KL Zero

Bored in a Digital Age | Intersections | The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity

Boredom is not merely neutral but potentially generative: It is the gateway to mind-wandering, the cognitive state in which the brain forms new connections, solves problems, and generates creative ideas. On this account, the real danger of the digital age is not boredom itself but our refusal to tolerate it. We have a self-defeating habit of reaching for the phone at the first twinge of discomfort, crowding out the very mental space in which our best thinking happens.

What Causes Lightning? The Answer Keeps Getting More Interesting. | Quanta Magazine

Armed with a slew of new instruments, physicists are closing in on one of nature’s oldest mysteries — and finding that storm clouds are seething with violent and unexpected phenomena.

Johnson, Samuel - Essay (1759-09-01), The Idler, No. 72 | WIST Quotations

The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do or who do nothing.

Doyle, Arthur Conan - Story (1890-02), "The Sign of the Four," ch. 1 [Holmes], Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, Vol. 45 (US) / 1 (UK) | WIST Quotations

I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is…