When I was younger, I was skateboarding a lot. I was listening to music and skateboarding. There were two songs, that are widely different: DJ Shadow’s “Building Steam With a Grain of Salt,” and Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right.” And I remember skateboarding to them and they made me just stop. And the world felt so cool. I would look a... See more

brilliantly funny, always authentic, and full of essential and glorious and relatable humanity

Then I started thinking about all the other important “nodal points'' (I don’t know what else to call this) of people, places, books, albums, websites, etc. that all played a part in shaping who I am as a person and what I think is important. These points are a combination of seeking things out myself and getting a recommendation that felt like it ... See more

A bigger problem than price inflation is expectations inflation: A constant increase in what you need to be satisfied.

There are a lot of benefits to being good at that narration. Describe your “calling” convincingly and you've defined a new game that others want to watch and play. But it’s a catch-22: if you spend all your time constantly sketching (probably quickly outdated) pictures of your thinking on the bigger questions we’ve all been tasked with answering, y... See more

The community opportunity often lies in creating an experience that has nothing to do with your topic (ie. a hiking trip for accountants). Our default is to do something focused on the topic like a “talk” or “course” or “discussion group” but sometimes, just having them do something fun together is much more effective. The goal is to get your membe... See more

I have also come to understand that trying to fit into society’s understanding of a “good girl” is a trap, the same way that the “model minority” and the “good gay” and the “good fatty” are all traps. Even when you succeed at it you lose, because these roles are all ultimately means of containment: of circumscribing power by putting exacting, contr... See more

Their way of adapting, the way they have to be resilient, is through mutual care, listening to others, accepting difference and pluralism, and being, in core ways, other-focused. The acceleration and accumulation of overlapping crises made our interdependencies — otherwise masked in slow violence and harm — more obvious. Technology and social media... See more

One of the fundamental choices that you face on Earth is the degree to which you’ll pursue deeper but riskier fulfillment or practice avoidance that exempts you from bad feelings but leaves you bereft of good ones.