Curation Is King

"There has never been more TV to watch. At any given time, you can stream shows old and new from platforms as wide-ranging as Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock, and Amazon Prime, or you can indulge in a more niche service like Shudder (for horror fans) or Acorn (for British programming). If you find yourself paralyzed by the sheer wealth of content,... See more

Introduced by the author Kyle Chayka, the term ‘Filterworld’ encapsulates the phenomenon of uniformity shaped by the invisible hand of digital algorithms. In this digital age, algorithms are the unseen curators, dictating the content you consume and influencing your tastes, relationships, and the fabric of your daily life through interfacing... See more

The difference between schools and libraries

From John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education (via Austin Kleon):

To begin with, libraries are usually comfortable, clean, and quiet. They are orderly places where you can actually read instead of just pretending to read.

For some reason libraries are never age-segregated, nor do

... See more

All of which raises another set of questions, about art rather than morals. Which is a better measure of an artwork, its quality on average or its peaks? How should ambition be weighed against execution, jolting insight against missteps, the good against the bad?