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An academic makes a dark joke about the end of humanity from the audience of a lecture and Johnathan Lear brilliantly dissects it and turns it into an challenge for us to continue to strive for excellence as humans regardless of what we face.

At least that's what I got out of it.

No surprise, Yuval Noah Hurari does an excellent job of summarizing this year of Covid pandemic in this article.

So many good takeaways here, but one that stands out for me wherein he perfectly summarizes a very complex issue:

"If it is not too complicated to start monitoring what you do — it is not too complicated to start monitoring what the government does."

“She opened the portal. ‘Are we all just going to keep doing this till we die?’ everyone was asking.“

This piece is fucking glorious. Read this piece.

As an American ex-pat I can 100% relate to this. I know now that it was foolish, but for many of my younger years I never voted because as far as I was concerned it was a bunch of old guys who couldn’t relate to me or any issues I cared about.

I can add nothing to this. It’s perfect just as it is.

Relevant even more so now than when Cal wrote it in 2019.

I upvote this +1 or whatever, regardless of who wrote it. 🙂

“For Stebbing, freeing one’s own mind is, uniquely, one’s own personal responsibility, and is, she explains, hindered by ignorance. People might appear to be free, because they live in a liberal democracy, but this apparent freedom can be illusory. Genuine freedom consists in individuals knowing how to think freely.”

Good stuff. Some great mojo here about writing and connecting with family. Had no idea David Duchovny wrote, much less, this well.

Note to self: have GOT to read more Knausgaard.

I haven't read any Knausgaard, but Toril Moi's critique of it strikes a chord with me - particularly as it relates his work to a quest for presence, and 'attention'. A question of one's existence and an attempt to record or validate it. Might have to add 'My Struggle' to the 'to read' list, though it seems like a behemoth.

"Nothing is more ordinary than existence—than being there; nothing is easier to miss. This is the heart of the project of 'My Struggle': all these thousands of pages are attempts to pay attention. They arise from the realization of how easy it is to miss the adventure of one’s own existence, to live one’s life without noticing, without paying attention to that one thing: that I was there. But they also arise from the realization that we will inevitably miss much of that adventure, that our only hope is to recreate the moments of existence from memory."

I, too, need to read more poetry.