Tanuj

Even bad images have something to say. So many of the memes that float around message boards and social media feeds are a complete mess, edges fuzzy and pixels popping out all over the place. But the poor quality becomes part of the point: It’s a marker of virality, a signal that the image has been shared and stolen by multiple viewer-artists who... See more

My first recommendation would be fiction. Reading fiction is important to understand the cross-sectional variation in humanity, to understand how difficult generalizations can be, to just get a sense of how different social pieces fit together, and to get a sense of different historical eras – and plus, reading fiction is often just plain flat-out... See more

Visiting the museum is a unique experience unlike other leisure activities today. Through the careful selection and placement of objects in space, the foundation is set for visitors to think about their world in new ways.

In the words of MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle: computers empowered their users, making them feel smart[er], “in control”, and “more fully participant in the future”.

Names are excellent for creating larger chunks, since when done right, they pack lots of information into a single sentence.

Being a woman in a male-dominated industry has made me very aware that this culture is sorely lacking something I am naturally able to provide in spades. Not in a way that saps me of energy or makes me feel like a martyr, but in a way that feels fulfilling and grounding in my sense of self.

This is what mental models are: ideas from diverse fields that can aid your life. In this sense, improving vocabulary is a meta mental model. It’s a way of finding and organising new mental models.

So what are the problems of relying too heavily on stories? You view your life like "this" [a journey] instead of the mess that it is or it ought to be.