“Scientists have searched fruitlessly for brain boundaries between thinking, feeling, deciding, remembering, moving and other everyday experiences." But these "are poor guides for understanding how brains are structured or how they work.” - Quanta
It’s a truism that high culture, as it used to be known, has been steadily losing its authority since the rise of mass culture in the early twentieth century. - New Criterion
If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. - The Atlantic
I can hide my mom’s photos or block her zombie Facebook account. But I’ve become accustomed to grieving this way. Technology has dictated what I remember and when, because I’ve let it. - Wired
The idea of the urban rambler—the flâneur—as a half-belonging creature took hold in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and adopted a variety of forms in the twentieth. - The New Yorker
Consciousness has long been the preserve of philosophers and priests, poets and artists; now neuroscientists are investigating the mysterious quality and trying to answer the hard question of how consciousness arises in the first place. - The Guardian
After surviving a disaster, a minority of people become more resilient, so that, should another disaster strike, they are better able to cope. For most people, though, the stress compounds. - The Atlantic
Read in bulk, certain repetitions emerge. Recordings are “tasty” and “crispy,” “gifts” and “treats,” but also “killer” and “monsters.” Eyebrows bounce and mouths hang loose. - N + One
The two hundred and fifty members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters are writers, composers, visual artists, and architects. It is a fixed number. When a member dies, potential new members are nominated and voted on. - Harper's
The rise of newspapers and magazines meant that tales of the bizarre and the outrageous could circulate widely and quickly, while the rapid increase in printed advertising made it easy to promote stunts and shams. - The Spectator
The idea of reading to help us think better (whatever that means) waxes and wanes with the times: "A decade ago, the fashion was to be pessimistic about the prospects of improving our thinking, and even about the value of thinking at all." - The Guardian (UK)
Underlying this question is a sense that our voices are not seen as philosophers’ voices, but primarily as women’s voices. It is as if women would necessarily have a distinctive point of view, as a group. - Aeon
Some 4 percent of the population experiences this kind of cross-sensory linking, and studies have shown it’s more prevalent in creative people. - Nautilus
A pragmatist ethics calls for prioritising feelings instead of facts, because a truly humanist democracy is sentimentalist rather than rationalist. - Aeon
The anodyne blandness of the term “general education” should not distract us from its critical place in the curriculum. General education forces a question that most institutions today would probably rather avoid: What should all students learn? - The Point
