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lost and found at tiny thing
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metrodad says
As the old joke goes...the lion may be the undisputed king of the jungle, but airdrop him into Antarctica, and he's just a penguin's bitch.
apropos of nothing
paul fussell says
Some exemplary unpleasant facts are these: that life is short and almost always ends messily; that if you live in the actual world you can't have your own way; that if you do get what you want, it turns out not to be the thing you wanted; that no one thinks as well of you as you do yourself; and that one or two generations from now you will be forgotten entirely and that the world will go on as if you had never existed. Another is that to survive and prosper in this world, you have to do so at someone else's expense or do and undergo things it's not pleasant to face: like, for example, purchasing your life at the cost of the innocents murdered in the aerial bombing of Europe and the final bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And not just the bombings. It's also an unpleasant fact that you are alive and well because you or your representatives killed someone with bullets, shells, bayonettes, or knives, if not in Germany, Italy, or Japan, then Korea or Vietnam. You have connived at murder, and you thrive on it, and that fact is too unpleasant to face except rarely.
found at everything^2 via thepoorman oh no i mean liberalfascism
a white bear says
What I'd like to argue is that porn-modeled sex is a symptom of the failure to give people any other model to imitate. Young people are so hungry for education about how to live adult lives that they'll take whatever they can get their hands on. For some aspects of adulthood, like acting professionally in work environments, a lot of them have plenty of models, either from their parents or from the media. Like my students writing about fiction, they can play that role well because they've had some decent models of what that would look like. But sex? What models do they have to bridge the transition from virginity to sane, secure, non-misogynistic maturity?
This post officially advocates better poetry- and sex-ed in high schools! Start them in kindergarten! We can’t just wait until they’ve grown up into ridiculous, stuttering, clueless adults and then pathologize their failures as "lack of self-esteem," "misogyny," "pornsickness" or "illiteracy." They need alternative, trustworthy sources of guidance.
is there no sin in it
optimal boarding method for airline passengers
Using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo optimization algorithm and a computer simulation, I find the passenger ordering which minimizes the time required to board the passengers onto an airplane. The model that I employ assumes that the time that a passenger requires to load his or her luggage is the dominant contribution to the time needed to completely fill the aircraft. The optimal boarding strategy may reduce the time required to board and airplane by over a factor of four and possibly more depending upon the dimensions of the aircraft. I explore some features of the optimal boarding method and discuss practical modifications to the optimal. Finally, I mention some of the benefits that could come from implementing and improved passenger boarding scheme.
Jason H. Steffen, pdf here
Schopenhauer sort of said:
it would be wonderful if along with the purchase of a book, one could buy the time to read it in
will self says:
And a Zen-like state of absorption into physical geography. Because if you are solely concerned with orientation and movement, then the so-called higher faculties don't have a lot to do. There isn't a lot of room. You're not tormented by what the Germans call the "earworm" gnawing away at you, or the resentment you had toward the guy at the party in 1985 who spilled the drink on you. That goes after a few miles. And I think then we're probably back in the hunter-gatherer mindset. What I'm saying is, you can be a huntergatherer. You can be a hunter-gatherer now. Anybody here in Manhattan, or in any major city, can make that choice to be a hunter-gatherer. more here
Levi-Strauss said
the thing about magic is that it works.
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