Nepal 79: The Most Beautiful Moment of My Life

Daniel 20 Comments

In life, we remember moments.

We may spend long hours at our work, in the library studying for school, or pouring over our computers. But these are not the things we remember when we look back on our lives. All of that drudgery fades with time, and we are left with only a few, golden moments. A relationship that is stressful and ugly becomes, in memory: a flash of a her smile; a moonlit night under under the stars in a deep mountain canyon; a shooting star; his unexpected ‘I love you.’ These are what stick, not the long, shut-down stretches of black, or the quiet evenings spent in your own head.

Suile holds the most beautiful moment of my life.

Long after the rest of the journey, the rest of the relationship, the rest of the emotions have faded from my memory, I will remember this moment. I will remember it, in crystal clear detail, until the day I die.

Continue reading →

Sweden’s Apathetic Refugee Children

Daniel 11 Comments

The next day, a doctor inserted a feeding tube through Georgi’s nostril. “He showed no resistance,” Soslan said. “Nothing.” Georgi was given a diagnosis of uppgivenhetssyndrom, or resignation syndrome, an illness that is said to exist only in Sweden, and only among refugees. The patients have no underlying physical or neurological disease, but they seem to have lost the will to live. The Swedish refer to them as de apatiska, the apathetic. “I think it is a form of protection, this coma they are in,” Hultcrantz said. “They are like Snow White. They just fall away from the world.”

—From: “The Apathetic” by Rachel Aviv

I read this article in The New Yorker over my morning coffee, and it blew me away so much I had to share. One of those stories that seems so fantastical it can’t possibly be true. But it is — and it’s not new, either.

I don’t have much to add, but you should read the article. It’s incredibly interesting.

Pausing Ads

AsideDaniel 2 Comments

Hey y’all;

just letting you know I’m pausing the advertising on the site for the moment. It’s not generating a ton of revenue, and I’m not satisfied with all the additional scripts and tracking it runs. It slows down the site and makes your user experience worse.

I’m seeing more success monetizing by using affiliate marketing, so I will continue including those links in some articles. I hope this isn’t too intrusive.

What you could do to help me out though is sign up for my mailing list, here. I’m still dialing in the exact format, but I generally send a roundup of the week’s articles, and maybe a few links to other things that interest me. Anyways, everyone says the real way to start leveraging your audience and build a following is to start an email list, so that’s what I’m doing. As always, your support means the world to me 🙂

And of course, if you really appreciate the work I do, you can click the “Donate” button in the sidebar and throw me a tip 🙂 But I don’t expect you to.

Thanks for reading,

Daniel