Recent kwiples

Saturday 18th of May 2024

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Beliefs The more you invest in a set of beliefs — the greater the sacrifice you make in the service of that conviction — the more resistant you will be to evidence that suggests that you are mistaken. You don't give up. You double down. Malcolm Gladwell, summarizing the findings of social psychologist Leon Festinger © 2021 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say I will remember that it's my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.  John Roberts © 2021 Kwiple.com
Criminal justice The Court had two very different ideas about proportionality of punishment: one for corporations under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause and another for people under the Eighth Amendment. The Due Process Clause, it said, did not allow a jury to punish one of the world's wealthiest companies with a punitive damages award of $145 million, which was equal to 0.29 percent of its annual revenue — barely enough to get the attention of the company's leadership. The Eighth Amendment did, however, allow California to put a thirty-seven-year-old Army veteran and father who engaged in minor shoplifting behind bars until he was at least eighty-seven. Adam Cohen, Supreme Inequality © 2021 Kwiple.com
Criminal justice In Kentucky, fully one quarter of the prisoners on death row had lawyers at trail who were later  disbarred or resigned to avoid disbarment. As one critic said, the Strickland [v. Washington ] standard, in the real world, requires the state to provide little more than “a warm body with a law degree.” Adam Cohen, Supreme Inequality © 2021 Kwiple.com
Death Ralph, you're probably going to get killed, so it's best to accept it. You'll get along much better. Curtis LeMay, to a pilot who confessed fears about LeMay's plan for low-level firebombing attacks on Tokyo without knowing about Japan's air defenses © 2021 Kwiple.com
Elites When elites leave their homelands, they typically go to stable countries with long-term horizons. In good times, the rich want a weak state with low tax and little regulation, but in bad times they prefer strong states. That's why the countries with the highest influx of foreign brains per capita are Aus- tralia, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Canada, according to the Fund for Peace. The safe haven of the American super- -rich in case the US collapses is social democratic New Zealand. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, July 29, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Hunger Of the 25 counties with the highest projected food-insecurity rates for 2020, 68 percent had majority Black, Latino, or  Native American populations — even though only 12 percent of U.S. counties have have a majority nonwhite population. National Geographic, August 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Hunger We've had considerable information that people go to food kitchens because the food is fine and that's easier than paying for it. Edwin Meese, Nixon's Attorney General © 2021 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Count votes in Congress by: 1. Calculating a Member's Proportional Vote (MPV) for each member, as follows: MPV = SPNP / NLRS where: SPNP = State's Percentage of the National Population NLRS = Number of Legislators Representing the State (in that legislature) 2. Totaling “yes” MPVs and “no” MPVs 3. Passing if total MPV is more than 50 OTHERWISE Abolish the Senate © 2019 Kwiple.com
Liars say I never threatened, or spoke about, to anyone, a coup of our Government. So riduculous! Sorry to inform you, but an Election is my form of “coup,” Donald Trump, July 15, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Money in politics Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Franklin Delano Roosevelt © 2021 Kwiple.com
Moral idiots say I would encourage them  rather to stay and fight. I think it would be good to have many English speakers in Afghanistan. The future of Afghanistan could be a bright future, but they're going to have to fight for it. Rand Paul, opposing any efforts to bring thousands of Afghan interpreters who fought alongside American troops, and their families, to the US, knowing full well that the Taliban, who've already killed more than 300 of them, will kill all those left behind © 2021 Kwiple.com
News  Starting about the eighties, we began to confuse news with entertainment. We merged the two. Timothy Snyder © 2021 Kwiple.com
Populism The global race to vaccinate is having a use beyond the narrowly medical. It is delineating two populisms that my trade likes to group into a Nationalist International. The first kind is serious about the business of government. “Authoritarian” in the roundest sense, it turns the brawn of the state on social ills, real or perceived, not just political rivals. … President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil embodies [the other populism], as do the US Republicans, some of whom took until last week to commend the vaccine to their voters. This is populism as cussed and near anarchic defiance of received opinion. It is ruthless in the pursuit of power but lax to the point of dereliction in its exercise. … Distinguish these … as Old World and New World … or as “heavy” and “light”, but distinguish them. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Populism In some countries, populists cherish the grandeur and dignity of the state. In the US, they can hardly bring themselves to fund the Internal Revenue Service adequately. Even Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis — the able Trump, by repute — barred public and commercial premises from demanding proof of Covid-19 vaccination. You need not oppose him to see the differ- ence with the conventional authoritarian impulse. Picture a dystopia extrapolated from US populism in 2021. It is not a super state you see. It is a failed one. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Post-2020 Senate shituation 15 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming) 2020 population: 40,085,414 Senators: 30 Republicans 1 Senator per 1,336,180 people — 1 state (California) 2020 population: 39,368,075 Senators: 2 Democrats 1 Senator per 19,684,037 people 19,684,037 / 1,336,180 = 14.7, therefore: average 15er's vote is worth nearly 15 times a Californian's, a Californian's vote is worth less than 7% of an average 15er's — 1 state (Wyoming) 2020 population = 582,328, therefore: 1 Senator per 291,164 Wyomians, a Wyomian's vote is worth 68 times a Californian's, a Californian's vote is worth 1.5% of a Wyomian's  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Reparations Haiti had to take out a loan in 1825 in order to compensate the French colonists [from whom they had. won independence in 1804]. The exorbitant interest from the debt meant it was not paid off until 1947, resulting in impoverished Haitians paying out more than twice the value of the colonists's claims. A formerly enslaved people forced to compensate those who had enslaved them: a devastating irony. Zeinab Badawi, Financial Times, July 28, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Reparations In 1833, following slavery’s abolition, the British government took out a loan of £20m to compensate slave owners. Its final payment was made in 2015. Zeinab Badawi, Financial Times, July 28, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Segregation De facto segregation means that Negroes are segregated but nobody did it. James Baldwin © 2021 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, a prep school frozen food heir from the mean streets of La Jolla. Tucker Carlson portrayed by Chris Hayes © 2021 Kwiple.com
Snapshot LeMay also had a shooting range in his basement. Naturally. Curtis LeMay portrayed by Malcolm Gladwell © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union  [A] country needing constant reassurance that it is a nation and not just a market with a flag on it. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 17, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Voting laws Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella because you are not getting wet. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissent in Shelby County v. Holder © 2021 Kwiple.com
War All war is absurd. For thousands of years, human beings have chosen to settle their differences by obliterating one another. And when we are not  obliterating one another, we spend an enormous amount of time coming up with better ways to obliterate one another the next  time around. It's all a little strange, if you think about it.  Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Work The goal, Dr. [Susan] Lambert [University of Chicago professor of social work] told me, is “one reasonable job per person.” Not “two for one and half for another.” Bryce Covert, New York Times, July 20, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Work The way to make work work is to cut it back. Bryce Covert, New York Times, July 20, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
 
World War II But if you had the bombsight, you could drop your bomb from way up high — outside the range of antiaircraft guns. We can drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from thirty thousand feet. … High altitude. Daylight. Precision bombing. That was what the Bomber Mafia cooked up in its hideaway in central Alabama.  Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia  © 2021 Kwiple.com