Tag Archives: Brain Pickings

It’s good to remember that even some of the best, most popular places on the Internet are still unknown to many. So the “Newsletters I Like” choice today is a website that I hope you’re already familiar with, but that I’m sharing in case you missed it: Brain Pickings.


Maria Popova is, in my estimation, one of the best things about the Internet. Her popular Brain Pickings website actually started as an email newsletter in 2006, which she eventually built into her popular longform chronicle of curiosities.

Curiosities?“, you ask. More like serendipit-awesome-osities: Two to three thoughtful, heartfelt, detailed, massively-hyperlinked articles per day about art, writing, science, design, history, or anything else which has crossed the transom of her interest.

Brain Pickings feels like pure oxygen on an Internet which can feel like a poorly-ventilated room, overpopulated with functional articles which lack the length and depth necessary to examine meaning. I look forward to her Sunday newsletter like I would look forward to an email from a friend who always sends me things that they know I’d like. Give yourself a weekly treat and sign up here to get it.

This is a link post – You can visit the site mentioned by clicking the main link above (or just click here).
I frequently worry that being productive is the surest way to lull ourselves into a trance of passivity and busyness the greatest distraction from living, as we coast through our lives day after day, showing up for our obligations but being absent from our selves, mistaking the doing for the being.
Maria Popova
'The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and The Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long' at Brain Pickings