Quotes that hit home

[ergophobe]

I was just listening to Ta-Nahesi Coates talking about Jefferson and he said much the same. He basically said we should not be putting Robert E Lee or Thomas Jefferson or Frederick Douglas or anyone at all up on pedestals (literally), because it always leads to distortions and pedestals are designed to create myth and tradition, not history and understanding.

[Brad]

"Remember, US cities weren't built for cars, they were demolished for cars."

Source: https://twitter.com/paultalkscities/status/1547323027976818688?s=20&t=npl6WR7aXXTXWGF5en11_Q

[ergophobe]

"The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won't do."

  -- from George Orwell's 1940 review of Mein Kampf. - https://bookmarks.reviews/george-orwells-1940-review-of-mein-kampf/

Interesting read.

[ergophobe]

"I know there are people who'd prefer to be relaxing on a Caribbean beach, instead of getting drenched while trudging through gorse bushes under a glowering sky; but I'm not going to pretend I understand them."
  - Oliver Burkeman

"People complain that they no longer have "time to read," but the reality, as the novelist Tim Parks has pointed out, is rarely that they literally can't locate an empty half hour in the course of the day. What they mean is that when they do find a morsel of time, and use it to try to read, they find they're too impatient to give themselves over to the task. "It is not simply that one is interrupted," writes Parks. "It is that one is actually inclined to interruption." It's not so much that we're too busy, or too distractible, but that we're unwilling to accept the truth that reading is the sort of activity that largely operates according to its own schedule. You can't hurry it very much before the experience begins to lose its meaning."
  - Oliver Burkeman

[buckworks]

Spotted on Twitter:

"If people working full-time jobs still need food stamps to get by, they're not the ones leeching off the government. Their employers are."

https://twitter.com/mhdksafa/status/1579686751286984705

[Travoli]

"If you can't tell what you desperately need, it's probably sleep." -Kevin Kelly

[buckworks]

"If you're not preparing for hard times you are preparing for hard times."

Sgt. Kickaxe on Webmaster World

[ergophobe]

"The last mile is the least crowded."

Mentioned as "the old saying" in James Clear, Atomic Habits (which generally I do not recommend... lots of fluff that could mostly be a two-page article).

[buckworks]

Violets are blue,
Roses are red.
Less than a week till
your flowers are dead.

Buy jewelry instead!

[littleman]

>Buy jewelry instead!

I am sure it is very variable, but most of the jewelry I buy just ends up living in a box in a drawer somewhere.  Flowers are definitely temporary, but for that week or so they are center stage.

[ergophobe]

My wife asked for, and received, a very high-quality sleeping bag in lieu of an engagement ring. 26 years later, that sleeping bag is still a frequent companion on colder-weather adventures. Every time she sleeps in it she reminds me how glad she is she has that instead of a ring.

One of the rare times she has gone jewelry shopping was with Buckworks and she was quite happy with that experience too, though more for the quality of the company and than the quality of the jewelry.

[rcjordan]

Maybe people who meditate for an hour per day are happier because they live a life that affords them an hour per day to meditate.  ^{-- /r @ginnyhogan_}

True dat!

[ergophobe]

"98.4% of all conversations about the block chain are non-consensual"
  -- Cory Doctorow on The Verge with Nilay Patel

[ergophobe]

"A general reminder whenever budget issues are discussed: the U.S. government is — this isn't original — best thought of as a giant insurance company with an army. When you talk about federal spending, you're overwhelmingly talking about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense."
  - Paul Krugman
https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/an-insurance-company-with-an-army/

I wonder who coined the original

[ergophobe]

"Which is more important," asked Big Panda, "the journey or the destination?"

"The company," said Tiny Dragon

James Norbury
https://www.jamesnorbury.com/big-panda-tiny-dragon