Category: ideas

“Interestingly, about two-thirds of English-speakers are not first-language speakers of English. … What happens to a language when it becomes everybody’s? Shaped by the mouths of billions of non-native speakers, what will the English of the future look like? A look into the past can give us an idea. English is of course not the first language [to have been] learned by lots of non-natives. When languages spread, they also change. And it turns out, they do so in specific directions.”

Philosopher Peter Atterton explains why virtually no one who is alive today would be alive had some horrific large-scale crime – be it the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Opium Wars, Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, the Crusades, Tamerlane’s wars, or what have you – not occurred.

“They won’t exactly be flying cars, but construction and battery materials are getting so light that ‘micro-commercial aircraft’ could serve as taxis.”

“My hand was tired, my notebooks were confused, and my phone’s camera roll showed a sea of paper tinged gray with either bad lighting or my phone’s own shadow.”

“‘We have binge watchers like Netflix does,’ he said, ‘and it’s a real badge of honor among some of our regulars to be the first to finish a new course.'”

“It’s tempting to cut through all the bullshit and simply say that it entails a certain kind of deep but informal exploration of places that have a visceral appeal to the explorer.” And apparently, London has the most visceral appeal ever.

“Unlike most actions whose remote consequences diminish to zero, like the furthermost ripples of a pond after a pebble has been thrown into it, altering when children are conceived or to whom they are conceived has repercussions that steadily increase over time.”

“I have grown to feel that the greatest thing about driving is that, if I really need to get somewhere or really need to get away from somewhere, I can do it. Essential to that sense of security and power is that I am actually doing the driving. Now I imagine running out, jumping into the car, and having to call tech support.”

“Too often, when it comes to gender behaviour, what sounds like hard science falls much closer to slapdash speculation.”

“Scientists have been probing individual regions of the brain for over a century, exploring their function by zapping them with electricity and temporarily putting them out of action. Despite this, they have never been able to turn off consciousness – until now.”