Brian Wiesner

Spaniards are good at living close together – with around 90% of the population now squashed into less than 30% of the country’s territory, they’ve little choice. What’s more, 65% live in flats – almost half of all pisos measure between 60 and 90 metres squared.

Some places are morning cities, and some places come alive at night. Every city has it’s own distinct circadian rhythm, and Berlin and Sydney represent the two extremes of that scale.

A few other examples of AM cities: Portland, Stockholm, Boulder, Colorado, Vancouver.

A few other examples of PM cities: Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Madrid, New York... 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

I struggle to understand why this feeling moves me so much, but there is just nothing else like it. From being so immersed in a conversation that you leave a changed person to getting a job through a friend of a friend.

These precious, golden moments. Sometimes it feels like fate, like we were just in the right place at the right time, sometimes... See more

There are many hopes to travel but perhaps my greatest hope is that it will always serve as a reminder that we live in a vast universe of the unknown with limited minds, that we should always be humbled by our ignorance, and that travel will always possess the capacity to restore us and nudge us to be less presumptuous and more generous and kind to... See more

Being off social media helped me remember how to think for myself. I’m having my own thoughts again, rather than social media telling me what to focus on.

I’ve been able to spend my time with much greater intention. I learn what I feel called to learn, rather than what’s put in front of me.

This order created uncoordinated systems that worked, without staff, as if by magic. Such was Jacobs’s “Sidewalk Ballet.” With density, she argued, came “eyes on the street,” a community-based security system that required neither barbed wire nor an extensive police presence. With wide sidewalks comes trusted interactions, even with strangers—a... See more

The Cultural Tutor perfectly sums up why beauty matters: “what’s the danger of a world without beauty?” they ask. “If everything is simply functional, simply useful, then life becomes a mere conveyor belt. It turn humans into machines of consumption, labour, & reproduction. Aren’t we more than that?”