bigthink.com

Boym argues that there are two kinds of nostalgia: a good and a bad one. The “good” kind is what Boym calls “algia,” or a longing for something gone. It’s the saudade of reflecting on a childhood friend, lost even to social media searches. It’s the mono no aware of grieving for the childhood you once had — the faces, the laughing times, the simpler existence. Algia is not “good” in that it’s always happy and pleasant, but is simply harmless. In fact, it can even be beneficial. This reflective brand of nostalgia allows us to linger in our memory, using the past as a way to find a bit of creative space in the present.

The difference in 2126 isn’t technological, it’s political — a revolution in how people choose to use the tools in their hands. People see data differently now: not as the raw material of automated systems but as a collective resource leading to transparent, community-led decisions. Data no longer automatically equals power. Once a tool of inequality, it has become the ground where fairness is contested and defended.

“It’s not designed to last. It’s designed to be cheap.” - Wayne Seltzer

1.) Demand independent confirmation of whatever statements are asserted as facts.

This journey goes across 13 countries, and is 11,654 miles or 18,755 kilometres and takes 14 days assuming no connections are missed.

He cites Ayn Rand. That’s the end of all credibility.

...Earlier this century, some very strong evidence arrived showing that there was a Universe before the Big Bang, demonstrating that the Big Bang wasn’t truly the start of it all...

NASA chief to defy agency's charter, terminating science

One of the best analogies I ever heard concerning the question of life in the Universe is that of a lottery. Each world that forms around each star — whether it’s a planet, moon, or dwarf planet — is like a lottery ticket. All of a sudden, a huge number of questions arise.

Ominous strings of Austrian composer Joseph Haydn’s “Oxford” Symphony (No. 92) announce the beginning and end of each episode of Revolutions. The podcast, hosted by author Mike Duncan, walks listeners through history’s most significant turning points, from the French Revolution to the Bolshevik insurrection. Its new season shakes up the formula. This time, Duncan isn’t talking about a terrestrial dustup. He’s chronicling the Martian Revolution.

Blindsight is a unique kind of first-contact novel. Its focus is not on humanity’s first meeting with an alien civilization, but rather that this civilization is highly intelligent, yet lacks consciousness.

CW: images from fur farms

A fantastic article on keeping time with incense.

There are at least two versions of the story of Pandora’s box. In the classic version from the Greek poet Hesiod, when Pandora’s curiosity got the better of her, she unleashed into the world all sorts of evils: sickness, famine, death, and people who ask questions at the end of a meeting. When Pandora finally closed the jar, she left only one “evil” inside: hope. For Hesiod, there’s nothing so cruel as hope. Hope is what forces us to carry on building, fixing, and loving when the world offers only destruction, chaos, and heartbreak. It’s what gets us off the ground only to be punched back down. Hope is the naivety of a fool. As Friedrich Nietzsche put it, “Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”