Sam Liebeskind

When systems that were designed for resilience are optimized instead for efficiency, they break.

Perhaps what we are witnessing is the birth of a cosmopolis characterized by a vastly deeper and more comprehensive kind of fixity than that introduced by print technology. An articulation of civilizational memory so rich, deep, and alive, it constitutes something like a planetary awakening, not merely into a new consciousness, but a new memory of... See more

Gavin de Becker argues that beneath even the most violent acts lie fundamental, universal desires — the need to feel loved, respected, seen. Twist those desires through a series of nonstandard deviations, and violence can follow (FYI readers on the internet– I am not condoning or excusing violence). But what struck me most was not the danger, but... See more

When you have a densely connected network like that, not only are the friendships more rewarding, but everyone else also becomes more important to each other for mutual support, like Metcalfe’s Law. A densely layered quilt is much stronger than a seam sewn by a single string.

people fail to anticipate how much learning happens in conversa-tions with strangers. In a series of studies, Atir and colleagues [9] brought strangers together for 10-min conversations. Compared with how much participants expected to learn from a conversation prior to having it, they consistently reported learning more inter-esting, useful, and... See more