She Knows How to Make an Exit. You’re Reading It. - The New York Times

She Knows How to Make an Exit. You’re Reading It. - The New York Times:

It is the Sisyphean task of obit editors to stockpile “advances” for as many of the newsworthy undead as possible, and when Marv took the job he commissioned a blizzard of them from colleagues throughout the newsroom. In the coming years, writing in my spare time, I would produce dozens.

Today, the subject of the first advance I ever wrote, in 1995 — a major American scholar — is still going strong at 90-something. He remains, blast him, almost obscenely productive, forcing me to update his obituary several times a year.

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The US has a 1.39 billion-pound surplus of cheese. Let’s try to visualize that. - Vox

The US has a 1.39 billion-pound surplus of cheese. Let’s try to visualize that.  - Vox:

As the Washington Post reports, US dairy producers now have a whopping 1.39 billion-pound surplus of cheese. That’s the largest domestic reserve of cheddar, Swiss, American, and other cheese varieties on record. There’s enough excess cheese to arm each American citizen with a hefty 4.6 pounds of the crumbly, melty, salty good stuff.

You might ask yourself: Why the massive cheese stockpile? There’s a larger story here: US dairy producers have been overproducing milk. When there’s a milk surplus, it gets turned into cheese, which can be stored for longer periods before spoiling. The Post notes milk and cheese surpluses tend to peak during the summer months, when dairy demand is down. Additionally, cows — which are more efficient milk producers than ever before, thanks to selective breeding — generate the most milk in the springtime.

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Overlooked No More: Emma Gatewood, First Woman to Conquer the Appalachian Trail Alone - The New York Times

Overlooked No More: Emma Gatewood, First Woman to Conquer the Appalachian Trail Alone - The New York Times:

What the public knew about Emma Gatewood was already remarkable. She was the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail by herself in one season. She was 67 years old, a mother of 11, a grandmother and even a great-grandmother when she accomplished the feat in 1955. And she personified the concept of low-tech, ultralight hiking, spurning a tent and sleeping bag, carrying only a small sack and relying on her trusty Keds.

But what the public did not know was equally remarkable. Grandma Gatewood, as she was called, had survived 30 years of severe beatings and sexual abuse by her husband. She often escaped from him by running into the woods, and she came to view the wilderness as protective and restorative.

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Martin Luther King, Jr., On racism, poverty, capitalism, and other big questions

Martin Luther King, Jr., On racism, poverty, capitalism, and other big questions: "What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. "



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Behold the priest-kings of the future Supreme Court - The Washington Post

Behold the priest-kings of the future Supreme Court - The Washington Post: "Legislatures and executives have readily, even enthusiastically, assented to the transfer of their powers to the Supreme Court. No one really questions the wisdom of having judges make policy; they simply wish to stack the courts so that their judges are the ones setting the rules. Thus elections have increasingly turned into a fight not to elect policymakers but to elect the politicians who will appoint or confirm the policymakers of the federal court system.

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Kim Jong-Un's Singapore Summit: North Korea Wins | National Review

Kim Jong-Un's Singapore Summit: North Korea Wins | National Review: "Absolute and unconditional reunification of Korea under the authority of the Kim regime, then, is imperative — and nonnegotiable. This is not some bargaining chip to be horse-traded away for better terms on some other items of interest to North Korean leadership. The call for unconditional reunification stands as a central and sacred mission for the North Korean state. The inconvenient existence of the government of the Republic of Korea stands very much in the way of Pyongyang’s vision of a peninsula-wide racial utopia; thus the South Korean state must be erased from the face of the earth.

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Nomad_Industries comments on Anarchists in the comment sections of r/Libertarian

Nomad_Industries comments on Anarchists in the comment sections of r/Libertarian:

To my mind, a "Real" Libertarian is anyone who:

1. Considers the spectrum of state authority vs. individual liberty before worrying about the traditional political spectrum of conservative vs. liberal
2. Holds more beliefs that trend towards preserving Individual Liberty than increasing State Authority

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How Georgia got its northern boundary – and why we can’t get water from the Tennessee River - SaportaReport

How Georgia got its northern boundary – and why we can’t get water from the Tennessee River - SaportaReport: "What does Georgia — more specifically, Atlanta — need to thrive? Today, like many large and expanding metropolitan areas across the United States, it needs water. The drought of 2008 in Georgia brought renewed attention to the fact that if the Georgia/Tennessee boundary had been properly surveyed along the 35th latitude, then plenty of water from the Tennessee River would be available for Georgia’s citizens. This is the story of Georgia’s mismeasured northern boundary.

