“One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!” the founding father of neuroscience [...]

"We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear."

"We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and [...]

“Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in his love letter to the hours of darkness, composed while flying alone over the [...]

That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and sorrows to another — this is the great miracle of being alive together. The object of human [...]

Interiors, Sergio Ceccotti

I’m at the airport - The New Yorker, Drew Dernavich

Jon Klassen

Geoff McFetridge (because)

The last days of disco, Larry Fink (RIP)

Christopher Dresser, Teapot and milk jug, 1875-1880. Terracotta, partially glazed. Made by Watcombe Pottery Co, Torquay. Photo: Felix Bielmeier. Grassi Museum Leipzig.I am always amazed at how [...]

Naum Gabo, Linear Construction NO. 1 , 1963/64 (Design 1942/43) Via Kunsthalle HamburgIn the 1930s, the Russian constructivist came across models that mathematicians had built from wire, wood and [...]

Massimo Vignelli, Harper’s Illustrated Handbook of Cats or Dogs, 1985. Via Vignelli Archive

Herbert Bauer, Cover of Gebrauchsgraphik: International Advertising Art, December 1970, a German magazine dedicated to graphic design. Via Letterform archive

Achille Castiglioni, “Bavero” Teapot with Lid, 2001. Porcelain. Alessi, Italy. Via philamuseum

These barbells, dumbbells, benches, squat racks, and rowers were already affordable, but the Cyber Monday 2023 prices are even better.

Cyber Monday deals at Best Buy are now live, and it is the retailer with the best tech deals.

Here are some hints to help you win NYT Connections #170.

Dyson vacuum fans, we've got news for you.

Get the best headphones and earbud deals on noise-canceling, over-the-ear, in-ear, and everything in between from the biggest retailers and the best brands.

Slavoj Zizek - Israel, Palestine & the Future #philosophy

Image Details & Source man in red jacket standing beside brown cow on green grass field during daytime by Frank Holleman on Unsplash Click Here for the Original, High-Quality Image This page was [...]

Image Details & Source a close up of a planet with a black background by Planet Volumes on Unsplash It is a 3D render of Jupiter; and I mean to highlight its Great Red Spot, the largest storm in our [...]

Image Details & Source Frame from Fire Emblem Awakening cutscene: “Marth No More” by ANIMA Inc.* The focus is on Lucina’s left eye. On how it bears the “Brand of the [...]

Image Details & Source Rick and Morty (comics) First run (2015–2020): Book 1, Volume 2, No. 7 ~ The Rickfinity Crisis, Part One / Dream a Little Dream of Me “I’ve been to the edge of [...]

Image Details & Source green bell pepper on brown soil by imso gabriel on Unsplash Last tended: August 1st, 2023 Foreword # It’s been a year since I started this website. I’ve spoken a [...]

I’m sitting here at Toronto Pearson International Airport after this year’s AAA meetings. The first time I went to the AAA’s was back in 2008, in San Francisco. I was a grad student [...]

There are a few different things that brought me to anthropology. One of them was 9/11. More specifically, it was how many people in the US responded to 9/11, including people I knew well. There was [...]

In the last post of this installment of the summer anthropologies series, I ended with the point that major league baseball (MLB) is an annual demonstration of autocratic corporate power. If that’s [...]

In part one of this installment, I mentioned Leslie White’s call to expand the purview of anthropology and take a closer look at things like baseball. I agree. White’s preliminary theory was that [...]

A couple months ago, just after the 2023 baseball season started, I was sitting in the upper deck behind home plate at Oracle Park in San Francisco, California. It is a great view. I was there to [...]

Oddly disconcerting footage of eyes being stamped onto the faces of flexible plastic dolls at a toy factory in Adana, Turkey.

Ally the Piper performed a badass cover of the classic Ozzy Osbourne song "Crazy Train" on bagpipes inside a moody industrial setting.

Walking Bass Piano Man performed a jazzy piano cover of the Sesame Street them, increasing the jazz factor by seven more levels.

A Sulcata tortoise named Penzi shared a vegetarian meal with a cheetah named Tuesday at Carson Springs Wildlife in in Gainesville, Florida.

Mark Rober created a nine-part underwater maze for his pet octopus that included incrementally increasing the difficulty levels.

Nashville punk crew Sn​õ​õ​per shared Super Snõõper earlier this year, a debut album so jam-packed with fun chaos it was our Album Of The Week and helped land them on our Best New Bands [...]

Last year, director Rob Reiner revealed that he was working on a sequel for his 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap, known for pioneering the mockumentary genre. Yesterday, on Richard Herring’s RHLSTP [...]

The Kelly Clarkson cover song is back like it never left. The Kelly Clarkson Show, now a daytime-TV institution, resumed production after the writers’ strike ended, and Clarkson resumed her [...]

The thing you have to understand about PinkPantheress’s Heaven Knows is that it contains a (synth) harp-filled song about an unrequited crush metaphorically murdering her, called [...]

Here’s a new one from Colombian screamo band Vientre. “Fiel de Fechos” is 90 seconds of sheer power and freak-out energy, with bomb-drop downbeats connected by slicing mathy [...]

#infographic

#photography“Corals at Night” by Nicolas Marin Benitez

#photographyPink Planet, Fayz Kha, Kenya

#photographyKids of Banna tribe in Ethiopia playing on wooden stilts WAVRIK

#designThe McLaren M6GT 'Plain Body' (Image credit: INK)

The 2023 Ocean Photographer of the Year Contest Highlights the Stunning Sights Above and Below the Surface

Lone Splendor: A Group Show Revels in the Wonder and Unknown of the Night Sky

Hera’s Imaginative New Murals Question the Animal Impulse to Migrate

JR’s Dramatic Cave Intervention Emerges from the Center of the Palais Garnier in Paris

Surreal Anatomies and Architectural Motifs Emerge from Elegant Sculptural Candles