The censor is convinced that “some forms of expression are so vile or dangerous that they should be restricted, or so valuable that they should be compelled.” Consequently, censors “claim the moral sanction to speak for the collective.” - LA Review of Books
When I hear people in the corporate world talking about creativity and storytelling — how what they’re really doing is ‘telling a story,’ how everything is about creativity and storytelling, how everything is narrative — I hear it and think: Do you actually know what it means to be creative? - Chicago Tribune
The quest for purity informs cancel culture. It pushes partisans to ever-greater extremes, even when those positions are politically self-defeating. It turns historical heroes /into villains and closes nuclear power plants in the face of climate change. - Virginia Postrel
It's leaps and bounds ahead. It raises immediate questions about how these technologies will change how art is made and consumed. It also raises questions about what it means to be creative when DALL-E 2 seems to automate so much of the creative process itself. - The Daily Beast
Swearing can abuse people or amuse them, inspire doubt or trust (or both) in others, and measurably relieve stress or pain — if you do it properly. "When it comes to your well-being," writes Arthur C. Brooks, "I offer three rules to keep in mind while honing your cursing technique." - The Atlantic
"The challenge, then, becomes finding a way of thinking about animal minds that doesn't simply view them as like the human mind with the dials turned down: less intelligent, less conscious, more or less distant from the pinnacle of mentation we represent." - The Guardian
Some physicists bat it around, with the help of art: "We meet up, sometimes over a drink, to exchange ideas and share our latest musings in cosmology or molecular biology. We have often stayed up late talking while listening to our favourite jazz or flamenco musicians." - New Scientist
"Guest speakers, frequently invited, included Margaret Sanger, the poet Amy Lowell, Emma Goldman speaking on 'Anarchy,' and Edith Ellis, a lesbian writer in an open marriage with the scandalous sexologist Havelock Ellis, speaking on the topic of 'Love.'" There were even "husbands' evenings," when men were allowed. - LitHub
Preprints are an issue. "It’s all too easy to make outsize claims that sidestep the process of peer review. No publication should carry a standalone abstract. ... even scientific papers that have passed through the intended safeguards of peer review can become vectors for confusion." - Nieman Lab
It sure feels like that sometimes. But "if nothing ever changes, then we are all locked inside the iron cage of the present tense. ... There’s no agency. No choice." - LitHub
"The smile has always been with us then, and it would appear it's always been the same. It seems only one step further to claim that the smile has no history. But this would be far from the truth. In fact, the smile has a fascinating, if much-neglected past." - Aeon
"As its perspective has spread out into popular culture, pop EvoPsych has inflected highly charged debates about gender, race, violence, and social class. It has also permeated a receptive Silicon Valley culture that shares much of its intellectual DNA." - The Yale Review
Recommendation systems pose difficult questions about what it means to speak, and whether speaking is something that only a person does. How do we draw a line between expressions and actions? And who (or what) can be considered a ‘speaker’? - Psyche
It might seem the other way around: that our fleeting attention is the result of an internet that’s unrelentingly feeding us the now. But my hunch is that people feel stuck or move on because online, these events feel like things that have happened, rather than something that is happening. - The Atlantic
