“Because TED is for, and by, unbelievably rich people, they tiptoe around questions of the justness of a society that rewards TED attendees so much for what usually amounts to a series of lucky breaks.” —
Don’t mention income inequality please, we’re entrepreneurs - Salon.com
I love TED Talks, but they are problematic in so many ways.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.—Mary Oliver.
(via sashayed)
[video]
“I’ve never had any patience for people who claim their creativity controls them rather than vice versa. I have every sympathy with people who struggle to create, but if I see one more film about someone who’s spent the last two years suffering from writer’s block, I will throw something heavy at the screen.” —
The Part Where I Hate The Damn Book « extribulum
Yes, exactly.
“Everything in the world is trying to distract you from getting something on the page. Our own doubts about everything we do is crushing. Don’t let it crush you. No one has any idea what they’re doing.” — How To Write The Great American Novel | The Awl
[video]
This is neat.
(via Wind Map: Gallery)
“I’m referring to literature that happens to be written by women. But some people, especially some men, see most fiction by women as one soft, undifferentiated mass that has little to do with them.” — The Second Shelf: On the Rules of Literary Fiction for Men and Women - NYTimes.com
“This old thing?, you want to say, pointing to your personal trivia or your political beliefs or your body. Got it in Barcelona for four Euros. It’s not real. This joke? I make it all the time. You’ll get sick of it. I am sick of it. But the new person doesn’t know that yet, and you are not actually about to tell him.” —
A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer DuBois
Every sentence of this book was good. Very good, in fact. There are not enough books that are really a joy to read as well as compelling and slow-burning and smart. And about chess, Russia, and some sort of foolish resilience in the face of, as it says, lost causes.
“The problem is that modern museums of art fail to tell people directly why art matters, because Modernist aesthetics (in which curators are trained) is so deeply suspicious of any hint of an instrumental approach to culture. …only art which wants nothing too clearly of us can be good. Hence the all-too-frequent question with which we leave the modern museum of art: what did that mean?” — Alain de Botton: Why Our Museums Of Art Have Failed Us And What They Might Learn From Religions