For the first time in all of time men have seen the earth: seen It not as continents or oceans from the little distance of a hundred miles or two or three, but seen it from the depths of space: seen it whole and round and beautiful and small as even Dante that "first imagination of Christendom" —had never dreamed of seeing it; as the Twentieth Century philosophers of absurdity and despair were incapable of guessing that it might be seen. And seeing it so, one question came to the minds of those who looked at it. "Is it inhabited?" they said to each other and laughed— and then they did not laugh. What came to their minds a hundred thousand miles and more into space-"half way to the moon" they put it- what came to their minds was the life on that little. lonely, floating planet: that tiny raft in the enormous, empty night. "Is it inhabited?" THE medieval notion of the earth put man al the center of everything. The nuclear notion of the earth put him nowhere beyond the range of reason even-lost in absurdity and war. This latest notion may have other consequences. Formed as it was in the minds of heroic voyagers who were also men, it may remake our Image of mankind. No longer that preposterous figure at the center, no longer that degraded and degrading victim off at the margins of reality and blind with blood, man may at last become himself. To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold-brothers who know now they are truly brothers.

The fact that Trump is threatening nuclear annihilation while astronauts are orbiting the moon brings to mind this reflection from Archibald MacLeish on the first such mission in 1968.

James Talarico says it’s time to start flipping tables

If you think there's no difference between a human mind and a bunch of sand you're probably correct about your mind specifically.

I don't think you would get it.

Jensen Huang, chief executive of the chip maker Nvidia, is worried. The tech industry hype may seem omnipresent, but Mr. Huang feels “the battle of narratives” is being won by the critics. “It’s extremely hurtful, frankly,” Mr. Huang said in a podcast interview last month. “A lot of damage” has been done by “very well-respected people who have painted a doomer narrative, end-of-the-world narrative, science fiction narrative.”

Maybe if AI freaks stopped telling us we're all going to be unemployed by the end of next year we wouldn't be so down on the concept.

"We software engineers have invented a machine that kicks software engineers in the nuts. We will be adapting these machines to kick workers in the nuts in all sectors of the economy. You must prepare to get kicked in the nuts. There is no alternative to getting kicked in the nuts."

Letterboxd screenshot Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) Watched by Branson Reese 28 Apr 2022 Abrams isn't a man so much as he's an avatar of cultural entropy. If you make something popular enough eventually you will die or sell it off and and a person in thick rimmed glasses whose main artistic vision is that he loves to have meetings will take it and sandblast it until it's nothing. I hate to see this happen here but maybe it's good that this happened. Maybe every franchise should collapse into a version of itself that makes shareholders nod and shake each others' hands. We should learn to speak in a language that rich people who don't dream can't comprehend.

i often think about this review

AYN RAND: it is Rational and in fact Noble to care only for one's self because who knows if anyone else is even Real with an inner life like you, plus you're the Main Guy so your happiness is like the whole world is happy
NARCISSISTIC SOCIOPATHS: wow what an interesting and totally New belief system

Bryan Johnson manages to be the dumbest rich guy in a world that includes Elon Musk, which is impressive. I'm not sure anyone actually thinks he's smart though.

Malcolm Gladwell is probably the dumbest guy I can think of who's known for being smart.

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

Its a color screencap or photo of former President Bill Clinton on a TV screen with his name in front his photo it reads "Bill Clinton live via Satellite" he appears to be testifying

Cry about it, loser.

I won't post the screenshot of Trump's disgusting gutter racism but I'll note, again, that the best explanation for the entire Trump phenomenon is that for a good 40% of the American public a black guy becoming President had the equivalent cognitive impact of getting kicked in the head by a horse.

American evangelicalism has always been a theological deadzone but it's really all out in the open now.

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

Who could this be? Hmm…

One of the most famous stories in the Bible is about God destroying a wall.

ME: Hey man, I live down the street. Can you please keep it down?
JEFFREY EPSTEIN: bill g. has drip dick. regrettable.
ME: Huh?
EPSTEIN: stinky dick = evolve computers. ?? nerd consciousness. ?
ME: Okay, well, it’s four in the morning. Please keep it down.
EPSTEIN: dick stink. ? as scent brain

Years ago an otherwise politically aligned friend got super annoyed with me for saying that Tusli Gabbard was a Russian asset and... well.

I don't know, man. On the one hand you have an unbroken line of apostolic succession tracing itself back to Jesus himself, but on the other hand there's a nihilistic couchophile, a sentient burlap sack full of earthworms, and a guy who makes footballs go through things.

I have been married for many years, and I still love and care deeply about my partner. Over the past year, she had an affair, and I knew about it from the beginning. She said that she needed it, that it gave her vitality, that she enjoyed a sexual freedom she had longed for and that she felt it was wrong to do this in secret and without my consent. I agreed; what she said made sense to me, and she convincingly assured me this was no threat to our relationship. At the same time, I always suffered when she was away with her affair partner and could not find a way to take this easily. She recently decided to break it off because the overall emotional burden for both of us was too great. But while she is grieving about it, I feel relieved. Even though I wish that I could have better coped with a situation I rationally and ethically consider OK, it conflicted with something deeper inside me that I can’t easily change. My question is: Should I feel sorry for my wife? At the moment, I don’t. I understand her feelings and I care about her, but at the same time I feel it is not my job to console her for this particular loss. What do you think about this? — Name Withheld

The whites are at it again.

Car Hits High School Student in Nebraska During an Anti-ICE Protest

Gotta love the "Bullet enters body" phrasing that NYT uses every time a right wing terrorist attacks someone.

Sitting here trying to come up with an appropriate clip to post in honor of Catherine O'Hara and I can't choose one. She was a genius in every scene. Every single scene.

Nobody is entitled to force you to participate in their mental illness. Kanye has gotten orders of magnitude more attention than he has ever deserved. I wish him well on his mental health journey but everyone should feel free to ignore him forever.

I am obliged to note the irony of ICE claiming that it was okay to kill that guy because he was carrying a gun three days after the Supreme Court heard arguments over whether states can prohibit people from carrying guns.

Gotcha—let’s dig into that step by step.

1. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵, because I turned you into an amorphous lump of flesh. You’re not just immobile—you’re immortal, and you feel only anguish.

2. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺. That makes total sense—it’s a natural human impulse, and you’ve been through a lot.

Ideas It Makes Sense That People See A.I. as God A religious fervor surrounds our relationship with technology.

There's only one God, ma'am. And he doesn't tell teenagers to kill themselves.

#gandalf #stupid

Maybe make a useful product you dick that's why we used to love tech you'll have a billion fans if your product doesn't suck shit