“ … ”

Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.

https://random.jamesbridle.com

The signals say: A good answer is worth reinventing from scratch, again and again. They say: The air is a mix we must keep making. They say: There is as much below ground as above. They tell her: do not hope or despair or predict or be caught surprised. Never capitulate, but divide, multiply, transform, conjoin, do and endure as you have all the long day of life. There are seeds that need fire. Seeds that need freezing. Seeds that need to be swallowed, etched in digestive acid and expelled as waste. Seeds that must be smashed open before they’ll germinate. A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still.

richard powers, the overstory

Be softer with you. You are a breathing thing. A memory to someone. A home to a life.

nayyirah waved

There are things known, and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors.

Jim Morrison

In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the supercomputer Deep Thought is built by a race of hyper-intelligent alien beings to determine the answer to “life, the universe, and everything.” Deep Thought determines that the answer is, somewhat anticlimactically, ’42’. It sounds like a joke, but is there more to this answer? Douglas Adams was an unabashed computer nerd and knew a heck of a lot about programming language and coding. In programming, an asterisk is commonly used to translate as ‘whatever you want it to be.’ In ASCll language, the most basic computer software, ’42’ is the designation for an asterisk. A computer, Deep Thought, was asked what the true meaning of life was. It answered as a computer would. 42 = ‘anything you want it to be.’ Genius.

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

krishnamurti

Let us sprawl over the planet like snow angels sheltering black fields, turkey vultures lifting on the thermals. When no one asks for our opinion, surveying our thin skin, white hair, our age, let our irrelevance make us risky. Let us be rowdy with reason or without.

susan bangs munro

There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember, carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after, when we will have to return to normal lives. Will there be any changes then? I don’t want you to remember these days, you know, like, ‘Oh, we were young and it was beautiful.’ Remember that our basic message is ‘We are allowed to think about alternatives.’ If the taboo is broken, we do not live in the best possible world. But there is a long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want?

 SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK AT OCCUPY WALL STREET

Sometimes the year looks back and lets out a scream, looks back, then passes out appalled.

Miklós Radnóti