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The Voters Decide – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

The Voters Decide – Stratechery by Ben Thompson: "Remember, in Noel and company’s description party actors care more about their policy preferences than they do voter preferences, but in an aggregated world it is voters aka users who decide which issues get traction and which don’t. And, by extension, the most successful politicians in an aggregated world are not those who serve the party but rather those who tell voters what they most want to hear."



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ryaniswild comments on Terry Crews Testifies Before Senate On Sexual Assault, Says He Won’t Be In ‘Expendables 4’ After Producer Threatened “Trouble”

ryaniswild comments on Terry Crews Testifies Before Senate On Sexual Assault, Says He Won’t Be In ‘Expendables 4’ After Producer Threatened “Trouble”:

What's so important is that he draws attention to the way he froze given that he's an ex-football player, has more muscles in his lower left arm than most of our bodies and could probably reduce us all to an Oberyn Martell-esque stain on the floor.

If he froze, felt ashamed, scared and afraid to act then what hope does the 19 year aspiring actress who just moved to Hollywood have? Or the actor working in a restaurant in West Hollywood waiting for his break?

His story shows that de facto power in a specific context will always vastly outweigh de jure power and that it doesn't matter who you are - the right power imbalance will be exploited if it can be.

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Women in tech: we’re training men to resent us – Noteworthy - The Journal Blog

Women in tech: we’re training men to resent us – Noteworthy - The Journal Blog: "How a personal hero gave me the scare of my life and challenged me to really listen
"



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FarawayFairways comments on a hard brexit

FarawayFairways comments on a hard brexit:

Boris screwed it up. He won the referendum. He couldn't even get this right! The whole bloody thing is an accident.

George Osborne stood down and left parliament altogether, and now Boris is left trying to reinvent himself as the arch Brexiteer.

He did of course try and become leader, but Michael Gove and the other 'genuine' Eurosceptic's scuppered him and he withdrew. They knew he wasn't really one of them. Sure they were happy to run with him for such time as he leant their campaign panache, but once it was over he'd served their purpose and they ditched him

If David Cameron hadn't told the BBC's James Landale that he was going to step down, Boris would have campaigned for 'remain' and the likelihood is that a leave vote fronted by such charismatic individuals as Gove, Fox, Duncan-Smith, Ledsom, and Stewart, would have lost

The whole thing is a complete cock up. Boris saw the crown and made a grab for it. The people didn't appreciate what he was trying to do, and now we are where we are

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“The Russians Play Hard”: Inside Russia’s Attempt to Hack 2018—And 2020 | Vanity Fair

“The Russians Play Hard”: Inside Russia’s Attempt to Hack 2018—And 2020 | Vanity Fair:

In the coming months, these experts told me, Russian operatives will likely start creating fake Facebook groups (if they haven’t already)—some that slam to the left, others that lean as far right as humanly possible—that will argue with one another, and help us do the same; there will be accounts on social media that use Cambridge Analytica-style targeting to serve up ads, and a barrage of cleverly designed and perfectly disguised bots on Twitter. All stuff we’ve seen already, but with much more advanced algorithms and snakier and more aggressive tactics. (This time, for example, fake video and audio will start circulating through the social stratosphere, all with the intended purpose of trying to make real news seem fake, and fake news seem real.)



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Department Of Homeland Security Releases Plan To Reunify Families : NPR

Department Of Homeland Security Releases Plan To Reunify Families : NPR: "According to the fact sheet, the Department of Health and Human Services has 2,053 separated minors in HHS-funded facilities "and is working with relevant agency partners to foster communications and work towards reuniting every minor and every parent or guardian via well-established reunification processes."

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https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/a-physician-in-south-texas-on-an-unnerving-encounter-with-an-eight-year-old-boy-in-immigration-detention

https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/a-physician-in-south-texas-on-an-unnerving-encounter-with-an-eight-year-old-boy-in-immigration-detention:

“The population I’ve been starting to see is younger, and it scares me,” Hart said. “These are little people, little babies. And they are ill-equipped to fend for themselves. They’re so totally traumatized. They don’t cry like normal kids. They don’t interact like normal kids.”

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Jogger who accidentally crossed U.S. border from B.C. detained for 2 weeks | CBC News

Jogger who accidentally crossed U.S. border from B.C. detained for 2 weeks | CBC News:

Roman was held in custody for two weeks before immigration officials on both sides of the border confirmed she was allowed back into Canada. Then she was transferred back into B.C.

