Ideas

In reality neoliberalism has depended on huge levels of government support for its entire existence. The global neoliberal economic order could easily have collapsed into a 1930s-level Great Depression multiple times over in the absence of massive government interventions. – Boston Review

In fact, while design thinking is not exactly the same as the scientific method we learned in school, it bears an uncanny resemblance. – Smashing Magazine

The collective confusion around the arrival of virtual beings, the horror mingled with wonder, is apparent right from the start. – LitHub

Many workplaces now lionise (whether sincerely or not is another matter) the importance of learning through failure, and of creating environments that encourage this. – 3 Quarks Daily

Aphantasia is a recently-identified variation of human experience affecting 2-5% of the population, in which a person is unable to generate mental imagery. Can you still be an artist? – The Conversation

What if cultural endeavors, particularly the public and the performative, are themselves a form of political action? – 3 Quarks Daily

When I’m procrastinating, stalling, temporizing, I am defined at the metabolic level by the thing that I am not doing. – The Atlantic

Attraction is an instinct. While it’s versatile to some extend, key aspects of perceived attractiveness seem to be inherent to our species. – Medium

Does culture really behave like space? If not, how are cultural relationships distorted when we convert them into spatial ones? – Cultural Analytics

It is not globalization that has brought us to the brink of the abyss, but the peculiar strain of globalization that emerged in the 1990s—a system in which international financial markets would discipline the bad habits of democratic governments, not the other way around. – The Atlantic

Intelligence can be found, in part, in our brains, but perhaps even more importantly in our hearts and skin, in the architecture of the physical spaces we surround ourselves with and in the friendships we keep. – Washington Post

Today it is not conservatives but liberals who are most sincerely committed to American history. Yet they too have evolved, perhaps even more dramatically, from their ideological forbearers. – Harper’s

A psychologist and a statistician argue that visual thinking, by revealing what would otherwise remain invisible, has had a profound effect on the way we approach problems. – The New Yorker

Covid-19 has disrupted daily American life in a way few emergencies have before. But it has also shaken things up and cleared the way for an economic boom and social revival. – The New York Times

Maybe we should all try to become more compassionate or honest or forgiving, but there’s no comparable moral demand for shy people to become extraverted, or for excitable people to be more placid. – Psyche

We get constant messages about what’s going on inside our bodies, sensations we can either attend to or ignore. And we belong to tribes that cosset and guide us. Still, we “insist that the brain is the sole locus of thinking. – The New York Times

The network idea is so powerful in our connected world, that it’s tempting to apply it to everything. But not to us… – 3 Quarks Daily

We found that the Green Code is changing Buffalo’s urban form in ways that had been difficult, if not impossible, under former zoning rules. – Fast Company

Taken seriously, the essay seemed to be suggesting an entirely new version of Silicon Valley: a movement away from making software to support existing institutions, and toward creating the institutions themselves. – The New Yorker

It’s enough for them to draw attention to an idea that is worth pursuing further—and an idea need not be true, well-justified given all our evidence, nor even believed by the scientist in order to pass that test. – Nautilus

“Scientists have to deal with this uneasy balance between being free to do what they like and needing to face the consequences of their unplanned actions, but if science is to thrive that’s the way it has to be.” – 3 Quarks Daily

In recent years, I.Q. scores have stopped rising or have even begun to drop in countries like Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France and Britain. Some researchers suggest that we have pushed our mental equipment as far as it can go. It may be that “our brains are already working at near-optimal capacity.” – The New York Times

And that’s fine. “Published authors, more often than not famous ones, have had few scruples when it comes to committing literary larceny. ‘Authors are like privateers,’ claimed Samuel Johnson, ‘always fair game for one another.'” – The Smart Set

Despite the hype, the reality is different – and to resist the hucksters, we need to understand why. – Wired