moviewise

Related article: How the Elderly Lose Their Rights

Guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent—and reap a profit from it.

By Rachel Aviv October 2, 2017

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderl...

My retirement strategy is to find a part time job that I enjoy doing and never stop working.

I believe that besides providing an influx of funds (in addition to savings and investments), staying socially engaged and mentally active by continuing to work is good for health. The security of knowing that there will be enough money to pay property taxes and basic needs, i.e. food, preventive healthcare, etc. is also a benefit.

"That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."

—Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple Inc.)

From: KISS For Health, Wealth, and Happiness Cats, Coca-Cola, And Documentary Movies That Show “Simple” Is A Force Of Good https://moviewise.substack.com/p/kiss-for-health-wealth-and-...

Why can't Apple allow individuals who need to physically access equipment to go on campus on their own, be in the room by themselves, without demanding that they be exposed to groups of other people for days?

If just one person is ill, then many others will get ill in an office environment.

But scheduling a person to use equipment and having an hour between people to circulate the air properly should be doable. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Apple engineers can obviously work from home, so why not let them if they choose to do so?

The Meaning Of Life According To The Movies (A Virtual Comedy Film Festival): https://moviewise.substack.com/p/the-meaning-of-life

> But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy

I think this is the secret to living well. Find the humor, find the positives, be jolly even in difficult circumstances because life is short, so why not laugh as much as possible? https://moviewise.substack.com/p/facing-lifes-difficulties

> The real depth, in anything insightful said, is created by the listener and how they choose to take the words to heart.

This is what life all is about.

"The friend noticed there above the entrance to the house, a horseshoe, which I don't know how it is here. In Europe it is a superstitious item preventing evil spirits to enter the house. So the friend asked Niels Bohr, but what you mean aren't you a scientist? Do you believe in this? Niels Bohr says, of course, I'm not crazy, I don't. So the friend asked him, why do you have it there? You know what Neils Bohr answered? He said, of course I don't believe in it, but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr

> Oogway then responds with that line, which is basically saying no matter what he does, he's not going to prevent Tai Lung's escape.

This is the difference between fate and destiny. If what we do does not matter, then that is fate, which is very confining, like a prison where you are restricted from having any meaningful impact on your own life. If fate were true, we could all just sit in a room quietly, waiting for fate to intervene and lead us by the nose down a path we never expected.

But that doesn't sound like the life we experience. We do make choices, those choices have consequences, and our lives are different because of the paths we took. This is destiny, and it has to do with what we choose to focus on, good or bad. If you spend your time doing things that are healthy for you and others, you and those around you become healthier. If instead you choose to focus on potential catastrophes, then that is what you and those around you experience.

And this kind of focus will likely enable the catastrophe to materialize because part of you will be working to fulfill this negative expectation to justify all the life that was wasted in worrying about it.

I believe this is a tenet of Karma in Jainism: "There is no retribution, judgment or reward involved but a natural consequences of the choices in life made either knowingly or unknowingly."

"a good and virtuous life indicates a latent desire to experience good and virtuous themes of life. Therefore, such a person attracts karma that ensures that their future births will allow them to experience and manifest their virtues and good feelings unhindered" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation

> The article explains why kung fu panda is a great movie by starting with a quote highlighting the pandas desire to break away from expectations to pursue his passion. By the end of the article, there’s a quote about illusion of control. It’s contradictory

I think the "desire to break away from expectations" and the "illusion of control" are not contradictory because they represent different struggles. The former is a struggle within, the latter is a struggle against the world. Understanding for yourself what you want to accept from the larger society, the expectations, is an inner struggle. Understanding that you have little control over that society, over life itself, is an outward struggle that doesn't have to consume you if you let go of the illusion of control.

The first one is about choosing what to focus on, the second one is about choosing to be at peace with that which you cannot control. These two work in tandem and are not contradictory.

> "ele não é assim, ele está assim"

"He is not like that, he is only acting like that" or "He is not like that, he is only currently like that."

I feel that there is a difference between "believe in yourself" and "embrace who you are / love yourself." The former is about confidence, the latter is about ego.

Thank you for sharing this. It's an interesting observation that the people who may best be helped by what I call "movie therapy" would be the most resistant to it, as they are not in the right frame of mind to consider new ideas or perspectives. It's one of those terrible ironies of life.

> just pick something and go for it. Do it well - be excellent.

It's funny that another Jack Black movie, "The School of Rock" (2003), has a similar message: Do what you love because you love it. Even if you are not very good at it, you can find a way to fit it into your life. https://moviewise.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/the-school-of-roc...

Another movie that shows this lesson is the 2013 documentary "Salinger": Be driven by making your work great, not by the reactions of others. https://moviewise.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/salinger/

Which is influenced by Hinduism, "you should do your work as perfectly as you possibly can with no thought of rewards, and only that way can you be a really happy person.”

> Yeah I think mindfulness is not about ignoring your problems. It's more about not letting your mind wander unnecessarily.

Learning to focus is one of the hidden lessons in "Kung Fu Panda." Po's journey allows him to finally reveal to his father his true passion because he learns to focus on his own destiny rather than letting the pressures of the larger society, as represented by his father's expectations, control him.

> I actually have found comfort in my personal life from thinking about that little passage...

This idea of finding comfort or guidance in movies is exactly how I feel, and it is what motivates me to catalogue the life lessons found in movies on "moviewise."

