#Twitterstory!!! I'm bored!!

My friend went to visit her family & called me breathlessly in the middle of the night!

Beth: OH MY GOSH I HAD THE SCARIEST DREAM! I WOKE UP SCREAMING!!

Me: What was it?!

Beth: I was driving the Buick Riviera down a country road...
(more)

Beth: It's dark-I can't see-up ahead there is something in the road-I'm going too fast to stop-I'm getting really scared and suddenly-just as I am about to run over it-(She starts getting loud, she is scared and unnerved!!) IT STANDS UP!! (She screams-totally freaking out)
(more)
OH MY GOD!!! I think!!! What horrible terrible thing did my friend see in this nightmare that has her calling me up in near hysterics!!?!!

Me: (now almost yelling myself!) What was it??!!!

Beth: IT WAS SO SCARY! (she squeals)

Me: WHAT???!!

Beth: A PINECONE!!!
(more)
Me: A pinecone?

Beth: It was terrible! It was so awful!! It stood up right in front of the car in the headlights, and I SCREAMED and then it opened its eyes and threw up its arms and screamed at me with little teeth and I RAN OVER IT!!!!

More
I couldn't stop laughing... I was picking her up at the airport the next night, so I spent the entire day driving around Los Angeles looking for pine cones. I glued google eyes, arms and gnashing teeth on them and hid them all over her apartment. Hidden inside everything.
(more)
I picked her up at the airport that night and she told me all about her horrible dream and we were in hysterics laughing. She lived across the courtyard from me, she headed up. A few minutes later there was a blood curdling scream.

That was followed by...
(more)
A second scream as she found the pine cone hiding behind her (rotary) phone.

My friend, by the way, was the sweetest nicest person I'd ever met. She never cursed.

"Ring Ring" said my phone.

Through the window I heard another scream.

#&#^#*#$#*#&!!!!" Said my phone...
(more)
So tonight I was about to write my friend a Christmas card... and decided instead to make her one....

(more)
Which led to me making her a calendar...
Which I hope she likes...
Because, for several years, she would stumble upon a hidden pine cone and call me all mad. Maybe this will make up for that?
#PineConeChristmas
@threadreaderapp unroll

More from Life

"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
This month I’m turning 22.

To celebrate, here are the 22 best threads I’ve found on Twitter this year.

Mostly about:

•Life/purpose
•Startups
•Entrepreneurs
•Writing
•Clarity of thought

If I see more interesting threads, I will add to this list.

Enjoy!

1. @ryanstephens: Need tips on growing a newsletter, mastering Twitter, writing online?

@ryanstephens breaks down a podcast discussion between @davidperell and @nathanbarry

Here’s what you can


2. @jackbutcher: How to separate your time from your income

•Explore the market
•Build equity
•Build products and services
•Scale your reputation
•Break the matrix

A fantastic thread complete with helpful


3. @AlexAndBooks_: I love to read.

Here is a great thread on 10 fantastic books.

Includes a short summary of each.

Don’t just take it from me, this is straight from the legend: @AlexAndBooks_


4. @m_franceschetti My biggest revelation in 2020 was the importance of sleep.

Here, @m_franceschetti founder of @eightsleep gives us his eight sleep hacks to improve sleep for 2021.

Do these and your productivity will

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x