Quote of the day

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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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J.D. Salinger from The Catcher in the Rye

That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.


Actually, that's the main reason to be depressed.

It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.

Naturally, as it were..

I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say 'Holden Caulfield' on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say 'Fuck you.' I'm positive, in fact.

Of course, being dead, you'll never see the reactions.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

Uh, fuck him?

I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone.

I tried that once myself. But then I woke up.

Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.

You know what's coming: https://youtu.be/3edi2Wkr5YI
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Graham Greene from The Quiet American

A man becomes trustworthy when you trust him.


My guess: for better or worse.

They don't believe in anything either. You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren't interested.
They don't want communism.
They want enough rice, I said. They don't want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don't want our white skins around telling them what they want.
If Indochina goes...
I know that record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does 'go' mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I'd bet my future harp against your golden crown that in five hundred years there may be no New York or London, but they'll be growing paddy in these fields, they'll be carrying their produce to market on long poles, wearing their pointed hats. The small boys will be sitting on the buffaloes. I like the buffaloes, they don't like our smell, the smell of Europeans.


The rest, as they say, is history. And I was smack dab in the middle of it once myself.

Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

Imagine that.

If you live in a place for long you cease to read about it.

Some places more than others of course.

Perhaps to the soldier the civilian is the man who employs him to kill, who includes the guilt of murder in the pay-envelope and escapes responsibility.

And it worked the same in both France and America. Or, today, in Russia.

Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.

Dark gray.
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Re: Quote of the day

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iambiguous wrote: Sun Jun 04, 2023 5:12 pm Graham Greene from The Quiet American

Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

Imagine that.
If innocence is like a dumb leper, then what is guilt like?
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Re: Quote of the day

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Jane Austen from Pride and Prejudice

He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal.


Tell that to the powers that be. Back then especially.

There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.
And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.
And yours, he replied with a smile, is wilfully to misunderstand them.


They'd fit right in here.

The distance is nothing when one has a motive.

So, how far would you go?

Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.

Hmm, that ever happen to you?

It's been many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable.

Actually, I've never had one myself.

One word from you shall silence me forever.

You tell me your word, I'll tell you mine.
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Re: Quote of the day

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The Onion

Guy Who Sucks At Being A Person Sees Huge Potential In AI


The silver lining let's call it.

Police Claim They Thought 9-Year-Old Boy They Shot Was Actually 10-Year-Old Boy

White instead of black too.

Biden Airlifted To Standing Position

President Kamala Harris amyone?

Annoying Boyfriend Always Leaves Toilet Seat Ripped Off, Flung Across Bathroom

That really is going too far.

State Department Issues Travel Warning For Americans Visiting Chili’s

What's the scoop on that?

Report: There Is Just Something Dark And Intriguing About Man With Serious Personality Disorder

And we've got a few of them here, don't we?
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Re: Quote of the day

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Michio Kaku from Physics of the Impossible

...the entire electromagnetic spectrum— from radar to TV, infrared light, visible light, ultraviolet light, X-rays, microwaves, and gamma rays— is nothing but Maxwell waves, which in turn are vibrating Faraday force fields.


Well, that certainly explains something.

The physicist Niels Bohr was fond of saying, “Prediction is very hard to do. Especially about the future.”

Let's test that.

In this book, therefore, I divide the things that are “impossible” into three categories. The first are what I call Class I impossibilities. These are technologies that are impossible today but that do not violate the known laws of physics. So they might be possible in this century, or perhaps the next, in modified form. They include teleportation, antimatter engines, certain forms of telepathy, psychokinesis, and invisibility. The second category is what I term Class II impossibilities. These are technologies that sit at the very edge of our understanding of the physical world. If they are possible at all, they might be realized on a scale of millennia to millions of years in the future. They include time machines, the possibility of hyperspace travel, and travel through wormholes. The final category is what I call Class III impossibilities. These are technologies that violate the known laws of physics. Surprisingly, there are very few such impossible technologies. If they do turn out to be possible, they would represent a fundamental shift in our understanding of physics.

Of course your own future may not be nearly this long.

Kerr found that a spinning black hole would not collapse into a pointlike star, as Schwarzschild assumed, but would collapse into a spinning ring. Anyone unfortunate enough to hit the ring would perish; but someone falling into the ring would not die, but would actually fall through. But instead of winding up on the other side of the ring, he or she would pass through the Einstein-Rosen Bridge and wind up in another universe. In other words, the spinning black hole is the rim of Alice's Looking Glass.

Next up: the Einstein-Rosen Bridge here.

Since Einstein derived his famous equation, literally millions of experiments have confirmed his revolutionary ideas.

Next up: E = mc² and dasein.

