Reading notes is a weekly curation of my tweets. It is, as Michel de Montaigne so beautifully wrote, “a posy of other men’s flowers and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.”

In this week’s edition: Big Tech’s business model is doing irreparable harm to society, but we don’t need to destroy the tech giants; in 1995, a WIRED cofounder challenged a Luddite-loving doomsayer to a prescient wager on tech and civilization’s fate; how the internet tycoons used the ideology of flatness to hoover up value and no one seemed to care; to change the way you think, change the way you see; why Epicureanism is the philosophy we need now; the rule of awkward silence; light as a mirror that reflects the culture of place; the great architecture of the Thapar University Learning Laboratory in India; and, finally, Mary Catherine Bateson on humility, one of the most essential elements of human wisdom. …

Reading notes is a weekly curation of my tweets. It is, as Michel de Montaigne so beautifully wrote, “a posy of other men’s flowers and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.”

In the first edition of 2021: The phrase ‘adult beginner’ can sound patronising, but learning is not just for the young; as machine learning continues to develop, the intuition that thinking necessarily precedes learning should wane; how to forfeit unrealistic optimism about the future; talking out loud to yourself; how to channel boredom; the massive effect culture has on how we view ourselves and how we are perceived by others; unlocking the key to a mysterious 17th-century painting; and, finally, Lao Tzu and finding the answers at the center of your being. …

Reading notes is a weekly curation of my tweets. It is, as Michel de Montaigne so beautifully wrote, “a posy of other men’s flowers and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.”

In 2020’s final curation: Imagining our alternate selves can be fuel for fantasy or fodder for regret; the future posing as today’s speculative solutions to yesterday’s wicked problems; Søren Kierkegaard wants us to put our trust in the unfolding moment of life; the four thinkers who reinvented philosophy; philosophy is a practice; an organic and simple way to find your life’s purpose; Bob Dylan and the aura of a work of art; how did Balthasar become black?; …

Reading notes is a weekly curation of my tweets. It is, as Michel de Montaigne so beautifully wrote, “a posy of other men’s flowers and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.”

In this week’s edition: What hunter-gatherer societies can teach us about work, time and happiness; mind-wandering and why it pays to play around; win seeking a means to heal our wounded planet, look to the painstaking, cautious craft of art conservation; finding balance and belonging through direct experience of life’s wholeness; Beethoven’s masterful use of small motifs; a linguistic outpost, surrounded by alien sounds; the loneliness of urban life; and, finally, John le Carré’s consistent love. …

Reading notes is a weekly curation of my tweets. It is, as Michel de Montaigne so beautifully wrote, “a posy of other men’s flowers and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.”

In this week’s edition: Video conferencing offers an illusory sense of unilateral control over conversations; replacing oppressive and meaningless work with work that actually enhances peoples’ lives; how we have come to esteem financial value over human value; consuming media is as much about managing feeling as accessing information; Cole Porter’s new kind of American lyric — and language; what we know of Sappho; Apollo’s archaic torso; and, finally, why it’s so important to expose the underlying structure of the so-called ‘free market.’ …

Reading notes is a weekly curation of my tweets. It is, as Michel de Montaigne so beautifully wrote, “a posy of other men’s flowers and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.”

In this week’s edition: We have become more trusting of immediate technosolutionist thinking to solve complex, evolving problems; how ‘doing technology well’ contributes to our hopes for leading an ethically good life; when personal productivity meets digital surveillance, it does real harm to workers; will we miss shared working spaces more than we think?; …

Reading notes is a weekly curation of my tweets. It is, as Michel de Montaigne so beautifully wrote, “a posy of other men’s flowers and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.”

In this week’s edition: Uplifting and “delightfully concrete” advice on how to cope with a dark Corona winter; what we miss when we forget Africa’s great thinkers; how in the new capitalist model, the company with the most funding wins; the enduring timelessness of Japanese aesthetics; how close is too close in a time of social distancing?; …

Reading notes is a weekly curation of my tweets. It is, as Michel de Montaigne so beautifully wrote, “a posy of other men’s flowers and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.”

In this week’s edition: how understanding the structure of global cabal theories can shed light on their allure — and inherent falsehood; what it take to drive the ‘digital media’ Fury back to the Underworld; embracing contradictory ideas may be the secret to creativity and leadership; how close is humanity to the edge?; how art sustains us when survival is uncertain; lockdown has affected our memory; what does philosophy actually do?; …