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Author: Tetman Callis

“During the day I saw many smiling people—for example, a woman who was sitting next to two big shopping bags on a park bench. She spoke to me in an absurdly happy voice, saying that she was waiting for her nephew to help her carry the bags home. ‘I’m so happy to have you standing next to me now, talking to me,’ she said. ‘When there are two of us, I’m less afraid of the artillery.’ She used to work as a museum guide at Saint Sophia Cathedral, and now she’s a pensioner. She is convinced that Ukraine will defeat the Russian invaders: ‘When I think about the frescoes of Saint Sophia, I believe that Ukraine will be protected by the whole world.’ She smiled, tears welling in her eyes. ‘We will win,’ she said. I didn’t know if she was crying more or laughing more, but I felt her courage and admired her. Is today only the third day of the war? Mariupol: fifty-eight civilians wounded. Kyiv: thirty-five people, including two children. This is far from a complete account. It feels strange to find myself in this broad, unarmed, almost delicate category: ‘civilians.’ For war, a category of people is created who live ‘outside the game.’ They are shelled, they must endure the shelling, they are injured, but they do not seem to be able to give an adequate response to it. I don’t believe this to be the case. There is something hidden in the smiles that I saw several times today—a secret weapon, an uncanny one.” – Yevgenia Belorusets, “Day 3, Saturday February 26, Bomb Shelter,” War Diary (trans. Greg Nissan)

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“‘Come, let’s argue then,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘You talk of schools,’ he went on, crooking a finger, ‘education and so forth; that is, you want to raise him’ (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking off his cap) ‘from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him of. I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him my means. Then you say, “lighten his toil.” But as I see it, physical labor is as essential to him, as much a condition of his existence, as mental activity is to you or me. You can’t help thinking. I go to bed after two in the morning, thoughts come and I can’t sleep but toss about till dawn, because I think and can’t help thinking, just as he can’t help plowing and mowing; if he didn’t, he would go to the drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand his terrible physical labor but should die of it in a week, so he could not stand my physical idleness, but would grow fat and die. The third thing—what else was it you talked about?’ and Prince Andrew crooked a third finger. ‘Ah, yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit, he is dying, and you come and bleed him and patch him up. He will drag about as a cripple, a burden to everybody, for another ten years. It would be far easier and simpler for him to die. Others are being born and there are plenty of them as it is. It would be different if you grudged losing a laborer—that’s how I regard him—but you want to cure him from love of him. And he does not want that. And besides, what a notion that medicine ever cured anyone! Killed them, yes!’ said he, frowning angrily and turning away from Pierre.” – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude)

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“It is not given to man to know what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will err, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.” – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude)

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“To an imagination of any scope the most far-reaching form of power is not money, it is the command of ideas.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “The Path of the Law”

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“It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “The Path of the Law”

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“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” – Cardinal Richelieu (as quoted by Fraud Guy in bmaz, “Jeffrey Clark: Physics Takes Over the Investigation Now,” emptywheel)

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“Nobody knows how many federal criminal laws are really on the books BECAUSE THERE ARE TOO MANY TO COUNT AND TRACK. Last best estimate I heard was about 5,000, but my guess is it may be higher, given all the regulatory crimes in the CFR. Everything is now a federal crime, and that is ludicrous.” – bmaz, “Jeffrey Clark: Physics Takes Over the Investigation Now,” emptywheel (emphasis in original)

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“What we call the stars are only inferences, inferences drawn from the only physical reality we have yet gotten from them—from a careful study of the unendingly complex undulations of the electric and magnetic fields reaching us on earth.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II

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“By experiments with charges and currents we find a number c2 which turns out to be the square of the velocity of propagation of electromagnetic influences. From static measurements—by measuring the forces between two unit charges and between two unit currents—we find that c=3.00×108 meters/sec. When [James Clerk] Maxwell first made this calculation with his equations, he said that bundles of electric and magnetic fields should be propagated at this speed. He also remarked on the mysterious coincidence that this was the same as the speed of light. ‘We can scarcely avoid the inference,’ said Maxwell, ‘that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.’ Maxwell had made one of the great unifications of physics. Before his time, there was light, and there was electricity and magnetism. The latter two had been unified by the experimental work of Faraday, Oersted, and Ampère. Then, all of a sudden, light was no longer ‘something else,’ but was only electricity and magnetism in this new form—little pieces of electric and magnetic fields which propagate through space on their own.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II

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“The Supreme Court’s decision to block student loan forgiveness is a reminder that the crimes of the rich are more readily absolved than the debts of the poor.” – Trevor Jackson, “The Unforgiven”

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“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.” – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude)

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“If we were serious about crime, we’d take most of the cops off the streets and replace them with accountants. Taking down the financial underpinnings of a criminal enterprise is way more effective than busting their entry level contractors. Money laundering can be incredibly simple — Joe sells weed, Bill has a sandwich shop. Joe needs pay stubs so he can buy a house, Bill’s shop isn’t making quite enough money yet. Joe hands Bill $500 in cash a day, Bill puts Joe on payroll. Bill rings the $500 through the cash register as 10 extra orders, pays Joe (including payroll taxes) $250 a day of legal money, and keeps the rest as profit. Assuming Joe doesn’t get busted, this can continue indefinitely as long as they keep trusting each other.” – C Zed, “Foundations of the #MoneyLaundry – A Twitter Seminar”

