I saw this earlier on twitter and I just had to share it with you. Apparently Jeffrey Goldberg was interviewing Nikole Hannah-Jones, and it got off to a fun start:
Jeffrey Goldberg: You and I have both had these conversations with my colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates about the arc of history and which way it bends. I’ve adopted the viewpoint of Barack Obama, that history is an arrow and the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice. And Ta-Nehisi says that there really is no moral arc, but if there were it would just bend toward chaos. Are you in the camp of people who say that long-term optimism is premature?
Nikole Hannah-Jones: I think it has not a lot of basis in historical fact. I would say the arc is actually a circle. It just perpetually turns back on itself.
Goldberg: But let’s use African-Americans as an example. Life has gotten better, no? Before there was before there was Brown v. Board of Education, there was no Brown v. Board of Education. Before there was a Civil Rights Act, there was no Civil Rights Act. We don’t live in a period of history free of lynchings, but the number of lynchings has gone down. There are more African-Americans in the middle class since Reconstruction. Life in America for African-Americans has gotten better. It’s been stutter stepped, but we ain’t in 1866 or 1873.
Hannah-Jones: I am not a slave. That’s true.
schrodingers_cat
Universe is a large place and we human beings are minuscule in comparison. I would say that Universe does not care about human beings at all.
Big R
Hello, 911? I’m a witness to a murder.
schrodingers_cat
John Cole@top
I have a modest proposition, that commenters rikyrah, lamh36 and ruemara be elevated to FPer status ( if they can do it and are willing). If black women are going to lead the resistance how about that happen here too?
ETA: I brought this up in a DougJ thread and he suggested I leave a comment in one of your posts.
Steeplejack
Fuck that autoplay GIF that can’t be turned off.
Adam L Silverman
And now you know why Jeffrey Goldberg went to Israel and volunteered for service there. As a prison guard in a facility for detaining Palestinians accused of terrorism/support for terrorists.
John Cole
@schrodingers_cat: All they have to do is ask.
dmbeaster
I have always hated these weirdo psuedo philosophical discussions about the alleged moral arc of the universe. I thought that was supposed to end after your freshman year in college.
dmbeaster
@Adam L Silverman: I am sure he would claim he was an arrow of justice insuring the proper moral arc for the universe.
schrodingers_cat
@John Cole: May be they are waiting for you to ask them, since it is your blog and all.
ETA: I haven’t asked them actually, I am just being a busybody, that and I find their comments insightful.
Adam L Silverman
@John Cole: I’d like a raise. Please.
Adam L Silverman
@dmbeaster: He’s something all right…
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: More kitchen goddess posts needed!
debbie
Somewhat similarly, the Guardian’s Gary Younge confronts Richard Spencer who insists African Americans have benefited from white supremacy.
Lots of assholes on this planet.
RSA
@John Cole:
That’s all it takes, in my very short experience. :-)
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve got one coming. Either late tonight or tomorrow. I made a salted caramel cheesecake. And I have pictures. So cheesecake pictures if you know what I mean. And I think you do!
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman: I steamed a bag of frozen broccoli florets tonight. Happy to share that recipe.
Aimai
@schrodingers_cat: ditto
Manyakitty
@Adam L Silverman: For which I give him credit. It’s certainly more than I can say.
Schlemazel
I buy that history is an arc and over TIME it bends towards justice. The problem is that the timeframe is huge. The current climate is not a good one it is true but I sincerely believe it will get better if we live through the current madness because while the assholes are large & in charge there are fewer of them now than ever before.
If I can give an analogy it is like the polar ice caps. We all see that over the last 100 years the icecaps have decreased. But the wingnuts will focus on a short period of time where the ice has increased for a couple of years and claim that proves climate change is a myth. In a hundred years people will look back & think the 20-teens sucked and were horrible but that it was just a blip in the course of human history. That is cold comfort to the people who are suffering through this shit but it is cause for hope & a refusal to give up
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: Will there be swirly caramel goodness in the cheesecake or a caramel topping?
