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
AI can make the contents of libraries more accessible than ever, and help us to magnify and make connections among what we discover. But it cannot yet
We read magazines and the glass of wine in my hand refills itself thanks to the magical properties of women gathered in a room.
philosophy - culture
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
storytelling is the ultimate compression algorithm for human attention. everything else, data, logic, tech feeds into it, but if you can’t wrap it in
In a world of 7 billion people, there’s clearly no single myth or set of myths that will work for all of us. Instead, we all need to discover and dev
"I also often hear the word evolution. Repeatedly I am asked to explain how my painting evolved. To me there is no past or future in art. If a work o
He thus becomes an alchemist, transforming a material with apparently little expressive potential into a stylised, hybrid female body, whose apparen
Looking at art and reading art history are activities with opposite shapes. When you see a person from many perspectives, a sharper, narrower image co
But curiosity about a new medium is not automatically betrayal of the old one. Picasso did not become less of a painter because photography existed.
Ann Carson's interview with Jenny Rydén of the Nobel Prizes: Q: Which of your books should readers start with if they're unfamiliar with your work
zero to one work is soul exposing. you’re making something out of nothing, then dragging it into reality by force of will while everything around you
I think. I have an idea. I work.
We, who live here and now, are not for a moment satisfied in the time-world nor confined in it; we incessantly flow over and over to those who precede

Ma in Japanese culture[edit] In modern interpretations of traditional Japanese arts and culture, ma is an artistic interpretation of an empty space, o
People fear nothingness. However in zen, we are taught to value emptiness as a source of potential and creativity. Think of it as an empty garden or a
philosophy - technology
value shifts from intelligence, efficiency, and metrics toward felt experience —bodily, emotional, textural, relational. biology, materials, design:
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?
quotes from the book
If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then you may be much better off that when it was loaded with ideas. p269
But technology is simply the making of things and the making of things can't by its own nature be ugly or there would be no possibility for beauty in
The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, a
The inability to imagine a world in which things are different is evidence only of a poor imagination, not the impossibility of change. — Rutger Br
When you reflect on what you collect, you start noticing patterns. You connect dots that once felt totally unrelated. You move from passive consumer t
But technology is simply the making of things and the making of things can't by its own nature be ugly or there would be no possibility for beauty in
philosophy - culture
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
But technology is simply the making of things and the making of things can't by its own nature be ugly or there would be no possibility for beauty in
writing - writing craft
If I want to be a writer who is any good, I really think I am going to have to be bored more often, which means sequestering my attention to my surrou
Time is the best editor. If you have it, time is the easiest trick for self-editing. Simply put your work away long enough so when you come back to it
'The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isn't the way it ever is. People should see that it's never a
writing - writing craft
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)
The tyranny of the quantifiable tramples over the question of what it is we get from doing the work, why we might want to do it, how writing – which i
a practice of being a work-in-progress person
On the first of the month, on the first of the year, a small seed is planted. It becomes very important to tend to that seed, to mark its progress as
Imperfection is the backbone of our lives. Nature has never demanded perfection of us, nor has evolution ever rewarded it. Total perfection would me
The tyranny of the quantifiable tramples over the question of what it is we get from doing the work, why we might want to do it, how writing – which i
Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant — there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing. Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters
I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. Charles Horton Cooley

philosophy - culture
I see a lot of technologists, particularly the CEOs of Silicon Valley companies, pontificating grand ideas about artificial intelligence and what huma
A beautiful question shapes a beautiful mind. And so the ability to ask beautiful questions — often in very un-beautiful moments — is one of the great
Asking vs Prompting the language we use in relation to these tools reveals how we understand ourselves in relation to them. gone are the days of askin
self - interiority
My soul, when I tend to it, is a far more expansive and fascinating source of guidance than my ego will ever be, because my soul desires only one thin
and the soul, if that’s what you’d call it, uneasy ally of the body First Time - Hozier
AI writing is soulless. You can read something and know that there is nothing of substance behind it. Whereas when you read a great piece of writing,
there is no local anaesthetic for the soul — joshua luke smith
writing - essay seeds
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,
Intelligence is not synonymous with consciousness and lived experience. Philosophers and neuroscientists studying embodied cognition argue that experi
AI writing is soulless. You can read something and know that there is nothing of substance behind it. Whereas when you read a great piece of writing,