"It was just unfair that there was nothing, no sign at the border," said Ferne, who visited her daughter several times while she was detained. "It's like a trap … anybody can be caught at the border like this."

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WE_Coyote73 comments on Lawsuit: School officials forced 12-year-old who killed herself to hug bullies

WE_Coyote73 comments on Lawsuit: School officials forced 12-year-old who killed herself to hug bullies: "The whole system of dealing with trouble makers is broken and unfortunately a lot of it is the courts fault for creating legal precedents that schools are requires to abide by. This could easily be remedied with state level legislation but then that will end up being challenged in court by lawyers looking to protect whoever they think they are protecting and that's just more wasted money on dealing with a case that will likely be lost due to the previous court precedents, not to mention state legislatures tend to have more pressing issues to deal with, so something like school discipline reform is a very low priority.

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Trump Stokes Outrage in Silicon Valley—But It's Selective | WIRED

Trump Stokes Outrage in Silicon Valley—But It's Selective | WIRED: "Pham points out that there were problematic policies under President Barack Obama, too. She remembers when she worked at USDS that her team had to write Obama a letter explaining why a security improvement he wanted to make was a very bad idea."



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Firefox Is Back. It’s Time to Give It a Try. - The New York Times

Firefox Is Back. It’s Time to Give It a Try. - The New York Times:

The web has reached a new low. It has become an annoying, often toxic and occasionally unsafe place to hang out. More important, it has become an unfair trade: You give up your privacy online, and what you get in return are somewhat convenient services and hyper-targeted ads.

That’s why it may be time to try a different browser. Remember Firefox? 

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The Leader’s Calendar

The Leader’s Calendar: "That’s why setting proper expectations and norms for what e-mails the CEO needs to receive—and when he or she will respond—is essential. Norms are necessary for the others in the organization as well, to prevent e-mail from having a cascading effect on everyone, wasting precious hours and intruding on personal time. One way for the CEO to stay ahead of the digital avalanche is to have an adept EA filter messages and delegate many of them to others before the CEO even sees them. In the end, though, there is no substitute for being disciplined about resisting the siren call of electronic communications. This is a topic our CEOs were often animated about, and best practices in this area are still emerging.

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First Person: Opioid Withdrawal – Quinn Norton – Medium

First Person: Opioid Withdrawal – Quinn Norton – Medium: "ello, I’m Quinn, and I’m documenting my experience of opioid withdrawal to help others who are facing the same process. It’s just one person’s experience, but I hope it can help others out there get through withdrawal safely and successfully, and put physical dependency behind them.

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cultured_banana_slug comments on Donald Trump told Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe he could ship 25 million Mexicans to his country and make him lose an election: "Shinzo, you don't have this problem, but I can send you 25 million Mexicans and you'll be out of office very soon."

cultured_banana_slug comments on Donald Trump told Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe he could ship 25 million Mexicans to his country and make him lose an election: "Shinzo, you don't have this problem, but I can send you 25 million Mexicans and you'll be out of office very soon.": ""I love my country more than any other in this world and exactly for this reason I insist on the right to criticize it perpetually."

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My dad didn't step out of a sitcom (opinion) - CNN

My dad didn't step out of a sitcom (opinion) - CNN:

Ron Drucker was a passionate, emotional man. Even when he didn't yell, his booming baritone voice spoke with such definitive authority that he might as well have been yelling, as far as I was concerned.

He wasn't the easiest man to live with, to say the least. I didn't agree with everything he did. I didn't like everything he did, and our relationship could be contentious. As I grew into adulthood, that meant that when he yelled, I yelled right back.

But my father lived his life with integrity.

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I Went To A Conference Full Of Conservatives Who Hated My Guts — And Told Me So

I Went To A Conference Full Of Conservatives Who Hated My Guts — And Told Me So: "A number of attendees asked me not to make any conclusions about the group by the acts of a few, to “judge on the individual, not on the group.” They all demurred when I suggested that instead of telling me they didn’t like the rhetoric, to tell the organizers, or Levant himself, who was circulating throughout the audience during the day. By having it on the record that they felt bad, they had fulfilled their social obligation: Getting too personal is unfair, but trying to hold people accountable for it was more than they were willing to do. No one at The Rebel Live wanted to admit that they had laughed the first few times Levant or Hopkins or Menzies made comments about me.

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Put the Kids to Bed | by Kasper Schmeichel

Put the Kids to Bed | by Kasper Schmeichel: "Coming in from the playoffs, I think we’re a bit under-the-radar in this World Cup. As Danes, that suits us quite well, actually. But we’re all just excited to get on the plane and get it started. It has been a very long wait for many of us players to play in a World Cup.

