redbird | Entries tagged with quote

And now for something completely different: more comments reposted from elsewhere (including but not only other Dreamwidth journals)

( an interestingly phrased question, old technology I use , 'the twentieth century,' being out as queer and poly, non-gendered relationship term to include 'aunt' and 'uncle, white women and white privilege' )

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"those little magic shops you read about where it appears and disappears as the plot demands"

--HopefulNebula

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link,
quote

Because I like the way they put this:

the underlying purpose behind making a relationship contractual rather than voluntary is that at some point in the future, in changed circumstances, something people were at the outset willing to do may be something that they need to be compelled to do

The way it was phrased to me once, in the context of publishing contracts, was that they should be negotiated as though you and the publisher were the best of friends, but at some point in the life of the property, you would both be run over by a truck, and your heirs would hate each other.

—malkingrey

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quote

Sometimes joy just shows up naturally, but sometimes it’s hard work. Sometimes you have to chase down joy and club it repeatedly to subdue it and drag it back to your lair.

—Marissa Lingen

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qotd,
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A total collapse of modern civilization would be a serious blow to the already sluggish economy, and the economic damage could amount to $80 trillion per year (the total value of all human goods and services). All in all, it would have serious implications for the upcoming elections. —Randall Munroe

It makes sense in context.

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quote,
silliness

In response to a discussion of a weird question a mutual friend was asked:

That question is so loaded it presents a hazard to any bridges it might have to cross.

saoba

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(Comments are closed, because if you imagine I am going to risk the violence of a discussion involving plural inflection, linguistic variation, the Wall Street Journal, corpus linguistics, Latin, Eton, snobbery, soccer, Davids Beckham and Cameron, Prince William, FIFA, corruption, bribery, the BBC, Vladimir Putin, Wikileaks, the Russian mafia, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin, you must be absolutely out of your tiny mind. I will be spending the weekend hunkered down in hiding with Julian Assange at a secret location outside London, avoiding the many forces around the world who would like to hunt down Language Log writers and kill them for daring to speak out on irregular plurals and other morphological and syntactic controversies.) —Geoffrey K. Pullum, at Language Log

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I mostly feel like one does watching someone else drive blithely off a cliff. Primary response is not "Hey that's violating traffic laws". —Shweta Narayan, discussing Germaine Greer's recent article claiming that Kali will take revenge on Greer's behalf

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qotd,
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"I really think the best course is to act as if you are living in a functional world. Act as if the people around you are of course sane adults who own their choices. Often, they will surprise you by being just that." —marshlc, on the "Tell Me About It" discussion board

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Well, we do put real sausage in sausage surprise. I suppose it might be more surprising not to have any. Or to have a fake sausage, though, given how sausage is made, I'm not quite sure if it is ontologically permissible for one to be fake. —

sythyry

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quote

sythyry

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And, over the last twenty years, string theory has sucked most of the life out of the subject, attracting top minds as a flame attracts moths, or like the broken advanced alien artifact that it probably is. —Joshua W. Burton

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“Reverend Billy has a First Amendment right to recite the First Amendment.” —Norman Siegel

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“Reverend Billy has a First Amendment right to recite the First Amendment.” —Norman Siegel

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There is an evident risk in installing a model of the public in the computer, since the return loop might be misused by a despotic government or an unscrupulous management. In considering this however we need to bear in mind the cybernetic fact that no regulator can actually work unless it contains a model of whatever is to be regulated. Much of our institutional failure is due to the inadequacy of the contained models.

It is perhaps more alarming that private concerns are able to build systems of this type, without anyone's even knowing of their existence, than that democratically elected governments should build them in open view and with legal safeguards. —Stafford Beer, Designing Freedom, 1973

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The real point of my post is not to assume that someone is "broken" just because they behave in ways you don't like or don't understand. —Miche, posting on alt.poly

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The real point of my post is not to assume that someone is "broken" just because they behave in ways you don't like or don't understand. —Miche, posting on alt.poly

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A thoughtful friend of mine who would prefer to remain anonymous writes:

Don't get me a pile of pseudo legalese to sign about how it's my responsibility to keep personal data safe—and then give me a hard time because I ask you questions like…
"What the hell does that mean?" and
"If I'm responsible for maintaining physical security for an area and that area does not actually LOCK—what do I have to do?"

Because it means I'm actually looking at the crap you wrote and actually consider such issues.

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Praise also then light, and creation unfinished

Don't Mourn, Organize

Miscellaneous comments 60

a nice turn of phrase

Quote, for my own reference

QOTD: Joy

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Nicely phrased

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QOTD: worth remembering

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