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Only allow yourself to experience emotions that help you.

July 30, 2021
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Think about it. It’s kind of like clothes. You can wear anything you want. Would people respect you more if you wore a suit every day? Maybe. Maybe not. But if they did, would you then respect yourself more? If you get sad a lot, if you get angry a lot, if you complain a lot, if you talk about your own problems a lot, that’s what you’re putting out into the world. And what happens? Nothing good. You just make it slightly worse for those around you. And, much more importantly, you make everything worse for yourself–you unintentionally prevent yourself from doing what you actually want to do, which is be happy and successful. (Once my friend said she didn’t invite me to a party because she “wanted it to be fun.”) And it’s usually just a series of random circumstances which have made some of us develop patterns like these. So I have done this before, and it has helped a lot. I’m gonna do it again, and you’re welcome to join me. July is my birthday month, so this can be your gift to me. All you have to do is, for the month of July, when something bad happens, or even whenever you just feel vaguely crappy for no reason like every damn day when you wake up, just go, “Oh, wait, no, I’m doing that thing with Ryan for July,” and …


How Crocodiles Survived the Dinosaur Extinction

July 30, 2021
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There are a handful of creatures that have survived relatively unchanged for millions of years– birds, frogs, salamanders, bees, and crocodiles. Why did they go on when the biggest baddest things ever, dinosaurs, didn’t? It wasn’t because they had a plan and had everything figured out in advance. It was because they had options and remained flexible. Everything that survived, it either had wings or was amphibious. So a crocodile is a tough predator, sure, but it’s comfortable both on land and in water. So if there was something wrong with the land, it would go in the sea. If there was something wrong with the sea, it would go on the land. And when the meteor hit and raised ash into the air, the crocodile was comfortable hunting in total darkness. A lot of times we tend to think of success as the final showdown, shooting the photon torpedoes into the exhaust pipe. But in real life it’s more about probability. What’s the probability of winning the lottery? Low. So don’t play the lottery or spend your time on lottery-like activities, like sending in a resume which is literally one of thousands that likely won’t even be read. Instead, starve out the enemy over a calculated period of time. Force them to cross a swamp. Instead of trying to kill every stray ant, plug the hole where they’re entering. As far as remaining flexible–don’t be …


Miles of Secret Trails, Rivers, Old Stonework in Pasadena

July 30, 2021
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I found this one day by accident and then kept coming back to it as a photo / movie location. There’s miles and miles of nature and old stonework and a river underneath the Suicide Bridge in Pasadena, California. If you wanna check it out, park at the San Pascual Stables and make for the trailhead at the north end of the lot. This is the Arroyo Seco Trail (“dry stream” in Spanish), which follows portions of the 25-mile seasonal river via a bike, hike, and equestrian track. (Check the map before you begin, to get a better idea of the entire city-to-mountain route along the waterway.) ​ Thanks for reading, Ryan


The Boyfriend 1971 Starring Twiggy

July 30, 2021
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Since you like crazy visual stuff and costumes and fashion, here’s The Boyfriend and Donkey Skin. It’s like they’re both competing for how crazy they can get. In Donkey Skin she wears a dress “the color of weather.” I kept watching it to see if I could figure out how they did the effect, and I couldn’t. Enjoy. 🙂 THE BOYFRIEND: ​https://123moviesme.online/the-boy-friend-1971/?sv=1​ DONKEY SKIN ​https://www3.bflix.to/movie/donkey-skin-nrz4m/520p4w0​ ​ Thanks for reading, Ryan


How to See the Big Picture

July 30, 2021
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So I heard one of the main traits really successful and innovative people have is the ability to see the big picture. Meaning you haven’t just mastered one skill, but you can zoom out and look at the whole hedge maze from above. Sometimes l feel like I’m looking through a dark room with just a flashlight. I can only see what’s in the little circle. But I know there’s a lot more there. I just don’t know how to broaden the little circle. But then I started playing chess. Chess lets you broaden the little circle. If you lose at chess again and again and again, it trains your brain to see the big picture, to see all the little things that are all happening at the same time, to accurately predict and plan for what is going to happen next, to ensure your survival and success in the imperfect real world, instead of just your own head. This video explains.   On board? Well, chess.com is totally goddamn free. I don’t work for them or anything. But go there. Hit “play computer.” Play each bot (they have faces) again and again and again until you can beat them without the hints. And then go on to the next hardest one. (But use the hints to teach yourself.) The intermediate bot “Nelson” is extremely aggressive and it took me weeks to beat him without any hints, …


