The most radical act of parenting right now is letting your kids be bored and unsupervised outside.

What?!?!?!

Christopher Nolan has never sent an email in his life. He doesn’t own a smartphone. He directed The Dark Knight, Inception, and Oppenheimer. All his films combined have grossed $6 billion at the box office and won 18 Academy Awards. He told 60 Minutes on Sunday he’s never been particularly interested in email as a way to talk to people. The reason he can pull this off comes down to his family. His wife Emma Thomas, an Oscar-winning producer, has worked on every Nolan movie since 1998. She’s his filter. She talks to the studios, runs the budgets, manages the schedules, and handles the thousands of people on every set. They also own a production company together called Syncopy, the company that actually emails the studios for him. While she takes care of all that, he writes and directs. His younger brother Jonathan is also part of the system. Jonathan made the hit TV shows Westworld and Fallout, and he co-writes many of Nolan’s scripts. Nolan writes on a computer with no internet. When he finishes a script, he hands it to his actors in person. He bans phones from his sets. The rule covers everyone, from the camera assistants to the biggest movie stars. In 2018 he told a reporter that being on your phone on set means you’re not paying attention to your job. A researcher at UC Irvine named Gloria Mark has been tracking how long people focus on one screen before switching to another. In 2004, the average was 2.5 minutes. Today, it’s 47 seconds. Screen attention spans dropped almost 70% in two decades. American businesses lose about $650 billion every year because workers can’t stay focused. Nolan’s next movie, The Odyssey, comes out July 17. It cost $250 million to make. It’s the first movie in history shot entirely on giant IMAX cameras. He filmed for 91 days across Greece, Iceland, Morocco, Italy, and Scotland, using 2 million feet of physical film. The film is being edited the old way, cut and glued together by hand on a machine from the 1940s. The work is being done at the last lab in the world that still does this. He’s not the only one. Christopher Walken, the actor, has never sent an email or owned a phone either. Stanley Kubrick, who made The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey, was the same way before he died in 1999. The pattern shows up too often in great directors to be a coincidence. Nolan’s films average four times their budget at the box office. Most films struggle to break even. The difference is what one person can produce when they protect their time to think.

Children in a kindergarten in Italy napping to the sound of birds singing.

Great financial advice in 8 words: Avoid debt, invest regularly, make coffee at home.

reminder

Colleges are going to shrink with declining fertility and reduced opportunities due to AI.

The NYT is predictably tearing down Reese Witherspoon for encouraging moms to try AI before they ingest the anti-AI pablum as truth Instead of linking to the NYT op-ed, I think you should watch this video and encourage you to follow Reese Witherspoon on Instagram

Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada spoke about the contradictions of human nature: “Some people dream of having a swimming pool at home, while those who have one hardly ever use it. Those who have lost a loved one feel a profound sense of loss, while others often complain about their living relatives. Those without a partner long for one, while those who have one often don't appreciate it. The hungry would give anything for a meal, while the satiated complain about the taste of their food. Those without a car dream of owning one, while those who have a car are always looking for a better one.” The key to happiness is gratitude: truly seeing and appreciating what we already have, and understanding that somewhere, someone would give anything for what we take for granted.

Why is no one talking about the fact that appetizers are now the same price as entrees

It’s absolutely wild to me that the existence of self driving cars is somehow still a news story 3 years after they have been our everyday existence in San Francisco

Depressing

If you're a naturally anxious person, I recommend pursuing a high stress career path where at least you'll be compensated for anxiety you're going to have anyways.

maybe we can do

i.e. the hardware can eliminate texts on weekends No access to online shopping apps unless it’s around holiday/birthday maybe it can only have a max of 5 apps/functions 100% customizable

you’re 22. you scroll 3 hours a day. it feels harmless at 28 you can’t read an article without checking your phone twice per paragraph at 32 you don’t understand why nothing you start ever finishes, you’re still dreaming of this project you wanted to start. still no time at 40 you’ve never finished a book in a decade. it all passed

I know kindness is never lost or wasted because Everyone who has ever been kind to me has made me kinder in return

Key to winning: Choose to be positive and grateful. Then, just keep at it. Time is the great compounder and will do the rest. So many people just don’t have the discipline to stay positive and grateful. Then time compounds the bitterness instead.

You dont want a yacht. You dont want a big house. You dont want a super car, a $40,000 watch, or shoes you worry about getting dirty. You want free will. You want to wake up naturally on a Tuesday and you want to go to bed when you’re done having fun. You want to say yes to everything that excites you without having to request time off. You want to go to the the gym at noon, in absolutely no hurry. You want to spend 18 hours a day doing what you love. You want to be exactly where you desire being, always. You want to spend as much time with the people you care about as possible. You’re saying you wanna be rich? In what?