Universal secondary education not only elevated Americans by spreading relevant knowledge and skills to the masses. It also gave rise to a more complex social and cultural transformation, as the adolescent period became pivotal in shaping who we are. - Aeon
Surprisingly, the researchers discovered that new and provocative ideas emerge at the edge of networks, from people with fewer contacts and little obvious pull. - Fast Company
Tyler Cowan: "Why for instance should I be called “Professor Cowen,” but few people would address the person fixing their toilet as “Plumber Jones”?" - Bloomberg
It has become unfashionable to subject pornography, and the market of desire it serves, to ethical critique, largely because of the broader embrace of an ethic of “sex positivity...” - Prospect
"An intergenerational discourse that looks at the next new thing—be it digital technology, the telephone, radio, TV, even way back to Socrates’ time, when he talked about the invention of writing as bringing about the end of memory—and worry." - Nautilus
"An essential but unanswered question in my field is: can the brain changes evoked by treatments – whether drug-based or psychotherapy – explain why only some people get better after each specific form of treatment?" - Psyche
The experience of imperial nostalgia, Peter Mitchell argues, is not just some lightly felt fancy or excuse for “rote grumpiness,” but evidence of a “real and unassuageable grief” that we should take seriously. - The Baffler
The modern sharing economy is premised on leaps of faith in perfect strangers: we rely on crowdsourced restaurant reviews on Yelp, climb into a stranger’s car through Uber, stay at someone else’s house via Airbnb... - The New Yorker
There’s a very big difference between an error and a lie – and between ‘fake news’ and ‘false news’. A fake is always false, and was intended to be. But a falsehood is not always a fake; it could simply be a mistake. - Aeon
For all of the well-intentioned idealism of today’s aspirational elite, there is a dark side of meritocracy that is never fully concealed in the strivers’ displays and proclamations of goodwill. - Hedgehog Review
There’s a huge leap in jumping from these general, aggregate findings to believing that such simple ideas can guide the behavior of complex states without an incredible amount of additional refinement. - Foreign Policy
In person, we still know how to be classy friends. But class is tricky on social media. No one can be expected to read the room when the room is planet-sized. - Wired
Disability Futures will have at least two more 20-person cohorts. Great, but "the feedback from the first class ... was frank: Do even better in the selection process." - The New York Times
Users claim they can "reality shift" to any fictional world; just, they say, "switch your consciousness to the right parallel universe." - Washington Post
