Some writers work like sculptors: they produce something fully chiseled that could stand forever. Novelists tend to be like that. Rather than being a sculptor, I see myself as being a musician. After a performance, no matter how it goes, the musician’s task is to start practicing for the next one.
~ Dan Wang via his 2025 letter
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What I am especially bothered by today is that, particularly in the media, design is being used as a ‘lifestyle asset.’ I’m bothered by the arbitrariness and the thoughtlessness with which many things are produced and brought to the market.
~ Dieter Rams
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Research on apocalyptic belief suggests that mood is more predictive than party affiliation or income in how people respond to big risks. Political identity explains surprisingly little. What matters is whether you think capable humans are still in control, how close you feel to the edge, and whether some part of you suspects the crash might actually be an improvement.
~ John Mac Ghlionn via The Hill
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Millions of artist create; only a few thousands are discussed or accepted by the spectator and many less again are consecrated by posterity.
~ Marcel Duchamp
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There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
~ Søren Kierkegaard
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The most common form of despair is not being who you are.
~ Søren Kierkegaard
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Success in school is not the same thing as success in life. University administrators in the James Conant mold assumed that people who could earn high grades would continue to excel later in their career.
~ David Brooks
via How the Ivy League Broke America
published by The Atlantic
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When we build, let us think that we build for ever.
~ John Ruskin
I’d probably rather live in a greedy country where people don’t share than in an envious country where people are stealing from each other.
~ David Sacks via The Atlantic
An American academic who wants to move to Europe would have to accept more teaching and administrative work, lose tenure, and for the pleasure of all that, probably halve her pay. She would likely also suffer the resentment of European peers, who scoff at the idea that better paid Americans are now refugees. Trump threw a lot against US universities; they are holding up okay, and I think they will remain strong.
~ Dan Wang via his 2025 letter
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