1. Here’s How To Rethink Boredom (And What To Do When You’re Bored).

2. This Party Sucks, Why Haven’t We Left? “What keeps people on Facebook?”

3. Mutual Aid Hub. “Town Hall Project built Mutual Aid Hub in March 2020 to highlight the incredible work of mutual aid organizers around the country, and to facilitate connections and shared strategies in this growing movement of community support.”

4. Sheila Heti’s diary in alphabetical order, from A to Z on The New York Times. “A little more than 10 years ago, I began looking back at the diaries I had kept over the previous decade. I wondered if I’d changed. So I loaded all 500,000 words of my journals into Excel to order the sentences alphabetically.”

5. The best books to jumpstart your creativity. This post is on an ENTIRE WEBSITE devoted to reading lists! “Shepherd is like wandering around your favorite bookstore but reimagined for the online world. We make book browsing fun and all the recommendations are made by authors, experts, and creators.”

6. How gray wolves divided America. “Many people love wolves. How did saving them become so controversial?”

7. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön: “Often we hear the teachings so subjectively that we think we’re being told what is true and what is false. But the dharma never tells you what is true or what is false. It just encourages you to find out for yourself.”

8. There Is Nothing Normal about One Million People Dead from COVID. “Mass media and policy makers are pushing for a return to pre-COVID times while trying to normalize a staggering death toll.”

9. What Happens to Middle School Kids When You Teach Them About Slavery? Here’s a Vivid Example. “The topic is emotional. That’s not a bad thing.”

10. ‘Tell everyone on this train I love them’: the meaning of a hero’s final words. “After he was stabbed and lay dying on a train, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche had a message I will never forget.”

11. On Being with Krista Tippett: John O’Donohue / The Inner Landscape of Beauty. “No conversation we’ve ever done has been more beloved than this one. The Irish poet, theologian, and philosopher insisted on beauty as a human calling. He had a very Celtic, lifelong fascination with the inner landscape of our lives and with what he called ‘the invisible world’ that is constantly intertwining what we can know and see. This was one of the last interviews he gave before his unexpected death in 2008. But John O’Donohue’s voice and writings continue to bring ancient mystical wisdom to modern confusions and longings.”

12. Honest (Original song by Danielle Ate the Sandwich). (video)

13. The best (and worst) Super Bowl commercials: Lizzo, cranky Zeus and more.

14. Mowed Down: Inside the Growing Anti-Lawn Movement.

15. Vibrant Sculptures by Amy Genser Arrange Rolls of Mulberry Paper into Dense Topographies.

16. Phoebe Robinson on her Comedy Special, Book Release, and Starting a Publishing Imprint, Tiny Reparations.

17. Love story collections: Modern Love Podcast on The New York Times, What Is Black Love Today? on The New York Times (“In a special collaboration between Modern Love and Black History, Continued, we gathered stories that illuminate how Black people live, and love, in this moment”), Celebrating Love collection from StoryCorps, and On the Road with Steve Hartman: Driven by Love (“Steve Hartman is sharing heartwarming stories that will inspire you this Valentine’s Day in the 30-minute special ‘On the Road with Steve Hartman: Driven by Love'”).

18. How to Love & Be Loved on the Good Life Project podcast: “today, we’re bringing you a very special episode drawing upon the deep wisdom of five past guests, each experts in the space of love, relationships, and self-discovery, to share provocative, unique, and valuable insights about how to love and be loved, how to hold relationships with curiosity and allow room for growth, how to create a society-wide container of compassion, then invite everyone in, even those you struggle to like, or be in the same room with, let alone love.”

19. The pandemic has taught us all that love can bend without breaking. “And yet, at the not-quite-end of it all, here millions of us still are; still together, still faintly dazed by the whole experience, but perhaps with a new understanding forged in crisis of what long-term love is all about. It’s not all Valentine’s hearts and flowers, tables for two and tickets to Paris. It is absolutely about kindness, patience, tolerance and the ability to pull together as a team in times of unexpected trouble. For love is not always love that stays rigidly the same when circumstances around it change. Post-pandemic love is perhaps just as often the kind that good-naturedly adapts, and is flexible enough to withstand a shock.”