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“Writing a good song is not mimicry, replication, or pastiche; it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what they recognize as their known self. This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value; it is the breathless confrontation with one’s vulnerability, peril, and smallness, pitted against a sense of sudden, shocking discovery. It is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes their own blood, struggle, and suffering in the inner workings of the song.”

“Writer and critic Maris Kreizman calls this the “bulletpointification” of books and believes it is endemic to a tech culture that fetishizes optimization. “It seems to me that there is a fundamental discrepancy between the way readers interact with books and the way the hack-your-brain tech community does. A wide swath of the ruling class sees books as data-intake vehicles for optimizing knowledge rather than, you know, things to intellectually engage with.”