Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaGalaxiesThe Boy Whose Head Was Filled with Stars: The Inspiring Illustrated Story of How Edwin Hubble Revolutionized Our Understanding... verified_publisherBrain Pickings by Maria Popova“We do not know why we are born into the world, but we can try to find out what sort of world it is.” In 1908, Henrietta Swan Leavitt — one of the women known as the Harvard Computers, who revolutionized...
Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaCulture Einstein on the Political Power of Art verified_publisherBrain Pickings by Maria Popova“Nothing can equal the psychological effect of real art — neither factual descriptions nor intellectual discussion.” “Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify,”...
Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaScienceDotspotting Expressionist Science: What the Mysterious Color-Markings on Storm Drains Have to Do with Rachel Carson’s Legacy... verified_publisherBrain Pickings by Maria PopovaStrange signals from the lacuna between street art and microbiology. I noticed them first in my neighborhood — dots of paint hovering over the grate of the storm drain in a blue-green spectrum punctuated...
Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaLanguage Loops, the Limits of Language, the Paradoxical Loneliness of “I Love You,” and What Keeps Love Alive verified_publisherBrain Pickings by Maria Popova“The very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new.” When I walk — which I do every day, as basic sanity-maintenance, whether in the forest...
Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaScience The Blue Hour: A Stunning Illustrated Celebration of Nature’s Rarest Color verified_publisherBrain Pickings by Maria Popova“The day ends. The night falls. And in between… there is the blue hour.” Blue, Rebecca Solnit wrote in one of humanity’s most beautiful reflections on our planet’s primary hue, is “the color of solitude...
Brain Pickings by Maria PopovaVirginia WoolfDignity, Daring, and Disability: The Pioneering Queer Composer and Defiant Genius Ethel Smyth on Making Music While Going... verified_publisherBrain Pickings by Maria Popova…with a side of Virginia Woolf’s elated infatuation. “Tell me nothing of rest,” the young Beethoven bellowed when he began losing his hearing, resolving to “take fate by the throat” despite his disability....
