Friday, July 3, 2020
It seems that the clarity of the outer message resides in the sheer length of the message. This is not unexpected; it parallels precisely what happens in deciphering ancient texts. Clearly, one's likelyhood of success depends crutially on the amount of text available.
— Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
Thursday, July 2, 2020
At times Douglass's life must have seemed to him like a hundred rickety bridges held together with wire made of irony.
— David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
I want two peanuts before I go to bed.
— Sid opening a container of almonds
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
If that happened to me I'd have to go to boarding school.
— Lily on if she stepped on a chipmunk while running
Monday, June 29, 2020
All great autobiography is about loss, about the hopeless but necessary quest to retrieve and control a past that forever slips away. Memory is both inspiration and burden, method and subject.
— David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass
Sunday, June 28, 2020
To boot.
— Ninny, with good timing
Saturday, June 27, 2020
“A designer who must rely on cutouts and rearranging to create effects, who cannot achieve the specific image or idea he wants by drawing, is in trouble,” he told the magazine Graphis in 1960.
— William Grimes, "Milton Glaser, Master Designer of ‘I ♥ NY’ Logo, Is Dead at 91," The New York Times
Friday, June 26, 2020
Em, you're just looking at a cartoon.
— Ken on the iPhone weather app
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Walking into that space is not going to be comfortable, but that's the space that Black people live in every day.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, conversation at The Broad
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
We keep on running up against "sameness-in-differentness", and the question
When are two things the same?
— Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
"First things are always interesting," he declared.
— David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass
Monday, June 22, 2020
Now, he added, "the whole country and the whole government have changed," and Hoover was too professional a beaurocrat to be fundamentally out of step.
— Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-1965
Sunday, June 21, 2020
“We all know the Trump campaign feeds on data, they are constantly mining these rallies for data,” said Ms. Laupp, who worked on several rallies for Pete Buttigieg’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. “Feeding them false data was a bonus. The data they think they have, the data they are collecting from this rally, isn’t accurate.”
— Taylor Lorenz, Kellen Browning and Sheera Frenkel, " TikTok Teens and K-Pop Stans Say They Sank Trump Rally," The New York Times
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Apryl (your cousin)
April (the month)
architect
architecture
across
Arthur
allergy
article
— Words added to "Aa" page in Steck-Vaughn Writing Dictionary
Friday, June 19, 2020
So much of material and so much of the world around us that we see is programmable somehow.
— Kelli Anderson, Materials for Computer People
Thursday, June 18, 2020
I read that report . . . of the 1919 riot in Chicago, and it is as if I were reading the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of ’35, the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of ’43, the report of the McCone Commission on the Watts riot. I must again in candor say to you members of this Commission—it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland—with the same moving picture re-shown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction.
— Kenneth B. Clark, via "Police," Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
The only reason that people want to hear from people like me is because you trust me. You don't expect me to be perfect, but I don't lie to you. I'm just a guy. And I don't lie to you. And every institution, every institution that we trust, lies to us.
— Dave Chappelle, 8:46
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Then used seventy-two ceremonial pens to sign H.R. 7152 into law.
— Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-1965
Monday, June 15, 2020
That's a junk moth.
— Emily on a moth not worth saving
Sunday, June 14, 2020
Genie: Oh, aren't you acquainted with recursive acronyms? I thought everybody knew about them. You see, "GOD" stands for "GOD Over Djinn"—which can be expanded to "GOD Over Djinn, Over Djinn"—and that can, in turn, be expanded to "GOD Over Djinn, Over Djinn, Over Djinn"—which can, in turn, be further expanded . . . You can go as far as you like.
— Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
