But we don’t come together to perform what we already know how to do. We come together to be unlovely and take ourselves apart, in order to mutually construct even more difficult ideas. It’s not supposed to be easy. The labor is what makes it beautiful. — Kyla Wazana Tompkins
One has only to remember some of our wolfish financiers who spend two-thirds of their lives clawing fortunes out of the guts of society and the latter third pushing it back. It is not enough to suppose that their philanthropy is a kind of frightened restitution, or that their natures change when they have enough. Such a nature never has enough and natures do not change that readily. I think that the impulse is the […]
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw […]
I am an immortal soul tied to the body of a dying animal. Philip K. Dick, paraphrasing W.B. Yeats.
Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information. Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, Sinan Aral.
My niche perspective is this: in the Army, firearms are much more heavily regulated than in civil society. How can so many enthusiastic gun owners say that they hold the military as a model, and yet not accept the strict regulations that go with the military’s use of firearms? […] This is another facet of rights without responsibility, or privilege without duty. A note from an Army Officer and reader of The Atlantic.
Announcing your plans is a good way to hear god laugh. Al Swearengen. I’ve stopped believing I can dictate the terms of my opportunities. Alma Garret. On my third (or fourth?) watching of Deadwood. It really does get better each time.
Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, it doesn’t go away. Philip K. Dick.
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Let me beguile you just a little bit more about extended families. Let us talk about divorce, and that fact that one out of every three of us here has been or will be divorced. When we do it, we will very likely wrangle and wail and weep formlessly about money and sex, about treachery, about outgrowing one another, about how close love is to hate, and so on. Nobody ever gets anywhere near close […]
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. Kurt Vonnegut.
The future will resent us in exact proportion to our failure to have attempted to meaningfully address those systemic problems that we will be known to have been quite aware of. William Gibson.
These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope. Ta-Nehisi Coates.
It would not be easy, no—for in order to win such a battle, he would have to forbid himself the privilege of stopping, and whatever he did right he would have to repeat, as though he were already living in eternity. Tom Junod. This quote really nails something I’ve struggled with since starting a company. When you find something successful you have to keep repeating yourself even if you’d rather, out of vanity or boredom, […]
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Viktor Frankl.
If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud. Nicholas Nassim Taleb.
In contrast to the Internet of now, the Internet of a decade back was better, smarter, more interesting and also it didn’t make you want to die all the time. Alex Balk.
Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose. To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society. Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate. Laurence D. Fink. P.S. Eric Posner disagrees: There is no reason to believe that CEOs are capable of determining the best […]
All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life. Ten seconds of silence. I’ll watch the time. Fred Rogers.
Back at Amazon headquarters or the trailer inside Gold Base, they really care about you. My auditor asked me a lot of questions about my work habits, my life, and family. As it turns out, I need more bias for action. Compromising for social cohesion only stymies progress. Oh, also, I have to disconnect from you. It’s okay, Jeff Bezos says you have to “maintain the culture,” and my auditor said that you are “antagonistic […]
