Hello friends,

and welcome to a new edition of your favourite (okay, maybe not your favourite, but at least i hope it’s one you enjoy reading) newsletter.

A big thank you to Catherine J. Runnels for supporting the newsletter. 🙏

Lots of great bite-sized content awaits. So let’s start… did you grab your coffee? I know it’s already annoying how i always remind you about it, but believe it or not, this newsletter really goes best with a cup of coffee.

That’s why we will start today with Coffitivity. A place where you can listen to cafe sounds.

TECH 👨‍💻

1. Ever wondered why hyperlinks are blue?

2. TxtPaper. A nice tool that converts web pages into PDF, ePub and mobi (kindle) files.

3. You can now create a website from your notebook. Just write something down, take a picture and…that’s it. Check out Paperwebsite.

4. IBM achieves quantum computing breakthrough. Read more.

5. Camera shy? No problem. Try Skittish.

CULTURE 🧬

1. I know Halloween is over, but…you can still check out The 20 greatest horror films of the 21st century.

2. We’re getting there. The future is all about electric cars. Electric vehicles: the revolution is finally here.

3. You just gotta see this. Jurassic Park with a cat.

4. The U.S.Constitution. But on the web, interactive mode. Here.

5. A great podcast episode about Partnerships, Patterns, and Paradoxical Relationships, with Esther Perel. Listen here.

PHILOSOPHY 📜

1. One of my favorite videos is a five-minute YouTube video of Victor Frankl teaching students and explaining the idea of “the meaning and purpose of life”. HERE.

2. A delightful funny book that teaches philosophy. Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar - Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes.

3. A great read about The Philosopy of Giving.

4. What makes us happy? Here’s an interesting read about it. How Do We Measure Well-Being?

5. An ABC podcast episode about Making peace with our unpeacefulness.

Our first book today is: Lust for Life by Irving Stone.

Here are five notes from the book:

1. How difficult it is to be simple.

2. What the world thought made little difference. Rembrandt had to paint. Whether he painted well or badly didn't matter; painting was the stuff that held him together as a man.

3. Money makes the man a beast.

4. There is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris.

5. Misery is the only thing in the world that has no end or edge.

The second book for this week is written by a famous actor. Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, there’s also a movie with the same name.

Here are five notes from the book:

1. I learned the advantage of training early, before the day starts, when there are no other responsibilities and nobody else is asking anything of you.

2. It’s human nature to work on the things that we are good at. It’s so satisfying. To be successful, however, you must be brutal with yourself and focus on the flaws. That’s when your eye, your honesty, and your ability to listen to others come in.

3. The only way you become a leading man is by treating yourself like a leading man and working your ass off.

4. My definition of living is to have excitement always; that’s the difference between living and existing. I seldom saw my life as hectic.

5. No matter what you do in life, you have to have a business mind and educate yourself about money. You can’t just delegate it to a manager. I wanted to know the details.

Founder of American Rocket Society and Author Edward Pendray on rockets and interplanetary experimentation:

There is something about rocket power which transcends the bleakly mechanical aspects of the subject, and changes its followers into missionaries. . . . Whatever it may be, those of us who have spent years in the study and development of rockets have acquired an emotion about them which is almost religious. We somehow feel privileged, as though we had stood in those years at some obscure crossroads in history, and seen the world change. We do not know exactly what we have loosed into the Earth, any more than Gutenberg with his movable type, or DeForest with his radio tube. But we feel in our souls that it is magnificent and wonderful, and that the human race will be richer for it in time to come.

Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi on how to approach life:

To the most trivial actions, attach the devotion and mindfulness of a hundred monks. To matters of life and death, attach a sense of humor.

Inventor and writer Lin Yutang on the beauty of autumn:

I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death.

A moment of nature is in order. This week’s nature shorts:

This week’s interesting articles and stories :

🟪 On the Link Between Great Thinking and Obsessive Walking. From Charles Darwin to Toni Morrison, an inside look at our need to walk, our need to move.

🟩 Five economic effects of daylight saving time. Though daylight saving time was intended to help us better take advantage of daylight hours during the winter, in recent years evidence has begun to show that the time change causes more harm than good.

🟨 Ten Ways to Make Your Time Matter. Accepting our mortality helps us let go of busyness and focus on what’s most important to us in order to live a happier, more meaningful life.

Here are this week’s interesting stuff we found on the web:

🟣 Explore the mysterious beauty of the ocean with help of amazing photographs. Explore the Ocean Photography Awards.

🟢 A really beautiful and amazing app about sky, stars and constellations. SkyGuide. I installed and used the app, and i totally recommend it.

🟡 A fun game. You draw, and a neural network tries to guess what you’re drawing. Quick, draw !

Hope you enjoyed powernotes. And if you did, why not share it with your family, friends or colleagues? Please share powernotes and help it grow. Thank you so much.

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Also, if you want to support the newsletter, you can buy me a coffee. Thank you.

Powernotes will be back in your inbox in december. More specifically, on 6th december. Winter is here ! ❄️ Enjoy the winter days, and take care ! Bye 👋