Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

by Hugh Howey

No two people have ever battled that read each other’s poetry, and I believe that. It’s why we in Intelligence are told to avoid poetry at all costs. Learn, but do not empathize.

There is a wastefulness to humankind that we ignore when we assume it’s a contemporary and temporary problem.

Instead of worshipping a past that never happened, we should look to a future that we might avoid.

But men wrestle with the things they cannot change, and they ignore those that might bend to some economy of effort. Winning at wrestling is about picking your partner. Most people prefer the unconquerable brute they already know. Or maybe, if you look around, we’re addicted to a challenge. And so things go unchanged and unaccepted, and our arms and hearts grow weary.