Collections

“Broadly speaking, the ability of the park to control the spread of life-forms. Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Li

value shifts from intelligence, efficiency, and metrics toward felt experience —bodily, emotional, textural, relational. biology, materials, design:

(1) 5 Questions on Material Stewardship with Harsha Kotak

People can feel care and discern quality. Though they cannot articulate it consciously, when given the option and when within their means, humanity se

Instead, they are asking something far more unsettling for brands: Does this mean something?Does this object reflect who I am – or who I aspire to be?

everyone wants you to live your best life until you’re actually living your best life. Then you become hateable. I could see my own participation in t

Friendship, however, has always depended on a certain irrational generosity. A willingness to waste time together magnificently. To listen to the same

a watched spag never bols

Heartbreak HQ

springs, not bones

the expectation theory of friendship

“Become a documentarian of what you do.”

Stop writing like a person who has things figured out. Write like a person who is figuring it out in front of you. That's the only voice that's ever h

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function

The glory of being immersed in the figuring out, the unfolding and the problem solving which generates meaningful work. In this, one loses the boundar

It’s reminded me that evil, as Hannah Arendt famously wrote, is banal: it’s something all of us far too readily participate in. That doesn’t, however,

The future does not belong to the fact collectors; it actually belongs to the dot connectors. Adam Grant

Ironically, the people who create fulfilling lives and careers—the ones we respect, admire and try to emulate—choose an alternative path to success. T

Throughout history, we have often been explorers in biology, rather than inventors. Now, we are at the cusp of biological innovation where we are star

Life is a search for many little optimas.

Being nature as opposed to being in nature is our ultimate human state.

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. Joseph Campbell

Beauty saves us by keeping us human enough to remain in a world that often feels inhuman. It is the thin, golden thread, the Songline, that leads us b

The Seventh Wonder of the modern world is a human child, any child. I used to wonder about childhood and the evolution of our species. It seemed to me

You’re not here to give your daughter the perfect picture of the perfect life. You’re here to show her how to reach for joy — messily, clumsily, inade

And so we arrive at the edge of something old disguised as something new. The problem of meaning. It is not a bug of civilization, it is its first fea

We don’t just need better models. We need to revisit first principles. What is a good life? What is a just society? What kind of human do we want to b

raw material: I’ve spent a good part of 10 years wondering what real world value my philosophy degree really had. I’ve started to think of it more as

And, you know, I concluded that at least the kinds of computers we now have will not become conscious. And I can lay out that argument. The argument m

The activist and technologist Pia Mancini once told me about the emergence of a new word in Barcelona: yosotros— a combination of “I” (”yo”) and “We”

And, you know, I concluded that at least the kinds of computers we now have will not become conscious. And I can lay out that argument. The argument m

We MVP’ed everything, but we also cared deeply about craft. And somehow, that mix of scrappiness and attention to detail shaped what Tally is today.

There is beauty in something well-made. The fine fit of a tailored suit. The delicate stitching of a vibrant rug. The mechanical elegance of a well-tu

Branding is the gap between the idea of a thing and the thing in itself.

A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization. It exists in the hearts and minds of individuals.

The contemporary crisis is not simply political, ecological, or psychological, it is perceptual. We see more than any generation before us and yet fee

It wounds us because it reminds us of the distance between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be. This is why beauty is inherently danger

Beauty acts as that great psychic liver, filtering the toxins of existence and turning the raw material of pain into the refined gold of meaning.

The world today is fractured by a “failure of imagination.” We find it easier to imagine the end of the world than a world that is beautiful. We have

Your sanity depends on you finding the comedy in the chaos

I like jokes because they are an unserious way of saying serious things

Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I

The project I'm doing is basically turning myself into a certain type of person who is able to have these thoughts. The essays are kind of just exhaus

The word “essay” comes from the French “essayer” — to try, to attempt. Michel de Montaigne, who invented the form in the 16th century, wasn’t showing

the goal is not to separate the strands, it's to document the tangle. (Ann Friedman)

You are daring to imagine that you could have a different life. Oh, I know it doesn't feel like that. You feel like a big fat failure now. But you're

What was the goal of experience, aside from some feminist reclamation? It was an attempt to encounter as much of the world as possible, to soak up oth

Adult life, I’ve decided, is about cohesion. Which is to say it’s about conflict, trade-offs. The ability to acknowledge parts of your psyche you aren

the people who actually move the world are not the ones preaching “action items.” they’re myth engineers. they alter the perceptual surface everyone e

Any situation is fixable if you’re good with words because words literally make up the meaning infrastructure, control the traffic of desire, and reor