Debbie Foster

“ADHD” is a term that describes a way of being in the world. It is neither entirely a disorder nor entirely an asset. It is an array of traits specific to a unique kind of mind. It can become a distinct advantage or an abiding curse, depending on how a person manages it.

We're drawn to artwork that subtly deviates from our predictions of the world-"Too much prediction error is unpleasant or even disturbing; none or too little is boring"-and new art movements may emerge as our predictions adjust to (and get bored with) the new images around us. (We initially reject cutting-edge art because it's too far afield from

He felt like the disappointing outlier on a Venn diagram, forgotten, eliminated when the data was collected and the average calculated. He didn't exist.

counts as an “event” at all is purely arbitrary.

For most of my life, I believed that this atomized, powerfully powerless tranquility was the ideal state.

Social media isn't monolithically good or bad. It's a mess, like any new technology. Language change has always been beyond our control and shaped by invisible factors. Your preferences don't really matter, because linguistic evolution reflects cultural moments more than the feelings of individual people. Since our cultural moment is defined by

Abundant research shows that most of the rich and famous, brainy and beautiful are little or no happier than individuals of ordinary means and gifts, because no matter who you are, your joie de vivre mostly derives from paying attention to someone or something that interests you.

Time travel needs a self, and the self needs to travel in time. This formation of a story of the self, and a sense of that story developing through time, through incidents, encounters and events, in continuity, that’s the human trick, the one the other animals can’t do.