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.
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.
Read moreTHE 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.
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.
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.
Read moreTHE 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.