The New Romantics

in 2020, only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies. That’s still the vibe.

Collecting and archiving are ways to reclaim and own our attention—they are acts of meaning-making. These practices are rituals: habits and skills that demand time, patience, and a willingness to look beyond the surface.

To collect well is to resist algorithmic influence. A true collection reflects deeply personal values and a genuine desire to... See more

Here on my screen was the distillation of a peculiar American illness: namely, that we have a profound and dangerous inclination to confuse art with moral instruction, and vice versa.

"Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden."

- Voltaire

The solution to the atomization curse that both gives us significantly more time back, and makes us much happier, is to seek to reintegrate these various foci of life as much as possible .

This obsession with the immediate “unburdening” of a thing you created is common in non-Japanese contexts, but I posit: The Japanese way is the correct way. Be an adult. Own your garbage. Garbage responsibility is something we’ve long since abdicated not only to faceless cans on street corners (or just all over the street, as seems to be the case... See more

"The Chinese say you need three things for paintings: the hand, the eye and the heart,” says the painter David Hockney. “I think that remark is very, very good. Two won’t do. A good eye and heart is not enough, neither is a good hand and eye.”

atomization encourages us to reduce multivariate experiences, often the most important parts of life, to their single most obvious element

Something is deeply wrong when we sext the same way we order a sandwich.