

“Do you think they’ll be remembered, our sons and husbands? Or will they just . . . disappear?” “I think we’ll remember them, and talk about them and tell their stories. We’ll know we loved them and were loved by them. That will be enough.” She pauses. “You know, the world doesn’t have to remember you for you to matter. We were loved by those we loved. Not everyone can say that,” she tells me softly. No, I don’t suppose they can.”
― The End of Men
― The End of Men

“It’s guarded by the watchman of the gods . . . Heimdal, I think his name is.”
― Hornet Flight
― Hornet Flight

“Do you remember the question?” That provoked him. Sheldon turned to Lars, who was attentive. “Watch this.” “Number one. Getting people to repeat their own questions forces them to figure out what they’re asking. If you’re not willing to ask a question three times, then you don’t really want to know the answer. Number two, you have brought me to Norway. Nothing’s familiar. I can’t become lost in familiar places. I just become lost. Number three, I don’t speak Norwegian, so I can’t follow any directions. If I understood . . . that would be demented. Number four, I don’t know of any half-intelligent, self-aware person who, if they give it a moment’s thought, doesn’t find time, people, or places all highly disorienting. In fact, what is there to disorient us other than time, people, or places? And for the three-part finale, I say this. I have no idea what it means to be neglectful of personal safety. As measured against what? Under what conditions? As judged by whom? I’ve sailed into a storm of tracer bullets, face first, on the Yellow Sea at dawn. Was I neglectful? I married a woman and stayed with her until the end of her life. You call that safe? As for hygiene, I brush my teeth and shower daily. The only one who thinks I’m dirty is someone who thinks I don’t belong, and so is probably an anti-Semite, and you can tell him Sheldon Horowitz says so. And nutrition? I’m eighty-two and I’m alive. “How did I do, Lars?” “Better than I could have done, Sheldon.” Rhea remembers the story. But she says to Lars, in front of Sigrid, “He was lucid. He has powerful reasoning skills. He was showing off.” Lars shrugs. “It worked on me.” “OK, maybe it isn’t dementia per se. But he’s odd. Really odd. And he’s increasingly talking to the dead.” Even as she speaks, she accepts”
― Norwegian by Night
― Norwegian by Night
“But there is another story, to which I was an even more direct witness, and that is the story of how a man skilled in deception and intrigue took over an entire political party and bent it to his will. The four years of the Trump presidency destroyed many friendships, and not a few marriages. But it also destroyed the Republican Party—once devoted to robust alliances, a healthy mistrust of executive power, and the expansion of democracy around the world—and turned it into something else, something unrecognizable, an antidemocratic party, a party willing to tear down the institutions of its own government, a party willing to give aid and comfort to a malign foreign power that wishes to destroy us, a party hostile to the truth.”
― Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could
― Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could
“observation-model-prediction. That is, in science, you figure out what happened, then figure out why it happened, then, using that knowledge, cleverly deduce what may happen in the future. An example would be Isaac Newton observing an apple falling to Earth, deducing universal gravitation, and from his deductions realizing that the moon orbits the Earth because of Earth’s gravitational pull. He can then generalize this logic to predict the future: he may realize that an apple will fall on the surface of any heavenly body, like the moon or Mars, and not just the Earth. This is science, running from cause to effect, observation to prediction, and past to future. Accounting is materially the opposite. In accounting, you start out with what is going to happen in the future: ie: that you are not going to pay any taxes, then figure out why you’re not going to pay any taxes, and then, from this, decide what, for tax purposes, happened in the past.”
― Andrew's Anarchy
― Andrew's Anarchy
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