When writing Ecce Homo in the late 1880s, Nietzsche sought to resurrect the Voltairean spirit in Europe, which he felt by his times had been washed away by pessimistic Romanticism. “Voltaire still comprehended umanità in the Renaissance,” Nietzsche wrote, “the cause of taste, of science, of the…

Just three years ago, in 2014, I wrote a little short story set in a future where most work is organized around blockchains. That story was set sometime past the 2120s, but it appears we’ll get there a century earlier than I thought. The idea of organizing work through smart contracts on blockchains…

After eavesdropping on a thousand Twitter arguments and reading just as many thinkpieces, I’ve noticed that there are two main ways of conceptualizing community governance. Both are normative. Both primarily arise when it comes to conflicts over free speech — or who it’s okay to punch. A glitched…

This is a guest post by Mike Travers, who develops software at Collaborative Drug Discovery , blogs on diverse topics at Omniorthogonal , collects his random hacks at Hyperphor , and has a PhD in Media Arts and Sciences . The scientific picture of the world has some disturbing implications when its…

Mike is a 2013 blogging resident visiting us from his home blog Omniorthogonal . Are ordinary people really populations of interests rather than something more solid? It’s disturbing to think of yourself as so fluid, so potentially unstable, held together only by the shifting influence of available…

This is a guest post by Taylor Pearson. “[M]ental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.” –Viktor Frankl The healthy state of humans is mild…

Being pretty self-taught as far as UI design goes, I’ve always wondered why so many articles and books talk about color theory and palettes. In my experience, using a “split complementary palette” is about 0% predictive of me making nice-looking designs. I have another word for that sort of thing:…

Strategy is everywhere in our society. But strategy in practice seems to be a cruel and even silly joke. I learned that the hard way when I went to college long before I ever studied strategy formally. My own “strategy” about how to get through college collapsed virtually the moment I set foot on…

Please understand that I’m not making any kind of criticism of her when I say that JK Rowling has abandoned the real world. When you have one billion dollars, it’s not really something you need any more; there’s no real need to explain why she chooses to live with magic instead. If nothing else, she…

Pages 144-235 of Christopher Alexander’s The Nature of Order Volume One: The Phenomenon of Life contain a theory of beauty as perceived by humans, conveyed in fifteen “fundamental properties.” Not every property occurs in every beautiful object, but in very beautiful buildings and objects, many of…

Sarah Perry is a contributing editor of Ribbonfarm. Author’s note: The thinking that gave rise to this essay was committed in collaboration with St. Rev . Errors, suspicious implications, and dubious conclusions are my own. On March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam, just north of Los Angeles,…

Warning: some of the haiku and tweets reproduced herein contain naughty language and references to having intimate relations with an inanimate national symbol. Is beauty subjective? People have strong feelings in both directions. A stylized representation of possible opinions about the nature of…

"It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness." In September 1942, Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, was arrested and transported to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents. Three years later, when his camp was liberated, most of his…

Sarah Perry is a contributing editor of Ribbonfarm. Nouns for human beings – “people” or “person” – conjure in the mind a snapshot of the surface appearance of humans. Using nouns like “people” subtly encourages thinking about people as frozen in time, doing nothing in particular. “People” is an…

On May 28, Harambe, a 17-year-old lowland gorilla was shot and killed by a Cincinnati Zoo worker to save a small child who had wandered into its enclosure. As such tragic incidents go, there was nothing particularly unusual about this one. Just a week earlier on May 21, for instance, zookeepers at…

Back in 2010, deep green environmentalist Rick Smith, then head of Environmental Defence Canada, hailed Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act regime as a cost-free operation that would catapult the province into the big leagues of renewable energy. Through fat subsidies and high prices…

Benoit Tardif Midway through my opening address for the Brisbane Writers Festival earlier this month, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a Sudanese-born Australian engineer and 25-year-old memoirist, walked out. Her indignant comments about the event might have sunk into obscurity, along with my speech, had they…

lorelinde How discovering an equation for altruism cost George Price everything. Laura met George in the pages of Reader’s Digest . In just a couple of column inches, she read an abridged version of his biography and was instantly intrigued. In the 1960s, apparently, egotistical scientist George…

Theranos founder, chairwoman, and C.E.O. Elizabeth Holmes, in Palo Alto, California, September 2014. By Ethan Pines/The Forbes Collection. The War Room It was late morning on Friday, October 16, when Elizabeth Holmes realized that she had no other choice. She finally had to address heremployees at…

Happy Ambition: Striving for Success, Avoiding Status Cocaine, and Prioritizing Happiness Why do billionaires, CEOs, and other titans of industry work so hard? Why do they maintain such relentless professional ambition? Look up and down the Forbes 400 list and you’ll find hedge fund managers who…

A nother week, another Donald-being-Donald moment. For many years in baseball, Indians, Red Sox, and Dodgers outfielder Manny Ramirez became a running joke in the fan community. That wasn’t because he couldn’t hit — he was a tremendous hitter. It’s because Ramirez was a kook. He’d throw to the wrong…

History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & Trump La Peste di Firenze It seems we’re entering another of those stupid seasons humans impose on themselves at fairly regular intervals. I am sketching out here opinions based on information, they may prove right, or may prove wrong, and they’re…

Brian Snyder / Reuters I originally submitted this piece to the New York Observer where I am an editor-at-large and a columnist on media and culture. Editorial decided it would no longer accept columns of this nature on this topic. I have the utmost respect for the leadership at the Observer, but I…

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal. (Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images) Every time I write a piece about Gawker —and I’ve written a few —I pause before I hit publish. Once I take a second to check what skeletons are in my closet, that my personal life is in order and that my facts and figures are…

The sharp-tongued Brit made his fortune playing "delusional, middle-aged men" who run their mouths, but this comic acknowledges the GOP frontrunner has surpassed even his bloviating characters: "Comedians tell a joke and they get in trouble; Donald Trump says a terrible thing … and he gets elected."…

It is very common when I first encounter a client struggling with mental health issues that they report their problem is that they feel anxious or depressed. Here is a typical exchange: Me: So, can you share with me what brings you in? Client: Well, I have not been feeling good. I have these low…

Let’s pretend for a moment that you are a giraffe. You live on the grasslands of the African savannah. You have a neck that is 7 feet long (2.1 meters). Every now and then, you spot a group of humans driving around on a safari taking pictures of you. But it’s not just your neck and their cameras…

Articles → Over-compensate to compensate 2016-02-23 You have something you want to change: a thought process or habit you want to fix. Let’s use the metaphor of a bunch of bricks on a seesaw.Right now all the bricks are stacked on one side.This is the way you have been. To make a change, most people…