randomWalks

Twenty years ago, at the 1993 Whitney Biennial, fault lines opened up and the ground shifted. About 30 of the 43 artists were in the museum for the first time. More than 40 percent of the participants were women, quite a few were nonwhite, and a generous amount of the work was about being openly gay. One of the exhibition’s admission buttons, designed by artist Daniel J. Martinez, read I CAN’T IMAGINE EVER WANTING TO BE WHITE. People went batshit.

It is not my job to convince you to distinguish me from the violent sociopaths that claim to be Muslims, whose terrorism I neither support, nor condone. It is your job.

Letting children have their own way? Doing just what they like? Wouldn’t that be a total disaster? Yes, if parents perform only the first half of the trick. In the cultural lexicon of modernity, self-will is often banally understood as brattish, selfish behaviour. Will does not mean selfishness, however, and autonomy over oneself is not a synonym for nastiness towards others – quite the reverse. Ngarinyin children in Australia traditionally grew up uncommanded and uncoerced, but from a young age they learned socialisation. That is the second half of the trick. Children are socialised into awareness and respect for the will and autonomy of others, so that, when necessary as they grow, they will learn to hold their own will in check in order to maintain good relations. For a community to function well, an individual may on occasion need to rein in his or her own will but, crucially, not be compelled to do so by someone else.

Although by conventional test-taking rules, the students were cheating, they actually weren’t in this case. Instead, they were changing their goal in the Education Game from “Get a higher grade than my classmates” to “Get to the best answer.

After a thorough review of the facts, available to our office at this time, it is our opinion that this case can only be seen as a tragic accident.

The problem isn’t that it’s impossible to pick yourself. The problem is that it’s frightening to pick yourself.

Clinton is an amazing person. At one point he hadn’t slept in like 30 hours and I heard him very articulately discussing the fine details of the history of ATMs in Malawi.

The very qualities that improve palatability and lengthen shelf life—high sugar content, fats that resist turning rancid, and a lack of organic complexity—make refined foods toxic to your key microbes. Biologically simple, processed foods may cultivate a toxic microbial community, not unlike the algal blooms that result in oceanic “dead zones.

The act of running a marathon is supposed to be simple, individual—a victory of the will over the body, celebrated by all and untouched by the complicated questions of who in the world can choose to suffer and who only bears suffering.

dont be afraid to do anything. infact if youre afraid of something, do it. then do it again. and again.

I have watched Dazed and Confused many, many times since that first afternoon, and it has improved with almost every viewing. It now seems like a completely different film. And as I have grown older, I’ve deduced why. Dazed and Confused is not a movie about how things were; Dazed and Confused is a movie about how things are remembered.