Big news: I’m starting a company! It’s called Moth Minds and it’s a platform that makes it extremely easy for anyone to start their own grants program. If you have thoughts on grants or are interested in starting your own — drop me a note: molly@mothminds.com. In lieu of this news I’ve been recently reunited with the film director energy buried deep within me — best represented by Lynch above.
Peopling
Reality has a Surprising Amount of Detail by John Salvatier
This was one of those articles that I can clearly chart a distinct before and after reading. It also led to my reflecting on how well design teaches an attunement to noticing details and articulating how they impact the whole.Meta is Murder by Mills Baker
Mills Baker eloquently unpacks the complex charisma of compelling leaders: “To see a person for whom life is an instantiation of meaning, whose will reflects only their values, inspires us; it is meaning in action, the former province of religion, and it has a mysterious force over us”The Tyranny of Ideas by Nadia Eghbal
I have never resonated with a piece more (and that’s saying something, since I generally find myself consistently nodding along any time I read Nadia’s writing). Favorite line: “Ideas ride us into battle like warhorses.”Klaus Krippendorff’s Trajectory of Artificiality by Christoph Labacher
This one’s for the true nerds — many layers of meta to dig in on when thinking about designing solutions ranging from pixels to cultural movements.
Learning
There’s no Speed Limit by Derek Sivers
Derek Sivers does an excellent job packaging the core of Bloom's taxonomy into this short, human-digestible story — essentially saying: you can learn anything far faster than the average if you just care enough to engulf yourself in learning it.A Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart
One of the best pieces of writing on the crisis of modern education, and from the rare perspective of a mathematician! Highly recommend reading, reflecting, and reconsidering how you think about learning.Letter on Culture and Context by Sebastian Garren
This piece alludes to a larger problem within nearly any complex field — how lonely it is at the frontier. Also excellently-articulated by Ryan Orbuch in the context of working on climate here.My Love Letter to the Liberal Arts
I wrote this piece while helping to build a new education institute with my friends. tl;dr: I want us to be happy and know that we are far more than just our brains.
Media
Rick Rubin: The Invisibility of Hip Hop's Greatest Producer (video)
I’m obsessed with artists, their relationships to ideas, and how they think about curation. Rick Rubin is a shining example of someone who seems to have found a peaceful place for himself on all three of these spectrums — not to mention an incredible body of work to show for it.In No Great Hurry : 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter (film)
Saul Leiter is probably one of my favorite artists of all-time. The gap between the moody complexity of his work and his relaxed demeanor is a wonderful reminder of the multiplicity of artists.Heaven by Tierra Whack (song)
Really into the direction Tierra Whack has taken recently and this song hits particularly hard in today’s world full of latent grief.Runnin’ Wild by Olivier St. Louis (song)
On a happier note, this is my upbeat anthem. Neat how much more fun life gets once you start going a bit wild within reason :)
Parting thought*
The only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.
― A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
*& a shoutout to all my wonderful friends. Truly can’t thank you all enough.