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The Heretic’s Apprentice

On the nineteenth day of June, when the eminent visitor arrived, Brother Cadfael was in the abbot’s garden, trimming off dead roses.

I wouldn’t say but she may have got the better of the bargain, after all.

— Ellis Peters

#bibliomania! #the devil you say #mystery #1989

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Severance

After the End came the Beginning.

I get out and start walking.

— Ling Ma

#keep your mind on your work #fiction #2018

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Content

When nearly everyone in the United States and around the world was being asked to shelter in place at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis held a press conference to address what he perceived to be a serious problem—the lack of new content.

Ultimately, they will refuse to turn every communicative act into another addition to the pool.

— Kate Eichhorn

#the content industry (anybody we know?) #media studies #2022

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Why Liberalism Failed

A political philosophy conceived some 500 years ago, and put into effect at the birth of the United States nearly 250 years later, was a wager that political society could be grounded on a different footing.

The greatest proof of human freedom today lies in our ability to imagine, and build, liberty after liberalism.

— Patrick Deneen

#liberalism and its alleged discontents #political theory #2018

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Emperor of Rome

Elagabalus was a Syrian teenager who was emperor of Rome from 218 CE until his assassination in 222 — and a memorably extravagant, inventive and occasionally sadistic party host.

It has helped me to understand ancient Roman political culture better — and has opened my own eyes to the politics of the modern world too.

— Mary Beard

#ancient history #2023

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Carbon Capture

To contextualize carbon capture, it is important to understand some of the fundamentals of climate change.

What will be our legacy, and what type of world will we be leaving them?

— Howard Herzog

#We’re so doomed #carbon capture & storage #technology #2018

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Riccardino

The telephone rang as he was finally drifting off to sleep, ever so delicately, after what seemed like hours and hours of thrashing about in bed without success.

I

— Andrea Camilleri

#montalbano’s last sigh #mystery #2021

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Behavioral Insights

The behavioral insights approach applies evidence about human behavior to practical problems.

The idea of a “behavioral” solution or approach should become meaningless, since the principles will have become absorbed into standard ways of working.

— Michael Hallsworth and Elspeth Kirkman

#nudge nudge #behavioralism #2020

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Crook Manifesto

From then on whenever he heard the song he thought of the death of Munson.

They always said that when the old city disappeared and something new took its place.

— Colson Whitehead

#the on-going crime #harlem #the '70s #fiction #2023

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The War Between the Tates

March 20.

“Mommy, will the war end now?”

— Alison Laurie

#oh those fabulous late ’60s #fiction #1974

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The Sullivanians

Chris Pearce grew up in a the loud silence of his own mysterious origins.

Sometimes it’s more real, more potent than the present.

— Alexander Stille

#communal life #psychoticanalysis #the '60s man #2023

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Analog

In his review of David Sax’s 2016 book, Revenge of the Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter, the environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote: “Digital life’s too self-absorbed—either we evolve quickly away from the social primates we have always been or else we will quietly suffer from the solipsism inherent in straight at ourselves reflected in a screen.”

And it is from that point of holistic essential knowledge about analog and digital that we could begin to shape our world to become a more sustainable place, a place not only for us but also for the flora and fauna and air and weather systems that since modern times we’ve viewed merely as a resource to feed our awesome yet fated technological prowess.

— Robert Hassanb

#the analog is the message #technology #2022

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Users

YOUR HEART WILL STOP

BEG

DANCE

OR DIE

— Colin Winnette

#virtual realities #relationships #fiction #2023

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The Art of R Programming

As detailed in the Introduction, R is an extremely versatile open source programming language for statistics and data science.

The message() function may work for some of these packages; if not, you may need to resort to using cat() to write to a file.

— Norman Matloff

#wow - where is apl when you need it? #statistical programming #2011

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Marshall’s Tendencies

In January 1986, I spent a sabbatical at the University of California at San Diego.

It is this, rather than any rigid recipe for research, that remains its enduring legacy.

— John Sutton

#the light's better over here #modeling #economics #2000

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The Confessions of Brother Haluin

The worst of the winter came early, that year of 1142.

“How good it is,” he said, “to be going home!”

— Ellis Peters

#domino theory #mystery #1988

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After the Beautiful

In the following I deal with a very small fraction of the European and American visual art now more or less commonly identified as “modernist,” itself a fraction of the poetry, novels, drama, music, dance, and architecture often also so classified.

And now when the link forged between us generally and in relation to our common aim has been broken, it is my final wish that the higher and indestructible bond of the Idea of beauty and truth may link us and keep us firmly united now and for ever. (A, 2:1237)

— Robert Pippin

#modernist painting #aestethics #philosophy #2014