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Cushing had journeyed to southwest Florida to learn about an ancient civilization, whose
“Habitat doesn’t replicate itself. Places get crowded. Creatures go hungry. They struggle. The result is competition and deprivation and misery, winners and losers, unsuccessful efforts to breed and, for the less fortunate individuals, early death. Many are called, but few are chosen. The book that awakened Darwin to this reality was An Essay on the Principle of Population, by a severely logical clergyman and scholar named Thomas Malthus.”
― The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
― The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
“Quammen compares the human population explosion to an outbreak of tent caterpillars. As we cut down deep forests and convert wild places to feed lots and drained swamp to cropland we encounter other species—birds, mammals, reptiles, bacteria and viruses—alien viruses whose hosts and habitats we have severely disrupted and displaced, so that viruses such as SARS, Ebola, MERS, the cluster of “swine flus” and Covid-19 are forced to find other places, other hosts including humans.”
― Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
― Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
“Nor do we wish to change. Ancient Judeo-Christian beliefs allow humans to use the rest of the world as they wish:”
― Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
― Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
“The real triggers for epidemic and pandemics are the societal organization and society-driven human/animal contacts and amplification loops provided by the modern human society, i.e., contacts, land conversion, markets, international trade, mobility, etc.” In that “etc.” lies our future.”
― Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
― Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
“We all know that any emotional bias -- irrespective of truth or falsity -- can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value.... If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction.”
― Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft
― Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft
Mandy’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Mandy’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
471 books
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23 friends
1,825 books
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355 friends
1,890 books
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119 friends
2,512 books
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26 friends
737 books
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135 friends
831 books
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39 friends
760 books
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83 friends
116 books
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1,484 friends
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