Someone’s probably told you before that something you thought, felt or feared was ‘all in your mind’. I’m here to tell you something else: there’s no such thing as the mind and nothing is mental. I call this the ‘no mind thesis’. The no-mind thesis is entirely compatible with the idea that people are conscious, and that they think, feel, believe, desire and so on. What it’s not compatible with is the notion that being conscious, thinking, feeling, believing, desiring and so on are mental, part of the mind, or done by the mind.

IT’S BEEN A WHILE since we’ve covered the Met Gala—2014, in fact—(here and here), and once again in 2018. Of course, it was cancelled last year due to the pandemic, but this year, it was brought back and there was so much social media coverage of it, it’s clear that everyone is relieved to have some happy distraction to report on for a change …

Since its inception in 2015, the research laboratory OpenAI – an Elon Musk-backed initiative that seeks to build human-friendly artificial intelligence – has developed a series of powerful ‘language models’, the latest being GPT-3 (third-generation Generative Pre-trained Transformer). A language model is a computer program that simulates human language. Like other simulations, it hovers between the reductive (reality is messier and more unpredictable) and the visionary (to model is to create a parallel world that can sometimes make accurate predictions about the real world).

SUMMER RETURNED for two glorious days last week, so like all self-respecting Brits, we dropped everything to enjoy the late-summer sun while it was still here. We spent both days on long bicycle rides to places we’d never been before, including hiking to the most photographed tree in the county (it was even in a famous film once). We had drinks on pub terraces in the middle of nowhere and got sunburned and ate truffle oil garlic bread pizzas and basically had the most wonderful time …

I try to read as many books as possible when I’m not working (currently it’s David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature), but a lot of the time, all I have time for are work-related articles. Many are a little on the dry side, but every once in a while, come across new topics or ideas that are really interesting or even enlightening. I usually tell P about them, but recently was inspired by the idea of sharing some of them with you. So, here’s a new series of Talking Points, that is, ideas that I’ve come across that I think you might be interested in hearing about. This edition covers the concepts of ataraxia, interoception, and rational thinking …

CHANCES ARE, you’ve already come across the quirky and whimsical work of Gab Bois. The 21-year-old Montreal-based artist’s career trajectory reads like a do-what-you love fairytale: she was a year-and-a-half into a bachelor’s degree to become an elementary school teacher when she began to post her photography on her Instagram account, @gabbois. Fast forward to 569k followers, solo and group exhibitions, a residency and many high-end brand collaborations later, and Bois, who never planned to make a career out of her photographic work, has put her studies on hold to pursue a career in the arts. 

It was the middle of June when more than two dozen songwriters, producers, and publishing representatives poured into an expansive, secluded creator’s “compound” just outside of Los Angeles’ wealthy Brentwood neighborhood. For three days, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., they wrote songs — in between catered meals and fierce games of corn hole in the estate’s backyard — to shop around to A-listers like Doja Cat, Ariana Grande, and Cardi B, who could turn the tunes into lucrative anthems. It was, essentially, a summer camp for hitmaking. There was just one twist: The writers were specifically encouraged to lift music from old hit songs.

Recently, P introduced me to Raindrop, a web extension that organises everything into tidy folders. In it, there is a folder where I keep TIG article ideas and that’s where I remembered the home of English designer (and son of the late Terence Conran), Jasper Conran’s, home in Bridport, a market town in Dorset, England …

Cryptocurrencies have emerged as one of the most captivating, yet head-scratching, investments in the world. They soar in value. They crash. They’ll change the world, their fans claim, by displacing traditional currencies like the dollar, rupee or ruble. They’re named after dog memes.