Modern-day takes on old news.
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Polachek, Hegel, Boulanger on Music
What’s the nature of music? Hegel, too, has an opinion.
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Diogenes, the Original Minimalist, on Minimalism
The original minimalism and today’s minimalism.
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Thomas Rid on ChatGPT in the classroom
All that talk about plagiarism and cheating and abuse is uninspiring and counterproductive.. How can we both use machines that learn, and help learn, to push out the edge of human knowledge through cutting-edge research faster and in new ways?
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Milken Review on Airline Deregulation
Pros and cons lost in the cacophony of complaints.
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The Uppsala University on a New Way of Measuring Time
Nudge electrons into a higher energy state (the Rydberg state) and you can amass significant information about time without ever having to start the clock.
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Oliver Burkeman by way of Joseph Goldstein on Generosity
What’s truly most likely to happen if you put it off, which is that you’ll never get around to sending that message.
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Guillaume Wolf on How to Create the Future
This philosophy, which he shares on a micro level (individuals) and macro level (brands/organizations), focuses on getting concrete, measurable results in order to create what he calls a “reality shift.”
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Kevin P. Hand on Oceans and Airport Security
Beneath that is a rocky seafloor, which may be teeming with hydrothermal vents and bizarre otherworldly organisms. So the next time you’re in airport security and frustrated…
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Blum against the boundaries of any single destiny
More different lifestyles are represented to us daily, televisually than to any previous group of people, and actual jobs are more specialized.
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The Etymological Compendium on why it’s odious to slap your fools
Even the dignitaries of the Church in the middle ages kept fools to make them laugh—or to laugh at them.
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Kay Redfield Jamison on The intensity of exuberance
In group celebrations we find exuberance differently. A love of festivities is universal, observed William James, and in many respects celebration is yet another form of human play.
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Justin Murphy on The Improvement Illusion
“Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.” —Thomas Merton I highly recommend this article on The Improvement Illusion by Justin Murphy.
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Robert Hayden’s poem “American Journal”
much here is beautiful, dream like vistas reminding me of home
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Knausgaard on the zeitgeist
All of this is part of a shared space, it is what we call the zeitgeist, the spirit of the time, which is also what we express ourselves through.
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Chodron on the wisdom of no escape and story of a woman running away from tigers
Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life, it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat.
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Carolina Busta on the Internet
Underscores the influence of Political Compass and gaming more generally on ideations of countercultural participation—or what he refers to as a “choose your character / choose your future” mode of “identity play that gained heightened relevance as American politics subsumed all of pop culture” during the mid-2010s.
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Zweig on Memory
A sort of jellyfish glistening in the abysses of consciousness…
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Einstein’s Three Rules of Work
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
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Culture is to society as style is to the individual
An answer to the sterile ends of pure utility and the cold-heartedness of a survival mindset.
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Eric Fromm on how love is primarily giving, not receiving
In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving. What is giving?
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David Foster Wallace on default-settings
I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about “teaching you how to think” is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea:
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Kierkegaard on expression, irony, and humor
Pure thinking is a phantom.
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The U.S. on how to lose a nuclear weapon
Despite an extensive search, not a single trace of the crew nor the plane nor the cores has ever been found.
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On the nuclear exercise “Snowball” (Снежок)?
In the days after, Soviet scientists’ reports detailed the impact of the nuclear blast on everything: vegetation, animals, shelters, vehicles, houses. And a small part on human lives.
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Whistler’s “Nocturne: Blue and Gold…” is melodious and harmonious
Since when does aesthetic consideration take precedence over realistic observations? Well, since Whistler. He painted the commonplace with mood, color, and form.
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Oak Ridge on radioactive mist
Swim naked in the local lake with Oak Ridge native Megan Fox, the mist caressing both of their faces would be radioactive.
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Yeltsin’s close nuclear call
It’s January 25, 1995 and you’re President Boris Yeltsin activating the “nuclear briefcase”.
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Larkin’s Poetry Of Departures
And they are right, I think. We all hate home And having to be there.
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Carl Sagan on the dumbing down of America and how science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time.
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Robin Williams on rich temptations
Don’t brag about morals until you have money to fund your temptations.
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Billy Collins on the arbitrary distinction between revision and writing
And when I revise, I’m writing, aren’t I?
