Wednesday, July 16, 2025
Baleful quote of the day
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Quote of the day
"[S]ocial influences act through a mechanism; and the character of their action depends upon the character of the mechanism." - Charles Horton Cooley, "The Process of Social Change" (1897)
Via Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart by Nicholas Carr
Monday, July 14, 2025
Trivia of the day
Question: Who coined the term social media?
Answer: "It was [sociologist Charles Horton] Cooley in fact who coined the term social media - in a remarkable 1897 article called 'The Process of Social Change.'"**Via Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart by Nicolas Carr
Sunday, July 13, 2025
Quote of the day
"For myself, I feel quite sure that if each of [Stanley] Milgram's subjects had been required to read Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem before showing up at the laboratory, his numbers would have been quite different." - Neal Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
Saturday, July 12, 2025
Well, this has aged well
We don't have rights because we're American: we're Americans because we recognize that all people have inalienable rights, and the government is only legitimate to the extent that it protects and preserves those rights. Or, at least, that's how it was supposed to work in pre-MAGA America. Under the new form of government that is taking shape, we don't have rights, we have privileges that are bestowed to us by Dear Leader (or as his followers disgustingly call him - "Daddy") and they are very much alienable. Any dissent, any independence of will that the Leader does not approve of will lead to a loss of liberty through various means of intimidation, threat, harassment, and/or persecution.
President Donald Trump escalated his long-running feud with comedian Rosie O’Donnell Saturday, threatening on social media to revoke her U.S. citizenship.“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump wrote. “She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
We don't need to understand that
"People need to understand, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers and Border Patrol don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them,” Homan said. “They just go through the observations, get articulable facts based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions.”
Sunday, July 06, 2025
Quote of the day
"Radical social movement in their time are always viewed as disturbances of the moral order. It is only retrospectively that social movements are viewed as speaking truth to power in ways that make moral sense." - Jason Stanely, How Propaganda Works
Saturday, July 05, 2025
Baleful quote of the day
Friday, July 04, 2025
What are they celebrating?
It is by imagination that we put ourselves in the place of another. When the whigs of that faculty are folded, the master does not put himself in the place of the slave; the tyrant is not locked in the dungeon, chained with his victim. The inquisitor did not feel the flames that devoured the martyr. The imaginative man, giving to the beggar, gives to himself. Those who feel indignant at the perpetration of wrong, feel for the instant that they are the victims; and when they attack the aggressor they feel that they are defending themselves. Love and pity are the children of the imagination.
Quote of the day
Thursday, July 03, 2025
Quote of the day
"We spend our days sharing information, connected as never before, but the more we communicate, the worse things seem to get." - Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart
Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Quote of the day
"A toxic relationship is just a cult of one." - Amanda Montell, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
Tuesday, July 01, 2025
Quote of the day
"I always found the term conspiracy 'theory' overly flattering. Special relativity is a theory. The Big Bang is a theory. That aliens helped build Stonehenge? Not a 'theory.'" - Amanda Montell, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality