Nick Papanicolaou

Developing taste is an exercise in vulnerability: it requires you to trust your instincts and preferences, even when they don’t align with current trends or the tastes of your peers. Because while having taste is cool, taste itself reflects a certain type of uncool earnestness – a commitment to one’s own obsessions and quirks.

Bruce Springsteen’s advice to young musicians:

Don’t take yourself too seriously.

Take yourself as seriously as death itself.

Don’t worry. Worry your ass off.

Have iron-clad confidence, but doubt.

It keeps you alive and alert!

Believe you are the baddest ass in town – and [that] you suck!

It keeps you honest.

Be able to keep two completely

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When we sing in the shower, we hardly expect applause. In fact, that would be awfully weird.

But online, when just about anyone might be clicking, watching or sharing, it’s disappointing to put your work into the world and hear nothing.

Nothing but a black hole that absorbs your best work and reflects nothing back.

And if that happens again and again,... See more

This, from Rory Sutherland:

Logic requires that people find universal laws, but outside of scientific fields and once human psychology has a role to play, it is perfectly possible for behavior to become contradictory.

A tax rise can cause you to work less because the returns of your labor are lower, or work harder to maintain your present level of

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