The office is buzzing this week with new tech for laying out digital newsletters; now, we must put the toys down and get to the writing.  On a busy Tuesday, we bring you ideas around meditation and the Perception Puzzle; after that, we revisit censorship and its complicated relationships with it.  After the heavy mental trip, we lighten the mood with champagne bubble science and a lunch and learn with Stan Lee on how to do your best work.

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In a never-ending quest to learn a little meditation, I pick up one of Eckhart Tolle's books and read its passages for clues.  Today, it's page 11 from the book Oneness With All Life, which Tolle says is an essential version of his book A New Earth.  The book is good if you have read A New Earth; it's less history or how Tolle discovered and refined his philosophy and goes straight into philosophy.  Page 11 is about perception and reducing thoughts when looking at an object.  Straight from the page, "Can you take the thinking out of perceiving?  Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?"  This contradicts what many of us like to do; we like solving puzzles.  The challenge is we turn everything into a puzzle to be solved.  Our ability to expand perception without the puzzle is a step toward meditation and a sense of calm looking at any situation.

The pages on this concept come with suggestions for practice – you can look at an inanimate object with the idea of staring at it without distracted thoughts.  I started to do this in the mornings last week and made it up to 2 minutes.  Similar to focus/distraction techniques we learned in Lamaze classes, pick and perceive the object, reduce the thoughts about it, and try to reduce other thoughts when they come to conquer any empty non-puzzle-solving space.  This is easier to do in the mornings before your head fills up with stuff; the next stretch practice will be to do this in the evenings when the work is done and before relaxing before bedtime.  This is when settling my mind is the hardest; it's also when I choose to do Wordle – another puzzle – go figure!

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On the surface, when I hear about censorship and recent news of book banning, I'm both frustrated and hopeful.  Frustrated that, as a society, we don't seem to learn any lessons, and optimistic because nothing banned is inaccessible, especially now.  The Gen-X punk in me says, go ahead, do it again; we found a way to; see, read, hear, and experience everything 50 years ago, and that was pre-Internet.  Ask any teenage boy growing up in the 70s and 80s, and they could tell you whose dad stashed the Playboys and where they were. The Guardian writes a good story on several historical censorship events, including Shakespeare, JD Salinger, and Ray Bradbury. 

Words and stories, and stories survive no matter who burns them.  Most people know this, and yet replacing the cuss words out of movies, applying labels to content, and performative press conferences touting library white-washing continue.  It makes you wonder if the performance and content (click-bait) generated are the point.

Another wrinkle in my censorship understanding process is what I did with my kids.  My kids grew up in the 2000s, and based on my businesses, there was a lot of tech in the house.  The Internet was exploding, and my kids would use the computer for homework and games.  This was before the iPhone explosion, and the rule in the house as you could use the computer, but it was in the living/dining room, and I wouldn't let my kids take a computer or laptop into bedrooms.  If they happened to come to a crossed something awful, I wanted them to be in a room surrounded by people to ask questions.  I knew back then that I couldn't stop the flood that would come, and I wanted to teach my kids to ask questions.  The jury is out on whether or not that worked. 

Pull the books, change the text, remove the words, or, in some cases, the intent.  A bucket won't save a boat with a hole in it.  Censor kids, and they will learn the lessons you hoped to hide from them from their friends.  Wouldn't it be better to have schools and libraries built with educators that help students understand the stories, ask questions about them, and dialogue with others?

Researchers at Brown University have taken on a life-changing study of how bubbles in liquids move and why.  Rumors abound that champagne bubbles rise in a straight line due to the shape of the glass or flute.  Not so, says Professor Roberto Zeni.  Flavor molecules and fatty acids contribute more to bubble action than glassware.  Nicola Davis has the write-up in the Science section of The Guardian.  You can thank us when the question comes up on your next trivia night.

A short clip and BONUS SHOT from fellow Substackers Matt and Luigi, who write The Weekly – is a clip of Stan Lee giving a talk and talking about doing the work that means something to you and because you think you can do it.  A good clip.  We will only add that if you don't know what that is yet, feel free to try a few things and get to the end of the project to determine if it's something you want to pursue.

A little trance background to push work forward.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

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Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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