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Billy Collins on how no man is lonely while eating spaghetti
This time, I was at a corner table at Pasta Vivace! on that side street next to the old music store.
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Me on Surveilling Surveillance
When everyone is watched, every behavior becomes dangerous.
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John Cleese and “Beer Mode”
Beer mode is a state of unfocused play where you discover new ideas. In contrast, coffee mode is a state of focus where you work towards a specific outcome.
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The Fermi Paradox on the Great Silence
It’s an entirely new situation, emerging from the physical possibilities that will face any species that can overcome the natural interstellar quarantine of its solar system.
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Dean Kissick on Virtual Pleasure
Much of culture now has the hollow, vacant feeling of having been made by algorithm. Consider the drab, broken anti-spectacle of Addison Rae performing trending TikTok dances onstage with Jimmy Kimmel or NFTs sold for millions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s—it’s art and pop stripped of all verve, fertility, and eroticism.
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Carry on: an epitaph to a bag
Epitaph to a bag with a face.
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Pulitzer Prize winners Will and Ariel Durant on the lessons of history
The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.
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Pythagoras on Beans and Hepatia on Oyster Shells
Pythagoras vs. beans and Hepatia vs oyster shells.
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Pieter Bruegel the Elder on Harvest
It’s harvest and I ask for more time without pressure.
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A poem on Vespers (End of August)
And some things have the nerve to be getting started…
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Legasov, the soviet chemist, said that to be a scientist is to be naive
What is the cost of lies?
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Yordi As Seen By Yordi
I accidentally broke my parent’s camera.
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What I love is blue
What I love about you is blue.
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Daniel Coyle on The Talent Code: Greatness isn’t born, it’s grown.
Skill is insulation that wraps neural circuits in reponses to certain signals.
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The Great Mathematician Paul Erdős on Possessions and Coffee
Between scientific conferences, universities, and the homes of colleagues all over the world.
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Van Morrison’s Into the Mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry.
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The only difference between the Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist – Salvador Dalí
The Temptation of St. Anthony (detail), 1946 Oil on Canvas, 89.5 x 119.5 cm (35 1/4 x 47 in.) Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique
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Henry Miller on the mystery of attention
Even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious.
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What Charles Bukowski didn’t say
Charles Bukowski didn’t say you should find what you love and let it kill you.
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Daniel J. Levitin on Organization: Chapter 1
Categorize to save yourself.
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All of Life is Practice
Cooking dinner, making love, walking dogs, even sleeping.
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Fear and Circumstance in Las Vegas
Place yourself in circumstances of want, and ask yourself, “is this what I fear?
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Wages in Cuba and a quote from my former Professor of Latin American Politics
Ending the dual-currency system is expected to lead to the eventual removal of subsidies and bankruptcy.
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The Gallery Inn
San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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Frame control on why gun control is political in the U.S.A
You were on your own.
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I’ve decided on Tolstoy’s Decision Making Matrix
You’re never at the beginning of some event.
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Klaus Fuchs on secrets on the American atomic project
…not until 1949 that decrypted cables from the United States Army Signal Intelligence Service (SIS)’s “Venona” project revealed Fuchs was a Soviet spy.
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On the secret closed city, озёрск / Ozersk
Those in paradise were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.
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Expanding our limits by learning a language
It’s called modelling.
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The Action Movie Fairy Tale
But these movies built a generation of men who are now in their 30s and 40s.
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Alex Steffen on how Optimism is a political act.
Perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better.
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Nora Taylor on her fear of octopi
An uprising of octopi.
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Alan watts on the length of life
A long life spent in a miserable way.
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Twain on the Safe Harbor
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
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Me on Pleasure
Start drinking. Daydream about your death.
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Omar Khayyam, Wise Guy, on Wise Living
Whatever and whoever.
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Kahneman and Tversky on their Prospect Theory
A link to Tversky and Kahneman.
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Recommendations to impress your cat with: photos of Colette
Sharing is caring.
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Me on a Creator
I had consumed and then I created, or rather, I had chewed something up and spat it out.
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3 Minutes with Michel de Montaigne
It’s within your capacity to ask yourself what you think and what you know.
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A Quick and Dirty Snapshot of Marcel Proust
Writer, poseur, mama’s boy, and tips on how to woo him.