Brian Sholis

- “We undertake activities that we know to be difficult or unpleasant because we see them as part of a good life and wish to think back upon them in the future. We curate our presents to furnish our futures with the right kinds of pasts.”

- “But the ambiguous quality of the analog is a strength. I could be a minute early or late, depending on my head-tilt. A visual demonstration of relativity. The digital numerals on your phone: That is time controlling you. On the analog, I’m my own boss.”

- "Our algorithmic self may or may not be faithful to how we see ourselves, but it has just as many dimensions and secrets."

- "Criticism in the broadest sense is a key tactic for maintaining a nonrigid, noncomplacent orientation toward the world. [...] Never get too comfortable, never be quite congruent with yourself, and never assume anything else is entirely congruent with itself."

A thoughtful essay about how our online identities—even when our default mode is misdirection or obfuscation—are visible to the platforms we use, and by extension to capitalism and its prerogatives.

* “What changes your life is your peers… The people you rise up with. They’re your power base. Not the person who’s already done it.”

- “Perhaps our biggest time error is near bias—caring too much about what’s about to happen, and too little about the future.”

- “[Meghan] Sullivan is mainly concerned with how we relate to time as individuals, and she thinks that many of us do it poorly, because we are “time-biased”—we have unwarranted preferences about when events should happen.”