James E. Powell
There is no arc and there is no morality unless and until people require it of themselves and others.
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: You just did.
efgoldman
@debbie:
My philosophical underpinning, simply stated
Shorter: Fuckem
Adam L Silverman
@Manyakitty: I think you misunderstood the snarky, sarcastic tone of my comment.
gene108
I don’t get. Whatever point they were trying to get to was shot out, went up-up-up over my head and is giving off a high pitched whistling now that it’s going back down to earth.
Wouldn’t be surprised, if the point they were trying to make just went back to where it started from.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Pick a number greater than zero and we’ll talk. ;-)
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat:
schrodingers_cat
Having T as the President is like having a denominator = zero in a function. The function ceases to exist.
We are not dealing with a rational function anymore.
Mike J
@Schlemazel:
I grew up in the south so you would not believe how many times I heard that the civil war didn’t need to be fought, that if people had just waited another 50-75-100 years slavery would have just faded away.
Of course I never heard that from a black person, but white people seemed to think having the country call their bullshit bullshit was more of a tragedy than people being owned so they could be legally raped and murdered.
efgoldman
@Steve in the ATL:
Recipe: Broccoli, water. Big fuckin’ deal.
Stir in two union organizers for piquance
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: #MathHumor
If I laughed at it, am I a nerd?
gene108
@Schlemazel:
It sucks in America, but China, India, and large parts of Africa are doing better than they have done in a long time.
Whether things are good or bad really depends on where you are.
There is no absolute good or bad period for everyone on the planet at the same time.
The Simp in the Suit
@schrodingers_cat: Wait, rikyrah, lamh36 and ruemara are black women? Who knew? All I ever see on this site is some pasty-faced, pudgy white dude mopping his kitchen floor.
It’s like my computer screen is a mirror.
Steve in the ATL
@efgoldman: I left out the secret ingredient, smart guy: creole seasoning.
Damn it—now you have the entire recipe!
different-church-lady
No white person should ever utter the words, “But let’s use African-Americans as an example.”
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
You were snarky in a blog comment? Does your mother know, young man?
Chip Daniels
@Mike J:
Uh huh, uh huh.
Lets try that out, shall we?
Lets confiscate the property of those making that argument, rape their daughters beat their sons and force them to work the rest of their lives for free.
In a century or so, lets ask their descendants to validate this theory.
schrodingers_cat
@The Simp in the Suit: Its the internet so who knows, but that’s how they identify themselves.
debbie
@efgoldman:
You’re probably sick of reading this over and over again, but it’s good to see you here.
Felonious Monk
@debbie:
Yes, indeed. And now they have their own Anthem.
different-church-lady
And can I just say that, as a sound engineer, I find the increasing amount of mic dropping in our society to be a disturbing trend?
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: She’s well aware of my genetic smartassedness.
Mnemosyne
@Schlemazel:
FWIW, was close to 60 years between the founding of the NAACP in 1909 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
Change moves slowly, until it suddenly accelerates.
Steve in the ATL
@debbie: you forgot to use sarcasm font!
Mnemosyne
I’m waiting to get my MRI. These machines make some very weird noises that I can hear from the waiting room. No biggie, though — I had an MRI before and it was not a problem.
jl
Jeffrey Goldberg is not a cave man living in a cave eating the crummy roots and berries that cave people had to eat. History is an arc upward and he should be thankful.
Steve in the ATL
@Felonious Monk: I first heard that song in the 1980’s in a dive bar in midtown Memphis where i was having a cocktail with Bill Eggleston.
satby
@Steve in the ATL: well, in Baud’s absence, we at least have you. Thank you.
Brachiator
@James E. Powell:
Yep. That’s pretty much it.
The reaction to Coates reminds me in a way of some of the reaction of some moderates and liberals to Malcolm X. Rather than take to heart Malcolm’s searing indictment of racist practices, they would try to deflect his charges with bland protestations about how things were slowly getting better, or might improve in the sweet by and by.
