Alex Burns

Because right now there is someone

Out there with

a wound in the exact shape

of your words.

Forty hour work weeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes—train and sprint, then rest and reassess.

Meanwhile, over the past few months, the Cut has twice gone viral with articles about age gaps. In December, it published a reported article by Lila Shapiro interviewing multiple couples with significant age gaps. In March came a personal essay by Grazie Sophia Christie about her relationship with her husband, who’s 10 years older. On social media,... See more

It felt like proof of something I’ve often sensed but have been unable to express, which is that trying too hard to control people’s impression of you is an insult to both your humanity and theirs.

one of my favorite Ken Liushort stories reflects on the narrator’s attempt to remember his departed wife. He writes:

I can’t remember the dress she wore or what she had bought; I can’t remember what we did for the rest of that afternoon; I can’t re-create the exact timbre of her voice or the precise shapes of her features, the lines at the corners

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We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.

— Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

But most websites today prioritize efficiency and usability, which leads to a kind of architectural sameness. “Everybody's house sort of looks the same,” he says, “you're taking the same hallway... because we’ve fallen into the same UI patterns.” He wonders about a new kind of website that invites curiosity rather than just guiding a behavior.... See more