Dan Altman

For about a century, other men had appeared in growing numbers; they were jovial and slimy, they lacked even the relative innocence of monkeys, they were carried along by their infernal mission to gnaw away & corrode any bond, to annihilate everything that was necessary & human.

For six thousand years there was no progress and no evidence of any impulse to change anything. People were fine with the way things were. In other words, this is not a people experiencing spiritual desolation. You and I need new diversions nightly. Nathan Hall -- The Nix.

The spiritual nature of reality has been the principal preoccupation of mankind since forever and it's not going away anytime soon. The notion that everything is just stuff doesn't seem to do it for us. - Alicia Western, in McCarthy's Stella Maris.

Part of the complexity of living through history is the process of explaining things about the past that you never explained to yourself. So many temporary realities, distantly viewed in the rearview mirror, will appear ridiculous to any person who wasn't there. -- C. Klosterman

America has become a land of first world expectations, second world supply chain, and third world productivity, inflation, and work ethics.

Past a certain point, life stopped getting better. Oh, but you have an electronic phone watch. Oh, but you have a robot that answers questions on command. . . Oh, but we have things we didn't have before so the Earth must be pointed upwards after all. M. Ma, Harassment Arch.

"I figured that somewhere online, there must be a list of Americans who will believe anything, no matter how implausible or insulting to their intelligence." "Is there such a list?" Sergei spun white froth in his glass. "Tom Hanks's Facebook fan page." -- Anthony Marra.

Data must be used to tell the truth, not to call to action, no matter how noble the intentions. -- Hans Rosling

The prolonged absence of any free exchange of information within a country opens up a gulf of incomprehension between whole groups of the population, between millions and millions. We simply cease to be a single people, for we speak, indeed, different languages. A. Solzhenitsyn

Twitter is trash and these food companies are monsters.

In William Gibson's Count Zero, one subplot turns around the search for a the mysterious artist responsible for sought after shadow box art pieces. We live in the cyberbunk future. #cyberpunk. theatlantic.com/technology/a…

"A man with two trades to his credit can easily learn another ten." One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Parents: Take your children to Disneyland or they grow up to read Baudrillard on summer vacation. teapaw.org/camrocnamtla/status/10…

The upside to secular thinking is that--in theory--your skepticism will prove correct. Your rightness might be emotionally unsatisfying, but it confirms a stable understanding of the universe. Sports fans who love statistics fall into this camp. C. Klosterman - X.

Before the Internet, Rupi Kaur would have been rejected by editors at publishing houses and these "poems" would only exist in fading notebooks in her attic. teapaw.org/camrocnamtla/status/97…

After Ezra Pound, yes. teapaw.org/Literature/status/8246…

"Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months. Now that everything had returned to normal . . ." - J.G. Ballard, High-Rise

Those who edit "history" to popular taste each decade will never understand the past--neither the horrors nor the glories of which the human race is equally capable--and for that reason, they will fail to understand themselves - T.R. Fehrenbach, Lonestar, A History of Texas.

Wow, after decades, Starbucks has realized that blackened beans and scalded coffee isn't the way to make a decent espresso with proper crema. Peasants. teapaw.org/Starbucks/status/95063…