Rousseau was, in effect, the diagnostician of despair who captured the affliction of alienation in all of its dimensions. The source of our affliction was the very thing we thought made us better: civilization. - The American Scholar
Contemporary America segregates debility and death, and it’s costing us, body and soul, writes Duke University historian James Chappel. - The American Scholar
Where you are, what you’re looking at, and what you like is being tracked more or less constantly—either you’re doing it to yourself voluntarily, by taking a video with your phone and posting it online, say, or a corporate entity is doing it for you. - The New Yorker
We talk a lot these days about Big Data, those heaping stores of digitized information that, fueling search and recommendation engines, social media feeds, and, now, artificial intelligence models, govern so much of our lives today. But we don’t give much notice to what might be called little data... - Hedgehog Review
If you feel empty in this way, you might find that bad news doesn’t make you feel upset, that good news doesn’t make you feel happy. Some part of you knows you should feel something when important things happen, but you don’t. - Psyche
These days, the favored term for an Internet powerhouse is “creator,” and in the course of this year a threshold of creatordom was passed. We don’t talk so much about podcasters, musicians, authors, or pundits anymore; they are simply creators, a catchall for people who are famous for making stuff across any number of platforms. - The New Yorker
I’m worried about pop culture — worried that the relationship between art and commerce isn’t working as it should, worried that even if the rest of American society starts moving, our storytelling is still going to be stuck. - The New York Times
“While we can’t claim to know what was going through Callas’ mind as she neared the end, we can nevertheless examine how much the external world referenced in Maria resembles the real thing.” - Slate (MSN)
Dennett was important because his work signalled a sea change in the concerns and methods employed by philosophers of mind. In the years BD (‘before Dennett’), philosophers assumed that their job was to chart the contours of our ordinary thought and talk about the mind. - Aeon
The cultural ideas (what was originally meant by ‘memes’) that are most suited to global dominance crowd out cultural ideas that developed locally and have deep meaning to the communities that created them. - Psyche
Detractors of year-end lists argue that they too frequently reward work that has already been heavily promoted and acclaimed, especially in a category like books, in which an individual can’t evaluate everything released in a year; another common argument is that they privilege known voices and forms over bold experiments. - The Atlantic
"In the early days of GenAI tools, I would share these bullet-point lists of ideas with my team, and it would be met with a similar reaction: Wow! And nothing would happen because the next step is a big and difficult one." - Fast Company
A report this year, from nearly 200 philanthropic leaders, noted that as 20 million households dropped out of giving, from 2010 to 2016, the organizations that have suffered most are community-based groups whose existence depends on small-dollar donors rather than on mega-philanthropists, and those that “provide the backbone of civic life.” - The New York Times
“Everything about the modern Christmas movie is so relentlessly familiar. Even the stars I don’t recognize look somehow inherently recognizable, as if they are all fitted with squinting approximations of famous faces. I’ve found myself charmed by their commitment to the bit.” - The New York Times