I guess one answer would be to do everything you can to improve things now, today, and let history take care of itself.
Steve in the ATL
@satby: I am here to serve.
different-church-lady
@Steve in the ATL: Jeeze, another cookbook?
trollhattan
@Steve in the ATL:
Bill’s your uncle, yes? (going from memory….always tenuous) How’s he doing?
#BigFan
Schlemazel
@Mike J:
Not sure I catch your point.
Even if slavery had ended on its own in 50 years that was no reason not to force it to end earlier. I don’t think the nation would have forced it if not for the slavers demanding it be put above all else. Just because I believe in 100 years people will look back at the shit hole we have allowed to develop with shame that is no reason that decent people should not work to bury the shit and the people who dug the hole. That the diggers have been so successful and the shit so deep just means we need to work harder/
Alain the site fixer
@schrodingers_cat: I’ll see what I can do/encourage. Long-due
CaseyL
“The moral arc” comment came at a time when liberalism was ascendant – not everywhere, not uniformly, but there were major, huge events where the forces of light prevailed. The Allies winning WWII; the huge expansion of the federal government (bringing the TVA, GI Bill, Soc Sec, Medicare); the huge expansion of colleges and universities all over the country; the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts… it was easy to see history as vindicating the idea that things always get better. Because things were getting better. It was hard to believe the arc of history could possibly reverse itself.
But we’ve seen exactly that happen over the past 40 years, as we wind up having to fight the same battles over and over again. The shitshow we’re in now – not just the US; there’s Brexit, the collapse of the Arab World into hideous cruelty and civil war, fascism ascendant in Eastern Europe – makes me wonder if the 1940s-1970s were themselves the aberration.
I will never again have to wonder how Dark Ages happen; never again wonder how a Nazi Germany could happen. Because I’m seeing it happen right now, before my very eyes. The sheer ugliness humanity is capable of is like a virus that never dies but only lies dormant for a couple of generations at a time.
I’d like to think that the collective consciousness of all the sapient life on this planet can coalesce into some sort of moral awareness, which bends towards justice.
But I no longer believe it as faithfully as I used to.
Steve in the ATL
@trollhattan: good memory. He is pretty old now, but still sharp, and enjoying quite a bit of popularity these days. He also just released his first album!
Steve in the ATL
@Mike J: unrelated: did you ever go to the Lamplighter Lounge on Madison, near Zinny’s? There are dive bars and there are dive bars.
Viva BrisVegas
@dmbeaster:
If the arc of the universe bends towards justice, why did it take so much blood, sweat and tears to get what little justice exists today?
The arc of the universe is bent by those who lean on it. Many of whom died while doing so.
Adam L Silverman
@CaseyL: As I’ve written here repeatedly: there has never been a period of progress/improvement in the US that has not been met with an immediate pushback. And when that’s failed, the pushback is turned into a long term, simmering insurgency to achieve the pushback over an extended period of time.
Felonious Monk
@Steve in the ATL:
Cocktail? Does one actually go into a dive bar and ask for a Manhattan or a Gin Fizz or a Rob Roy or a Gimlet? In Memphis? :-)
Schlemazel
That was pretty much my point. A) don’t give up B) don’t give in C) do whatever you can to make things better NOW! Even if we don’t win today the work will make make a difference.
This. Nicely said!
Steve in the ATL
@Felonious Monk: fine, I admit it: we were drinking corn squeezins
Elie
@James E. Powell:
One must have joy in what one upholds. Without it, there is no energy for continued struggle. You in the end, have to — MUST believe to have ANY chance of it happening and ongoing energy to sustain it.
The blood of martyrs and of those who struggle forward can only be justified through singing and joyous affirmation of what we believe and are willing to die for… happy warriors or nothing can happen.
No one charges the hill from cynicism and defeatism. It is just not possible. Find the music or go into your home and pull the shudders.
trollhattan
@Steve in the ATL:
Wow, had no idea. Tell him he just snagged a key sale.
