I have watched death as it happens, and I have watched birth. What I learned is that neither are discrete events. They are both processes, things that unfold. Birth is a series of awakenings, and death is a series of sleepenings. My son will take years to be born, and my father took six months to die. Some people spend decades dying.
~ Dean Ball via Hyperdimensional
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Americans don’t just disagree on policy anymore. They disagree on reality. They disagree on who and what deserves trust. They are, in measurable statistical terms, living in different countries while sharing the same zip codes.
~ John Mac Ghlionn via The Hill
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The radicalization of college-educated Americans who have begun to live the unpleasant realities of their less privileged compatriots—who can hardly afford rent, much less to buy a house and start a family—is an encouraging turn. They could form part of a broader social movement that finally addresses our deepest problems instead of dissolving them in electronic bile. A professional class that identifies with America’s multitudes of have-nots and votes on that basis would be a powerful force for greater equality and opportunity.
~ George Packer via The Atlantic
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There’s more to the Bay Area than unusual health practices. It is, after all, a place that creates not only new products, but also new modes of living.
~ Dan Wang via his 2025 letter
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Students are trained to be good hurdle-clearers. We shower them with approval or disapproval depending on how they measure up on any given day. Childhood and adolescence are thus lived within an elaborate system of conditional love. Students learn to ride an emotional roller coaster—congratulating themselves for clearing a hurdle one day and demoralized by their failure the next. This leads to an existential fragility: If you don’t keep succeeding by somebody else’s metrics, your self-worth crumbles.
~ David Brooks
via How the Ivy League Broke America
published by The Atlantic
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Violence is glorified, commodified, and endlessly recycled. The same society that censors books sells bullets by the box. Music, films, and news alike turn killing into entertainment, then wonder why empathy has eroded. This is not an argument for censorship but for conscience. Art shapes appetite. When cruelty becomes content, compassion vanishes.
~ John Mac Ghlionn via The Hill
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Our leaders preside over an extraordinary machinery of destruction, but they remain strikingly obtuse about human beings — about their pride, shame, convictions and historical memory.
~ Yonatan Touval via The New York Times
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Donald Trump does not think strategically. Nor does he think historically, geographically, or even rationally. He does not connect actions he takes on one day to events that occur weeks later. He does not think about how his behavior in one place will change the behavior of other people in other places.
~ Anne Applebaum via The Atlantic
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Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.
~ H. L. Mencken
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The enthusiasm of software developers for generative A.I. stands in stark contrast to how other Americans feel about the impact of large language models.
~ Clive Thompson via The New York Times