How We Ended Up in the Era of ‘Quantitative Aesthetics,’ Where Data Points Dictate Taste The Humanities Crash and the McNamara Fallacy in culture. _...Read More_

"The interweb has been abuzz of late with talk of The New Aesthetic. A never-ending stream of polemical blog posts and autobot-regurgitated twitter commentaries (hashtag [#newaesthetic](/culture/new/newaesthetic) ) bombards us from every angle. What is this new thing? _...Read More_

"Scorn the pleasure which comes from the applause of the majority. Many men praise you; but have you any reason for being pleased with yourself, if you are a person whom the many can understand? Your good qualities should face inwards."

"It's easier than ever for writers to earn good money, but don't get it twisted: You still must dare to be a loser."

"There are too many possible lifestyles now, and it's a bigger problem than you realize."

"Historically, many of the most interesting and important writers have tended to carve out insular, informal pockets of autonomous cultural activity from which they could birth something larger. These pockets would shield members from the _...Read More_

"How are we still getting caught in the rain?"

"On fatherhood and the unspeakable terror of steering the ship."

"On new, untapped modes of veridiction."

"On the value of soul in the era of machine intelligence."

"For the most part, Johnson studied and wrote through a lifetime of poverty. He was a hypochondriac with nervous tics, who never enjoyed the support of a patron. He came of age at a difficult time for writers, a time when patronage was _...Read More_

"It's easy to lament the decline of testosterone, but most Americans prefer a low-testosterone society—including many of those who lament the decline of testosterone."

"Are you OK, babe? You've barely touched my mushy dots and it's thwarting my aspiration"

"The son of an art dealer, Vermeer lived and worked in Delft as a painter, an art dealer, and the head of the St. Lucas art guild. He was raised a Calvinist reformed Protestant, but converted to Catholicism upon his marriage. He had 11 _...Read More_