insecurity materialized

 

Gehry's [born 1929] story is that very early on he was conventional, but one night with clients in Japan he got drunk and tried to sketch straight lines but they were all wavy, which his clients loved (and didn't realize were mistakes) - thus was born his signature style.

no middle

 "In Punk Rock, you're either Green Day or Day Job."

no strings attached

Detroit could have been Silicon Valley

 

most expensive photograph

Peter Lik [born 1959], took "Phantom" in an area known as “Antelope Canyon” in Arizona, USA, that auctioned in 2014 for $65 million.

ostrich strategy

"By not saying anything, you're saying something."

platonic

"Never forgive a friend who betrayed you once - he will betray you again."
- Plato [c. 428 BCE- 348 BCE]

zen master

“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” 

— Thich Nhat Hanh [1926-2022]

Leonardo's secret

Saper vedere: "To know how to see."

haggis and whisky

"The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry."
-- Robert Burns [1759-1796]

Athenian comedian

"Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever."

- Aristophanes [c. 446 BCE –  c. 386 BCE]

raindrop journey

 An interactive map shows you from start to finish here.

"money shouts, wealth whispers"

The "Kipling Suite" at London's oldest hotel Brown's in posh Mayfair goes for £5,405 per night.

what the Renaissance was about

Piero della Francesca [1420-1492]

"The Renaissance was about the rebirth of many things but youth and good looks, health and money lay at the heart of them."
- Charles Van Doren

canon of body proportions

 

Polykleitos [5th century BCE]. Alongside the Athenian sculptors Pheidias, Myron and Praxiteles, he is considered one of the most important sculptors of classical antiquity.

zinger: a striking or amusing remark.

 "That's your phone? It sounds like a rape alarm."

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”

"I may walk slowly, but I never walk backward."
- Abraham Lincoln [1809-1865]

"A well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste."

"Cruelty is human and natural, but not acceptable."

- Jodie Foster [born 1962]

world's longest lasting acronym

most famous non-historian historian

$5000 Tesla

 

"the secret is humility"

Founded as a maker of shrines and temples in Japan in 578, Kongo Kumi is the world's oldest continually operated business. Other old companies here.

query

 

dirty, vulgar, smelly

 "85% of the medieval village weren't allowed into the castle as they were considered peasants."

communal eating in the USSR

 

Home kitchens and dining were "discouraged" in favour of cafeterias.

Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something.

 

banality of evil

 Hitler's maid:

childhood trauma changes the brain

Abusers "coach little league, teach school, volunteer as Gray Ladies [provide nonprofessional care and services for the sick and convalescent usually in hospitals],  know the Bible ... they do all these things and even cry ... and then they have to balance themselves out." "The worst crime is that they expect you not to tell."

- Darrell Hammond [born 1955], Cracked Up

Banksy

formidable

drawing truth to power

 

The Crack-Up

"... the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function ... One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the 'impossible,' come true.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940], The Crack-Up

brain sugar routine

I drink "maybe 16" Coca-Cola beverages daily. "But I don't drink all of them. Maybe 12. I start them, but then it starts to get warm."
- Carrie Fisher [1956-2016]