Agalia Tan

Many “designer” influencers barely do, or show, any actual design work at all. Instead, they build credibility by performing proximity to design, like posting brand guidelines from major rebrands or reacting to industry news like a hovering art director. Online, it’s easy to look like an authority on design without making very much of it.

Culture brands don’t typically win by being better. They win by moving the goalposts for everyone around them. You should always be aiming to change the larger playing field.

Energy and imagination make a wonderful combination. Each gets the best out of the other. Energy creates demand for the ideas produced by imagination, which thus produces more, and imagination gives energy somewhere to go. [5]

Merely having energy and imagination is quite rare. But to solve hard problems you need three more qualities: resilience,... See more

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the value of daily surprises:

"Try to be surprised by something every day. How is this different? What is its essence? Don't assume that you already know what these things are all about, or that even if you knew them, they wouldn't matter anyway. Experience this one thing for what it is, not what you think it

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Earlier this year, Dirt contributor Michelle Santiago Cortés wrote about “yearnposting”, examining the trend of Instagram and TikTok content for people that “want to be devastated (in a good way).” These posts, “combine the warmth of a wholesome meme with the hope of a motivational post and the raw emotion of a trauma meme,” like a video by noted... See more

I believe deeply in something like soulmates - a real, mutual, sustaining love. That’s the dream, of course. But the search is hard, as anything worthwhile tends to be, and we have to keep trying.

I think heartbreak deserves less caution than most of us assume. Because love, even when it doesn’t last, is still worth the price of entry. It’s proof... See more

Do the dichotomies of reason vs. feeling, objectivity vs. subjectivity, man vs. machine, and physics vs. metaphysics still make sense?

MK: This is the computer-thinking speaking. These are binaries . 0’s and 1’s are for computers, and arguably should only be for computers.

I thoroughly believe, alongside thinkers like Douglas Rushkoff, that we must... See more