“The virtue of reading like a historian is that critique or disavowal is not the primary goal. On the contrary, reading historically provides something more destabilising: it requires the historian to put her own values in parentheses.” – Aeon
Category: ideas
Intentional Forgetting May Be A Good Strategy For Remembering
“Traditionally, forgetting has been regarded as a passive decay over time of the information recorded and stored in the brain. But while some memories may simply fade away like ink on paper exposed to sunlight, recent research suggests that forgetting is often more intentional, with erasure orchestrated by elaborate cellular and molecular mechanisms.” – The Atlantic
Decisions, Decisions. Turns Out Many Of Us Aren’t Good At Triaging
One of the paradoxes of life is that our big decisions are often less calculated than our small ones are. We agonize over what to stream on Netflix, then let TV shows persuade us to move to New York; buying a new laptop may involve weeks of Internet research, but the deliberations behind a life-changing breakup could consist of a few bottles of wine. – The New Yorker
Hell As An Incentive
The “bad place” has been detailed extensively – these are all the bad things that will happen to you if you don’t behave. Hell has been a moral consequence, it has been a spur to behave better. And increasingly we’re being warned of the possibilities of versions of it visiting earth. The point is, the concept of hell is a powerful idea that has framed our thinking. – The New Yorker
Beauty Isn’t Explained By Science. But Science Needs To Understand Beauty
If there is a universal truth about beauty — some concise and elegant concept that encompasses every variety of charm and grace in existence — we do not yet understand enough about nature to articulate it. – The New York Times
The Truth About The So-Called Gig Economy
We’re all going to be driving an Uber before long, and everyone who’s not will be freelancing at something else, right? Or maybe the gig economy isn’t growing so fast – or isn’t really growing at all. Economists can’t agree. – The Atlantic
The Fine Art Of The iPhone Notes App Celebrity Apology
The list of celebrities who have used iPhone Notes app to apologize in recent months is, well, long. What’s the appeal? False intimacy: “Sometimes statements include grammatical and spelling errors, or profanity, which function (perhaps unwittingly) as rhetorical devices, making the authors seem not only unpretentious but fallibly human. Their notes also frequently employ clichés of spoken apologies: ‘from the bottom of my heart,’ ‘profoundly,’ ‘I wish I knew then what I know now,’ and so on.” – The New York Times
The Day Mainstream Culture Died
Jared Marcel Pollen: No taste is triumphant anymore. This is to say that the mainstream is itself in peril as much as the domination of any narrative art within it. Indeed, the very notion of a mainstream seems to be perishing in overproduction and disaffection with the cultural gatekeepers. – 3AM Magazine
The Market Economy Model Has Crippled All Sorts Of Professions
We are all customers now; we are all supposed to be kings. But what if ‘being a customer’ is the wrong model for healthcare, education, and even highly specialised crafts and trades? – Aeon
How Sound Can Tip Us To Things Like Climate Change
Scientist Garth Paine: “I have spent decades making field recordings in which I create a setup before dawn or dusk, then lie on the ground listening for several uninterrupted hours. These projects have taught me how the density of the air changes as the sun rises or sets, how animal behavior shifts as a result, and how all of these things are intricately linked.”