Category: censored opinions
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Comments on Privilege
The next time you post Internet comments on privilage or post to accuse someone of making their own Internet comment or post from out of their own privilege, just remember: 4 Billion people have zero Internet access. Privilege, like all barriers to virtue, comes in degrees. Deal with the big hurdles first.
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Trump Towers Kill Trump Windmill Idiocy : 100x More Birds Than Windmills
Again with the Trump windmill idiocy. Donald Trump recently said: “Alternative energy is so expensive. And honestly, it’s not working so good. The wind power kills all your birds. All your birds, killed. You know, the environmentalists never talk about that.” This is hilarious. So hilarious that shortly after I meditated on the numbers behind all…
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A Defense of Pokémon Go
Three multi-millionaires. A father of four. A PhD in agricultural science. An Oscar winner. A crowd of twelve-year-olds outside a custard joint in St. Louis. A retiree. A CTO. A teen who hadn’t seen the sun in months. Professional artists — a filmmaker, a novelist, a painter, a stylist, a musician. All of these…
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War for Your Mind: Information in 2016
Today’s Guest Post comes from Cassie Phillips of Culture Coverage: There’s a war for your mind. While this statement can be cast aside as hyperbolic fearmongering, there is no denial that media, art, words and publishing have had a massive impact in molding our social mindset throughout history. From the playwrights of ancient Greece to our modern…
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The Flaw in Turing’s Test
In perhaps the finest single cinematic scene last year, we watched “Nathan” (Oscar Isaac) dance an eerie groove alongside one of his female robots “Kyoko” (Sonoya Mizuno) who mirrored him twerk for twerk. Nathan incarnates some dark fictional amalgamation of Larry Page and Travis Kalanick — a billionare isolated by his fame, his fortune, and his…
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Does Talent Exist?
No. Or rather the existence of talent is so widespread and common that its potency clocks in at around the near-impotent range. Here’s the thing: My buddy used to work for Community Support Services, which helps mentally handicapped people live bright and vibrant lives. His main client was Jerry. Jerry still ranks in the…
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The Hipster Fallacies
INTERVIEWER What about the letters to your fiancée was Pynchonian? JOHNATHAN FRANZEN The tangly sentences, the overfullness of them, and a kind of dirty explicitness. A hipster jadedness. “Seen it all, done it all, don’t mean shit.” Like the dark side of R. Crumb. — from his “Art of Fiction” interview in The Paris Review…
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On Henry Ford, Jews, and Muslims
Henry Ford was the most anti-semitic innovator in American history. So he hired hundreds of thousands of Arabic Muslims to work his Detroit automotive factories. Arab Muslims who moved to Dearborn, just outside of Detroit. Dearborn Muslims who just voted overwhelmingly for a guy who may become the first Jewish President. …
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Two Americas :: Thoughts on the Foster-to-Homeless Pipeline, the American Worship of Comfort, and Finding Your Calcutta
Now and again you’ll come across a strange night where you learn about yourself and, if you take action, those nights change your life’s entire trajectory . Tonight was one of those nights for me and I think I’ve placed a stake in the ground in a way that ten years from now will illuminate something of a…
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Will My Alma Mater Save 9 Million Dollars ?
Tis the season for phonathons — political, religious, and otherwise. Got a call from my alma mater and I was unfortunately unable to give to their phone-a-thon cause this year, but I figure I can give something better. Something that has me REALLY excited, hopeful, and proud: together, we could generate over $ 9 million in savings…
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Dear Future Lance: The Project is Ash — and that’s what makes it beautiful
The best things I ever accomplish always immediately follow me: getting to my wits end, realizing that I am nothing, I am finite, I will die — meditating even on the circumstances that will attend my death and that I will only die in one of the many billions of ways that exist for man…
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Elon Musk’s Submarine Car: Why Build It?
In the authorized biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Ashlee Vance highlights Elon’s purchase of the submarine car: Elon Musk paid $1 Million for the Lotus Espirit that Roger Moore drove underwater in The Spy Who Loved Me and wantes to prove that such a vehicle can be done. “Maybe we’ll make…