Against Brute Force: D.H. Lawrence on the Superpower of Vulnerability

"Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy."

Culture • 3h

Is American Culture Simply Bad Now? I’ve been hanging...

Is American Culture Simply Bad Now? I’ve been hanging with my friend Matt while he’s here in Tokyo for a trip, which he refers to as his “America is Cooked Tour” as he keeps running across things that are much better here.

Culture • 10h

Between Worlds

Arthur Jafa at the New Museum, Teresa Margolles at MoMA PS1, the story of an unsung Black architect, and our art tarotscope for the fall.

Culture • 13h

Uniformity

Consistency costs extra. If you want to buy machine screws or widgets that are exactly the same to five decimal points, you’ll pay a premium for that. In exchange, you’ll get parts that are precisely as expected, making assembly more reliable. Mechanization’s productivity and

Culture • 14h

The Dandelion and the Meaning of Life: G.K. Chesterton on How to Live in Wonder

Recovering the "forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence" alive in the back of our modernity-deadened minds.

Culture • 19h

How Do You Know That You Love Somebody? Philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s Incompleteness Theorem of the Heart’s Truth, from Plato to Proust

"The alternations between love and its denial, suffering and denial of suffering … constitute the most essential and ubiquitous structural feature of the human heart."

Culture • 20h

Ocean of Stars: A Painted Poem About How to Bear the Astonishment of Life

Here we are, bewildered miracles of chemistry and chance, trembling embers of dead stars capable of sign and song, a wild bet against probability that won. We have dreamt up origin myths and cosmological models, built the Taj Mahal and the Large Hadron Collider, to fathom where

Culture • 23h

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