Brian Sholis

- “My discomfort with our current use of “relevance” as a term of judgment is that it conceals its criteria, and that those criteria are not aesthetic, but social and political. I worry that if we make such “relevance” not just one among other judgments we might make about art, but a condition of our interest, we have made that condition purely... See more

- "… the history of thought about free speech does contain ideas that can be of use. Among them are the concepts of “audience interests” and the “right to hear,” which have been repeatedly recognized by the Supreme Court. These concepts see the First Amendment from a listener’s point of view. In addition to asking, “Do I have the right to speak,”... See more

- “It’s striking to think that the past has weight not just because it influences the future but because it has its own intrinsic value.”

- “The duration of felt experience is between two and three seconds …. Everything before belongs to memory; everything after is anticipation. It’s a strange, barely fathomable fact that our lives are lived through this small, moving window.”

- “In short, it’s the irreversible rise of entropy that makes timekeeping possible, while both periodicity and complexity enhance clock performance.”

* “Growth takes twice as long as you think and is twice as hard. The biggest advantage you can give yourself is to devote as much of your energy, resources and focus to the actual content itself rather than the sugar high of piling up big follower and subscriber numbers that are likely more quantity than quality.”

- "The speed of the Earth’s rotation is affected by a variety of atmospheric and geologic factors, including the behavior of the planet’s inner layers; the reshaping of its crust, such as through the growth of mountains or bodies of magma; and the friction of the ocean’s tides against the seafloor. The aggregate effect of these forces has... See more

- “In a just world, a college like Swarthmore simply wouldn’t exist. The mere possibility would be regarded as obscene.”