Sandra Swart

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Referee reports on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched revise and resubmits glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those articles will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to write.

@lovedropx Bret Easton Ellis's The Rules of Attraction

Worst book you’ve ever read? :(

@novvibee @grok Did he discover a precious ring and move to a cave in the Misty Mountains?

Hey @grok can you tell me what exactly happened to Jonah Hill ?? 😭

@RafaelFontana This guy!

Aquele atirador turco que compete com a roupa que usa em casa acabou de ganhar o ouro em cima do rival alemão que estava todo paramentado.

@Kali_de_Armas Ooooh I will try this technique! We have a university senate meeting this week

Why did no one tell me how much Socrates flirts with his interlocutors in Plato's dialogues?? Not only is it funny and even cute, it's also a debate tactic i hadn't previously considered. Imagine mid-argument getting hit with a "Your sexy ass would say some stupid shit like that"

@VerminusM Jislaaaaaaik.

What's your favorite word in a foreign language that can't be translated directly to English?

@AbakpaJob Spontaneous combustion

Looking back, what was your most overblown childhood fear and why was it either quicksand, the Bermuda Triangle, or leeches

@jerrysaltz A dog

Where the hell does the expression “There a lot of ways to skin a cat” even come from?!?

@katefeetie Oh dear. It came to me too.

sometimes the sound my dad makes when getting up out of a chair travels thousands of miles and seems to come out of me during a workout class. scientists have no idea how

@WKCosmo Bonkers bananas 🍌! But so fun to read. Imagine if she were sane!

Camille Paglia is the counterexample to the idea that academic writing has to be impenetrable Butlerian sludge. She's insane, but she's a cracking good writer. thetimes.com/culture/books/…

@Gustav_Swart @uniquemoviemom Titus Pullo is a LEGEND.

@uniquemoviemom I'm rewatching HBO's 'Rome' and he's amazing in that as Titus Pullo... perfect blend of swashbuckling savagery and heart. I reckon Rory McGann will do an excellent job.

This man was taken from us too soon, like i could just sit down and listen to his dialogues all day.

@SundayTimesZA He is a brave man. Lots of respect for whistle blowers

Prof Adam Mahomed, the hos­pital’s highly respec­ted head of internal medi­cine, is throwing in the towel in the public health sector, saying the Charlotte Maxeke hos­pital remained totally dys­func­tional “because of the bulls**t of polit­ics”. Read more: tinyurl.com/45jkfafd

Never meet your heroes

Saiga

@GilberteDSL I found this out the hard way and will never forgive Brendan Fraser

Why is there no HBO miniseries of Moby Dick

@SunnyLedfurd Deep tracks only!

one thing the 90s nostalgia leaves out is how much Dave Matthews we were forced to hear against our will

@sukh_saroy And I fear I shall be all alone When I get towards the end. Who will there be to comfort me Or who will be my friend? I will hold my house in the high wood Within a walk of the sea, And the men that were boys when I was a boy Shall sit and drink with me. - Hilaire Belloc

A Harvard psychiatrist spent 85 years tracking 724 men from their teenage years to their deathbeds to find out what actually makes a human life worth living, and the answer that came back is the one almost nobody in their twenties or thirties is willing to act on. His name is Robert Waldinger. He runs the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest scientific study of happiness in human history. It started in 1938. It is still running today. Most studies last a few years. This one has outlived its founders, its second director, and most of its original participants. The setup was simple. Researchers recruited 724 young men. Half were Harvard sophomores. The other half were teenagers from Boston's poorest neighborhoods. They wanted to follow them for the rest of their lives and find out what actually predicted a good life. Then they did the thing nobody else had the patience to do. They waited. For 85 years, the team measured everything they could think of. Blood tests. Brain scans. Income. Marriages. Mental health. Sleep. Loneliness. Every two years, the men answered questionnaires. Every five years, they had a full medical exam. Some of them became senators. One became President. Some ended up homeless. When the data finally came in, the result was so simple that the researchers spent years looking for what they had missed. It was not money. It was not IQ. It was not social class. It was not career success. It was not even genes. The single strongest predictor of who would be happy, healthy, and mentally sharp at 80 was the quality of their close relationships at 50. Not the number of friends. Not the size of the network. The depth of the connection. The men who had at least one person they could call in the middle of the night were measurably healthier 30 years later. The lonely ones, regardless of wealth, declined faster across almost every metric the team could measure. The detail that should disturb every ambitious person reading this is the one most people skip. The Harvard sophomores in the study had every external advantage you can name. Elite education. Family money. Strong networks. That advantage meant almost nothing if they reached middle age without people who actually loved them. The privileged loners aged worse than the working-class men with strong families. Waldinger has been asked the same question in every interview he has done in the last ten years. What is the lesson? His answer never changes. He says people in their twenties and thirties believe they need to chase fame and money and achievement to have a good life. The 80-year-old men in his study who actually had it figured out say the opposite. They wish they had spent less time at the office and more time with the people who mattered. You will not believe him. Almost nobody in their twenties or thirties does. The data has been public for decades and the world has not changed. The reason is that the cost of investing in people you love does not pay off for 30 years, but the cost of investing in career success pays off next quarter. The brain is built to chase the next quarter. It cannot see the 30-year compounding curve. The good news is that the men who repaired old relationships in their 60s and 70s still gained measurable health benefits. The brain does not stop responding to connection just because you waited. But every year you wait costs you compounding interest you cannot get back. Your career will outlive you for about three months. The people you loved well will carry you for the rest of recorded time. You are not behind on your goals. You are behind on your phone calls.

@allie__voss This happened with my dog. He struggled once. I was weak. Now I need to LIFT his enormous ass into the back of my pick-up each time. People stare and shake their heads. He gently wags his tail.

Not a parent, but I do feel like I've watched one example of this in real time working in childcare: -Child struggles with something -Parent immediately swoops in and helps, despite the kid not even asking for help -Next time the kid doesn't struggle as long, and just looks to the parent to fix it This often happens with things kids SHOULD struggle through (holding chalk, getting dolls' clothes on, building blocks) that kids need to learn for developmental reasons It feeds the parent's ego because they get to save the day, but over time the kid learns not to even try to solve their own problems, and that their success is someone else's responsibility The parents who tell their kids "You don't need me, you've got this" end up with the grittier kids

@MikeBales Cocktus? I regret nothing

Trying really hard to come up with a name for my cactus 😏😜

@chmonke I tried it once at a party when I was young. Don’t do it!

I’ve been wanting to get into thinking. Any recommendations on where to start? Any thoughts that are good for a beginner?

@UOzkirimli Oh my gods. This is horrific.

Istanbul Bilgi University, the place where I started my academic career as a 24-year old teaching assistant in 1995 and worked for 15 years, was shut down by a presidential decree overnight - without any reason or justification. 20,000 students and 1,000 employees not knowing what to do, where to go. Oh, and the same day the "presidential" courts started the process of shutting down the main opposition party. What a country to live in... #bilgiuniversity #bilgiüniversitesi #turkey #türkiye #democracyallaturca