Today the leading (and only) candidate for a theory of everything is string theory. But, again, a backlash has arisen. Opponents claim that to get a tenured position at a top university you have to work on string theory. If you don’t you will be unemployed. It’s the fad of the moment, and it’s not good for physics. I smile when I hear this criticism, because physics, like all human endeavors, is subject to fads and fashions. The fortunes of great theories, especially on the cutting edge of human knowledge, can rise and fall like hemlines. In fact, years ago the tables were turned; string theory was historically an outcast, a renegade theory, the victim of the bandwagon effect.

So much for the scientific method?
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Re: Quote of the day

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Emil M. Cioran from On the Heights of Despair

The deepest and most organic death is death in solitude, when even light becomes a principle of death. In such moments you will be severed from life, from love, smiles, friends and even from death. And you will ask yourself if there is anything besides the nothingness of the world and your own nothingness.


Yep, that's where I'm heading alright.

What would happen if a man's face could adequately express his suffering, if his entire inner agony would be objectified in his facial expression? Could we still communicate? Wouldn't we then cover our faces with our hands while talking? Life would really be impossible if the infinitude of feelings we harbor within ourselves would be fully expressed in the lines of our face. Nobody would dare look at himself in the mirror, because a grotesque, tragic image would mix in the contours of his face with stains and traces of blood, wounds which cannot be healed, and unstoppable streams of tears. I would experience a kind of voluptuous awe if I could see a volcano of blood, eruptions as red as fire and as burning as despair, burst into the comfortable and superficial harmony of everyday life, or if I could see all our hidden wounds open, making of us a bloody eruption forever. Only then would be truly understand and appreciate the advantages of loneliness, which silences our suffering and makes it inaccessible. The venom drawn out from suffering would be enough to poison the whole world in a bloody eruption, bursting out of the volcano of our being. There is so much venom, so much poison, in suffering!

I know what you're thinking but, no, I wouldn't actually go this far.

Memories vanish when we want to remember, but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget.

Well, not counting the exceptions of course.

For animals, life is all there is; for man, life is a question mark. An irreversible question mark, for man has never found, nor will ever find, any answers. Life not only has no meaning; it can never have one.

Well, not counting this one of course.

Everything is possible, and yet nothing is. All is permitted, and yet again, nothing. No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it is all the same whether you cry or remain silent. There is an explanation for everything, and yet there is none. Everything is both real and unreal, normal and absurd, splendid and insipid. There is nothing worth more than anything else, nor any idea better than any other.

Philosophically, say.

How good would it be if one could die by throwing oneself into an infinite void.

Let's ask him now.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Stephen Hawking from A Brief History of Time

An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job.


Run this by your God please.

Newton’s theory, if a pulse of light is sent from one place to another, different observers would agree on the time that the journey took (since time is absolute), but will not always agree on how far the light traveled (since space is not absolute). Since the speed of the light is just the distance it has traveled divided by the time it has taken, different observers would measure different speeds for the light. In relativity, on the other hand, all observers must agree on how fast light travels. They still, however, do not agree on the distance the light has traveled, so they must therefore now also disagree over the time it has taken. In other words, the theory of relativity put an end to the idea of absolute time!

Next up: where we fit into it.

...the future is unknown and open, so it might well have the curvature required. This would mean that any time travel would be confined to the future.

Next up: his future.

As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass rises ever more quickly, so it takes more and more energy to speed it up further. It can in fact never reach the speed of light, because by then its mass would have become infinite, and by the equivalence of mass and energy, it would have taken an infinite amount of energy to get it there. For this reason, any normal object is forever confined by relativity to move at speeds slower than the speed of light.

Blah, blah, blah?

However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God.

Pick one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

...one of the twins went for a long trip in a spaceship at nearly the speed of light. When he returned, he would be much younger than the one who stayed on earth. This is known as the twins paradox, but it is a paradox only if one has the idea of absolute time at the back of one’s mind. In the theory of relativity there is no unique absolute time, but instead each individual has his own personal measure of time that depends on where he is and how he is moving.

Theoretically let's say.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Pessimism...

“The world’s bumper sticker reads: Life sucks, and then you die. Perhaps Christian bumper stickers should read: Life sucks, but then you find hope and you can’t wait to die.” Ted Dekker


Praise the Lord!

“You know how both life and porno movies end. The only difference is life starts with the orgasm.” Chuck Palahniuk

Praise the Lord?

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A spacetime thing.

“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.” Mark Twain

Next up: the woman.

“When things are at their blackest, I say to myself, 'Cheer up, things could be worse.' And sure enough, they get worse.” Robert Asprin

You know, being optimistic.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” William Butler Yeats

Of course he's only paraphrasing me.
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Re: Quote of the day

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The Onion

World Rejoices As Batch Of New Billionaires Descends From Sky


Praise the Lord!
On the other hand, what are the odds that it's yours?


Child Who Was Saved From Train Tracks By Angel Kind Of Disappointed It Wasn’t Spider-Man

Maybe next time, kid.