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itty53 comments on TIL that gaslighting is the act of deliberately driving someone crazy by altering the environment and denying their sense of reality

itty53 comments on TIL that gaslighting is the act of deliberately driving someone crazy by altering the environment and denying their sense of reality:

This was the MO/Strategy of the Russian troll farms.

The idea is pretty simple: By imitating "normal Americans" and then espousing radical and extreme ideas, they were convincing real normal americans that those radical and extreme ideas were "normal american" ideas.

The idea was to drive people farther towards their fringe elements. If you were left of center, they wanted you to see prejudice, sexism and racism in everything and everyone. Right of center, they wanted you to see America "under attack from all sides" by Muslims, Liberals, whatever. If you're black, they wanted to convince you the problem is white people. If you're white, they wanted to convince you the problem was black people. They wanted to create more extremists, thereby destabalizing the nation.

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Fyre Festival Organizer Sold Fake Tickets While Out on Bail, U.S. Says - The New York Times

Fyre Festival Organizer Sold Fake Tickets While Out on Bail, U.S. Says - The New York Times: "The disgraced organizer of the Fyre Festival, who was charged last year with wire fraud in connection to the failed event, ran a fraudulent ticket-selling scam for several months while he was out on bail and now faces new charges, federal prosecutors said on Tuesday.

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The man who has focused on one word for 23 years - BBC News

The man who has focused on one word for 23 years - BBC News: "In all his time working on the dispute, there has been only one moment when Nimetz united both sides. It was at an unlikely time too, when Macedonia was putting up numerous statues of Alexander the Great in its cities, and had named its main airport after him, causing outrage in Greece.

"When that was happening, I said to a reporter from Skopje, 'I can't understand all this, because Alexander the Great was a great military leader, but he destroyed so much and killed so many people.' Well, I got hell for that - from all sides. I almost resigned."

 "



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Pastor Mike Stone, new SBC Executive Committee Chairman, answers some probing questions - Christian Index

Pastor Mike Stone, new SBC Executive Committee Chairman, answers some probing questions - Christian Index: "I have been amazed at key pastors and leaders who jump on an issue with little to no investigation of the facts. The rush to judgment, the propensity to condemn, and the consistent assignment of motives hold the potential to destroy this convention in a way soteriological arguments never could. We might reasonably expect such behavior from our children. But not from our leaders.

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Georgia church expelled from Southern Baptist Convention over racial discrimination charges

Georgia church expelled from Southern Baptist Convention over racial discrimination charges:

DALLAS — A Georgia church was expelled from the Southern Baptist Convention on Monday over charges of racism. 

The convention's executive committee voted to withdraw fellowship from Raleigh White Baptist Church during its morning meeting in Dallas, said Roger S. Oldham, the committee's spokesman. 

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einTier comments on Donald Trump accuses India of charging 100% tariff, says trade might stop

MonsenorTickles comments on Donald Trump accuses India of charging 100% tariff, says trade might stop:

We joked in the 1970's about the "robots coming to take your job" but it really happened. Slowly, over the course of a few decades, and then all at once in the last ten years. This is what failing towns and blue collar workers are feeling. I see it in my hometown. The refineries used to provide all the capital for the area. If you didn't work for them directly, you did something to support the people who did -- you educated their children, you ran the grocery stores that fed everyone, you ran the bank so workers could deposit their checks.

Today, the refinery my father worked in produces about ten times the amount of refined petroleum that it did when he started there in 1960. One problem, it does it with a tenth of the workforce. It used to employ 15,000+ people, now it employs 1200. In a metro area of over 400,000 people (200k in 1960), it's no longer a major employer though people think it is.

What this means is that many of the 1200 people that work there make far less than the people who did that job before them, because there's a lot competition for the low-skilled, low-education jobs. In the 60's and 70's, you could work out there with your manual labor and make a damn good living. Not so today.

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Maine Voters to Rank All Candidates Rather Than Pick One - WSJ

Maine Voters to Rank All Candidates Rather Than Pick One - WSJ: "Maine voters will be able to choose more than one candidate in crowded primaries Tuesday, including contests for the governor’s race.

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Opinion | Top Colleges Are Cheaper Than You Think (Unless You’re Rich) - The New York Times

Opinion | Top Colleges Are Cheaper Than You Think (Unless You’re Rich) - The New York Times: "Typical lower-income students – from a family earning $50,000 or less, for example – face an annual bill of $6,000. Students can often cover that cost through part-time work and a small annual loan, without their parents having to pay additional money.

