Winnie Lim

Neurons without electrolytes in their environment cannot function. They are idle, dying, or dead—this is defined by new research just published in the Journal of Neuroscience as “brain depression”. Neurons are connected to communicate with each other. When neurons in a region don’t function, neighboring neurons try to awaken them—this is referred to as the spreading of electricity in the parts of the brain that are not in depression in the same scientific article. This is seen as aura in those with migraines in the occipital lobe of the brain. For migraines in other regions, the healthy neurons signal pain sensing nerves located in the meninges, a tissue separating the brain from the skull (there is no pain sensing nerve inside the brain). Migraine is pain signaled by pain-sensor neurons in the meninges and so the location of where we feel pain is not necessarily connected to the location that causes pain.

An increasing amount of evidence — much of it clinical — suggests that migraine is a response to cerebral energy deficiency or oxidative stress levels that exceed antioxidant capacity and that the attack itself helps to restore brain energy homeostasis and reduces harmful oxidative stress levels.

Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider.

One of the core questions that I seek to answer in this book is whether it is still possible to recover the dharma that existed prior to the emergence of Buddhist orthodoxies and then build upon that foundation an adequate ethical, contemplative, and philosophical practice that optimizes human flourishing in a post-credal age. Paradoxically, to imagine what might emerge after Buddhism, we need to go back to the time before Buddhism began.

We’re all doing time. We’re all in prison. We’re all on death row. And we can all free ourselves.

Explorable Explanations is my umbrella project for ideas that enable and encourage truly active reading. The goal is to change people’s relationship with text. People currently think of text as information to be consumed. I want text to be used as an environment to think in.

In typography/design, ‘sidenotes’ place footnotes/endnotes in the margins for easier reading. I discuss design choices, HTML implementations and their pros/cons.