Beautiful tune! 🤩 #Synthwave 🎹💜

I think the trick is how to still be happy while realising we're in deep shit.

Smells like existential dread

"Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it" ~ Hermann Hesse

David’s story was a tragedy – and a triumph. Thanks to his life as a human guinea pig, the world was bequeathed dozens of medical breakthroughs: the confirmation that a virus could cause cancer was a major one; so too was the mapping of the genetic origin of his disease...

Please teach your children not to measure their strength by how much pain they can endure.

#Synthwave #Citypop 🎹💜

"We are tiny specks in a vast universe. How can we or anything we care about really matter?" Philosophers have tended to be critical of the reasoning behind this kind of lament, but in a new paper, philosopher Luke Elson defends something like it.

Hume was not a Humean (says Galen Strawson). For which other philosophers is it true that "[philosopher] is not a [philosopher]-ian"?

A new analysis suggests that, in general, philosophers of the past 100 years or so have tended to reach “peak influence” between their early 50s and late 60s.

Eunsong Kim on the relationship between art and capitalism (and the reading crisis as class warfare).

If we’re gamifying our reading, we stop reading widely: we pick different versions of a story that we are guaranteed to like, and with that we lose a sense of well-roundedness, a sense of discovery and surprise.

Amazon has pulled out of sponsoring the Paris Book Fair, thanks to pressure from a booksellers’ association: Syndicat de la Librairie Française (SLF).

"The authors in agreement include thousands of heavies—like Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory, Jeanette Winterson, and Alan Moore."

#Synthwave #Dreamwave #Outrun 🎹💜

Today's reminder

Them: Yeah, Spinoza was an atheist! Spinoza: Actually, I wasn't. I argued that God and Nature are the same infinite substance - everything that exists is in God. My philosophy denies a personal creator, but it does not deny the divine.

Kakistocracy

Interpellation: Louis Althusser's concept of how ideology manipulates us to conform to its values. We are automatically, unconsciously called into roles, responding to signs, as if instructed: "Yes, I recognize myself in this."

Version 1.0: learning. Version 2.0: upgrading.

A new South African video game lets players take back African artefacts held in western museums in a series of heists, amid a growing campaign to repatriate treasures looted by colonial armies.

"You might think, looking at a forest or a tide pool, that all the creatures in it are equal. But it turns out that some individual creatures have a much bigger influence than others." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

"A lot of people think that optimism is about being overly positive about everything and believing that everything is going to turn out very well. That is a kind of blind optimism." fivebooks.com/best-books/e...

A philosophy professor taught Aristotle's virtue ethics while conducting her own master class in deception. She shares how small lies and omissions nearly destroyed her relationship—and what she learned about truthfulness.

Jürgen Habermas, one of the great political and social theorists of the 20th Century, has died.

It's one of the most iconic images of all time, and a London dentist thinks he's solved the mystery at last.

Coloring outside the lines.

Curtin University scientists have developed a new technique to explore the deep history of Australia's landscapes. The approach could help researchers understand how the environment responds to geological activity and climate shifts...

#Synthwave 🎹💜

Beyond ceiling paintings, this principle could help solve the problem of liquid films collapsing on inclined surfaces, with potential applications in precision coating, electronic circuit printing, 3D printing, and fluid control in space environments.

People often speak on behalf of others, like the concerned citizen who stands up for their neighbors at a city council meeting, or the activist who defends the rights of an oppressed group. Some of these spokespeople are elected, and some volunteer, but others simply get drafted into the role.

Whitman’s verse, which elaborates the completeness of being and the unity of the material and spiritual, offers a poetic counterpoint to the struggles of the Romantics.

Subjectivity may be the rule today, but it should not rule us. It may dominate the foreground of debate and be deployed to justify every point of view, but it does not follow that truth is no longer possible. Truth may be harder than ever to ascertain or convince people of...

The Israel–Gaza war has produced an estimated 33 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent—matching the annual emissions of 7.6 million cars. This underscores the significant, often overlooked climate impact of armed conflict, which remains largely absent from global climate accounting...

The Fiji Solar Crown is a concept addressing the challenges the island nation faces due to climate change.

Since bonobos are some of humans’ closest living relatives, the study hints that imagination might have deep evolutionary roots, possibly originating in a shared ancestor that lived around six million to nine million years ago, just before the human lineage split off from other apes.

Is mathematical beauty like the beauty in literature and art – or is it something else? This Essay by Rita Ahmadi explores how beauty in mathematics might be defined, particularly in the age of AI

Pi, the mathematical constant representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, is essential in fields from aerospace engineering to biomedical research. Its infinite digits underpin calculations for spacecraft navigation, fluid dynamics, and advanced diagnostic tools...

Qualia essays go where curiosity leads. This week, join @nattyover.bsky.social on her quest to understand whether a burgeoning, abstract mathematical field can help the planet. www.quantamagazine.org/can-the-most...

This artist brilliantly captures the movement and mischief of cats. 🐈‍⬛✍️

It's Bandcamp Friday! Here is some new music to celebrate this day! Support the artists you love! tommy86.bandcamp.com/album/flyin-...

Is intellectual curiosity a moral obligation?

#Synthwave 🎹💜 'Above The Clouds' 🤩

Just passing through.

Indian educator Rouble Nagi meets kids where they are to ensure that all have a way to learn.

Oliver James has gone from functionally illiterate to literacy advocate.

“If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves... If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future.” — Carl Sagan