The information in your news feeds is curated for interest or surprise. As such, the news is not a record of the ordinary but the extraordinary—a reflection not of reality but of precisely that which is uncharacteristic of reality.

-Gurwinder

19 Things You Can Say to People in 10 Seconds That Sometimes Produce Insanely Outsized Effects

1. Yeah, someone *should* do that. Why not you?

2. Is there something you could do about that problem in the next five minutes?

3. That's a great thought - have you written it up somewhere? I'd be excited to share it if so.

4. Should you write a blog or Linke

We’ve gotten so damn good at making products with good physical attributes that the commercial war of the future will be about identity rather than value —Iannaccone

On the Sublime:

In the presence of the sublime, we are made to feel desperately small. In most of life, a sense of our smallness is experienced as a humiliation (when it happens, for example, at the hands of a professional enemy or a concierge). But the impression of smallness that unfolds in the presence of the Sublime has an oddly uplifting and pr

Kurt Vonnegut, talking about when he tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope:

“Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of b

“To make art, you have to have just as much doubt as you do confidence.”