Category: quotes

Always loved a good quote
beggs

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quotes

Class War in America

For all the talk of market efficiency, the “information economy” has created a vast category of professionals who do nothing but copy and paste McKinsey info­graphics into presentations for no social or even narrowly commercial purpose.

Julius Krein, in The Real Class War article in American Affairs Journal

I know people like that.

A friend shared this some time ago. It’s an interesting, if long, article on where the classes and allegiances of Americans are and how they got to where they are. There is some emphasis on the rise of bullshit jobs and how they have somehow granted authority to loudmouths.

Best line:

Many of these people presumably possess some narrow technical ability, though if so, it is less and less evident. But they conspicuously lack any self-awareness, much less insight into issues of broader human concern, … The case of Donald Trump speaks for itself.

Julius Krein, in The Real Class War article in American Affairs Journal

Emphasis mine.

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These are the rules of the internet

“People love koalas and countries not being consumed by fires, but what people really love is nudes. These are the rules of the Internet.

James Felton, in US Model Raises Over 500,000 for Australia Bushfires by Sending Nudes [iflscience.com]

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quotes ranting

We don’t have the bus to ourselves

“I see we have the bus to ourselves,” she said. Julian cringed.

“For a change,” said the woman across the aisle, the owner of the red and white canvas sandals. “I come on one the other day and they were thick as fleas—up front and all through.”

“The world is in a mess everywhere,” his mother said. “I don’t know how we’ve let it get in this fix.”

Flannery O’Conner, in Everything That Rises Must Converge

O’Connor’s story is speaking about racisim in the 50s against blacks in the American south, the line before is “Everybody [on the bus] was white”. But, it would work today for others, Hispanics in America, Polish in England, Africans or Syrians in much of Europe. Bigotry is bad and the world is once again in a mess everywhere; people, even politicians, thinking and saying things like this.

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Progress…?

The world is much better than in the past and it is still awful.

Dr. Max Roser, in Memorizing these three statistics will help you understand the world [gatesnotes.com] on Gatesnotes.com.

The idea of the article is important; knowing a few basic statistics about the world will help everyone to understand and contextualize the news and social media noise we encounter all day. To make an informed judgment on the veracity of online, and offline, claims, too often qualitative and editorial, about the world. Doom and gloom sell, “if it bleeds, it leads” but now is the best time to be alive.

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quotes ranting

Banks are watching…

This article [newyorker.com] in the New Yorker is depressing in third world corruption stench of the whole thing, but there is some silver lining: The fact that banks are submitting such detailed reports about possible fraudulent activities, and beyond just money movement they are paying attention to the context. This is heartening, if a bit Big Brother scary.

Banks are legally mandated to file suspicious-activity reports with the government in order to call attention to activity that resembles money laundering, fraud, and other criminal conduct
…
In paperwork filed with the bank, [Cohen] said that the company would be devoted to using “his experience in real estate to consult on commercial and residential” deals. Cohen told the bank that his transactions would be modest, and based within the United States. In fact, the compliance officers wrote, “a significant portion of the target account deposits continue to originate from entities that have no apparent connection to real estate or apparent need to engage Cohen as a real estate consultant.” Likewise, “a significant portion of the deposits continues to be derived from foreign entities.”

Ronan Farrow, in Missing Files Motivated the Leak of Michael Cohen’s Financial Records [newyorker.com]