I have one WE collectible–a first edition “Big Star” LP. It will definitely put my kid through Stanford. :-)
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne:
Rhythmic chuffing or chirping sound, about once a second or so? That’s the cooling system for the big magnet. Loud buzzing or crackling noises at odd intervals are the scan coils used during the imaging.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@schrodingers_cat: This is correct.
Felonious Monk
@Steve in the ATL:
Are you talking about this Bill Eggleston?
Steeplejack
@Steve in the ATL:
If you’re having “cocktails” it’s not a dive bar. In a dive bar you have beer or “drinks,” with the name of the liquor clearly stated in the name of the drink, e.g., gin and tonic, rum and Coke, etc.
Fair Economist
I’m still with MLK. There has been some backsliding in some respects, like income inequality, oligopoly, and democracy on a world scale, but overall I think things are improving. War for conquest has become extremely rare; the percentage at starvation poverty is at all-time lows; and I can get married. Plus, right now we seem to be getting a sea change in the acceptability of sexual harassment.
Villago Delenda Est
The universe would be a much more pleasant place when Jeffrey Goldberg is removed from it.
Lyrebird
@schrodingers_cat:
Great suggestion! I think Rikyrah has her own blog, but while Elon James was writing here I think it was a co-hosting arrangement or something.
Anyone know hovercraft IRL and/or know if she’s doing fine even while not sharing as much of her humor here?
magurakurin
@CaseyL:
like shingles. fuck. humanity has shingles. explains a lot.
your point is an interesting one, in all seriousness.
Lapassionara
@Steve in the ATL: I knew Bill Eggleston when I lived in Memphis in the 60’s. This was before he moved to color photography. When he decided to use color, he went to Las Vegas and took photographs of plastic flowers. Amazing,
CaseyL
@Adam L Silverman: I think there’s more to it than that. What enables a successful long-term insurgency? Are the current era’s drivers-of-darkness (fractionalization of information leading to epistemic closure, enormous gaps between rich and poor and the end of socio-economic mobility, vague awareness of a coming ecology of scarcity) the results of the insurgency or its causes? Do things just start to fall apart synchronistically when they reach a certain threshold, and the barbarians come out?
Is there a way, IOW, to shorten the coming Dark Age?
Steve in the ATL
@trollhattan: he and Alex Chilton were good friends. If you look through the window behind Bill in that New Yorker photo, you can almost see Andy Hummel’s parents’ house (“that Hummel boy, throwing his education away!” as he was known in the neighborhood)(which was also my neighborhood and is still Mom’s, who, as you no doubt recall, is Bill’s sister).
BTW the Bösendorfer piano he is playing there cost over $80k and took several years to build. I drop that fact whenever my wife complains about my guitars.
Lapassionara
@Steve in the ATL: Alex Chilton’s parents had a big garage behind their house where Bill Eggleston had his darkroom. Back when photographers had dark rooms.
Steve in the ATL
@Felonious Monk: the very same!
@Steeplejack: pedantry is always welcome here!
Adam L Silverman
@CaseyL:
Yes, stock up on rechargeable flash lights and lanterns!
What I mean here by insurgency is, for example, the generations long attempt to reverse the New Deal. The pushback was swift and strong and failed because FDR was alive. And because of WW II. But it wasn’t defeated. Instead it transformed itself into a low intensity, low level fight over 70 decades. Growing when possible, so that it now encompasses almost all of American conservatives and Republicans. And can remanifest itself as a full blown revolution.
Regnad Kcin
@Steve in the ATL: hope you had the good fortune to make it to Harry’s On Teur while that was still a thing
CaseyL
@magurakurin: Thanks! Some years back, my friends and I talked a lot about metaviruses (a sort of contagious mental illness affecting entire populations) – a scifi concept we take, or took, seriously. Your comment about shingles is quite apt, actually! Metavirus as a species-wide mental shingles.
