This book… where she gleefully dismantles the artisanal artfully-tattooed precious twee yuppiness of it all as the world collapses makes the $13 faithfully recreated Bangkok street-food lunch with $4 iced tea all the more surreal.
A philosopher’s 350-year-old trick to get people to change their minds is now backed up by psychologists
First,l tell them how they’re right (just not from *all* sides)
Work in the World of Tomorrow: AI to Replace 7% of Jobs by 2025
And the push for higher minimum wage will only accelerate this, and apart from a major catastrophe/war/collapse this cannot be stopped.
Minimum guaranteed income is the only thing that will prevent massive upheaval, I cannot think of anything else.
Maybe my experiences of my fellows have been reduced to so base a level that the smallest kindness overwhelms me…Holocausts do not amaze me. Rapes and child slavery do not amaze me….I am amazed when I drop a glove in the street and a teenager runs two blocks to return it. I am amazed when a checkout girl flashes me a wide smile with my change, though my own face had been a mask of expedience. Lost wallets posted to their owners, strangers who furnish meticulous directions, neighbors who water each other’s houseplants—these things amaze me.
Lionel Shriver- We Need to Talk About Kevin (via junesquibb)
The whole controversy about Lionel Shriver and nature of censorship (her keynote speech was promptly removed from Brisbane festival website) is bothering me to no end.
We really are moving to the world of Fahrenheit 451 and my son will be growing up in it. I am scared to think what the literature in the world defined by her detractors would look like.
More so, rather than having a healthy discussion, she is now going to be defended by the right wing set who she has little in common with, and everyone that she does is going to be too scared – she is now toxic to them. That speech removal was only the beginning. Such is the intellectual climate of the world we live in. There is only black and white and no shades of gray.
It’s far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.
Lionel Shriver (via quotemadness)
A lot of people get so hung up on what they can’t have that they don’t think for a second about whether they really want it.
Lionel Shriver, Checker and the Derailleurs (via larmoyante)
I’m less concerned that you love my characters than that you recognise them. Human beings have rough edges. Authors who write exclusively about ethical, admirable, likeable characters are not writing about real people.
Excellent piece by Lionel Shriver in defense of unlikable characters.
(via rebeccaschinsky)
Reading time is precious. Don’t waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously turn you off the activity altogether.
How Not to Read by Lionel Shriver (via treesofreverie)
Saw an ex coworker on the subway this morning. I used to talk to her every day, for months, but now I couldn’t remember her name, apart from the fact that she was Singaporean. And she didn’t recognize me – must be the beard or whatever expression I now have now that my commute is so long and I don’t bike anymore.
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tinfoilparachute 