Alice > Recent Status Updates

Per recommendation, and gift, of my dear cousin, here we gooo

And if you don't feel like you're among the richest people on the planet, think of the words of the old Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky: 'Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.'

Changing the world often starts in the quiet places, where others don't think to go.

The invention of the bicycle gave women more freedom of movement than ever, and the famous suffragist Susan B. Anthony considered a woman riding a bike 'the picture of untrammelled womanhood'. The bicycle did away with 'old-fashioned, slow-going notions of the gentler sex', according to a Nebraska newspaper in 1895, and paved the way for 'some new woman, mounted on her steed of steel'.

When asked who held the patent to his vaccine [Dr Salk], he famously replied, 'Well, the people, I'd say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?'.
Today, polio is nearly eradicated.

One thing's certain: scientific innovations have saved more lives than all the Malalas, Mandelas, and Mother Theresas combined.
That's why it's especially tragic that so many whiz kids spend their time building pointless apps and algorithms. If we want to take on the big challenges of our time, we're going to need an army of morally ambitious science geeks.

four main ingredients of moral ambition:

1 the idealism of an activist

2 the ambition of a startup founder

3 the analytical mind of a scientist

4 the humility of a monk

"That element of serendipity in Rob's big career switch makes me hopeful. You don't have to play the Good Samaritan all your life to make a difference. You can be your average exec in your average company one day, and then take the lead in fighting one of the world's deadliest diseases the next. You can catch the moral ambition bug and start to transform your life and career."

"Much of modern protest seems too fleeting. Heavy on intuition, light on strategy. Heavy on intentions, light on results. 'Being on the right side of history, writes Tufekci, doesn't insulate one from weak analyses.'"

" To put it bluntly: awareness is overrated. The fact that people are aware of various injustices doesn't mean they'll act on that knowledge - on the contrary. We hold all kinds of opinions on all kinds of matters, but we generally do little with our viewpoints."

Rip, ain't that the truth..

Regardless, you can't be afraid to come across as weird if you want to make a difference. Every milestone of civilisation was first seen as the crazy idea of some subculture or another, from the Pythagorean theorem to the conviction that slavery is depraved.

Join a cult (or start your own)

"We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers."
- Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragette (1858-1928)

In some circles, you'd think the highest good is not to have any impact at all. A good life is then primarily defined by what you don't do. Don't fly. Don't eat meat. Don't have kids. Reduce! Reduce! Reduce! The aim is to have the smallest foot-print possible, with your little vegetable garden and your tin house. Best-case scenario? Your impact on the planet is so negligible,you could just as well not have existed

Reminds me of that employee who said, "The best minds of my generation un ing about how to make people click ads."

I met one of these once.
How flipping depressing .

Maybe you dream of doing something else with your limited time on this planet. [...]
In that case, you'll need a book that's more than the latest guide to finding happiness. Not a book that makes life easier, but one that makes life a little harder. The kind of book you half-wish you'd never picked up at all because once you put it down, you might just have to change your life.
This is that kind of book.

“Choose a good, imperfect person who leaves the cap off the toothpaste, and puts the toilet paper roll on upside down, and loads the dishwasher like a ferret on steroids—and then appreciate the hell out of that person. Train yourself to see their best, most delightful, most charming qualities. Focus on everything they’re getting right. Be grateful—all the time—and laugh the rest off.”

We don’t get to know the whole story all at once. And where we’re headed matters so much less than how we get there.

Was this a happy ending?
Of course. And also only a beginning. In the way that beginnings and endings are always kind of the same thing.

If you wait for other people to light you up, then I guess you’re at the mercy of darkness.

“Yeah. I’m a pessimist, though, so I didn’t trust myself, either. I always start with death in every situation and work my way backward.”
“Are you starting with death now?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re here. And you’re gonna be fine. And if you’re gonna be fine, then I’m gonna be fine. So it’s not even a question.”
“That’s the worst logic I’ve ever heard.”

My first read in french!!

Laura
It has happened
Here we go

Every hour, she thinks, someone for whom the war was memory falls out of the world.
We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs.

Flowers grow on her tiny wrought-iron balcony, and in summer she can estimate what time of day it is by feeling how wide the petals of the evening primroses have opened.

"When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?"
He says, "Not in years. But today. Today maybe I did."

He is a ghost. He is from some other world. He is Papa, Madame Manec, Etienne; he is everyone who has left her finally coming back.

'Chapter 159: The Simultaneity of Instants' was gut-wrenching in its entirety. Unfortunately I can't paste here the whole thing for future me, but I will safeguard the final lines and their goosebumps:

[...] Werner hears Marie-Laure inhale, Marie-Laure hears Werner scrape three fingernails across the wood, a sound not unlike the sounds of a record coursing beneath the surface of a needle.
He says, "Es-tu là?"

All your life you wait, and then it finally comes, and are you ready?

Stick-thin, alabaster-pale Etienne LeBlanc runs down the rue de Dinan with Madame Ruelle, the baker's wife, on his heels: the least-robust rescue ever assembled.

You are alive.
I am only alive because I have not yet died.