THREE HUNDRED ELEPHANTS IN A GAS TANK

Ferris Jabr:
We’ve known for more than a century that fossil fules are combustible crypts containing the power of countless deceased life forms that collectively absorbed hundreds of millions of years of sunlight.

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NEW BEGINNINGS

To state the obvious, I’m not the only one who has spent more than a few minutes over the last couple of weeks attempting to state clearly the New Year’s Resolutions™ I’m thinking now that I’ll fail to live up to this year.

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THE IMPOSITIONAL POWER OF THE CANON: SAFE SPACES

Ta-Nehisi Coates:
Great canons angle toward great power, and the great privilege of great power is an incuriosity about those who lack it.

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THE POWER OF POWERLESSNESS

Hannah Arendt:
Impotence or complete powerlessness is, I think, a valid excuse. Its validity is all the stronger as it seems to require a certain moral quality even to recognize powerlessness, the good faith to face realities and not to live in illusions.

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THE END IS WHERE WE START FROM

Joan Westinberg argues that the death of critical thinking will kill us long before AI. I think she’s right that we sorely need to (re)cultivate the ability to think and read more deeply.

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THE WORTH OF LIFE IS AT STAKE

Alfred North Whitehead, writing in 1939:
Today we are witnessing a relapse into barbarism. The tendency touches every country.

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