We’re caught in the flow — dipping in and out of content all day, attention flickering between screen life and real life. Main characters, silent witnesses, crisis actors, targeted persons: some days it can be a little bit difficult to remember what’s real and what’s fake, where we stop and content begins.

In literary criticism, an idiot plot is one which is kept in motion solely by virtue of the fact that everybody involved is an idiot, and where the story would quickly end, or possibly not even happen, if this were not the case.

Two friends and Sonia Delaunay wearing her designs in Robert Delaunay’s studio, Paris, 1924

Yes, the world is in trouble. And yes, we are going to need to do incredible things to make it through this transition. But until you have achieved your own sovereignty, you are as likely to make it worse as you are to make it better. Build yourself into a rock upon which profound things can be set. Then, and only then, is it time to begin taking care of the rest of the world.

Design books for non-designers, recommended by the Stripe Design Team

Stressed plants cry — and some animals can probably hear them