The New Romantics

Don’t even mention dating or — gasp — sex when the simple act of looking into someone else’s eyes provokes anxiety. But what could they do? Give up their phones and the corporate-controlled, like-driven culture, which is all they’ve ever known? Silent scream emoji!

archive.ph

But there is one big reason why a lot of men don’t think they should create—they think their turn to be creative has passed. It was taken by their ancestors, and they misused the privilege. Now they must, in the names of their fathers, be silent.

Amie McNee • We Need Men's Art.

Oh, damn…I felt this one.

But boredom is when life happens.

Nick Catucci • You might just have to be bored

Dr. Gage studies how certain activities can stimulate the growth of new cells in the brain. “I think if you’re doing complex work that involves making decisions and planning, that may matter more than whether you’re using your hands,” he said.

Working With Your Hands Is Good for Your Brain - The New York Times (nytimes.com )

But E.B. White, one of our last great idealists, was eternally right when he asserted half a century ago that the role of the writer is “to lift people up, not lower them down” — a role each of us is called to with increasing urgency, whatever cog we may be in the machinery of society.

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The Zeitgeist Is Changing. A Strange, Romantic Backlash to the Tech Era Looms

Ross Barkan theguardian.com

“The new romanticism has arrived…Backlash is bubbling against tech’s dominance in everyday life, particularly the godlike algorithms - their true calculus still proprietary - that rule all of digital existence.”

. As author Leah Price put it in her book How to Do Things with Nooks in Victorian Britain: “Once a sign of economic power, reading is now the province of those whose time lacks market value.”

Georgina Elliott • Why don’t straight men read novels?