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“Live for the sensation of life, not for the story you tell about your life. But never take anything, including that commandment, too seriously. That’s the great lesson from our feline friends. No animal is more spontaneously playful than cats. Which is why, if they could philosophize, it would be for fun.” – John Gray, quoted by Sean Illing in “Why Cats Rule”

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“Humans are the only creature on earth capable of building a rocket ship or developing a vaccine. That makes us intelligent, not wise.” – Sean Illing, “Why Cats Rule”

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“It’s easy for people to forget that they are not discovering the story, but creating it from random data.” – Rabbit Rabbit, “A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon”

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“One of the basic laws of physics is that electric charge is indestructible; it is never lost or created. Electric charges can move from place to place but never appear from nowhere. We say that charge is conserved.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II (emphases in original)

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“The total amount of information which has been acquired about the physical world since the beginning of scientific progress is enormous, and it seems almost impossible that any one person could know a reasonable fraction of it. But it is actually quite possible for a physicist to retain a broad knowledge of the physical world rather than to become a specialist in some narrow area. The reasons for this are threefold: First, there are great principles which apply to all the different kinds of phenomena—such as the principles of the conservation of energy and of angular momentum. A thorough understanding of such principles gives an understanding of a great deal all at once. Second, there is the fact that many complicated phenomena, such as the behavior of solids under compression, really basically depend on electrical and quantum-mechanical forces, so that if one understands the fundamental laws of electricity and quantum mechanics, there is at least some possibility of understanding many of the phenomena that occur in complex situations. Finally, there is a most remarkable coincidence: The equations for many different physical situations have exactly the same appearance. Of course, the symbols may be different—one letter is substituted for another—but the mathematical form of the equations is the same. This means that having studied one subject, we immediately have a great deal of direct and precise knowledge about the solutions of the equations of another.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II

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“What was that African proverb? A person who has not known pain will hear the sound of weeping and think it is song.” – Sandra Jackson-Opoku, “Diomedéa” (emphasis in original)

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“All Indians grow up with drunks. So many drunks on the reservation, so many. But most Indians never drink. Nobody notices the sober Indians.” – Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues

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“The Indian world is tiny, every other Indian dancing just a powwow away. Every Indian is a potential lover, friend, or relative dancing over the horizon, only a little beyond sight. Indians need each other that much; they need to be that close, tying themselves to each other and closing their eyes against the storms.” – Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues

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“Whenever one is trying to understand a new phenomenon it is a good idea to take a somewhat oversimplified model; then, having understood the problem with that model, one is better able to proceed to tackle the more exact calculation.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II

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“The defeat at Moscow indicated that Operation Barbarossa had failed and Germany could not win the war on terms Hitler expected. The Red Army’s victory at Stalingrad proved that Germany could not win the war on any terms. Later, in the summer of 1943, the immense Battle of Kursk would confirm that Germany would indeed lose the war. The only issues remaining after Kursk were, ‘How long would that process take, and how much would it cost?’ ” – David M. Glantz, The Soviet-German War, 1941-1945: Myths and Realities

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“The sisters walked to the church, which was one of those simple buildings, four walls, a door, a crucifix, and twenty folding chairs. Those folding chairs were multidimensional. Set them up facing the front, and they served as pews. Circle them around a teacher in the middle, and you had Sunday School. Push them up to card tables, and you feasted on donated food. Fold those chairs, stack them in a corner, and you cleared a dance space. Folding chairs proved the existence of God.” – Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues

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“The more clearly you picture the history of life as an unbroken series of ecosystems, and not just a line of related species, the more clearly you understand the tragedy of what we’re doing to Earth, the consequences of depleting the planet we like to claim we’ve inherited.” – Verlyn Klinkenborg, “What Were Dinosaurs For?”

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“I remembered my last visit to the wonderful city of Turin in northern Italy. I’d been struck by how contained and elegant that place was—actually a French city, due to the long shadow of the House of Savoy. Etched in my memory was the serenity of its daily life, which one sensed as a dangerous creator of unexpected absurdities or impressive outbreaks of madness, like Friedrrich Nietzsche’s, when in January 1889 he left his hotel and on the corner of Via Cesare Battisti and Via Carlo Alberto, sobbing, hugged the neck of a horse being whipped by its owner. That day an unstable border broke open for Nietzsche, which had seemed to separate rationality from delirium for several centuries. That day, the writer distanced himself definitively from humanity, however you want to look at it. To put it more simply, he went crazy; although according to Milan Kundera, maybe he was just apologizing to the horse for Descartes.” – Enrique Vila-Matas, The Illogic of Kassel (trans. Anne McLean & Anna Milsom)

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