Sign in with Facebook
1,081 books
—
908 voters
“I have tasted death, Ziller. When my twin and I merged, we were close enough to the ship being destroyed to maintain a real-time link to the substrate of the Mind within as it was torn apart by the tidal forces produced by a line gun. It
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“animal suicide accounts gave scientists, natural historians, and the general public a means of reflecting on the concept of human self-destruction as well as ideas about humanity’s relationship to nature without always having to talk about people. Writing and thinking about animal suicides, just as we saw with the cases of animal heartbreak and homesickness, gave people a way to ponder their own afflictions, even if they were doing it unconciously.”
― Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves
― Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves
“you will almost certainly be viewed in one of three ways. As a minus one: actively harmful, someone who creates problems. Or as a zero: your impact is neutral and doesn’t tip the balance one way or the other. Or you’ll be seen as a plus one: someone who actively adds value. Everyone wants to be a plus one, of course. But proclaiming your plus-oneness at the outset almost guarantees you’ll be perceived as a minus one, regardless of the skills you bring to the table or how you actually perform. This might seem self-evident, but it can’t be, because so many people do it.”
― An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth
― An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth
“Square astronaut, round hole. It’s the story of my life, really: trying to figure out how to get where I want to go when just getting out the door seems impossible. On paper, my career trajectory looks preordained: engineer, fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut. Typical path for someone in this line of work, straight as a ruler. But that’s not how it really was. There were hairpin curves and dead ends all the way along. I wasn’t destined to be an astronaut. I had to turn myself into one.”
― An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth
― An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth
“Thus judges on the D.C. Circuit promptly moved the hiring of 2014 clerks before Labor Day. Judge Janice Rogers Brown, for example, was widely reported to have hired a clerk named Shon Hopwood in the first week of August 2013. Hopwood has an unusual personal history: before entering law school he served a lengthy prison sentence. But his early hiring quickly became quite usual. Clerks who wouldn’t begin work until 2015 were being hired in February 2014, a year and a half early.”
― Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design
― Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design
“Because after a couple days of this fabulous invisible room-cleaning, I start to wonder how exactly Petra knows when I’m in 1009 and when I’m not. It’s now that it occurs to me how rarely I ever see her. For a while I try experiments like all of a sudden darting out into the 10-Port hallway to see if I can see Petra hunched somewhere keeping track of who is decabining, and I scour the whole hallway-and-ceiling area for evidence of some kind of camera or monitor tracking movements outside the cabin doors—zilch on both fronts. But then I realize that the mystery’s even more complex and unsettling than I’d first thought, because my cabin gets cleaned always and only during intervals where I’m gone more than half an hour. When I go out, how can Petra or her supervisors possibly know how long I’m going to be gone?”
― A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: An Essay
― A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: An Essay
History, Medicine, and Science: Nonfiction and Fiction
— 1542 members
— last activity Oct 14, 2025 06:03PM
Discussion about the fascinating stories of our scientific and medical past
Vladimir’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Vladimir’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,186 books
|
95 friends
712 books
|
31 friends
229 books
|
72 friends
2,753 books
|
171 friends
1,356 books
|
521 friends
746 books
|
62 friends
1,793 books
|
364 friends
1,614 books
|
217 friends
More friends…
Polls voted on by Vladimir
Lists liked by Vladimir
