…A small window in which to act

“The excruciating power of Zweig’s memoir lies in the pain of looking back and seeing that there was a small window in which it was possible to act, and then discovering how suddenly and irrevocably that window can be slammed shut.”

— When it’s too late to stop Racism, According to Stefan Zweig, The New Yorker, June 22, 2018

“Smart people are beginning to understand the size of the problem, but they haven’t yet figured out the timing; they haven’t yet figured out that the latest science shows that this wave is already breaking over our heads.”

— Bill McKibben, 2010, on climate change. Eaarth, p 51

“The true debate lies in the solutions and in mobilizing the social and political will to act upon our knowledge. Deciding not to act is a choice itself, and one that we cannot correct later. The time to act is always now. Because the longer we wait, the worse the outcomes will be.”

— Climate scientist Andrea Dutton, in Axios, Special report: A 30-year alarm on the reality of climate change

Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice.

“…a European aircraft maker that said it cleans the cockpits of its planes every week of malware designed for Android phones. The malware spread to the planes because factory employees were charging their phones with the USB port in the cockpit.”

— Quoting security researcher Mikko Hyponnen, Technology News, via @allan

“When the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants...”

— Moby Dick, chapter 28, via @MobyDickatSea

Thirty-eighth and Bulloch

“We write these strategic white papers, saying things like ‘Get the local Sunni population on our side.’ Cool. Got it. But, then, if I say, ‘Get the people who live at Thirty-eighth and Bulloch on our side,’ you realize, man, that’s fucking hard—and it’s just a city block. It sounds so stupid when you apply the rhetoric over here. Who’s the leader of the white community in Live Oak neighborhood? Or the poor community? ‘Leader of the Iraqi community.’ What the fuck does that mean?”

Patrick Skinner, a former CIA operative turned Savanna, Georgia police officer, as quoted in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, New Yorker, May 7, 2018, by Ben Taub

“God not only plays dice with the universe, but sometimes throws them where they can’t be seen.”

— Physicist Stephen Hawking, New York Times obituary, March 14, 2018

All of science is based on it…But I don't really know why it works

“If I were to flip a coin a million times I’d be damn sure I wasn’t going to get all heads. I’m not a betting man but I’d be so sure that I’d bet my life or my soul. I’d even go the whole way and bet a year’s salary. I’m absolutely certain the laws of large numbers—probability theory—will work and protect me. All of science is based on it. But, I can’t prove it and I don’t really know why it works. That may be the reason why Einstein said, ‘God doesn’t play dice.’ It probably is.”

— Physicist Leonard Susskind, Stanford University, in his 2005 essay for the Edge.org collection “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?”

Ask an 11-year-old

“Then there’s the really fascinating part. People in their 20s are having a new experience: They are, for the first time, noticing some of the things actual teenagers enjoy and are being completely appalled, both morally and aesthetically. A flood of young rappers is scoring hits with music that baffles grown rap fans with its slurry boneheadedness […] If the last version of pop was driven by people who desperately wanted everyone to care and everything to matter, it’s only natural for the next wave to be interested in what it looks like when you don’t care, and nothing matters.”

— 25 Songs That Tell Us Where the Future of Music is Going, Introduction by Nitsuh Abebe, New York Times Magazine, Sunday, March 11

The introduction concludes with,

"Keep scanning along that birth chart, and it will emerge that the highest number of births in American history seems to have come around 2007. If you want to know where music is going, ask an 11-year-old."

How to start a YouTube channel

“If you think that you’re being restricted by time or money or equipment, then you’re fooling yourself and you need to just get out there and start making stuff [...] My advice sounds so simple: start making videos. So why don’t we? Why does everyone find it so difficult? Well, the answer is, you want to make something that’s good, that’s popular, that everyone likes. You’re worried that, what if you make it and nobody does like it, or it’s bad. And so rather than face that reality, you just don’t make anything.”