I love birds, and have multiple nest boxes and feeders around my home. I've learned to identify my backyard birds by using The Cornell Lab of Ornithology website: https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home I'm also working on a funny animated cartoon about birds with some factoids thrown in: https://moviewise.substack.com/p/introducing-its-all-good-ti... I think birding is a great way to introduce kids to the idea of land conservation and habitat preservation for wildlife near human populations. Birds are able to co-exist well with us within suburbs and cities if there are large parks or nature preserves nearby. Humans obviously also benefit from having a place to go near their homes that can bring them closer to nature, which can be both mentally calming and physically invigorating. And of course other animals and plant species would benefit from protecting and/or expanding park land.

A helpful way to deal with childhood trauma, I've found, is to take a wide perspective. The speech that Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, who was abused by his father, gives in the 2013 movie "Saving Mr. Banks" beautifully encapsulates this idea and eloquently delivers this advice: overcome your past. Here is the full speech: https://moviewise.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/saving-mr-banks/

Discoverability based on more specific categories, like "humor/comedy" "movies" "advice" would be more helpful than trying to triangulate between what a writer/author reads and what a new reader is reading. Writers who are more open-minded subscribe to newsletters that have nothing to do with the content they write about. If a reader is interested in more "humor" writing, for example, it doesn't make any sense to suggest a travel newsletter simply because the author of the article they are looking at reads it, and you are deeming it higher quality because of that when it may not really be better than other newsletters in the same category but rather a reflection of a personal relationship the author has with another author. To a lesser extent the same goes for the readers of a publication. People have eclectic tastes and are not monolithic. But as a reader if I'm enjoying an article under the category "movies" then I would appreciate seeing articles that are tagged with related terms like "film" "cinema" "movie recommendations" "movie reviews." The lack of tagging or more nuance in the categories Substack offers really limits discoverability.

Also, seeing the stats for the last 7 days and the last 24 hours (source, subscriptions, etc.) would allow writers to get a sense of what they recently did in terms of marketing that may be working best. 30 days is too long to be able to see if a particular action had any impact.

> Or even a pay-per-article model - some of the free newsletters I'm on publish paywalled things I'm interested in, but I don't want to subscribe to the full deal. But I'd pre-load my account with $50 and pay a couple of dollars for a single article.

This is an excellent idea! Tracking individual articles for payment, rather than the whole publication/newsletter, would allow for bundling in a way that respects Substack's intentions of preserving/respecting the author and reader relationship.

Yes, I'd like an aggregate email notification, sent no more than once a week, containing only the titles of recent posts of all the newsletters I subscribe to that will allow me to go to one place, like an app, where I can read all these articles at once rather than piecemeal. Prior to the app, the only way to get notified of a new post was to get an email from the newsletter, which as I mentioned can start to become pretty tedious because of the constant stream of emails. Alternatively, one could bookmark all the newsletters one subscribes to on a web browser and keep checking them, which is also quite tedious. A reader app is a better solution.

>What I put out there every day is worth the measly $5 a month I charge for it. What worked well for me in the past was giving out a no strings attached free trial of The Sizzle for two weeks then asking people to pay if they want it to continue. Substack’s business model however is freemium content. You give away the bulk of your content to build an audience then upsell that audience with paid subscriber only content. [...] I could add a 14-day free trial to the paid subscription, but Substack doesn’t do free trials without also adding a credit card and automatically charging that card when the trial is over. Most people hate this (me included) as they’re scared they’ll forget to cancel before the trial ends and get charged for something they don’t want, so they just don’t take the risk.

Your model sounds better for professional writers, or already established writers. But the benefit of Substack for emerging writers is that it gives them a platform to establish a brand presence with the hope that it will develop into a large enough audience to get enthusiastic readers who will convert into paid subscribers. There is also no easy way for new writers to try to start a writing career while also trying to figure out different technologies to send out a newsletter. Substack makes it completely easy, and it's fair that they charge some percentage once a writer starts earning money while using their platform.

> But what are the things the app can do that the web cannot?

As a subscriber to many Substack newsletters with different publishing schedules, I've found it to be a bit tedious and distracting to have my email inbox be inundated with new posts. I'd rather go to a reader app that has all the newsletters I've subscribed to in one place for when I have the time and the interest to spend a couple of hours reading. I'd like for the app to just send me a reminder once a week with who published what so that I can decide if I want to go to the reader app and peruse at my leisure.

As a writer on Substack I've found that readers like to reply directly to the emails they receive instead of leaving a comment on the web version so that others could see it and perhaps react/interact with it. If the app could help harness a community for the writers by making it more comfortable for readers to like and leave comments, then that would be beneficial in building a brand. Additionally, if the app has a mechanism to recommend Substack newsletters that are similar to the one a particular reader is reading then that would help expand the reach/discoverability of lesser known writers.

One of these life lessons was made into a great movie.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), fantasy directed by Frank Capra:

35. Maintain a good reputation. One day, when you’re in trouble, your good repute will turn out to be your saving grace.

"People can underrate the novelty lurking within things they thought they’d already experienced fully."

In other words, like "comfort food" people find it rewarding to read books or watch movies that they are already familiar with because there is still novelty (fun) hidden within them if the books or movies, etc. are complex enough. An example of such works is found here:

Great Movies Based On Books https://moviewise.substack.com/p/great-movies-based-on-books

Music clips from movies can make you feel happier. Here is an example: https://moviewise.substack.com/p/a-short-history-of-jazz-in-...

The animation of the characters dancing in "The Jungle Book" (1967), was created based on video of the musicians, Louis Prima and his band, performing this number: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV8HrpOu1FA

A funny line is also memorable.