Rp
I think this is incredibly unfair to Goldberg. Her response is clever, but Goldberg is right that in MOST respects the world and our society are much better places to live than they were 100 years ago. That’s not an argument for relaxing; in fact, it’s the exact opposite. Liberals have made enormous progress over the years, so we need to keep pushing. Negativity doesn’t accomplish much.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeah, mine mostly came from my late mom, too. My dad was well-read and a nice guy, but a born straight man.
Lapassionara
@Adam L Silverman: Yes! This is the culmination of a long range plan to undo the New Deal. Serously meant and on the verge of fruition.
Steve in the ATL
@Lapassionara: if you know Bill, then you know we weren’t actually drinking corn squeezins.
When he and Rosa got married, almost 60 years ago, the bought an apartment in midtown overlooking Overton Park, where that picture was taken. He kept it even after they started buying houses, and he has lived there permanently since she died a few years ago.
You must have been there before the house on Central near the University Club, where he had a darkroom and took many of his well known photos, such as that freezer full of stuff, the green bathroom, and the shoes under the bed.
Ah, so many stories…that I’m sure as hell not posting on the internet!
Felanius Kootea
@Lyrebird: I’ve been wondering about Hovercraft too. I miss her. Hope she’s doing okay.
CaseyL
@Adam L Silverman: Ah, but why would it persist over generations? There was a time when “even Republicans” supported SocSec and Medicare, as there was a time there were moderate-to-liberal Republicans. The oligarchs weren’t, aren’t, constant across generations: there are no more Guggenheims or John Fords. Who keeps that fire smoldering across generations, and causes it to spread?
Steve in the ATL
@Regnad Kcin: less than a mile from my house!
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I inherited mine from my Dad. So Mom has now caught two generations of it.
Lapassionara
@Steve in the ATL: Yes. When I last lived in Memphis, they had two grand pianos in their living room. He could play anything by ear. Just remarkable.
Jack the Second
@Mike J:
They also can’t seem to remember that it was the g-d South that seceded and started the shooting portion of the Civil War because they were afraid the newly elected, not yet seated President might take some action to eventually restrict slavery, and they were so pants-shittingly terrified of the possibility they couldn’t help but have a Civil War.
Fuckers, then and now.
Adam L Silverman
@CaseyL: There was originally a minority of conservatives, mostly Republicans, but some conservative Democrats before the parties reshuffled themselves after the Civil Rights era, that always opposed the New Deal. They were unable to stop it. They were unable to immediately push it back. So they began the long, slow work over 70 years to eat away at it. To peck it to death. And to convince other conservatives and coopt other Republicans into opposing it as well. Same group that wants the Civil Rights acts and the Great Society reforms overthrown. And in the 19th century they were opposed to the Civil War Amendments. As for who keeps it alive? Ideologues. And it is passed down. The Kochs didn’t learn their opposition out of the blue, they learned it from their Dad who was a Bircher.
Felanius Kootea
@schrodingers_cat: That would be wonderful. Hopefully they don’t get the vitriol that Angry Black Lady did (I remember John talking about the insane comments directed at her that he deleted/didn’t make it past the filter).
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Word on the street: Mueller is about to issue indictments tomorrow. Signs point to someone high in the food chain, like Don jr or Jared.
debbie
Whare are the instructions for using the sarcasm font?
Repatriated
@Jack the Second:
For some of them, it’s not a matter of “can’t remember”, it’s that they were lied to about it.
They remember what they were taught, not what actually happened.
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman: and packing the courts with right wing nut jobs has been a key element of their nefarious plot
Adam L Silverman
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Some RUMINT on social media. We shall see what we shall see.
