“Everybody’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another beer.“

– W.C. Fields

Jam:

Compared to What (Live at Montreux Jazz Festival) – Les McCann;Eddie Harris – 1969

Have an excellent weekend everybody!

The post Toast & Jam for July 31, 2026 first appeared on Sevenelles.

“Here’s to the obvious.
It needed someone to say it.“

– Anonymous

Jam:

Basket Case – Green Day – 1994

Have an excellent weekend everybody!

The post Toast & Jam for July 24, 2026 first appeared on Sevenelles.

Turns out your mitochondria have been reading your diary. Curt Buermeyer (writing from inside a 132-degree sauna, as one does) points to Dr. Martin Picard’s research showing that chronic stress burns roughly 60% of your daily cellular energy just keeping the lights on — and that people with a genuine sense of purpose have measurably stronger mitochondria. Purpose, it seems, is not a TED Talk abstraction. It’s fuel. The drift you feel on a Tuesday afternoon isn’t laziness or a character flaw; it’s your cells running a maintenance loop because you haven’t given them anywhere interesting to point. Which lands squarely in LIVE and LABOR territory, with LEGACY watching from the doorway. The uncomfortable question isn’t the big one — why are you here, cosmically, etc. It’s the small one: how many hours today did you spend genuinely aimed at something versus just being conveyed through them? Your cells apparently already know the answer.

Article Excerpt:

When you’re under chronic stress, the basic energy cost of just keeping your cells alive jumps by roughly 60%. Not the energy you use to think or move or create — just the energy required to maintain baseline cellular function.

Article Summary:

Curt Buermeyer opens sweating through a sauna session at 132 degrees, discovering that his brain had been quietly demoted while his body dealt with not cooking itself. That got him thinking about cellular energy — specifically the work of Dr. Martin Picard at Columbia, who runs the excellently named Mitochondrial Psychobiology Group and picked up a $1.5 million science prize in 2024 for treating mitochondria as information processors rather than the dusty “powerhouses” of high school biology.

The headline finding: chronic stress raises the baseline energy cost of simply keeping your cells alive by about 60%. Meaning more than half of what you’ve got is spent treading water before you do anything useful with it. Healing, learning, creating — all downstream of whatever’s left after the stress tax.

The really intriguing (and perhaps pseudo-scientific) part: Picard’s 2024 research shows that people with a strong sense of purpose have measurably more powerful mitochondria. Purpose is not just a motivational-poster concept — it’s a biological input your cells respond to.

Read the Full Article

The post Your Cells Need You To Have a Purpose first appeared on Sevenelles.

“To good company — the only thing that makes bad wine drinkable and good wine memorable.“

– Anonymous

Jam:

What I Like About You – The Romantics – 1980

Have an excellent weekend everybody!

The post Toast & Jam for July 17, 2026 first appeared on Sevenelles.

“To the existential dread that drove us here, and the third drink that’s making it manageable.“

– Anonymous

Jam:

Baba O’Riley – The Who – 1971

Have an excellent weekend everybody!

The post Toast & Jam for July 10, 2026 first appeared on Sevenelles.

Look, I have opinions. Confident ones. Delivered with the authority of a man who has clearly Googled nothing. And apparently I’m in excellent company, because the entire species is out here citing Maslow’s pyramid (which Maslow never drew), swearing by Myers-Briggs (which can’t even remember what it said about you five weeks ago), and dying on hills built out of pop trivia we absorbed by osmosis in 2003. Curt Buermeyer’s piece is a nice, gentle whack from the reality stick. A keen reminder that often the loudest person in the meeting wins, regardless of whether they’re right, because we’re all wired to mistake volume for evidence.

Article Excerpt:

Nearly 75% of people who retake the Myers-Briggs within five weeks receive a different personality type. That’s not a minor measurement issue — it’s a fundamental reliability failure. A personality test that gives you a different answer about yourself in five weeks isn’t measuring who you are. It’s measuring your mood that Tuesday morning.

Article Summary:

Curt Buermeyer opens with a card game at Lake Anna where he confidently told his son that seven shuffles fully randomizes a deck. His son pulled up Claude, checked the actual research, and — surprise — Dad was wrong. The seven-shuffle rule is oversimplified pop trivia Curt had been repeating for years without ever checking.

From there he takes a bat to several sacred cows. Maslow’s hierarchy? The needs are real, but the pyramid is empirically dead — and Maslow never even drew the triangle. Some management textbook did, and we’ve been citing it as gospel for fifty years. Myers-Briggs? Three-quarters of people get a different type when they retake it within five weeks. It’s a mood ring with a certificate.

The real villain is the Illusory Truth Effect — repetition masquerading as evidence — plus our evolved instinct to trust whoever sounds most sure. Curt’s recommended fix isn’t paralysis or pedantry. Just hold your confident claims more lightly, get curious when someone pushes back, and actually look up one thing this week that you’ve been citing for years. The gap between what you know and what’s true is where the interesting stuff lives.

Read the Full Article

The post Often Wrong, Never in Doubt first appeared on Sevenelles.

“Here’s to summer — the season nature designed specifically for ignoring responsibilities.“

– Anonymous

Jam:

American Music – Violent Femmes – 1991

Have an excellent 4th of July weekend everybody!

The post Toast & Jam for July 3, 2026 first appeared on Sevenelles.

“Here’s to the friend who refuses to call it a night, and to the rest of us who reluctantly agree they’re right.“

– Anonymous

Jam:

Step On – Happy Mondays – 1990

Have an excellent weekend everybody!

The post Toast & Jam for June 26, 2026 first appeared on Sevenelles.

“To the people who put up with us — and to the slow-dawning realization that we’re somebody’s people too.“

– Anonymous

Jam:

Everyday People – Sly & The Family Stone – 1968

Have an excellent weekend everybody!

The post Toast & Jam for June 19, 2026 first appeared on Sevenelles.

“To all the fathers: By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.“

– Charles Wadworth

Jam:

Take A Picture – Filter – 1999

Have an excellent Father’s Day weekend everybody!

The post Toast & Jam for June 19, 2026 first appeared on Sevenelles.