Adam Phillips tells us again and again, the quest for self-improvement is itself the problem. What we suffer from “are our self-cures”, otherwise known as “symptoms”; what we need to be cured of are our cures, and our hankering for them. “There is no cure.” - New Statesman
After “community,” the second-most used word at NFT.NYC is probably “rich.” As in, “Do you want to be rich?” The speakers ask the audience variations on that question a lot. -Artnet
Jill Lepore: Of course, there is such a thing as society. The question now is how the pandemic has changed it. Speculating about what might happen next requires first deciphering these statements, and where they came from. - The Guardian
Parallel shifts in culture and technology are forging a new paradigm. The rules around how we create and capture economic value are being rewritten, opening up new roads to the kind of wealth creation previously limited to a select few. - The Atlantic
Before the pandemic, his songs permeated U.S. media. "His primacy within wider culture came from the widest possible acknowledgement that not only had Sondheim created a succession of groundbreaking hits, but that in the mostly reactionary world of the American musical, he was a revolutionary." - The Guardian (UK)
And that's because human brains are so energy hungry that they train hard to be energy-efficient. What happens when actual machines can mimic the brain? - Wired
If computers gave each and every one of us a better way to gauge where to put our resources and energy and everyone of us had a better shot at living longer healthier lives, would that be a positive development? - Cody Pallo
The more finely you can identify different body states—distinguishing, say, among aggravation, irritation, frustration, hostility, anxiety, and disgruntlement—the more you will understand yourself, and the more effectively you will move in the world. - The Atlantic
The most straightforward reason for the surge in gambling is a change to the law: In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, opening the door to online sports betting across 21 states. As a direct result, sports-betting revenues grew 69 percent. - The Atlantic
In the face of such debilitating immensity, we cannot merely shrug and take a selfie. We cannot allow the scale of the crises we are already living through, and of those to come, to trump their urgency. - Boston Review
Beyond grasping the stakes of these statistical debates, then, public engagement with neuroscience would be less prone to overreaches of ‘neurorealism’ if equipped with a better understanding of how scientists go about constructing tasks that can model reality in the scanner. - Psyche
"What we don’t know — about the lives of our neighbors and fellow citizens and why they think the way they do — is almost as important as what we do know." - The New York Times
In New York, the arts' elitism "stands in stark contrast to the middle decades of the 20th century, when the city was a haven for cash-strapped artists and New Yorkers across the income spectrum could make and enjoy a wide range of art." - New York Daily News
"Stories about slavery for children must do more than transmit information about the past. These stories have a reparative function—they must also humanize and liberate. These stories must uplift, hope, and heal while presenting the truth of slavery’s echoes in the present." - Slate
