I talked to plenty of people who fell into this intensity later in life, including empty-nesters. One thing they have in common is an eagerness to be in each other’s space — a lot. They ignore the messages that only a romantic partner is an appropriate plus-one or the person to do errands with or be your ride from surgery. They do life together... See more
What I discovered by casting a wide net was that I have very little ability to predict how useful a call will be in advance. Relevance is easier to predict, but it’s not a very good proxy for usefulness, which is a product of lots of other things including the other person’s enthusiasm and the breadth of their interests. To some extent, the more... See more
Neo is instructed by some shadowy presence seemingly in his computer to “follow the white rabbit.” That’s a reference to Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” one of the movie’s structuring literary allusions.
A chapter titled “Down the Rabbit Hole” coined the phrase that is now used to describe becoming so obsessed with something that... See more