Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
In March 2019, heavy rains in California led to a brilliant carpet of orange poppies in Walker Canyon, part of a 500,000-acre habitat reserve in the Temescal Mountains southeast of Los Angeles. Run by a state conservation agency, the reserve was mainly a local attraction until a twenty-four-year-old Instagram and YouTube influencer with tens of tho
... See moreall of us are losing what he felicitously called our “collective vocabulary.” He asked, “Are common points of reference dwindling? Has the personal niche supplanted the public square?”
John McPhee • Draft No. 4
Having seen so many students go through my classrooms, I’ve come to know that a lot of parents don’t realize the power of their words. Depending on a child’s age and sense of self, an offhand comment from Mom or Dad can feel like a shove from a bulldozer. I’m not even sure I should have made the reference to Logan growing up to be social chair of a
... See moreJeffrey Zaslow • The Last Lecture
Barbara Sarnecka, an associate professor of cognitive sciences at the University of California, Irvine, told Lenore that today “adults are saying: ‘Here’s the environment. I’ve already mapped it. Stop exploring.’ But that’s the opposite of what childhood is.”
Johann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again
In the unwritten rules of the post-deregulation era, three major airlines operating within a single hub city was at least one too many. As American had displayed in Dallas, operating a hub had become a contest to control the maximum number of passengers between the maximum number of city pairs. This strategy demanded a huge number of airplanes flyi
... See moreThomas Petzinger Jr. • Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos
The woman might have been pixie-sized, but she certainly had big ideas about how to expand the library’s services to the community. It was both exciting and interesting to be part of something that was so focused on helping people.
Lucy Score • Things We Never Got Over
Our subdivision's development was linked to a massive demographic shift that had begun before World War II. As African Americans migrated up from the South for jobs in northern cities, whites abandoned those cities. They paved over more and more of the plains, inventing suburban sprawl to satisfy a need—not simply for land, but for white land. In D
... See moreMinal Hajratwala • Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents
Then came the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the rise of populism, and the pandemic. These were three hits that a healthy democracy could have withstood but that caused ours to buckle and give way, revealing pillars and beams that had been decaying for decades. Pollsters are struggling to catch up with the depth of Americans’ dismay across the poli
... See moreNeil Howe • The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End
In each case, a brilliant man put his company in jeopardy because measuring himself and his legacy outweighed everything else.