Cal

“What if we don't try to go back to anything? And what if we also slough off the idea of 'saving the world'? What if we reject all the utopias and frown at all the gadgets and the grand plans, what if we take off our shoes and get our feet back properly on the ground? At this time of year, the soil is warm out here. There are a lot of nettles around, it's true, but the sting is never as painful as you think it's going to be.”
― Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

“I think we need more math majors who don't become mathematicians. More math major doctors, more math major high school teachers, more math major CEOs, more math major senators. But we won't get there unless we dump the stereotype that math is only worthwhile for kid geniuses.”
― Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

“Sometimes I lie awake at night, or I wander in the field behind my house, or I walk down the street in our local town and think I can see it all around me: the Grid. The veins and sinews of the Machine that surrounds us and pins us and provides for us and defines us now. I imagine a kind of network of shining lines in the air, glowing like a dewed spiderweb in the morning sun. I imagine the cables and the satellite links, the films and the words and the records and the opinions, the nodes and the data centres that track and record the details of my life. I imagine the mesh created by the bank transactions and the shopping trips, the passport applications and the text messages sent. I see this thing, whatever it is, being constructed, or constructing itself around me, I see it rising and tightening its grip, and I see that none of us can stop it from evolving into whatever it is becoming. I see the Machine, humming gently to itself as it binds us with its offerings, as it dangles its promises before us and slowly, slowly, slowly reels us in. I think of the part of it we interact with daily, the glowing white interface through which we volunteer every detail of our lives in exchange for information or pleasure or stories told by global entertainment corporations who commodify our culture and sell it back to us. I think of the words we use to describe this interface, which we carry with us in our pockets wherever we go, as we are tracked down every street and into every forest that remains: the web; the net. I think: These are things designed to trap prey.”
― Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

“Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.”
― Garrison Keillor, We Are Still Married: Stories & Letters