“All of our feeds are at their core tremendously banal: They’re just windows into what people do with themselves all day, repeated over and over again. And we watch, because, for some reason, we love watching humans be humans.” - The New York Times
The so-called “ink knights” were deeply into the spy game. “What’s stronger than the sword? Apparently a humble aspect, a high tolerance for cocktail party talk, and a library card.” - LitHub
David Hajdu strives to refute the ages-old criticism that art made with machines is cold, soulless and artificial. In fact, he argues, machines have enabled radical new art forms, empowered marginalized communities and served as instruments of cultural change. - Washington Post
Some do suggest that the Internet and digital technologies impair or otherwise alter performance on specific learning and memory tasks: people who use GPS devices to navigate seem worse at recalling routes, for instance. - Nature
High culture became the only thing standing in the way of the free market, and now that too has been taken care of. Art can co-exist with Schlock, but it cannot indefinitely survive the onslaught of Kitsch — the only kind of culture the free market can really tolerate. - Unherd
Such attempts to mimic him miss the point, which is that true thinking should be dangerous to your intellectual equilibrium. It should strive for answers that overthrow the terms of the questions being asked, not simply prove a point. - The New Republic
“Time and again, fires have fast-tracked urban change. London after the Great Fire of 1666 rewrote its safety laws, widened streets and erected new public buildings, like the domed St. Paul’s Cathedral. Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871 ... invented the modern American metropolis.” - The New York Times
"In front of Sam’s tool crib, where workers got outfitted with gloves, goggles, hand tools, and helmets, I bumped into Rocio Carlos. ... She said that due to the fires, her classes at ArtCenter College of Design had all been moved online.” - Los Angeles Review of Books
“In modern reality, most media are streamed, digitized, and easily vaporized; not so much owned as leased; pockmarked with ads and often tweaked (or falsified) via AI. In modern fiction, meanwhile, vintage media have emerged as tactile objects that symbolize integrity.” - The Atlantic
Apparently, we’ve been thinking about wholesale termination at least since about 1800 B.C., the date ascribed to the myth of Atrahasis, a Mesopotamian creation story that predates Biblical writings by several hundred years and features a world-cleansing flood. - The New Yorker
A psychologically rich life is one filled with diverse, unusual and interesting experiences that change your perspective; a life with twists and turns; a dramatic, eventful life instead of a simple and straightforward one; a life with multiplicity and complexity. - The Guardian
A traditional story forgoes psychological realism in favor of a universality that can be integrated into the lives of its listeners. The novel, on the other hand, offers vicarious experiences that are often psychologically relatable and even cathartic but bear more on the cultivation of feeling than on the guidance of action. - Hedgehog Review
The term “vibe shift,” which was apparently created by the members of the scene and sort of stolen by journalists and interpreters, is itself telling. It is really a shift not in but to vibes: to mood itself, that is to say, something felt but not fully articulated or articulable. - Unpopular Front
The moments that these photographs recall have no active hold in my memory. Still, upon seeing them—presenting themselves as the definite proof of truth, helpfully supplicated with captions from myself—my narrative of the present shifts to accommodate the information. - Public Books
The cost-benefit calculation is complicated and nuanced, requiring us to find a course between apocalyptic visions of civilizational decline and the naive utopianism of Silicon Valley. - LA Review of Books