Mt. Wilson Observatory

July 30, 2021
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I haven’t been here yet, but I really wanna go. “Built in 1904, the Mount Wilson Observatory is an astronomical observatory located in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, California. The observatory contains two historically important telescopes: the Hooker telescope, which was the largest telescope in the world from its completion in 1917 to 1949, and the 60-inch telescope which was the largest operational telescope in the world when it was completed in 1908.” Free of charge, you can view the historic Hooker 100-inch telescope from the Visitors’ Gallery inside the dome. The hours are from 10AM to 4PM every day. (Check though if they’re back from Covid.) Also I know what it’s like to feel unappreciated as an artist, so I thought it’d be cool to include other people I like in these emails. Check out @donnie_odonnell on Instagram. Thanks for reading, Ryan


Blow-Up 1966

July 30, 2021
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Have you seen Blow-Up? If not, at least just watch the great effect on the opening credits… Both De Palma’s Blow Out and Coppola’s The Conversation copy the plot, only they capture a murder with audio tape instead of a photograph. Plus Godard’s Weekend! BLOW-UP: ​https://www3.bflix.to/movie/blow-up-021qr/w1lk5pk​ WEEK-END: ​https://www3.bflix.to/movie/weekend-oxqn5​ As always, this movie site is pretty great, but you should probably install these ad blockers first. ​https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom/RK%3D2/RS%3Di3UytW17opGKkbYmB2P5GTQ7lPA-​ ​https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pop-up-blocker-for-chrome/bkkbcggnhapdmkeljlodobbkopceiche?hl=en​ Also send me some recommendations too! So far only two people have. 🙂 Also I know what it’s like to struggle or feel under-appreciated as an artist, so I thought it’d be cool to include people here that you may not have heard about–> Thanks for reading, Ryan


Rainbow Helicopters Are Flying Over Fred Flintstone’s House

July 30, 2021
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Right next to me, as I write this, there’s an older white guy asleep in his car. White shirt, glasses on, eyes closed, mouth open. A class act, just like me, waiting out some awful piece of real life in a McDonald’s parking lot in Hollywood, California. What I am waiting for is photos. I just got back from an insane trip to the Grand Canyon, and I took a lot of strange pictures of myself along the way. At the actual canyon, I’d heard a bunch of married couples who sounded like they hated each other but would probably never get divorced. “You’re stepping on it.” “I’m not STEPPING on it.” “Yes, you are. Look, you’re going right back INTO it.” When it started to rain, an Australian in yoga pants said that she thought she just needed a hot drink. All that was all right, though. It made me feel like I was smart. Like driving all night to Arizona by yourself was a smart move, and not at all sad and crazy. Another positive thing was that I got to see several rainbow-colored helicopters. They were beautiful and I tried to photograph them, but I was made to stay on one side of a fence. On the way back I stopped to take my photo with a two-story cutout of Fred Flintstone, but then discovered that someone had built an entire Bedrock City …


10 of My Worst Ideas

July 30, 2021
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The difference between people really being good or not good artistically–it’s not what kind of film you shoot with or what kind of paint you paint with. It’s what kind of creative ideas you come up with. So again, all you have to do to come up with good ideas every day is get up a little earlier than you normally do, set a timer on your phone for 20 minutes, and then ALLOW yourself to write down STUPID ideas. (Good ones slip through.) I went back over all my dumb ideas for the last couple months and picked out the best of the worst. (I came up with a lot of great practical ones too, including this very email you’re reading right now, but these are funnier.) 1. “Put different seeds inside of each other and try to make a Siamese-twin fruit of two different kinds, like a half-watermelon half-pumpkin… that’d probably work. Just fields and fields of half-watermelon, half-pumpkin freaks.” 2. “Make an effort to make friends with men.” 3. “Ask people about questions you have but cannot answer such as marriage sounds awful but being alone also sounds awful.” 4. “Use what you know about development and habits to engineer interesting human children – such as if you make them do weird shit every day from when they are born they will not question it and develop it as a habit, and will …


Le Souffle Au Coeur / Murmur of the Heart

July 30, 2021
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My best friend’s French teacher kept saying, “I don’t know if I should be showing you this” while they watched Le Souffle au Coeur AKA Murmur of the Heart in high school. She never turned it off, though, and that’s how I first heard about it and saw it. (Thank you, Albert.) It’s a lot like Rushmore if you’ve seen that, but made in 1971–angry 15-year-old trying to figure out women and failing. Laurent collects charity money for the Red Cross and spends it on jazz records, talks about Camus’ suicide philosophy, measures his penis with his brothers… they paint an exact copy of a valuable painting and then stab it with a knife in front of their parents… also there’s a lot of wistful sexual misadventures with sort of real-life weight to them. I once showed this to a girlfriend I had and she said, “I don’t know how I feel about that.” 🤠 LE SOUFFLE AU COEUR A.K.A MURMUR OF THE HEART: https://www3.bflix.to/movie/murmur-of-the-heart-qppv/qx593qj Also I thought it would be cool to include other artists I like who you might not know about in these emails, so please check out @fayeweiwei on Instagram. Happy Mother’s Day, Ryan

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