Steve in the ATL
@Repatriated: “war of northern aggression”
Mike in NC
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: If so, I will really enjoy my Friday bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon.
satby
@Felanius Kootea: weren’t you around during the Wilmer wars? The same misogynist trolls will resurface, with their thinly veiled racism publicly, and probably outright vile stuff sent privately.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Adam, Lindsey Graham says 70% chance Trump launches massive strike on NK if there’s another missle test.
rikyrah
@Mike J:
My favorite part of A Letter from Birmingham Jail is when MLK talks to those who say that he is moving “too fast”, then he details how long the Negro has been waiting.
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: Pshaw. Nothing but the finest legal minds!
Repatriated
@Steve in the ATL: What a quaint way to describe “Treason in defense of Slavery”…. must be some regional dialect thing.
Amaranthine RBG
God, this month’s Atlantic was insufferable. Long article by some college professor asking why people bother to go to college. They just forget everything anyway. Yikes.
satby
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: a second Hanukkah miracle this week? Pray it’s so!
Felanius Kootea
@satby: Yes I was. I guess developing elephant hide is part of being a front pager. I’ve been hanging out at this blog too long – I remember stormy and Darrell back when John Cole was still a Republican. They were right wingers but didn’t seem positively evil. Something has changed over the years (I like to blame Fox News for radicalizing conservatives with incessant propaganda but I think there’s more to it than that).
Omnes Omnibus
@Felanius Kootea: It wouldn’t. It lurks below here and if any of those commenters choose to ask for FP rights and get them, the undercurrent of white racism will bubble up.
satby
@Adam L Silverman: the hubris of that man to actually accept a nomination for something that he is completely unqualified for. Appalling.
Edited, Kindle didn’t think hubris was a word.
Adam L Silverman
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: I saw that he said 1 in 3 chance. Regardless, at this point, who knows.
Davebo
@Adam L Silverman:
Saw that and did a double take when I realized it was a Republican asking the questions.
Honestly, I know 3 federal judges who I’d never ask advice on say, buying a car or such things. They aren’t the sharpest bowling balls on the rack when it comes to life but they know the law!
Adam L Silverman
@Felanius Kootea: @satby: @Omnes Omnibus: It would not be tolerated.
Adam L Silverman
@satby: It is what it is.
Adam L Silverman
@Davebo: This is partially what happens when you allow a non attorney to chair the Judiciary Committee. The rest is simple tribalism.
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman: honestly, attorneys should be in charge of everything, not just the judicial committee. I can’t think of any problems with that.
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: Sure, sure…
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Adam L Silverman
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: I think your comment is missing a comment. Or my secret comment decoder is broken.
Amaranthine RBG
It’s the new no pie filter.
joel hanes
@CaseyL:
there are no more Guggenheims or John Fords
But there are duPonts. And the Kochs learned from their father. And the Coors people learned from their parents and grandparents. And a great many folks caught the virus from Ronald Reagan. And new would-be autocrats arise in each generation of “self-made men” : in the midwest, the newish fortunes from e.g. Johnsonville sausages and Menard’s home-improvement and Mills Fleet Farm have produced a crop of rich folks adamantly opposed to taxation and redistribution, and committed to the idea that there’s no such thing as the common good.
As long as ordinary Americans continue to worship wealth, they will continue to contract this sickness from the wealthy.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Adam L Silverman: invisible ink ?
efgoldman
@CaseyL:
When I was young, the GPO/Dem divide was more rural/urban, farm/city, Northern liberal (GOP) vs Southern conservative (Dem). But neither party was run by the end-of-the spectrum crazies. Both were centrist and understood that legislation meant compromise and that’s why they were elected.There was no significant burn it down caucus. The RWNJs fixed that thru primaries.
joel hanes
@debbie:
instructions for using the sarcasm font
HTML way
<code> your stuff goes here </code>
Steve in the ATL
@joel hanes:
real helpful, thanks
Hey, it works!
joel hanes
@Steve in the ATL:
it works
Machines should work.
People should think.
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes:
Mnemosyne
@dmsilev:
I could feel the magnetic waves on my knee at several points. It was a weird sensation. And i jumped when the damn machine made the same sound as the emergency broadcast system.
