Brian Sholis

* “It’s lack of awareness to lossiness that dooms most conversations to miscommunication, not the lossiness itself.”

"This book traces the history of adult education in America from its roots in the popular tradition of self-improvement, to present day education outside a college or university setting. The author persuasively links developments in the realm of popular self-improvement to cultural and social forces, and explores the reasons why ordinary citizens... See more

- “Textual interfaces are everywhere in the modern workplace. Slash-commands in Slack and Discord and Notion, hash-tags for channels and tagging, special syntax for searching and querying data across applications, @-mentions in social media and team work environments, and so on. We’re training ourselves to be more savvy users of the textual... See more

* “I take extra care to prioritize extended time with friends. If you want a deep conversation, you need time. Instead of spending two or three hours with somebody, I prefer to spend two or three days with them.”

- "As an activist on the left, I long assumed that my role consisted entirely of raising awareness, sounding alarms, and deploying arguments; it took me years to realize that I needed to help build and defend spaces in which listening could happen, too. As citizens, we understand that the right to speak has to be facilitated, bolstered by... See more

- "The decision to **add to cart** is no longer a knee-jerk reaction mid-scroll on social media, but now a risky energetic investment by an increasingly cynical and burnt-out online user."

- "Even if we’re anonymous or confusing to other people, we remain pellucid and knowable to platforms, which establish a recognizable personal brand of sorts algorithmically. When we encounter ourselves in the guise of recommended content and customized ads, we are meeting our coherent public image, as the platforms have deduced it from an entire... See more

* "[Writing] should feel like work rather than labor."

- " To defend our right to listen to one another, we must sometimes strain to hear voices that the powerful would drown out. "