Category: ideas

Perhaps it’s too overwhelming to contemplate on any pop level, but also, the lack of a sufficient representation of our time is weird. “Months into this altered reality, pop culture has remained stunted, vaguely gesturing at our shared reality without having contributions of substance. There have been surprisingly few works in music, TV, or films that help us process what we are going through. This is not for lack of content.” – BuzzFeed

Take Stonehenge, for example. “Stonehenge too might once have been largely a wooden structure. The central bluestones and the rings of sarsen stones that surround them are surrounded in turn by several rings of postholes, just as at Woodhenge. The stones could therefore originally have been covered or surrounded by a huge ring-shaped wooden building. The archaeological blogger Geoff Carter has even suggested that the sarsen stones themselves and their lintels could have acted as load-bearing structures in a huge wooden temple that completely covered the bluestones.” – LitHub

Givers might favor the beautiful and dramatic because they think about gifts in the abstract: “What’s a good gift?” Recipients, in contrast, imagine themselves using it, and so focus more on utility. – The New York Times

Because thinking minds are different from evolving organisms and self-assembling molecules, we cannot expect them to use the same means—mechanisms like genetic drift and thermal vibrations—to overcome deep valleys in the landscapes they explore. But they must have some way to achieve the same purpose. As it turns out, they have more than just one—many more. But one of the most important is play. – Nautilus

“Today many regard tolerance not as the willingness to allow views that some may find offensive but the restraining of unacceptable views so as to protect people from being outraged. Regarding tolerance as the demand of those who might be offended, rather than as a permission for those who might offend is to turn the idea on its head.” – The Guardian

The cycle of harm perpetuated by Facebook’s scale-at-any-cost business model is plain to see. Scale and engagement are valuable to Facebook because they’re valuable to advertisers. These incentives lead to design choices such as reaction buttons that encourage users to engage easily and often, which in turn encourage users to share ideas that will provoke a strong response. – The Atlantic

“I discovered that there are important parallels between the theory and practice of repairing damaged art and that of repairing damaged nature. But there’s an important difference. The environmental sciences investigate processes of nature that have endured billions of years, and yet scientific thinking about the repair of ecosystems is but decades old. Artistic production is, on the other hand, of relatively recent origin, yet systematic thinking and writing about the repair of tarnished art is centuries old. It seems very likely that ecological restoration can learn a considerable amount from this senior literature.” – Aeon

“Imagine the 21st-century worker as accessing two modes of thinking: productivity mind and leisure mind. When we are under the sway of the former, we are time- and results-optimizing creatures, set on proving our industriousness to the world and, most of all, to ourselves. In leisure mode, the thrumming subsides, allowing us to watch a movie or finish a glass of wine without considering how our behavior might affect our reputation and performance reviews. For several hours a week, on Sunday evening, a psychological tug-of-war between these perspectives takes place.” – The Atlantic

“It’s rare to see art that is intrinsically woven into, and ultimately shapes, the very fabric of society. Was art always destined to be something that came only after we had satisfied our basic subsistence needs? Human evolution suggests not.” – Aeon