Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
When I have given oral presentations, I reach my people more directly than if I’d written everything down for them to read. When people can see your face and hear the melody of your voice, your point gets across more vividly. Language evolved, after all, for face-to-face contact, not rendered as glyphs on paper.Imagine a square divided into four sm... See more
New York Times • Opinion | If You Have Something to Say, Then Say It (Published 2021)
As Matt Clancey points out that “the benefits of knowledge spillovers from being physically close to other knowledge workers have been falling and may no longer exist in many domains of knowledge.” This is a controversial claim, but Clancey provides a detailed review of multiple studies that address this matter from different directions.
Dror Poleg • Dror’s Substack | Substack
it is culturally telling that we habitually hack off the end of the long version: “A Jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”
Slate • General Education Has a Bad Rap
Pluralistic: My McLuhan lecture on enshittification (30 Jan 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorowpluralistic.net
to participate in the great decisions of government. There was, Lippmann brooded, no “intrinsic moral and intellectual virtue to majority rule.” Lippmann’s disenchantment with democracy anticipated the mood of today’s elites. From the top, the public, and the swings of public opinion, appeared irrational and uninformed. The human material out of wh
... See moreMartin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
The acrid views expressed about colloquial speech in online comments sections today is a relatively new view of language, fostered by a combination of bourgeois sensibility and the dominance of unchanging documents such as dictionaries, both of which subtly but powerfully distract us from the dynamic reality of language’s essential mechanisms.
John McWhorter • Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally)
about the bleating idiocy of American mass media in the era after 9/11 and the run-up to the Iraq War. In it, he offers a thought experiment that has stuck with me. Imagine, he says, being at a party, with the normal give and take of conversation between generally genial, informed people. And then “a guy walks in with a megaphone. He’s not the smar... See more