Friday, December 3, 2021
By happy coincidence, however, Zin also figured prominently in the biblical Book of Exodus, the region that Moses and the Israelites passed through at the end of their forty-year flight out of Egypt. This provided a handy theological and historical explanation for why a Christian nation might want to explore the reigion, and when the British tried this tack on Constantinople—repackaging their earlier offer so that it was now to be an archaeological survey of biblical sites under the auspices of the respected Palestine Exploration Fund—the ploy actually worked.
— Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia
Thursday, December 2, 2021
He didn't like what he felt
He got out of there rl fast
— Lily after I texted her a photo of pigeon footprints in concrete on a platform at Providence train station
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
1 hr till bingo
— Lily
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Of course, there is nothing more endearing than attention.
— Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia
Monday, November 29, 2021
"The buildings I try to describe will last longer than we will, so it is only fitting that they should have the greater space." True to his word, Lawrence spent the rest of that letter imparting absolutely no information about himself.
— Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia
Sunday, November 28, 2021
Faced with his inability to produce new work, Wilde began to elaborate a philosophy of failure. He claimed that artists might be sucessful 'incidentally' but 'never intentionally': "If they are, they remain incomplete. The artist's mission is to live the complete life: success, as an episode (which is all it can be); failure, as the real, the final end.
— Matthew Sturgis, Oscar Wilde
Saturday, November 27, 2021
Experts say the cyberattacks on softer civilian targets could be the start of a new phase in the conflict. Lotem Finkelstein, head of intelligence at Check Point, a cybersecurity company, said that Iranian hackers had “identified a failure in Israeli understanding” about cyber conflict. They realized that “they do not need to attack a government agency, which is much more protected,” but could easily attack small, private companies, with less sophisticated security, “that control enormous amounts of information, including financial or intimate personal information about many citizens.”
— Farnaz Fassihi and Ronen Bergman, "Israel and Iran Broaden Cyberwar to Attack Civilian Targets," The New York Times
Friday, November 26, 2021
To literal memes being put on the engines, SpaceX lavishes in giving these parts at Starbase personality.
— Marcus House, "SpaceX Starbase and Stage Zero! How close are we to Starship Orbital Flight Test?," showing images of pictoral name tags on engines
Thursday, November 25, 2021
Of course, it's like entering a hall of mirrors. And some of them are concave, and some are convex, and there are no flat mirrors... I think it's an enormous mistake to look at the past as a series of solid rocks that was definitely there.
— Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "Caligula's Gardens," 60 Minutes responding to Anderson Cooper's comment "Long after the assassination itself, some historians believe Caligula's enemies assassinated his memory. There's a number of contemporary scholars who have argued that Caligula's critics distorted his memory, that they have falsely made him out to be far worse than he was."
Wednesday, November 24, 2021
I see a paint roller but it's being used for spaghetti.
— Lily before she goes to bed
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
welcome to debugging lol
— Eric
Monday, November 22, 2021
We used ice. As the ice melts, we can take out the straps and it will lower to the ground.
— Shelly Willis
Sunday, November 21, 2021
“Without significant fanfare — or even visibility — we are integrating nonhuman intelligence into the basic fabric of human activity,” they write.
— Kevin Roose, "A Robot Wrote This Book Review," The New York Times
Saturday, November 20, 2021
The letter—with its references to Hyacinthus and Apollo—was indeed so effusive as to be more like a work of literature than a regular communication. Its artistic excess could be turned to advantage. Pierre Louÿs was asked to transform the text into a sonnet—a French poetic version of Wilde's "prose poem." It could then be published... By making the letter public, they sought to destroy its power. No one had ever been blackmailed over a published poem.
— Matthew Sturgis, Oscar Wilde
Friday, November 19, 2021
How do we make it through having decentralized exponential tech.
— Daniel Schmachtenberger, "The Joe Rogan Experience #1736 - Tristan Harris & Daniel Schmachtenberger"
Thursday, November 18, 2021
And with an inverted demographic pyramid, so you've got a lot more older people, and then fewer middle age people and then eventually just very few youngsters, and this will necessarily lead to resources being applied to taking care of the elderly instead of advancing science or advancing civilization. I'm quite worried about that one, becuase I see no reversal of the trend.
— Elon Musk, "Elon Musk speaks on Starship and SpaceX at National Academies of Sciences and Engineering with QA"
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
Indeed, Wilde thought that "a great deal of the curious effect that Maeterlinck produces" was due to the fact that French was not his first language. And he began to percieve that he might be able to achieve something similar. Freed from the demans of realistic dialogue, there was no reason why his own French would not be sufficient for the task. Oddities of expression would give a certain relief or color to the piece.
— Matthew Sturgis, Oscar Wilde
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Swept from desert burrows, hundreds, if not thousands, of scorpions skittered into villages, stinging at least 503 people.
— New York Times subheadline for "Plagues Strike Egypt: Sudden Floods, Then 4-Inch Scorpions Called Deathstalkers"
Monday, November 15, 2021
In many ways, you are already in the authoritarian state, you just don't know it. Many things happens today in US, is, can be compared Cultural Revolution in China.
— Ai Weiwei, The Firing Line with Margaret Hoover
Sunday, November 14, 2021
BOXES FOR PRECIOUS STUFF
— Title of display case in Wenham Museum "A Boxed Assortment" exhibit
