele não conseguia voar.

Provavelmente o passarinho, um filhotinho de pomba — conforme fui informado posteriormente, pois até então para mim era um pardal —, devia ter caído do ninho. Meu filho, que sempre demonstrou gostar muito de animais, ajeitou o bichinho em uma caixa de sapato forrada com jornal na nossa área de serviço e tentou, até conseguir, dar água pra ele através de uma seringa. Ele também conseguiu dar migalhinhas de pão pro passarinho.

Enquanto estes cuidados paliativos aconteciam, a gente foi tentar identificar onde podíamos levar ele, porque não tinha como ficar com ele em casa. Depois de falar com alguns veterinários e de contar com a ajuda da minha irmã, identificamos que uma das universidades aqui da cidade possuía um CRAS — Centro de Reabilitação de Animais Silvestres. Assim, depois de passada a noite com o passarinho hospedado aqui em casa, fui até o local com meus dois filhos, com a missão de deixá-lo em mãos que pudessem fazer mais por ele do que nós. E foi lá que me informaram que ele devia ter caído do ninho onde estava, e que na verdade, ao contrário do que eu imaginava, era um filhotinho de pomba, e não um pardal.

O final da história foi feliz. Felizmente deixamos o bichinho com quem podia cuidar dele de uma forma mais apropriada. Depois dos cuidados que seriam prestados, fui informado, aliás, que o passarinho seria devolvido à natureza, que é o lugar dele, afinal. Gostei de fazer essa boa ação, e como tenho dó de bichinhos abandonados, me senti duplamente recompensado na situação, e todos ficaram felizes, incluindo meu filho.

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Curioso em saber se tínhamos feito a coisa certa, apesar do final feliz de anos atrás, li a notícia completa. E descobri que, sim, fizemos o que era esperado. Encaminhar bichinhos com lesões, como no caso do filhotinho, para um centro de recuperação. Temos muita sorte em ter uma instituição do gênero aqui na cidade. 😊

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A post by Ricardo Amorim on LinkedIn caught my attention this week. It features a picture of a statue in which a child and an adult are on a seesaw, with the adult being much larger in weight and height than the girl. However, it is the child, with a pile of books beside her, who is lifting the adult — who, by the way, appears to be holding a cellphone in his hands — up.

The statue, whose image in the post claims to be located in Japan, but in reality is located in Heine, Heilongjiang, China, bears the inscription “知識就是力量,” which translates to “knowledge is power.”

Regarding the fact that the man is holding a cellphone, although it seems too large to be a cellphone, there is the old reflection that “cellphones are great servants, but terrible masters,” meaning that we can use them to gain knowledge, but we need to use them with moderation.

But the real reason the image caught my attention was the message that the statue and its inscription convey. It is our knowledge that is primarily responsible for determining our importance — which, to me, is completely aligned with the premises of lifelong learning, since I believe that the continuous pursuit of learning results in an increasingly higher level of knowledge. And, as the inscription on the statue reproduces almost literally the famous quote by Francis Bacon in his work “Meditationes Sacrae” from 1597, “knowledge itself is power,” the idea of continually obtaining and, more importantly, sharing knowledge is the basis for building not only our importance but also our reputation and influence.

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I don’t know about you, but I have never been one who loves push notifications. If you look around in the web, you’ll see some saying it was invented by Apple in June 2009, while others will say Blackberry came up with it in 2003.

No matter who created them, the thing is push notifications are everywhere for smartphone users, that is, for mostly everyone nowadays. And the problem is although some of them can be genuinely useful, I guess I wouldn’t be alone when saying most of them are not, and having to deal with them, even if only for the slightest moment it takes us to dismiss them, is a waste of time.

Push marketing, a 2014 cartoon by Marketoonist

I guess some different things can be pointed out as explanations for so many push notifications in our lives. First, the sole existence of so many apps: messaging apps, social media apps, shopping apps, streaming apps, games and so many other apps, all trying to send us their own messages, as to friendly remind us of whatever, or to say they miss us, only actually trying to engage us with whatever. For every new app we install, 100% of them want us to enable notifications.

Second, a train of thought some app devs have, making them think that we, app users, want to be notified of all and every app information, when that’s rarely the case. Let me illustrate by saying that if I schedule an appointment or set up a reminder so I don’t forget to pay the electricity bill or don’t forget to buy groceries, I want to be remembered about it, ok. But it is not always that I want an online seller to throw random product discounts on my screen, or to say that there are 15 users who have the same interests as me, following that new, obscure, web influencer.

Third, as Tom Fishburne put it last week, “Push notifications often reflect the marketing myopia that drive a lot of customer experience. Marketers often inflate the role that their brands actually play in people’s lives”. This is so well said, because it does reflect some apps and their needy and totally inappropriate behavior. After all, it’s not because I bought something in a supermarket, drugstore, shoe store or any retailer that I’m going to immediately want to buy something else. To the extreme, it might be that I won’t buy anything at that specific place ever again. In any case, I don’t need extra push notifications, and even less, a notification fatigue.