— Derek Muller, How to start a YouTube channel, 2013

Old Man Principles

Tyler Ruzich (with the mic), with Alex Cline, Ethan Randleas, and Dominic Scavuzzo — candidates for governor of Kansas. (Photo Jeff Tuttle/For The Washington Post)

“‘You know, lots of people ask me, what can you, Tyler Ruzich, do for people my age?’ Tyler said, back in his car. ‘I say, we keep continuing these Old Man Principles that aren’t working. In [Alexander] Hamilton’s time, someone my age could be commander of a frigate. Did the Founding Fathers consider that a 17-year-old might be governor? I don’t know. Did they consider that a reality-television businessman would become president of the United States after losing the popular vote? Probably not.’”

— “Six teenagers are running for governor in Kansas…”, by Monica Hesse, Washington Post, March 3, 2018

CNN and Fox News

“CNN and Fox News have done to our parents what they thought violent video games & Marilyn Manson would do to us.”

@Blk_Dolphin, Jan 31, 2018, via Mike Elgan, This Week in Tech episode 652, at 35:50

Update: earliest instance of this quote is by Deborah Lonrau LeKashman, Quora, Aug 15, 2017. Thanks to Matt Popke (@Polackio) for the keen eyes and good memory.

What gives me the authority? I bought 2 drinks.

“Do you believe that you’re in charge of deciding if our brilliant ideas are good or not? All these talented people with this money and TV credits, they come up here and you get to decide what’s good and what’s not good and we believe you. And what the hell do you know about it? Nothing. You know nothing. You’ve never written a show. Most of you aren’t funny — probably all of you — you wouldn’t be here if you were funny, you wouldn’t need to come to this. But just think of how you would feel if I came into your office and said “I don’t like the things you say at these meetings. I don’t know anything about your business. I don’t have a reason. I don’t even work here. I just thought I’d come in off the street and give you a piece of my mind. And what gives me the authority? I bought 2 drinks.”

— Jerry Seinfeld: Comedian, [at 23:10]

“The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice, not in theory.”

— @toastyken, August 5, 2016. Christopher Henner, Chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation, says that this is the first ever Tweet to mention Wikipedia.

“…a dark, mysterious force that somehow pulsates ominously in an unknown recess”

— White House memo on Computer Use, January 29, 1976. Via John Overholt

Those who read

“Those who read own the world. Those who watch television lose it.”

— Werner Herzog, New Yorker, 2014

The hornets that sting

“There were some filmmakers speaking in an auditorium like this one about how documentaries should be made, how we should be like a fly on the wall and not interfere. And I just couldn’t take it anymore so I grabbed the mic and said, “No! We are directors. We are creators. We should be the hornets that sting.’ ”

— Werner Herzog, New Yorker, 2014

Herzog continues: "There was a roar of disgust against me so I shouted, 'Happy New Year losers!'

“If we had started 20 years ago…such a plan might have made sense.”

— Bill McKibben, 2010, on addressing climate change, from Eaarth, p 52

“Smart people are beginning to understand the size of the problem, but they haven’t yet figured out the timing; they haven’t yet figured out that the latest science shows that this wave is already breaking over our heads.”

— Bill McKibben, 2010, on climate change. Eaarth, p 51

Spring

“There is one day when all things are tired, and the very smells as they drift on the heavy air are old and used. One cannot explain, but it feels so. Then there is another day—to the eye nothing whatever has changed—when all the smells are new and delightful and the whiskers of the Jungle People quiver to their roots, and the winter hair comes away from their sides in long draggled locks. Then, perhaps, a little rain falls, and all the trees and the bushes and the bamboos and the mosses and the juicy-leaved plants wake with  a noise of growing that you can almost hear, and under this noise runs, day and night, a deep hum. That is the noise of the spring—a vibrating boom which is neither bees nor falling water nor the wind in the tree-tops, but the purring of the warm, happy world.”

— Rudyard Kipling, Jungle Book 8, The Spring Running

Everything is subject to change.