Brian Wiesner

To state the obvious: it is very hard to work a full-time job and also write a book. I cannot imagine doing both of those things while also raising a family. You have to carve out time in the mornings and nights, and ideally block weekends because the best thing to have as a writer IMO—with novels, especially—are extended blocks of time. The brain... See more

This is the backdrop of the whole phone as an extension of arm thing. The way that we experience time is completely warped now. Time has been compressed to the past and present and future all at once as we interact with everything all of the time across every time period, as Douglas Rushkoff discusses in his (very good book!) Present Shock .

The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It’s not about the formal credentials. It’s fundamentally about play . It seems to describe a life where it’s just fun to be reading, learning, writing, and collaborating on... See more

Cities, like the residents that call them home, tend to run on distinct circadian rhythms; internal, collective clocks that dictate when the streets and town squares come alive, peaking with movement and activity, and when they eventually begin to quiet down, the bars, cafes and clubs emptying.

Having temporarily relocated from Berlin to Sydney,... See more

For me personally, meaningful social connections are the foundation and the multiplier of lasting happiness, but the starting point lies within each one of us.

In the end, we determine the quality of our relationships through the quality of our relationship with ourselves.

As we’ve discussed before, that’s why you feel the difference when you sit in an IKEA chair versus something handcrafted. You may be saying, well, a chair is a chair—but even in the most strictly utilitarian worldview, the quality is different. And though you may justify this through modes of mass production, attention to detail, etc. etc., the... See more

You Want a Social Life, with Friends

by Kenneth Koch

You want a social life, with friends.

A passionate love life and as well

To work hard every day. What’s true

Is of these three you may have two

And two can pay you dividends

But never may have three.

There isn’t time enough, my friends–

Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends–

To find the time to have... See more

language models are not intelligent in the ways that even small children are intelligent, but they are already superhuman at tasks like summarization, translation (both linguistic and conceptual), and association. And when you apply those skills to artfully curated source material written by equally, but differently, gifted humans, magic can... See more