Asher

“Terrible, terrible state for a man to be in. A few things can ease The Madness—can I give you my advice?” “Please.” “Okay, first and foremost: stop wanking about her.” “How do you know I’m wanking about her?” “Just a feeling I have. But you’ve got to stop.” “Well, it’s not, like, the start of Street Fighter where you choose your fighter. It’s not like I select her as my subject. Sometimes she just pops into the room, you know? The mental room. It’s the erotic equivalent of that adrenaline jolt you feel when you realize you’re both in the same pub. Do you know what I mean?” “Yes and it’s pathetic,” he says, taking a piece of gum from the multipack in his glove compartment and shoving it in his mouth. “As long as she’s the subject of your masturbation, your body is still attached to her.” “So you’re telling me you NEVER have a nostalgiwank about your exes?” “I mean, I feel like I’ve had a wank about everything at this point,” he says. “But once a relationship is over, I don’t allow myself to think about her in that way for at least a year. It’s the only way I can move on.” “Maybe I’ll just stop wanking altogether.” “No, you mustn’t do that,” he says gravely. “Samuel Johnson said: ‘Having a penis is being imprisoned with a mad man. But you must let the mad man speak.’ ”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“as the AI researcher Pedro Domingos so memorably put it, “People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world.”21”
― Melanie Mitchell, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans

“Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or rebel against it.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“We drive as fast as road designs tell us to drive. The result: drivers kill four times as many pedestrians on spacious suburban residential streets than on the narrow streets of traditional neighborhoods, because those spacious roads make driving faster feel safer. And it is not collisions that kill people, but collisions at high speed.”
― Charles Montgomery, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design