Brian Sholis
@briansholis
Brian Sholis
- “When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for and generator of thought. It’s like a thematic gravity well, a magnet for what would otherwise be a mess of iron filings. I’ll read books differently and listen differently in conversations. In particular I’ll remember everything better; everything... See more
James Somers • More People Should Write
- “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 New Yorker • Being in Time
2019 profile of Wendell Berry by Amanda Petrusich.
Archive-friendly link: https://archive.is/wMaf1
WB: “The thing that worries me very much is how much language we’re using now that is so abstract as to require no thought at all. I mean very important words. Justice, for instance. I had a list, I think, of eleven kinds of justice. Restorative justice, climate justice, economic justice, social justice, and so on. The historian John Lukacs, whose work I greatly respect, said that “the indiscriminate pursuit of justice . . . may lay the world to waste.” And he invoked modern war, which kills indiscriminately for the sake of some “justice.” He thought the pursuit of truth, small “t,” much safer. I want to remember—and this comes to me from my dad, to some extent—that our system of justice requires a finding of truth, and it labors to see that justice is never done by one person.”
WB: “Once you accept that something or somebody is exploitable, there’s another limitlessness. Exploitation leads, with perfect logic, to exhaustion. And our ways of land use exploit both land and people.”
WB: “You must either decide this is worth working at, or just leave it undone. Marriage is not perfect agreement. But you’ve accepted this other person into your mind. I work alone, but always with her presence in my mind. And she is somebody I want to impress. I’m going to write this with the hope that it’ll help her to love me. I feel the stakes are pretty high. I’m in a conversation with her that hasn’t ended yet.”
WB; “Our dominant practice now is to solve problems with other problems.”
WB: “You can’t think about the issues we’re talking about without finally having to talk about mystery. You’ll finally have to talk about the commitment that doesn’t see any end. That’s a life that you are not going to be able to prescribe, that finally you’re not in charge of.”
- “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.”
The New Yorker • Being in Time
- “In a just world, a college like Swarthmore simply wouldn’t exist. The mere possibility would be regarded as obscene.”
The Point • Elite Education | The Point Magazine
- "Review drift happens whenever the context of review differs from the context of use. … If the context of review is typically short-term, then companies are incentivized to optimize for short-term satisfaction, even at the cost of long-term quality."
C. Thi Nguyen • Review Drift
- “Textual interfaces make automation trivial, and automation tools much easier to build.”
Linus Lee • Text as an interface | thesephist.com
* “Instead of growing your Rolodex, double down on your best friendships, and find your 10 Club.”