We can look at something for years and still not really see it. We treat attention as if it’s infinite and costs nothing, spent anywhere without consequence. This week’s #TheEdit is about slowing down enough to notice the things that exist outside ourselves.

• What you lose when you stop reading physical books. The cognitive case for print over e-readers is well-worn territory. The more interesting question is what a physical book does to how we connect – to a story, and to ourselves – Big Think
• Living in an Alive World. What would change if you looked at a bird, a mountain, or your own backyard the way you’d look at someone you loved? “I have set out to explore the trees and instead discovered… a dialogue of earthliness” – Longreads
• The craft of storytelling with Ann Patchett. Where do stories actually come from? And why seeing the best in other people might be the whole craft – Re:Thinking   
• The Diffusion Pilot. An animator watches an AI generate infinite images of anything he could imagine, then deliberately limits its power to reclaim his own hand in the work – Aeon
• Welcome to Toronto, World Capital of the Urban Raccoon. With up to 640,000 raccoons and counting, Toronto’s least welcome residents turn out to be its most adaptable thinkers, outsmarting most humans who walk past the evidence without noticing – Literary Hub  
• Does modernisation erase cultural difference – or amplify it? Global data says the opposite of what you’d expect: as the world gets more connected, cultural differences are growing, not shrinking – traced all the way from rice farmers in China to old mining villages in Peru – Psyche   
• Who is the Hero of Your Story? The one mistake most businesses make when telling a story is making themselves the hero. “Nike is never the hero; it’s the consumer or the athlete they’re championing” – The Beautiful Truth