Thought provoking

This got me thinking that, ultimately, it's the totality of those “nodal points” that indicate one's own unique perspective. It doesn't matter if you specifically sought out the nodal point or not, it’s the recognition that counts. When you encounter a piece of life-changing information (no matter how large the change part is), you are... See more

Contrary to the deep stories of consumerism and Western heroic mythology, interacting with meaning is actually something much closer to the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi (difficult to succinctly encapsulate, but basically the idea that beauty depends on the imperfect, incomplete, impermanent, humble, and unconventional) vs. a compulsive cycle of... See more

But we have to acknowledge that when we remove friction from one domain, we're not eliminating it, we're just moving it somewhere new.

This is why the skill of simple awareness is important, as is the ability to tolerate ambiguity. Psychologists David Gard and Lawrence Leung define ambiguity tolerance as “the ability to hold in mind complex psychosocial information without rushing to judgment or a conclusion about its meaning”. They go on to delineate that “the process of... See more

simulated companionship

But even in this era, patronage was conditional. Artists served the ideological aims of those who paid. The church demanded piety. The state demanded civic glory. The Medici demanded immortality. As a model, patronship has always involved a tension between creative expression and institutional ambition. The artist received funding but also... See more

What Friend misses is not knowledge (it has the Internet) but intimacy, in all its complex form, in its disagreements, its hiccups, its letdowns and its compromises. It has text but no texture.

Substack sells intellectual taste as cultural currency and contemporary belonging.

Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF describes this phenomenon:

"No one talks about the future anymore. Instead, everything accelerates the present to a fever pitch, intensifying and weirding the dysfunctions of the current moment. There’s a hole where the future used to be, and all that remains is the increasingly spicy present."