Maria Popova

Such a fantastic @onbeing conversation with James Bridge as we continue to reckon with our relationship with nature and the meaning of intelligence in the age of ChatGPT Also see:

“We are never as kind as we want to be, but nothing outrages us more than people being unkind to us.” Superb read

If you listen to nature with your whole being, or would like to learn, here is a wonderful read on the language and wisdom of the more-than-human world

“It is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar.” Wonderful short read from the diaries of an uncommon woman

Against Self-Criticism – wonderful read on how our internal critics enslave us and how to break free

Superb conversation with @TedGioia about music – about the costs of complacency and the hidden crucibles of innovation in culture – on the always excellent @coldxman podcast

"The Fragile Species" remains one of the most wondrous and insightful things ever written about how to live with ourselves and each other

“The truth is that we are all potential fossils still carrying within our bodies the crudities of former existences, the marks of a world in which living creatures flow with little more consistency than clouds from age to age.” Superb read:

Excellent read on an increasingly common and urgent subject, with nothing less than the essence of our humanity – which has to do with creativity and moral discernment – at stake

"The risk of asymmetry is bound to induce anxiety. But we have to keep trying. Anxiety is the price of unfathomable joy when we do connect with another person in the realm of authentic friendship." Superb @aeonmag read on Simone de Beauvoir and friendship

“The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.” E.E. Cummings, born on this day in 1894, on what it means to be an artist, in a wonderful lost essay illustrated with his own line drawings

“It’s a mercy that time runs in one direction only, that we see the past but darkly and the future not at all.” Life, loss, and the wisdom of rivers – superb read