confusionAlways loved a good quote
beggs
“[A]fter the airline sent a text message to relatives saying it “deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those onboard survived.”
From ‘All lives are lost’ [cnn.com]
By Michael Pearson and Jethro Mullen on CNN.com
What the fuck? A text message? An SMS? Wouldn’t want to be the person who decide that was the best way to inform people their friends and family on MH370 are dead. Worse than firing people by SMS.
[M]odernity (especially liberal modernity) makes things difficult (perhaps uniquely difficult) for people of faith. It fosters a pluralism that denies any one religion the power to organize the whole of social life. It teaches that public authorities must submit to the consent of those over whom they aspire to rule, thereby undermining the legitimacy of all forms of absolutism. It employs the systematic skepticism of the scientific method to settle important questions of public policy. It encourages the growth of the capitalist marketplace, which unleashes human appetites and gives individuals the freedom to choose among an ever-expanding range of ways to satisfy them.
Damon Linker, in Is secularism inevitable? [theweek.com] from The Week
Of course there are several major differences between human and bee consensus, not the least of which is that we are not part of a hive mind, despite how much the internet often feels like one. Also, we don’t usually make decisions based on trees and flowers, though maybe we should.
Annalee Newitz, in This video of a honeybee swarm reveals why humans can’t form consensus [io9.com]
“Advertising isn’t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought… when advertising is involved you the user are the product.”
Jan Koum co-founder of Whatsapp, quoted in What’s Up With Whatsapp? Facebook Might Want To Buy It, That’s What [techcrunch.com] on TechCrunch
Couldn’t agree more. (P.S. Koum’s emphasis)
Politics is, admittedly, a weak point [in America]
The Economist, from Declinism Resurgent [economist.com]]
Understatement of the century… It’s not a weak point, it’s fucking broken.