You might think of Google as a search company, but 80 percent of its quarter-trillion-dollar annual revenue comes from ads—both hosting them and placing them throughout the internet. And a big part of what makes Google the most profitable advertising company in the world is that it knows a lot about you. - LitHub
Early modern skeptics understood something we’re still grappling with today: Certain people are more vulnerable to believing extraordinary claims. They identified “melancholics,” people predisposed to anxiety and fantastical thinking, as particularly susceptible. - The Conversation
“The most striking result is the disparity between how important creativity is for science versus how much opportunity and value is given to it within the research environment.” - Nature
"We believe creative professionals can harness new technologies while still upholding their foundational creative and ethical principles." - The Conversation
MAID now accounts for about one in 20 deaths in Canada—more than Alzheimer’s and diabetes combined—surpassing countries where assisted dying has been legal for far longer. - The Atlantic
But how would Austen handle one of today’s extremely normal plot lines: “If marriage is the ultimate accomplishment, or if your accomplishments all amount to marriageability, what does that mean for you if your marriage ends?” - LitHub
From Mexico’s 1976 Canoa to France’s Age of Panic from 2013, critics choose the films that show their countries, at their best, worst, and most complicated. - The Guardian (UK)
If you have a world in which everyone is encouraged to be a total individualist, they tend to get trapped in that mindset. It’s wonderful when things are going well, because you, your own desires and thoughts are the centre of the world. But the moment things go wrong, you retreat into yourself. - The Guardian
Machines no longer assist our lives from the outside; they increasingly define the conditions under which we think, work, and relate. And here Skidelsky joins a growing chorus of artists, poets, and writers in asking the big questions we once debated and wrote about—questions of meaning, purpose, and the conditions of human freedom. - LA Review of Books
What if long-term success is more about building environments where people feel inspired, curious, and connected? That’s what libraries do. And that’s what the best organizations of any kind are learning to do, too. - Fast Company
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
