Thomas

“The problem with social media platforms is not just that they seek to hook us on their products, it’s also that they offer themselves as the answer to profound human desires, which they are ultimately unable to satisfy.”

L. M. Sacasas

Desire, Dopamine, and the Internet

I believe that art is not a luxury. art is not just nice aesthetics that you buy to make rooms look less depressing. it is not home decor. it is not the third dessert. it is the main course — that creative source which feeds our lives. art is direct access to truth and beauty — a way of seeing that makes life worth living in this difficult,... See more

Leisure, it must be clearly understood, is a mental and spiritual attitude—it is not simply the result of external factors, it is not the inevitable result of spare time, a holiday, a weekend or a vacation. It is, in the first place, an attitude of mind, a condition of the soul, and as such utterly contrary to the ideal of “worker” in each and... See more

Ambition isn't about getting more money, more goods, bigger houses, greater acclaim from people you don't know or respect. It's not about anything that can fit on a spreadsheet or graph, or that lends itself well to bragging on social media. All of that is just grasping, not ambition.

Ambition is about the echoes you want to leave reverberating in... See more

The role of metaphor and narrative, as opposed to new theories or experiments, is too little recognised in discussions of the historian of science Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shifts, supposed (and contested) moments of dramatic change in science. All scientists know how to go about scrutinising a theory: you use it to formulate some testable hypothesis,... See more