I did not like that they only gave me earplugs, not headphones with music, and I left a comment card saying so. I know I still would have heard the noises, but music would have made me less anxious.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Maybe Disney could buy them too and then they’d have to give you headphones that played music from Disney owned media.
Steve in the ATL
@Mnemosyne: I would rather hear shrill blasts like emergency broadcast signals than “simply having a wonderful Christmastime” at the Americana mall
Cacti
@rikyrah:
Yep.
The greatest obstacle to that moral arc bending isn’t enemies, but wishy washy “friends”. Those who support your cause in principle, but don’t want their lives inconvenienced in bringing it about.
joel hanes
@Adam L Silverman:
Ah, you know your Orange Catholic Bible. Very good.
But are you familiar with The Hipcrime Vocabulary ?
joel hanes
@Adam L Silverman:
Actually, I believe the maxim I cited is due to IBM’s Watson senior, who wanted all his technical people to understand that drudgery was not included in their job description; it was their job to make the damned computers do the drudgery, so that they would be free to think, creatively, of ways to make machines more capable. I think that maxim is the origin of the “Think” walnut plaques that famously adorned IBM desks well into the 1970s.
Ladyraxterinok
@Mnemosyne: Seneca Falls (early 1860s?), constitutional amendment giving women right to vote – 1920
Joe Miller
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Who is saying this?
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes: I am not. Sorry.
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes: Tracking.
joel hanes
@Adam L Silverman:
Easy hits obscured by a blog named after the meme.
This is what you want :
https://aowp.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/the-hipcrime-vocab/
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes: Thanks. I think…
joel hanes
@Adam L Silverman:
If you haven’t read Stand On Zanzibar, I envy you, because you still get to read it for the first time. The Sheep Look Up is almost as good.
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes: When I get through the current stack, which since its in iBooks or Kindle isn’t really a stack, I’ll give them a looksee.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
They sometimes play “it’s a small world” as our hold music at work. Sweet dreams! ?
misterpuff
@joel hanes: It always blows my mind that we are 17 years past the date of SOZ setting, but the world looks the same. Brunner was one hell of an extrapolist and a hell of a writer.
joel hanes
@misterpuff:
17 years past the date
Yah, and 49 years since Brunner wrote Stand On Zanzibar
It’s worn well, I think, compared to much other SF from those years.
Spider-Dan
I don’t want to wallow in achievement, but it really is true: the moral arc bends towards justice. You can take basically any 10-year period and things are better later than they were earlier.
Trump is terrible, but I’d rather live in 2017 than 2007, and I’d rather live in 2007 than 1997, and I’d rather live in 1997 than 1987, wash rinse repeat until at least 1847 or so. And I’m not talking about YouTube and PlayStations. There are significant, tangible gains made.
David Evans
@schrodingers_cat: But just before it ceases to exist, it becomes huge. Bigly huge, So huge you’ll get tired of all the huge.
debbie
@joel hanes:
Is this it?
It is! Thanks!
BretH
I’m guessing most folks commenting here didn’t actually listen to or read the entire interview. It’s definitely worth the 10 minutes or so it will take.
grubert
@schrodingers_cat:
well, he *is* a degenerate.
Aardvark Cheeselog
@Chip Daniels: Did you read the whole comment?
Aardvark Cheeselog
@CaseyL:
> Is there a way, IOW, to shorten the coming Dark Age?
An Encyclopedia Foundation!
Gex
Moral arc doesn’t just randomly bend on its own. This dude may not realize it but black people, brown people, women, and LGBT people have worked hard and died to bend that curve. And after we do all that work, they use the results to try to convince us we shouldn’t be highlighting issues and trying to advance the ball up the field.
It is really frustrating to have them use the results of our efforts to try to prove to us our efforts aren’t needed.
Uncle Cosmo
@schrodingers_cat: I think of it more like a zero determinant in a correlation matrix – you try to invert it to get some meaningful eigenvalues & everything blows to hell & gone & you have No. Fucking. Clue.