Damien

“The daughters of the high priest Anius changed whatever they chose into wheat, wine or oil. Athalida, daughter of Mercury, was resuscitated several times. Aesculapius resuscitated Hippolytus. Hercules dragged Alcestis back from death. Heres returned to the world after passing a fortnight in hell. The parents of Romulus and Remus were a god and a vestal virgin. The Palladium fell from heaven in the city of Troy. The hair of Berenice became a constellation.… Give me the name of one people among whom incredible prodigies were not performed, especially when few knew how to read and write.—VOLTAIRE, MIRACLES AND IDOLATRY”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“For many people, it’s about FOMO, the “fear of missing out,” or “the fear of losing a special moment.” Eyal describes this as the brilliant driver for Instagram. And this last part is true: the app at the very least is nearly brilliant. But that moment which he is referring to is not necessarily something special. On the contrary. There aren’t enough special moments, so we end up making do—repetitive and mundane moments are documented instead.”
― Erling Kagge, Silence: In the Age of Noise

“I came across one company called NuManna, named in reference to manna, the foodstuff the god of the Old Testament had provided for the Israelites during the time of their wandering after the Exodus. The company marketed gigantic buckets of freeze-dried powdered foodstuffs with a shelf life of a quarter of a century, whose varieties included, but were by no means limited to, oatmeal, hearty beans and beef, cheddar broccoli soup, and pasta primavera mix with freeze-dried chicken chunks. In the Testimonials section of NuManna’s website, I read a brief blurb from a customer named Reagan B., which seemed to me an unwitting encapsulation of the absurdity of the entire apocalypse preparedness project. “This stuff is awesome,” wrote Reagan. “My wife has been away for a while so I ate NuManna while she was gone. It was simple and everything I had was really good. I wish NuManna was around when I bought a bunch of bulk food in the past from the Mormons. I don’t want to have all these ingredients and put them together. NuManna was simple and great tasting. I gave away all my other bulk food.” At first this comment seemed purely and unimprovably comic in its conjuring of a character who, for all his determination to be adequately prepared for the collapse of civilization due to nuclear war or the impact of a massive asteroid, was also the type of man for whom not having his wife around to cook dinner—which seemed to me to be at worst a Domino’s Pizza situation—forced him to crack open his apocalyptic food stash. (Equally bewildering, equally wonderful, was his purchasing food in bulk only to conclude that he lacked the stomach for the labor of assembling all these ingredients into meals.)”
― Mark O'Connell, Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back

“Never make the mistake of thinking that alcoholics are weak because it took an incredible amount of internal strength and conviction in order for me to keep drinking despite the growing mountain of evidence against it.”
― Mishka Shubaly, The Long Run