austene3

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Uber Driver: *Calls* I'm at the corner of X and Y

Me: Great! So are we - where are you exactly?

UD: I'm at the corner

Me: Yep got it but where precisely are you - which corner

UD: I'm on X street

Me: OK - is that North or South of the intersection?

UD: I don't know North and South

Me: OK - North is closer to the harbour, South is closer to Victoria

UD: I'm closer to Central

ME: That's South - which side of the road are you on?

UD: The left side

Me: ...

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Get money, if you will. It is useful. But, above all, get books.  For the older you grow, the more you will understand that in them is the richest satisfaction in life.

Source

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Effective Altruism = Culture (According to dead English Poet)

Quote from poet Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), in an essay about culture as the study of and search for perfection, that I think gels nicely w/ Effective Altruism:

"Whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be over-hasty in determining what reason and the will of God say, because its turn is for action rather than thinking, and it wants to be beginning to act; and whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions, which proceed from its own state of development and share in all the imperfections and immaturities of this, for a basis of action; what distinguishes culture is that it is possessed by the scientific passion as well as by the passion of doing good; that it demands worthy notions of reason and the will of God, and does not readily suffer its own crude conceptions to substitute themselves for them. And knowing that no action or institution can be salutary and stable which is not based on reason and the will of God, it is not so bent on acting and instituting, even with the great aim of diminishing human error and misery ever before its thoughts, but that it can remember that acting and instituting are of little use, unless we know how and what we ought to act and to institute."

-Matthew Arnold in ’Sweetness and Light’

In other words (1) long sentences used to be cool and (2) EA = 'culture'

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Let those who have, keep, let those who have not, strive to attain, a high standard of cultivation and scholarship. Yet let us remember that these stand second to certain other things. There is a need of a sound body, and even more of a sound mind. But above mind and above body stands character - the sum of those qualities which we mean when we speak of a man's force and courage, of his good faith and sense of honor.

Theodore Roosevelt “Citizenship in a Republic”

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why doesnt this have a million views

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Every dabbler thinks his opinion is as good as another's. Any man who has eyes and ears shall be judge... promulgating with the most unbounded assurance the crudest opinions... It is rather the person who has studied the subject systematically that is regarded as disqualified. He is a theorist: and the word which expresses the highest and noblest effort of human intelligence is turned into a bye-word of derision.

John Stuart Mill (The Spirit of the Age, 1831)

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To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries.

Virginia Woolf (How Should One Read a Book?)

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This whole channel is incredible. Worth reviving my account (however briefly)

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Read often, read broadly, don’t worry too much about what you enjoy reading beyond that you enjoy it, and DEFINITELY don’t worry too much about what other people read.

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THE WAY IT WAS MEANT TO BE SEEN.

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I always love when questionable science supports my bad habits.

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Whatever, then, the State Socialists may claim or disclaim, their system, if adopted, is doomed to end in a State religion, to the expense of which all must contribute and at the altar of which all must kneel; a State school of medicine, by whose practitioners the sick must invariably be treated; a State system of hygiene, prescribing what all must and must not eat, drink, wear, and do; a State code of morals, which will not content itself with punishing crime, but will prohibit what the majority decide to be vice; a State system of instruction, which will do away with all private schools, academies, and colleges; a State nursery, in which all children must be brought up in common at the public expense; and, finally, a State family, with an attempt at stirpiculture, or scientific breeding, in which no man and woman will be allowed to have children if the State prohibits them and no man and woman can refuse to have children if the State orders them. Thus will Authority achieve its acme and Monopoly be carried to its highest power.

Benjamin Tucker (SSA.15)

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This is like a glimpse into my own future.

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I wonder if the English language intro sounds as hilarious to the Chinese?

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Kittens are neither solid nor liquid.

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This explains so much about feline behaviour. (Source)