Chris Gethard Confronts His Internet Tormentor
Gethard is good at addressing insults that he gets on the internet. It’s a pretty fascinating subject.
“There is something vaguely dystopian about oppressed peoples in Syria or Iran seeking dignity and liberation inside a corporate sovereign that is, for its part, creating great wealth for its founders and asserting control over its users.”
—
Why I’m Leaving Facebook - The New Yorker
This article just says the same old trite things, but this is a cool thought. It’s always great news when sci-fi tropes become applicable on a whole new level.
[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
“I studied a lot in school. I studied hard in high school and at Harvard and in law school. My IQ doesn’t break the bank, and I wanted to do this so I studied all the time.”
I’m rewatching episodes from Seasons 1-4 to cleanse my palate of what I’ve seen of Season 5. I’m glad I decided to do this because I missed this quote the first time around.
Josh Lyman sums up what makes the characters on this show so appealing to me. I can picture myself as any one of them. Even if I don’t completely relate to their experiences (as I obviously can with Josh’s), I can accept the premise of who they are. This is crucial because who they are informs their actions and the decisions they make.
This is what a good television show has to do if it wants to keep an audience’s attention for years. It’s what The West Wing fails to do in Season 5.
The West Wing Season 5
This is the first season of this show without Aaron Sorkin.
This is like watching impostors replacing the characters I’ve grown to love over the past four seasons.
I’m playing a drinking game. One shot for each heavy-handed dramatic moment that would not have happened if Sorkin were still running the show.
EDIT: It’s just occurred to me that I’ll probably die.
“We grew up with the Internet and on the Internet. This is what makes us different; this is what makes the crucial, although surprising from your point of view, difference: we do not ‘surf’ and the internet to us is not a ‘place’ or ‘virtual space’. The Internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the Internet, we live on the Internet and along it. If we were to tell our bildnungsroman to you, the analog, we could say there was a natural Internet aspect to every single experience that has shaped us. We made friends and enemies online, we prepared cribs for tests online, we planned parties and studying sessions online, we fell in love and broke up online. The Web to us is not a technology which we had to learn and which we managed to get a grip of. The Web is a process, happening continuously and continuously transforming before our eyes; with us and through us. Technologies appear and then dissolve in the peripheries, websites are built, they bloom and then pass away, but the Web continues, because we are the Web; we, communicating with one another in a way that comes naturally to us, more intense and more efficient than ever before in the history of mankind.”
— Piotr Czerski (via azspot)
(via theatlantic)
[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
“These are important thinkers, and understanding them can be very useful and it’s not ever going to happen at a four-hour seminar.”
“
Walter White is a man who is one of the world’s greatest liars. He is a man who lies to his family, lies to his friends, lies to the world about who he truly is. But what I think makes him a standout liar is that first and foremost he is lying to himself. He still sees himself as a good family man who does things for very pragmatic, practical reasons. He doesn’t examine himself too closely; he doesn’t see the truth of his reality. And Gus Fring is someone who does know who he is and where he fits into the universe. He does accept that he is, in fact, a bad guy. Walter White doesn’t see himself as a bad guy.
If you start with that premise, you come to realize that Walt wants to be Gus Fring, even though he probably won’t admit it. He chafes at having to work for someone like Gus who is as smart, or probably smarter, than he is. That chafes him, the idea that he’s second best in any way, shape, or form.
”
Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 1 Notes Essay
We might describe our world as having retail sanity, but wholesale madness. Details are well understood; the big picture remains unclear. A fundamental challenge—in business as in life—is to integrate the micro and macro such that all things make sense.
Humanities majors may well learn a great deal about the world. But they don’t really learn career skills through their studies. Engineering majors, conversely, learn in great technical detail. But they might not learn why, how, or where they should apply their skills in the workforce. The best students, workers, and thinkers will integrate these questions into a cohesive narrative.
