All Posts, page 21

Justin McElroy resurfaces an old post of his, back from 2013:

Learning to appreciate things you don’t initially enjoy is the power to fill the world with stuff you like.

Those McElroy folks are just so damn good at advice.

David Roth, writing for Deadspin; this paragraph is so good:

Presidents exert a kind of ambient influence on the culture, but as Trump is different than previous presidents his influence necessarily feels different. Barack Obama wanted to be a cosmopolitan leader who brought people together and into a deeper empathy through a mastery of reason and rules; the country he governed doesn’t work like that, though, and the tension between that cool vision and this seething reality grew and grew. By the end, his presidency had the feeling of a prestige television show in its fifth season—handsomely produced and reliably well-performed but ultimately not really as sure what it was about as it first appeared to be. Trump has no such pretense or noble aspiration, and has only made the country more like himself; living in his America feels like being trapped in a garish casino that is filling with seawater, because that is what it is.

Jessica Rosenkrantz of Nervous System design studio:

This puzzle is based on an icosahedral map projection and has the topology of a sphere. This means it has no edges, no North and South, and no fixed shape. Try to get the landmasses together or see how the oceans are connected. Make your own maps of the earth!

Super clever and cool design.

Michiel de Boer:

It is believed that the most seen photo is this Windows XP background. And I’m convinced that the most viewed shape is the mouse cursor.

This is packed with great quotes from filmmakers that I hadn’t heard before.

David Lynch:

I never talk about themes. It’s a very big shame when something is finished and then people want you to translate it back into words. It never will work. It never will go back into words and be what the film is. It’s like describing a piece of music; you don’t hear the music, you just see the words. It’s better to let people conjure up their own ideas, having seen and experienced the film.

Kubrick on explaining the ending of 2001:

I tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out because when you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they’re dramatized one feels it.

Great perspective on the current political situation in the United States.

Most people would say that “the ends justify the means” is a crap moral philosophy. Democrats would agree. But liberals often overcorrect to the point where thinking about the ends at all is thought of as - in a vague, reflexive kind of way - innately immoral. There’s a very Enlightenment way of thinking that implies that, with the right means, the ends take care of themselves, and immoral behavior becomes functionally impossible.

We can call this Values-Neutral Governance, and you can see why it would appeal when you’re trying to sum all the demands placed on a politician. Under this thinking, you don’t need to engage with the needs and desires of your constituency, your donors, or even your opposition, because, if democracy is working, everyone deserving will get what they need as a matter of course.

And you can see how utterly paralyzing it can be when half the participants of the system refuse to play by those rules. Values-Neutral Governance is an engine that only runs by mutual consent.