Writing Inspiration | 17 & 18 | Apr 27 — May 10
Combining two weeks into one this time because work has been crazy!
Excerpts
One way to understand neurodiversity is to remember that just because a PC is not running Windows doesn’t mean that it’s broken. Not all the features of atypical human operating systems are bugs. We owe many of the wonders of modern life to innovators who were brilliant in non-neurotypical ways. Herman Hollerith, who helped launch the age of computing by inventing a machine to tabulate and sort punch cards, once leaped out of a school window to escape his spelling lessons because he was dyslexic. So were Carver Mead, the father of very large scale integrated circuits, and William Dreyer, who designed one of the first protein sequencers.
from Neurodiversity Rewires Conventional Thinking about Brains by Steve Silberman, WIRED
At some point, you become aware that you are no longer present in your body. You observe — with sadness, or horror, or detached curiosity — the diminishing spasms of that body on the operating table, the last useless convulsions of a discontinued meat.
The animal life is over now. The machine life has begun.
from ‘Your animal life is over. Machine life has begun.’ The road to immortality by Mark O’Connell, The Guardian
Perhaps the most unanticipated outcome of the unfettered nature of the Internet is that the sheer volume of information didn’t disperse influence, but rather concentrated it to a far greater degree than ever before, not to those companies that handle distribution (because distribution is free) but to those few that handle discovery.
from Not OK, Google by Ben Thompson, Stratechery
He took it as a stage name when he started performing magic, as a teen-ager. Soon he stopped using his real name altogether, and he asked me not to reveal it. “It’s a cocoon, from which I escaped,” he said.
from A Pickpocket’s Tale by Adam Green, The New Yorker
Her works struck a chord with a particular kind of reader: adolescent, male and thirsting for an ideology brimming with moral certainty. As the New Yorker said in 2009: “Most readers make their first and last trip to Galt’s Gulch — the hidden-valley paradise of born-again capitalists featured in Atlas Shrugged, its solid-gold dollar sign standing like a maypole — sometime between leaving Middle-earth and packing for college.”
from The new age of Ayn Rand: how she won over Trump and Silicon Valley by Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian
Words
palimpsest (n)
- a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain
- (more generally) something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form
iniquity (n)
- immoral or grossly unfair behavior
sardonic (adj)
- grimly mocking or cynical
- from Greek “sardonis”/”of Sardinia,” used by Homer to describe bitter or scornful laughter
lionize (v)
- give a lot of public attention and approval to (someone); treat as a celebrity
If you run across an amazing piece of writing, word, or excerpt, let me know about it here. ❤️
