Recent kwiples

Monday 29th of July 2024

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By the numbers Oh … I'd … say … 9 point 142 or thereabouts, which we all know is nearly a full point lower than how you rate yours.  How Katanji Brown Jackson should have responded to Lindsey Graham, who asked her  during her confirmation hearing for appointment to the Supreme Court, “How would you rate your religious faith on a scale of 1 to 10?” © 2022 Kwiple.com
Citizenship In a 2019 survey, only 40 percent of Americans were able to pass the test that all applicants for U.S. citizenship must take, which asks questions like “Who did the United States fight in World War II?” and  “We elect a President for how many years?” The only state in which a majority passed was Vermont. George Packer, Atlantic Monthly, March 10, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Democracy It is impossible to excel at disinformation and democracy at the same time. Thomas Rid, Active Measures © 2022 Kwiple.com
Energy But it [digital messianism] is also built on a  conceit: tech as the industry of industries; the shaper of events. It is a less tenable conceit than it was a month ago. Tech is relevant in Ukraine; see the propaganda war. But next to the existential role of energy, which keeps Russia solvent, and has the west scrambling for alternative sources, what stands out is the modesty of its bearing on events. Silicon Valley is giving history a nudge here and there, no doubt, but not setting its essential course. That is still the role of people who dig stuff out of the ground for fuel. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, March 25, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
History There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. Attributed to Vladimir Lenin © 2022 Kwiple.com
Individualism Take the dictum of J. S. Mill, the classical individualist: “Men are not, when brought together, converted into another kind of substance.” [the way hydrogen + oxygen = water] Of course not. But the fallacy is to suppose that they existed, or had any kind of substance, before being “brought together.” Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History? © 2022 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
Math Geometry is the cilantro of math. Few are neutral. Jordan Ellenberg, Shape © 2022 Kwiple.com
Math Here's something that happens a lot in math. You sit down to solve one problem, and when you finish, the next day or month or year, you realize you've solved a lot more problems at the same time. When a nail requires you to invent a truly  new kind of hammer, everything looks like a nail worth hitting with that hammer, and a lot of things actually are. Jordan Ellenberg, Shape © 2022 Kwiple.com
Math Mathematicians are prone to an imperial tendency; we often see other people's problems as consisting of a true mathematical core surrounding by an irritating amount of distracting domain- specific knowlege, which we impatiently tear away to get as quickly as possible to “the good stuff.” Jordan Ellenberg, Shape © 2022 Kwiple.com
Math Proof makes insight portable. Jordan Ellenberg, Shape © 2022 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
Profiles in courage NO WAR Остановите войну, не верьте пропаганде, здесь вам врут. Russians against war [ Stop the war Don't believe the propaganda You are being lied to here ] Sign displayed by Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at Channel One Russia TV channel, after sneaking up behind the anchor during a live broadcast to the nation to protest Russia's invasion of Ukraine, before the anchor switched to pre-recorded footage and she was taken away for interrogation © 2022 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say I want to thank the Russian Academy for this Lifetime Achievement Award. Hillary Clinton, 11:19 AM – Mar 15, 2022, responding to the announcmeent that the Russian Foreign Ministry imposed sanctions on her and twelve other high-profile Americans banning them from entering Russia © 2022 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say It's not a fraternity any more. Madeleine Albright responding to Henry Kissinger, a former Secretary of State, who called to congratulate her on becoming America's first female Secretary of State and said, “Welcome to the fraternity” © 2022 Kwiple.com
Snapshot I don't know them, but I'm reminded of that old line from the “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” movie where – where one character says, “Morons, I've got morons on my team.” And I have to think anybody that would sit down with white nationalists and speak at their conference was certainly missing a few IQ points. Marjorie Taylor Greene portrayed by Mitt Romney, after Greene spoke at the white nationalist America First Political Action Conference in Florida on February 25, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union Wall Street is not primarily  a helpmeet to Main Street, as it once was. It’s the tail that wags the dog. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, February 13, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court [Clarence] Thomas should never have been on the court. Now that we know his wife was plotting the overthrow of the government, he should get off or be thrown off. You can't administer justice when your spouse is running around strategizing for a coup. Maureen Dowd, New York Times, March 26, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpism What we’re seeing, I liken it to a land, sea and air attack. The land attack is on voting rights. That is one of the ways that you begin to undermine democracy. The sea attack are these attacks against  teaching critical race theory and “divisive” topics, so you can erase people from American history and  erase the role of various people in American history. And the air attack is the loosening of gun laws  that we're seeing in Texas, Tennessee and Georgia.  This is a full-blown assault on American democracy that’s going after voting rights, that's going after education and that is reinforcing political violence as an acceptable method of bringing about your political aims. Carol Anderson, New York Times Magazine, March 20, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I've said we need to build more gallows.  If we try some of these high-level criminals, convict them and use a newly built set of gallows, it'll make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country. Wendy Rogers, Republican state senator from Flagstaff, AZ, fantasizing about hanging poitical opponents in a speech zoomed to the white nationalist American First Political Action Conference in Florida on February 25, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Now, they’re going and saying, “Vladimir Putin is Adolf Hitler,” as if that isn’t a good thing. Nick Fuentes, February 25, 2022  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say The U. S. is a white nation. Peter Brimelow, February 25, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Ukraine War But other global threats haven't gone away since this war began. We're just ignoring them. In an age of constant crisis, the urgent shoves aside the important, which in our case is climate change. I don't see how we fix this. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, March 24, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Ukraine War I started to think about the parallels between climate change and this war and it's clear that the roots of both these threats to humanity are found in fossil fuels. Burning oil, gas and coal is causing warming and impacts we need to adapt to. And Russia sells these resources and uses the money to buy weapons. Other countries are dependent  upon these fossil fuels; they don't make them- selves free of them. This is a fossil fuel war.  It's clear we cannot continue to live this way; it will destroy our civilization. Svitlana Krakovska, Ukrainian climate scientist and member of the  UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, quoted in The Guardian, March 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Ukraine War  The Russian army’s incompetence in Ukraine  may only heighten dangers. Six weeks ago,  Putin thought he had a strong military. Now,  to adapt the cold war jibe about the USSR, Russia looks like Burkina Faso with nukes plus a brutal artillery. That could encourage Putin to use his one unbeatable weapon: nuclear. We may, God forbid, start getting used to isolated nuclear attacks, after which we move on, like after the atomic bombs of 1945. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, March 24, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
War The future use of military forces, driven by autonomous systems, weaponized algor-  ithms, and hypersonic weapons, highlights the potential for a more destructive form of warfare in the twenty-first century. However, as the Russians and Chinese have demonstrated over the past decade, if objectives can be achieved without violence, most actors will do so. New ways of using information operations, lawfare, and deniable military and para- military activities offer different pathways to achieve strategic outcomes for state and nonstate actors. Mick Ryan, War Transformed  [2022] © 2022 Kwiple.com
 
Women [During confirmation hearings for Katanji Brown Jackson] the male Torquemadas were joined by a female inquisitor, Marsha Black- burn. The Tennessee Republican is all mag- nolia Southern charm — until she spits venom. “Can you provide a definition for the word woman?” Blackburn asked Judge Jackson, invoking the controversy over a transgender  swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania. Blackburn’s question inspired Tucker Carlson to later hold up a graphic of a woman's reproductive system, along with a silhouette of a woman so shapely that Roger Aisles would have approved. Maureen Dowd, New York Times, March 26, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com