The bird and the branch

it sat on one morning 🦜

The Song of the Lark | The Art Institute of Chicago

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For a long time, I have been wanting to share this press conference clip of Bill Murray where he talked about what art means to him, and just never found the right place.

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The Monuments Men Press Conference - Bill Murray 'How Art Saved my Life'

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What follows is an end-of-year clean-out of the Branches backlog. A list of things I’ve liked, but haven’t found a way to share yet… enjoy.

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“I remember always thinking that life itself doesn’t actually exist, because if no one tells it as a story or turns it into a narrative, life is merely something that happens, nothing more.

To understand life, you have to tell it, even if only to yourself. This doesn’t mean that a story can make life comprehensible, because there are always gaps in any narrative, whatever sutures or remedies you might try to apply.

That is why a narrative only restores life in fragmentary form.”

— Enrique Vila-Matas

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1. The most underrated line from Succession 🎥

2. Bill Kenwright Delivers his Speech at the Hillsborough Memorial 🎥

3. 24 hours in an invisible epidemic 📝

4. Smorgasbord: on the value of link roundups 📝

5. Why Lego won 🎥

6. Things could be better 📝

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Dani DaOrtiz at Fool US 2022 (the act that Penn and Teller didn’t even try to figure out.)

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“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and do try to love the question themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

– Rainer Maria Rilke

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Dreams - The Cranberries, 1993

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“Write with a specific person in mind. When writing Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report, I pretend that I’m talking to my sisters.

For more than forty years, I’ve studied the documents that companies file. Too often, I’ve been unable to decipher just what is being said or, worse yet, had to conclude that nothing was being said.

The most common problem is that a well-intentioned and writer simply fails to get the message across. Stilted jargon and complex constructions are usually the villains.

Though highly intelligent, they are not experts in accounting or finance. They will understand plain English, but jargon may puzzle them. My goal is simply to give them the information I would wish them to supply me if our positions were reversed.

To succeed, I don’t need to be Shakespeare; I must, though, have a sincere desire to inform.

- Warren Buffett

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Aphex Twin - Stone In Focus

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"The everyday human gesture is always a heartbeat away from the miraculous.

Remember that ultimately we make things happen through our actions, way beyond our understanding or intention; that our seemingly small ordinary human acts have untold consequences; that what we do in this world means something; that we are not nothing; and that our most quotidian human actions by their nature burst the seams of our intent and spill meaningfully and radically through time and space, changing everything.

Our deeds, no matter how insignificant they may feel, are replete with meaning, and of vast consequence, and that they constantly impact upon the unfolding story of the world, whether we know it or not."

- Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files, Issue #216

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Every Monday Night – a short film about ball & life

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1. Psychologists have posited hundreds of cognitive biases over the years. A fascinating new paper argues that they all boil down to one of a handful of fundamental beliefs coupled with confirmation bias 📝

2. "I Hope This Grief Stays With Me" - Andrew Garfield Fights Back Tears And Celebrates His Mum 🎥

3. Most jump rope revolutions in a single skip - 8 by Kirato Hitaka 🎥

4. Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle 🎥

5. Billie Eilish: Same Interview, The Sixth Year | Vanity Fair 🎥

6. The brain undergoes a great “rewiring” after age 40 📝

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Morning, Interior - Maximilien Luce, 1890

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"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days."

- Annie Dillard

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nothing, except everything.

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1. Carmine, A Don Doesn't Wear Shorts - The Sopranos 🎥

2. Write a Note to Your Spouse Every Day 📝

3. Charles Munger Interview: The Power of Partnership with Warren Buffett 🎥

4. Why Sargent Painted Outside The Lines 🎥

5. Hermanos Gutiérrez: Tiny Desk Concert 🎥

6. Ezra Klein’s Formula for a Good Day Involves These Four Things 📝

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1. WHAT PUNISHMENTS ARE NOT GIFTS 🎥

2. Analogy as the Core of Cognition 🎥

3. Andrew Grove, "Strategic Inflection Points" - 1996 MIT Industry Leaders Program Lecture 🎥

4. Last Suppers 📝

5. John Mayer: Someday I'll Fly 🎥

6. Cultural observations: Mullets 🎥

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Sam Fender & Holly Humberstone - Seventeen Going Under (Acoustic)

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1. The Head/Heart/Hands Framework 📝

2. Good Old Neon 📝

3. 136 Internet Videos that Blew My Mind 📝

4. 334 Quotations By People I Really Like and 152 Facts Which Never Cease to Delight Me 📝

5. MARGIN OF SAFETY: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor, by Seth A. Klarman 📝

6. 129 Cars 🎧

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boygenius - You're Still The One (Shania Twain Cover).

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no one else can stand
in exactly the spot where
I’m standing, and
it’s taken three decades’ walking
to say I love you
to the inevitability of my solitude.

- TWO POEMS by Irène Mathieu

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