Now, I know all the push notifications hell is avoidable, to a point. We can always completely turn them off, or select which notifications we want to see or not, and it’s nice to see that there are so many serious devs who implement the ability for us, users, to choose what we want to be notified about. These are serious people. But the thing is there are apps which ask us to enable notifications for genuine reasons, like informing me of when my ride will arrive, or when my product is coming towards home, but, in doing so, also start to shoot a lot of other push notifications, with offerings, discounts, so on and so forth.

And these are the apps that, behaving in such a way, are bad players. When I notice such behavior, I usually mercilessly uninstall them. But I’m obliged to live with a couple of them, as I depend on their services for a reason or another, and these apps don’t allow me to choose what to receive. Sad.

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Photo by Suzy Hazelwood, on Pexels

I came across this text from Christopher Butler today, where he mentions some notes about the act of blogging that he took back in 2010. Parts of his text ringed with me, specially because he mentions the act of writing in a blog as “this experience of being able to express ourselves without any restriction” and the accompanying “awe and excitement of publishing on the web“.

It took me a long time to get back to blogging. In spite of having started to blog somewhere in 2007 or 2008 — that is, fifteen-ish years ago — I later completely walked out on it for many years, first trying to convince myself that it was because of lack of time, but then acknowledging it was because I had lost interest in it for many reasons, depression and anxiety included in the package. I had maintained a website with a blog and some other random stuff and cancelled my hosting plan (although I never cancelled the domain name, and that was good).

Sometime last year it occurred to me that something was missing in my life.

I’ve always liked to write and it’s been sometime now that I’ve been feeling better with myself. This something missing was it, it was to write. Maybe in a blog, maybe not. The thing is, during this same period I came to know about note taking and figured out that was something I’ve always done, just without knowing it had a name. So I came across very fine apps like Obsidian, Logseq and Tangent Notes, all of which I still use on a daily basis to register my thinking. As I wrote my notes locally, I started to consider the idea of writing in a digital garden, publishing some thoughts, but unorderly. I liked this idea. Then came omg.lol, a wonderful service that, among many features, offers image hosting and weblogs: that was enough to awake that feeling of wanting to blog again, so I created a blog there and it was just a matter of time until this blog here was reactivated.

Christopher Butler’s text reminded me of the therapeutic effects that a blog can bring. As he says, with a blog “I can share the part of me that is afraid of dying, the part of me that is ashamed by my own thoughts, jealous of someone else’s success, that loathes myself, that is afraid of being misunderstood; all of the fears and anxieties and little things that twist around in your gut; that if you’re sensitive and smart and insightful enough, you’re managing to deal with; you can exercise these in a different way“. That is, I can share mostly anything, and I guess the secret to keep such blogging therapy a success is to write, first and foremost, to myself, for the fun of it, for the joy of it.

Sitting and writing what’s on my mind, figuring out what thoughts I want to express and shaping such thoughts in a way that makes them readable and understandable to someone else in a blog post format is very nice. And if and when I feel there might be anything else, not suitable in a blog, there’s always the possibility of falling back on streams of thought, private journals and digital gardens. Anything counts, because all of these things, as blogging, are therapeutic as well.

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The year is 1984. Michael Jordan, to me the greatest basketball player of all time, is still a rookie, having recently joined the Chicago Bulls as their third overall draft pick, still far from his total of 32,292 points scored in his NBA career.

Michael Jordan and his Air Jordans

Yesterday I watched Air, an Amazon Prime movie directed by Ben Affleck and released this week, showing us how Nike executives went after the Jordans to try to turn Michael into their basketball shoes division spokesperson. I had never heard about the movie — until some Brazilian NBA sportscasters talked about it and how it would be release on May, 12. With Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing as the opening tune and many more nice music in the soundtrack, I found the movie plot very interesting.

And Air is not a movie about Michael Jordan. I mean, it’s not his biography. Ben Affleck, by the way, opted for not showing Michael on screen, directly. The director did this out of deference to him, because no one would portray him up to his legend. So it is that actor Damian Delano Young, who plays Michael, barely speaks during the movie, appearing few minutes and always shown from behind. When Michael does appear, it’s through historical footage, that is, using videos from his own games.

Young Michael Jordan playing for the Bulls

So, it is actually a movie about Nike. I didn’t know Nike was the underdog in the basketball shoes industry, I guess much because I’ve always seen Nike as the giant it is nowadays. Back in 1984 it had a very little marketshare, behind Adidas and Converse, the two dominant powers in the market. And Air shows Sonny Vaccaro, a Nike executive working directly with Phil Knight, the company’s co-founder and CEO, pursuing to hire Michael Jordan as a means to flip the industry’s game board — what they get to do, by closing a historical partnership which resulted in the Air Jordan sneakers family.

