Monte Johnston

Who knows only his own generation remains always a child.
-- George Norlin

[Saganism @Saganismm]

“A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it... they are unlikely long to enjoy it.”

— John Stuart Mill

[Saganism @Saganismm]

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”

— Cicero

[Curiosity @MAstronomers]

People don't realize how absurd this view actually is.

A camera. On a robot. On Mars.

Built by humans on a planet 140 million miles away, launched on a rocket, landed using a sky crane, and now driving across an alien desert taking pictures so detailed you can count the rocks.

100 years ago, your great-grandparents thought airplanes were a miracle.

You are scrolling past Mars on your phone.

[Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill]

Nietzsche on marriage - great quote.

From my "Top 18 Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes" - see link below.

[Julia Turc @juliarturc]

So what happens to (software) libraries now?

I had this shower thought that, if humans stop coding, there's no incentive for us to make reusable libraries. Clankers are happy to implement quick sort from scratch in assembly.

Will they ever have enough initiative to say "hey, I'm kinda proud of this, let me clean it up and put it out there to help other clankers save some time in the future"?

Is this the end of reusable software? I can't accept that we've peaked as a society library-wise.

[Monte Johnston @johnstonmonte]

@FOXSports I’ve gotta say, @RGIII is a great commentator!

[Vibrant Dad @vibrantdad]

Does any company make "dumb" refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, etc.?

I'm tired of these smart products breaking down every three years.

My grandparents had the same fridge for 50 years. It can be done.

[Danny Deraney @DannyDeraney]

Every year, I share this video of French caretakers who take sand from Omaha Beach in Normandy, and scrub them into the letters to give them the gold coloring.

They do this for all 9,386 US soldiers who died.

France also gave us this land as American soil. #MemorialDayWeekend

[Monte Johnston @johnstonmonte]

@lynaghk Is Weathertron dead?

[Nicholas A. Christakis @NAChristakis]

The free world is standing with Ukraine. But not my country. It’s so deeply shaming. And so against our own interests.

[Benjamin Domenech @bdomenech]

One thing to know about Peggy Noonan and the Challenger speech, whose anniversary is today, is that in the moment The White House thought the speech didn't land.

Reagan himself believed that he missed the mark. Noonan went to bed thinking that she had been called on in a moment of crisis and had failed.

The next morning, she came into the office to messages from all sorts of people saying differently. And then Reagan called, and asked how she knew that he knew that "High Flight" poem - and she hadn't, she had just hoped he'd recognize the reference. Turns out it was on a plaque at the school of his daughter, and he had read it regularly.

Then she said she was worried the speech hadn't worked, and Reagan's response was: "Well, Frank Sinatra called, and he said it landed. And he doesn't call after every speech."

The first memory of my life - the very first thing that I remember - is sitting in front of the old tube television in my Keds, watching the TV, and knowing that this man on the screen was the president, and that was the leader, and he was important, and he was telling us why these brave people died.

Her words. His speech.
https://t.co/4i02oamOU5

[Andrew Wimer @andrewwimer]

It's also a fact that many people who have their money seized stand to lose more by hiring an attorney to fight back. In 20 of 21 states where @IJ has data, the average forfeiture is less than the cost of hiring a lawyer. https://t.co/ZnpH6Pe6h9

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

I hope you’ll watch this.

We had a hearing today on the role of private equity in health care. I asked a nurse to explain how fundamentally different care is when a hospital’s purpose is to make the owner filthy rich vs. when a hospital’s purpose is to provide good care.

[Isaac Yonemoto is cooking @DNAutics]

@HowardL3 It'll suck going back to any other language

[Free Black Thought @FreeBlckThought]

"Coming back here is not easy. The racism when I played here...I wouldn't wish it on anybody. I would never want to do it again. I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and say, 'The nigger can't eat here.' I would go to a hotel and they would say, 'The nigger can't stay here.' [...] At the same time, had it not been for my white friends, had it not been for a white manager..., I would have never made it. ... I'd have got killed here, because I'd have beat someone’s ass and you'd have saw me in an oak tree somewhere."

—Reggie Jackson on the vicious racism of the late 1960s, playing Rickwood Field in Birmingham, AL, and on the white friends who helped get him through it:

[Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن @elicalebon]

I can’t believe I have to explain what’s happening here, but here goes. Elite students of Ivy League schools have glamorized oppression so much that they have now reached role play status to satisfy their fantasies. Here, the students have appropriated the suffering of Gazans and are cosplaying as living through humanitarian crisis. In their American make-believe story where Ivy League infrastructure sets the scene, the students play Gazans and the school administration plays Israel.

Israel (the school) is blocking their “basic humanitarian aid” in this play, and if they don’t receive it soon, they will “die of thirst and starvation” (appropriating exact experiences of Gazans). They also destroy upper class buildings and claim them as “liberated” while the students repeat chants in zombie-like chorus, playing the roll of “freedom fighters” destroying Israeli infrastructure and claiming them freed. If I’m alive in a world where people don’t see the levels of perversion in this, I give up.

You don’t see this in lower tier schools from kids of lower socio-economic standing because they aren’t plagued with the guilt of privilege that they’re seeking to launder through Middle East role plays of feigned suffering. This is as first world dystopia as it gets.

Meanwhile, these Ivy League students who can have much more than a glass of water and as much food as their stomachs can take are commanding the attention of the media and the entire American audience, while actual Gazans who need humanitarian aid are ignored. I still have to pinch myself that people don’t see this.

[Peer Richelsen @peer_rich]

next year we will have AI job interviewers meeting AI applicants

“this meeting could have been an API call”

[Thomas E. Ricks @tomricks1]

"The key...was conservatives who held power but feared they would lose it to the left unless they made alliances with the fascists.... That was the final essential pre-condition of successful fascism: decision-makers ready to share power with fascist challengers.” (Paxton)

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

The Fosun Foundation building in Shanghai has a dynamic facade consisting of 3 layers of bronze tubes flowing around

[📹Laurian Ghinițoiu]

[Physics In History @PhysInHistory]

Henri Poincaré on logic and intuition ✍️