Literacy literally restructured our consciousness, and the demise of literate culture—the decline of reading and the rise of social media—is again transforming what it feels like to be a thinking, living person. - Derek Thompson
Despite years of Eat-the-Rich–type discourse, we seem to struggle with how money and power operate without falling into either conspiratorial exaggeration (the fantasy of Satan-worshipping elites ritualistically drinking baby blood is centuries old) or fawning admiration for the taste and sophistication of the rich and famous. - The American Scholar
When we speak of dignity, worth, or the respect owed to persons, we are not engaging in idle abstraction. These concepts do real work. They justify constraints on what the powerful may do to the vulnerable. - 3 Quarks Daily
In the past thirty or so years, the academy has replaced the church as the center of the liberal moral imagination, providing the sense of a community bound by ethics, a firmament of texts and knowledge that should inform action, and a meeting space for like-minded people. - The New Yorker
Rod Dreher emerged from the conservative blogosphere in the 2000s and won fans with his daily stream of testy opinions and unguarded anecdotal writing. He seems almost allergic to ideological consistency, has long had readers on the left as well as the right, and sometimes changes his mind over the course of a single paragraph. - The Atlantic
It might never improve enough. “Even in the most ambitious view where AI technology is feasibly able to generate worlds that are as responsive and interesting to explore as a video game that runs locally … there’s a lot more that goes into making a video game.”- The Verge (Archive Today)
“The fundamental problem we face involves the degree to which the truth must now compete with such a vast multiplicity of falsehoods that discovering truth itself becomes unviable.” - Paris Review
There’s no question that they’ve helped me write. And yet, if I look back over my career as a writer, the value I’ve derived from carefully controlling my environment has paled in comparison to my main source of motivation: scary e-mails from editors. - The New Yorker
Is it a helpful shorthand for describing the remarkable plasticity of our nervous system or has it become a misleading oversimplification that distorts our grasp of science? - Aeon
Institutions foster cooperation by rewarding good behaviour and punishing rule-breakers. Yet they themselves depend on cooperative members to function. We haven’t solved the cooperation problem – we’ve simply moved it back one step. So why do institutions work at all? - Aeon
What happens in a performer’s brain while playing? Traditional brain-imaging tools like functional m.r.i. (f m.r.i.) require subjects to lie motionless in a scanner. Newer wearable technologies, including EEG (electroencephalography) caps fitted with electrodes, make it possible to study musicians in more natural settings. - The New York Times
From the jarring morning alarm to the podcast we listen to on the way to work; from the constant murmur of the office to the background music in the café; from the endless information on our smartphones to the television that’s on just to have “something” playing. - 3 Quarks Daily
There is satisfaction in pressing a button or cranking a dial that no touchscreen will ever replicate. There is also certainty; if I reach for my car’s temperature control, I know it will be there, without taking my eyes off the road to click through six sub-menus. - The Guardian