Now, I’m not a movie critic or a sports expert. But I really enjoyed the movie. It was nice to see how Air Jordans were sneakers customized to Michael Jordan’s feet, maybe the first ones to be made specifically for an athlete — as the movie makes us understand. Until Nike’s move, the athletes signed with Adidas and Converse and used the shoes these companies provided them without custom features.

From a business perspective — and the movie was pure business, it was something fantastic and unprecedented at that time. Along with another unexpected decision, the one of not only offering Michael Jordan a yearly salary of 500,000 dollars, but giving him participation in the sales of the Air Jordans, something that started a new trend, where athletes started to profit from their partnerships with sports companies.

The Jordan brand is perhaps the sneaker market’s most valuable name. When the movie finished, it was possible to understand that Nike targeted earning $3 million dollars in four years. But that figure was far off what really happened — and only in the first year, the shoe was so popular it sold $126 millions. Today, the Air Jordan brand fetches Nike and Michael Jordan $3 million in revenue every 5 hours. That’s amazing, and that’s way the movie makes us understand the beginning of. So, if you have the chance, give the movie a try.

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We are all human beings and, as such, emotional beings. Accepting this reality is important, just as much as knowing that a surge of emotions can definitely influence our decisions, acts, and statements. This week, while talking to a friend, he sent me this anonymous saying, which fit like a glove for when we’re feeling emotional. It goes like this:

"Never reply when you are angry. Never make a promise when you are happy. Never make a decision when you are sad."

Coincidentally, looking for information about the origins of the saying, I ended up coming across these 3 tips — dubbed the 3R’s for when you’re feeling emotional by the user who mentioned them in Reddit:

  1. Retreat. Take a step back from the situation, whether that’s physically leaving or mentally retreating.
  2. Rethink. Is there another way I could look at this situation? Are my emotions proportionate to the situation, or am I making a mountain out of a molehill? How does this situation look from the other/another person’s perspective?
  3. Respond. Reacting and responding are two different things. Reacting is much more automatic, and it’s when we let our emotions dictate our actions. Responding means that we’re being mindful of our words and actions moving forward.
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Você alguma vez na vida já sentiu admiração por alguma das pessoas que trabalha com você? Esta semana tive a oportunidade de trocar alguns pensamentos a respeito disso com um amigo, e a conclusão da conversa foi bastante interessante.

No dia em questão eu tive uma reunião com uma pessoa com quem ambos trabalhamos de forma recorrente. A pessoa em questão já é apelidada por nós de mago das finanças, pois, dentre nós, seus conhecimentos dos processos da área Financeira são os maiores. Nenhuma outra pessoa que trabalha sempre com a gente, aliás, tem experiência exercendo algum cargo na área, exceto ele. E eu sempre fico admirado cada vez que conversamos, porque toda hora que isso acontece, eu — e, ouso dizer, nós — aprendemos um pouquinho mais com ele.

“ver uma pessoa extremamente competente fazendo o que ela tem mais habilidade para fazer é como assistir à um músico muito habilidoso dominando seu instrumento favorito”

Quem convive comigo sabe que eu gosto muito dos princípios de lifelong learning, que me incentivam a aprender continuamente, sempre que a oportunidade se apresentar e sobretudo através da troca de vivências e experiências. Não almejo me tornar financista, mas ouvir esta pessoa em particular por vezes me faz pensar que, se eu tentasse, talvez não fosse tão difícil assim. Sempre há algo novo que eu acrescento ao meu parco domínio dos números, e eu juro que um dia serei capaz de usar o Excel apenas com o teclado, tal qual ele faz. Tá, usar o Excel com o teclado com pelo menos 5% da destreza dele.

Depois da reunião, comentei com meu amigo o quanto eu admirava nosso mago financeiro. Admiração pura mesmo, sem qualquer expectativa de algo em troca, sabe? Ainda que eu sempre aprenda alguma coisa, a admiração é maior, e se transforma mesmo em uma espécie de prazer em ver alguém executar o que faz, de forma bem feita, contando com um expertise que apenas quem o possui sabe o que custou construir.

Minha conclusão, compartilhada com meu amigo, foi de que ver uma pessoa extremamente competente fazendo o que ela tem mais habilidade para fazer é como assistir à um músico muito habilidoso dominando seu instrumento favorito.

Ou assistir à um grande chef de cozinha preparando seu prato mais elaborado. Ou ver um grande esportista em um dia inspirado. Ou ter a chance de ler a maior das obras primas do seu escritor favorito. É ter a chance de admirar o talento alheio. Quer você compartilhe ou não o talento em questão.

E a menção à talento, com a qual fecho este texto, não é por acaso. As pessoas extremamente talentosas em suas atividades profissionais são, sim, verdadeiros artistas. E como tais, merecem uma salva de palmas. Aqui, fica a minha.

▣ Foto da capa do post por Hayley Murray, no Unsplash.