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White Manager Pleads Guilty to Forcing Black Cook to Work for Years Without Pay - The New York Times

White Manager Pleads Guilty to Forcing Black Cook to Work for Years Without Pay - The New York Times: "Mr. Edwards, who could face up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced, admitted that while he was in charge, from 2009 to 2014, he beat Mr. Smith with a belt, punched him, hit him with pots and pans and burned Mr. Smith’s bare neck with hot tongs, according to a Justice Department statement released on Tuesday. He also used abusive language and racial epithets against Mr. Smith.

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You must remember this: Sultan Mohammed V protected the Jews of Casablanca

You must remember this: Sultan Mohammed V protected the Jews of Casablanca:

When Paris fell to the Germans in July 1940, the sultan, then 30, was put in a precarious position as Morocco came under the rule of the collaborationist French Vichy regime. Among their first acts, the new overseers sought to impose anti-Semitic laws in Morocco, as per Nazi protocol. Jews had lived in that part of the world since well before Carthage fell, and over a quarter of a million called Morocco their home in 1940. Members of the community had served the sultans' court as ministers, diplomats and advisors. Mohammed V took seriously his role as Commander of the Faithful, which he viewed to include all "people of the book," meaning everyone belonging to the Abrahamic faiths — Jews, Christians and Muslims. He bravely and publicly declined to assist in the persecution of his own Jewish citizens.

"There are no Jews in Morocco," he declared. "There are only Moroccan subjects."

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Conan O’Brien, in Conversation

Conan O’Brien, in Conversation: "This is related to the idea of change: I’ve always been fascinated by Hans Gruber in Die HardIn his film debut at 42, Alan Rickman was riveting as the calm, collected villain in the classic 1988 action movie. In a memoriam written upon Rickman’s death in 2016, New York’s Adam Sternbergh wrote that Rickman’s Die Hard performance “single-handedly lifted the American action genre to the outskirts of art. He redefined what was possible.” . He is so committed to his plan. He’s been working on it for years and has everything planned down to the millisecond. Then he learns that there’s a super-cop loose in the building. And that cop has stolen the blasting charges Hans Gruber needs to open the safe, he’s killing Gruber’s best men, and there’s no way he can quickly be found. Hans Gruber’s response to that information is, “Interesting. Proceed with the plan.” That was the time to say, “Everybody get your shit. We’re going back to Germany to figure out another Japanese bank to rob.” But nope. Even at the end of the movie when Hans Gruber is falling off the building and has seven seconds of life left, instead of reflecting on what it all meant, he takes out his gun and is firing up at Bruce Willis. Sometimes my experience with executives is as if they’re Hans Gruber and the internet is Bruce Willis. "



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Exodi comments on U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley Was Denied Access to Detention Center for Immigrant Children, and Somebody Called the Police When He Went to the Door

Exodi comments on U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley Was Denied Access to Detention Center for Immigrant Children, and Somebody Called the Police When He Went to the Door: "Regular people will do horrible, unspeakable things because it is expected of them. It takes surprisingly little time for them to fill the role. We must be horrified by this because that means that you and I would probably do the same thing in the same circumstances. This is why we need, as a society, to prevent the circumstances. You put children into a prison with prison guards and they will be treated like prisoners."



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Atul Gawande: Curiosity and What Equality Really Means | The New Yorker

Atul Gawande: Curiosity and What Equality Really Means | The New Yorker: "Once we lose the desire to understand—to be surprised, to listen and bear witness—we lose our humanity. Among the most important capacities that you take with you today is your curiosity. You must guard it, for curiosity is the beginning of empathy. When others say that someone is evil or crazy, or even a hero or an angel, they are usually trying to shut off curiosity. Don’t let them. We are all capable of heroic and of evil things. No one and nothing that you encounter in your life and career will be simply heroic or evil. Virtue is a capacity. It can always be lost or gained. That potential is why all of our lives are of equal worth.

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Atul Gawande: Curiosity and What Equality Really Means | The New Yorker

Atul Gawande: Curiosity and What Equality Really Means | The New Yorker: "Once we lose the desire to understand—to be surprised, to listen and bear witness—we lose our humanity. Among the most important capacities that you take with you today is your curiosity. You must guard it, for curiosity is the beginning of empathy. When others say that someone is evil or crazy, or even a hero or an angel, they are usually trying to shut off curiosity. Don’t let them. We are all capable of heroic and of evil things. No one and nothing that you encounter in your life and career will be simply heroic or evil. Virtue is a capacity. It can always be lost or gained. That potential is why all of our lives are of equal worth.

"



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