Grace

“The only thing it’s like is the Gutenberg print revolution and that was followed by four hundred years of bloody war. Suddenly, people were exposed to so much more information than ever before. They had no systems to process it or to tell truth from lies. They were overwhelmed. That’s where we are. And humanity doesn’t have time for four hundred years of bloody war right now. There are so many emergencies to deal with.”
― Naomi Alderman, The Future

“In every office I’ve worked, word of complimentary cake races through the ranks of the cubicle class like it’s a rumor about the Wells Fargo wagon showing up in River City, Iowa. Free break room cake is a blessing, a gift from some benevolent force that asks nothing of you in return. Free break room cake offers you an opportunity to share a portion of some other person’s joy, both literally and figuratively. In a space built on capitalist power structures, free break room cake reminds you that you don’t need to produce anything to be deserving of a little sweetness.”
― R. Eric Thomas, Congratulations, The Best Is Over!: Essays

“...why is it, she wonders...that we expect our children to be the ones to halt deforestation and species extinction and to rescue our planet tomorrow, when we are the ones overseeing its destruction today?”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood

“We can pull atoms apart, peer back at the first light and predict the end of the universe with just a handful of equations, squiggly lines and arcane symbols that normal people cannot fathom, even though they hold sway over their lives. But it's not just regular folks; even scientists no longer comprehend the world. Take quantum mechanics, the crown jewel of our species, the most accurate, far-ranging and beautiful of all our physical theories. It lies behind the supremacy of our smartphones, behind the Internet, behind the coming promise of godlike computing power. It has completely reshaped our world. We know how to use it, it works as if by some strange miracle, and yet there is not a human soul, alive or dead, who actually gets it. The mind cannot come to grips with its paradoxes and contradictions. It's as if the theory had fallen to earth from another planet, and we simply scamper around it like apes, toying and playing with it, but with no true understanding.”
― Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World