What emerged in tandem with the growth of capitalism was a system in which insurance and investment were bound together until it became integral to the economic system, seen as essential in protecting investments. This is why today you can’t get a mortgage without it. - Aeon
Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI) uses external stimuli to connect with a dreamer and encourage them to focus on a particular topic or theme. - The Walrus
An education spent in pursuit of material comfort and convenience is a recipe for unhappiness, an existence in thrall to the raw, hungry American mantra of success, “More! More!” - LA Review of Books
Kids giggling at "six-seven" reveals the brutal math of digital culture: references expire faster than milk. What happens when shared cultural touchstones become as fleeting as TikTok trends? Generational gaps now measure in weeks, not decades. — Common Reader
The “constitutive” role of universities cannot merely be announced to like-minded audiences or extracted from sympathetic courts. - Chronicle of Higher Education
While it has been researched across hundreds of empirical studies – especially since the explosion of research in the late-1990s – there is still remarkably little evidence that corroborates popularised claims about the diagnosis. - Aeon
This is where we are with the internet now: The man in charge of the Césars (the “French Oscars”) had to say, "“From the outset, he was extremely touched by the Academy’s invitation. ... He worked on his speech in French for months.”- The Guardian (UK)
“The performing arts, with their warm embrace of subjectivity, might not seem the most likely corrective amid this crisis. But they have much to teach us about the notion of truth.” - The New York Times
“There are plenty of self-serving, self-aggrandizing, morally objectionable reasons for why people participate in public shaming. Nevertheless, the concept of moral self-defence reminds us that our self-respect, our social identities, and our status in our communities are vital.” - Psyche
In a world increasingly defined by distance, between citizen and state, between policy and experience, between law and justice, Rammohun Roy offers a reminder that good government is not only a matter of laws or statistics. It is a matter of presence. - Aeon
We need to work, because survival demands it, and we need to rest, because work is tiring, but are those two possibilities really exhaustive? - Liberties Journal
It is no longer enough for universities to say that their programmes allow you to explore some of the most fundamental questions of existence. Now the questions are of a decidedly more bottom-line sort: how will philosophy help you buy a house or build your pension pot? - Aeon
The aim is cognitive clarity via fewer inputs, distilled choices, and settings centred around presence and focus. While design minimalism emphasizes appearance and object count, psychological minimalism directs attention and reduces cognitive friction. - Psyche
A different dark vision of society has emerged. Suddenly, we seem to be living in the age of Epstein. We tell ourselves that by understanding his rise to power we might understand the world. - The New Yorker
The age of orality was an age of social storytelling and flexible cultural memory. The age of literacy made possible a set of abstract systems of thought—calculus, physics, advanced biology, quantum mechanics—that form the basis of all modern technology. - The Atlantic