Everything is public now, potentially: one’s thoughts, one’s photos, one’s movements, one’s purchases. There is no privacy and apparently little desire for it in a world devoted to non-stop use of social media. Every minute, every second, has to be spent with one’s device clutched in one’s hand. - The New Yorker
Through a combination of oral examinations, one-on-one discussions, community engagement and in-class projects, the professors I spoke with are revitalizing the experience of humanities for 21st-century students. - The New York Times
At first blush, it can be hard to take perfectionism seriously as a source of suffering. The lament “I’m a perfectionist” carries a strong whiff of humblebrag—the kind of thing savvy job applicants say when asked their greatest flaw. - The New Yorker
In the second half of life, we’re all expected to say how much happier we are than in our insecure twenties, how we wouldn’t swap places with our younger self, oh no, not even if you paid us. Hmm. Sometimes I feel that way, but not always. - The Ruffian
You may assume that a collapse in the imperial superstructure meant that people went hungry and homeless, and that is certainly the picture in the poems of lamentation and sorrow. But the physical evidence of people’s health, for instance, shows something very different. - Aeon
What a close comparison in fact illuminates is not just how pernicious A.I. can be to intellectual life, but also how it can undermine the very principles of the Enlightenment itself. - The New York Times
While the underlying mechanism is unclear, neuroscientists theorize saying something out loud separates and distinguishes it from “mere” thoughts. (You didn’t just think it. You also heard it.) - Fast Company
“It wasn’t so much that we’d failed to replicate (the study’s) famous longitudinal results. It was more that our study confirmed a nagging message that the field is still resistant to accepting: there are no childhood skills that are silver bullets.” - Psyche
“After a great loss, some people find themselves communing with nature, at the seaside or deep in a forest. Others turn to spirituality, toward a temple or church. Me? I’d come to grieve with the Muppets.” - The Atlantic
The rise of the cheap, daily newspaper in the 19th century created the first true attention economy—an endless churn of spectacle and sensation that remade how Americans engaged with the world. - The Atlantic
Looking back, it becomes clear that the process only really starts after severe damage has been wreaked to the fundamental concept of justice—and once the minimal morality you didn’t know you depended on has been destroyed. It is this exhausting, terrifying immorality that forces you to look for a somewhere else. - The Walrus
When technology mediates contact, this can strengthen familiar forms of scepticism about love – for example, about whether or not the other person is really who they seem to be. We want sincerity and depth of feeling. Not just a pleasing response. - The Conversation
If you want to make an accurate judgment of how progress is going, it seems intuitive that frequent monitoring would help. On the other hand, popular wisdom suggests that watching too intently can distort your sense of how quickly or slowly something is proceeding: as the saying goes: ‘A watched pot never boils.’ - Psyche
