Being in the throes of an emotion influences a great many things: your memory, what you see, the inferences you draw about the world, how you learn new things, how you interpret ambiguous stimuli, and much more. - Psychology Today
Somewhere in the 19th century the notion develops that a work of art can be most effective when it’s ugly, when it deeply mirrors certain social realities and presents them in such a way that the audience is spurred to immediate action. - 3AM Magazine
As almost anyone can confirm, manifest anger is by its nature felt and received with an intense immediacy, bringing to life the bodily and emotional resonances of the word ‘feelings’. And yet it is also peculiarly slippery, liable to hide and dissemble, to disguise. - Aeon
Some 90% of the world’s data has been created in the last 2 years alone. In total, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day, with the number continuing to grow. Yet while the amount of data that we produce has grown exponentially, our understanding of how to manage it has not. - VentureBeat
In the 20 years that zombie apocalypse narratives have grown and reached critical mass in popular media, such comparisons at an insurrection at the seat of American democracy — where five people died and scores more were injured and traumatized — are disturbing, but unsurprising. - The Conversation
The sheer number of cultural artifacts is stupefying. More photographs were taken yesterday than in the entire first century of photography. Odds are that some were good, even great. Google announced in 2010 it had found nearly 130 million books. Every morning, we awaken further behind. - Washington Post
“Hobbies take on this aura of being good, useful, appropriate, and socially sanctioned. Something you should—the word here is should—be doing. And if you’re one of those slackers that doesn’t have a hobby, then you are suffering from some kind of a moral weakness or failing.” - The Atlantic
For knowledge workers, the biggest sign that the status quo is broken is the rise in self-reported burnout. McKinsey and Lean In collaborated on a survey of knowledge-sector jobs. They found a significant increase in those describing themselves as feeling burnt out “often” or “almost always." - The New Yorker
Now that we have more storytelling than ever, has empathy increased apace? If stories have such sunny effects, why has the big bang of storytelling coincided with an explosive growth of hostility and polarization rather than harmony and connection? - Boston Globe
Why are composers like Mozart, Beethoven and Bach widely regarded as the greatest of all time? Why is it that in a 1985 survey of art experts by the Illustrated London News, only 2 of the 20 greatest paintings of all time were from the 20th century, one from the 18th century, and none at all from the 19th century? - EconLib
A small study of college students found they now only focus on any one task for 65 seconds. A different study of office workers found they only focus on average for three minutes. This isn’t happening because we all individually became weak-willed. Your focus didn’t collapse. It was stolen. - The Guardian
Although the notion that group solidarity leads inevitably to prejudice, animosity, and conflict is common, it is also incorrect and potentially dangerous. - The Atlantic
Since the start of the pandemic, more of our relationships depend on computer-mediated channels. Amid a churning ocean of online spats, toxic Slack messages, and infinite Zoom, could algorithms help us be nicer to each other? Can an app read our feelings better than we can? - Wired
