Stetson

“If the mothers who are not married are not married precisely because the men with
whom they have fathered children would not meaningfully contribute positive
resources to the raising of their children, then the observed marriage gap in children’s outcomes is not a good approximation for what their children would gain
from parental marriage.”
― Melissa S. Kearney, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind

“Undifferentiated and only cosmetically varied, the literary world had become one swarming mass, like a rat king. Their cosmetic differences hid a frightened, stifled sameness, which sought only more of itself, and which cast out any true difference, often in the name of difference, while pretending, even to itself, that it didn’t know what it was doing. Any time a group wasn’t sufficiently differentiated, I knew, it aggressively descended into delusion; in which case only those who firmly stood outside could see the truth. The crowd is untruth…”
― Jordan Castro, The Novelist

“With creators no longer required to pursue artistic excellence, culture has become a lowest-common-denominator fight for attention. Where there is no value other than money, honor is meaningless; and where there is no honor, there cannot be shame. And without shame, fame and infamy become indistinguishable.”
― W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century

“The uniquely human things you do are thanks to the chatter of spikes in your cortex. This outer layer of the brain contains more neurons in you than in any other animal, ever. So many in fact that we have to divide the cortex into a constellation of areas, each with its own name, to make sense of it all. (Few of these names are exciting—the area with the most neurons that talk directly to the spine, and so has the most control over movement, is called the primary motor cortex; the areas next door are the premotor cortex and, wait for it, the supplementary motor area. Inspired.) These areas all share the same types of neurons but do wildly different things with the spikes sent between them.”
― Mark Humphries, The Spike: An Epic Journey Through the Brain in 2.1 Seconds