In 1990, Pat Buchanan, the intellectual grandfather of the MAGA movement, declared that if Quebec ever broke off from Canada, America should “pick up the pieces.” This now seems to be, if not the publicly stated U.S. policy toward Canada, then at least the predator clan’s policy: pressure the economy, break up the federation, pick up the pieces. And no, it is not a joke.
~ Anne Applebaum via The Atlantic
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Just as it is vastly easier to generate a realistic video of an astronaut in orbit around Alpha Centauri than it is to develop an interstellar propulsion technology, it is vastly easier to generate a plausible simulacrum of a conversation between two conscious beings than it is to develop a computer program that is conscious and has a genuine desire to communicate with a human.
~ Ted Chiang via The Atlantic
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In general, women face a far higher risk of pelvic floor issues due to structural anatomical differences, childbirth, and hormonal changes associated with menstruation and the menopause.
~ Jacob Whitehead via The Athletic
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Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.
~ David Foster Wallace
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Europe is different. Europeans are mostly not aware that they have been enlisted in a project that has as its end point the extinction of France, Germany, Italy and the rest of Europe’s historic nations as meaningful political units. Brussels has been able to win assent to its project only by concealing its nature. Europe’s younger generation appears to have seen through the dissembling. We are only at the beginning of the consequences.
~ Christopher Caldwell via The New York Times
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Beauty is something that disappears when you try to define it.
~ Iain Banks
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There is a saying that we provide the machines with an end, and they provide us with the means.
~ Iain Banks
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Faced with a growing number of chores, you push what you can onto other people’s plate, and they respond in kind. The result is an onslaught of ad hoc assignments, whipsawing across inboxes and chat channels, that culminates in a shared state of permanent overload.
~ Cal Newport via The Atlantic
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In a world that otherwise values competition, effort, and merit, the British have allowed their state to be governed by the purest chance. It seems like a formula for disaster. Instead, it has produced 350 years of constitutional stability.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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There is no friend as loyal as a book.
~ Ernest Hemingway
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