LIV Golfers On Saudi Course Forced To Putt Around Woman Being Beheaded

PGA officials shrug.

Taylor Swift Now In Long-Distance Relationship With Curiosity Rover

Axtually, the trans Curiosity Rover.

Google Engineers Invent New Body Part To Strap Gadgets Onto

Patent pending.

New Wearable Computer Also Sucks Your Dick

You're turn to Google it.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Vladimir Nabokov from Lolita

It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.


Think Sue Lyon and Dominique Swain. And then practically any man on the planet.

Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.

Pick one:
1] God
2] No God


I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.

Postmodern let's call it.

Words without experience are meaningless.

That and [here] a context?

I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita.

Not even close as it turned out.

I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither - I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.

Let's call it "one possible outcome".
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Re: Quote of the day

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Carl Sagan from Cosmos

The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.


Trust me: Some feebler than others.

If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.

After Cosmos, say.

The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.

It's still religious bullshit though, right?

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we've learned most of what we know. Recently, we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

Let's run this by, say, Wall Street?

We inhabit a universe where atoms are made in the centers of stars; where each second a thousand suns are born; where life is sparked by sunlight and lightning in the airs and waters of youthful planets; where the raw material for biological evolution is sometimes made by the explosion of a star halfway across the Milky Way; where a thing as beautiful as a galaxy is formed a hundred billion times - a Cosmos of quasars and quarks, snowflakes and fireflies, where there may be black holes and other universe and extraterrestrial civilizations whose radio messages are at this moment reaching the Earth. How pallid by comparison are the pretensions of superstition and pseudoscience; how important it is for us to pursue and understand science, that characteristically human endeavor.

Go ahead, Mr. Pinhead, fit yourself in there somewhere.

You are worth about 3 dollars in chemicals.

Next up: accounting for inflation.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Stupidity...

“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap." Napoleon Bonaparte


He wondered if that was still true...

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.” Laurence J. Peter

Of course now we know.

“Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.” Jim Butcher

Let's start one here.

“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.” Oscar Wilde

Like posting here.
Right, Mr. Pinhead?


A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.” Bertrand Russell

Next up: a stupid woman.
Right, Ms. Pinhead?


“He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.” P.G. Wodehouse

Or here: “He had just about enough intelligence to click "submit" when he posted, but certainly no more.”
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Re: Quote of the day

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Peter Wessel Zapffe

The human yearning is not merely marked by a ‘striving toward’, but equally by an ‘escape from'.


And, for some -- the lucky ones? -- from existing itself.

Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and others, allow the following answer: Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.

Pick one:
1] the objectivists
2] the pinheads
3] ALL OF THE ABOVE


He is the universe’s helpless captive, kept to fall into nameless possibilities.

Like posting -- posing -- here?

Despite his new eyes, man was still rooted in matter, his soul spun into it and subordinated to its blind laws. And yet he could see matter as a stranger, compare himself to all phenomena, see through and locate his vital processes. He comes to nature as an unbidden guest, in vain extending his arms to beg conciliation with his maker: Nature answers no more, it preformed a miracle with man, but later did not know him.

As close [perhaps] as we can possibly get to free will?

Man beholds the earth, and it is breathing like a great lung; whenever it exhales, delightful life swarms from all its pores and reaches out toward the sun, but when it inhales, a moan of rupture passes through the multitude, and corpses whip the ground like bouts of hail.

As close [perhaps] as we can possibly get to the human condition?

Life had overshot its target, blowing itself apart. A species had been armed too heavily – by spirit made almighty without, but equally a menace to its own well-being.

Us, right?
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Re: Quote of the day

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Truman Capote from In Cold Blood

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.”


Spooky enough for you?

Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.

Even, as it ended up then, "out there".

As long as you live, there's always something waiting; and even if it's bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can't stop living.

All the way to the grave as likely as not.

Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity.

Or, for you and I in all likelihood, of oblivion.

You are a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity. You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction. You are strong, but there is a flaw in your strength, and unless you learn to control it the flaw will prove stronger than your strength and defeat you. The flaw? Explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion. Why? Why this unreasonable anger at the sight of others who are happy or content, this growing contempt for people and the desire to hurt them? All right, you think they're fools, you despise them because their morals, their happiness is the source of your frustration and resentment. But these are dreadful enemies you carry within yourself--in time destructive as bullets. Mercifully, a bullet kills its victim. This other bacteria, permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn and twisted; there is still fire within his being but it is kept alive by casting upon it faggots of scorn and hate. He may successfully accumulate, but he does not accumulate success, for he is his own enemy and is kept from truly enjoying his achievements.

Hulk of a creature? Meet the Clutters.

I thought that Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought so right up to the moment that I cut his throat.

Only God knows?
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