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He’d watched a YouTube video about stress fractures and how they can build up over time, taking down airplanes, bridges, and even parts of the Earth. That’s what an earthquake was—life breaking the fucking Earth. If stress can break a planet, what hope is there for any of us?
When I was working overseas, I got regular reports from intelligence about a suspect that he had never left his house. Which was weird because I had been following him around as he bought bomb parts. Turned out they were watching the wrong apartment.” “Moral to the story, always double-check,” said Brenda. “No. Expect people to be lazy and stupid,”
“Do we need to wait for your drone to come back here? Or will it follow us?” asked Jessica. “Once it’s done it will switch to Terminator Mode and seek me out,” said Theo. “You’re not supposed to program that into your future AI overlords,”
“We have people we look up to and trust. But sometimes they’re not worthy of our trust if they make us compromise who we are. Sometimes people even use that trust to manipulate us,”
“I learned that the things you covet are often burdens for those who possess them,”
“We all have some degree of disassociation with the voice in our head. It’s why we call ourselves stupid out loud or criticize ourselves mentally. If you think about it, who are we talking to? We already know we screwed up. It’s like we’re pretending there’s another person telling us this in order to reinforce it.”
Being social primates who gained a survival advantage through cooperation, we’re hardwired to care what others think—even to the point where a simulacrum of another person, whether it’s a voice in our head or a cartoon mascot for a language app, can motivate us.”
“There’s an expression that says, when you hear footsteps on the roof, don’t assume reindeer.
“If you walk into a library and really think about it, it’s not empty. There are thousands of people waiting to speak to you.
