I am beginning to understand it now.

Quote from: p139[..]where there's property, there's theft[..]

" 'To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.' [..] "

"[..] Where there are papers in locked rooms, there are people with keys to the rooms!"

Pae is loyal to A-lo, Chifoilisk to Thu; these are two different countries.

Quote from: p137, Chifoilisk to Shevekyour habit of approaching everybody as a person, an individual, won't do here, it won't work. You have got to understand the powers behind the individuals.

Next there is a scene between Shevek and Atro, in which it is described how Atro's "genuine contempt for both money and power made Shevek feel closer to him than to anyone else he had met on Urras." And for a moment, a page or a half-page, maybe, I want them to see eye-to-eye, but it is quickly made clear that Atro's only difference is in scale, not in quality. He still cares about ownership and possession, it's just that he cares about it on a global scale, rather than at a country's scale. Pae and Chif work for their states -- against each other. Atro works for all the states -- against the other humans further out in the galaxy, which they all, the Cetians,

I'm curious to see if we meet those people further out.

Quote from: p143It's not money I want, you know. I want the superiority of Cetian science recognized, the superiority of the Cetian mind.

He still wants dominance, ownership, just on the scale of a different larger body than all the rest of the scientists we've met on Urras so far. What a fucking pain.

This book! Shevek has become a lecturer, giving courses at the university, and the administration is asking him to give grades, and he tells his students... ok, just write about anything you want in physics, I'll give you the highest grade.

Quote from: p128To his surprise a good many students came to him to complain. They wanted him to set the problems, to ask the right questions; they did not want to think about questions, but to write down the answers they had learned. And some of them objected strongly to his giving everyone the same mark. [..] If no competitive distinction were to be made, one might as well do nothing.

"Well, of course," Shevek said, troubled. "If you do not want to do the work, you should not do it."

Quote from: p127Toni Morrison said, "The function of freedom is to free someone else," and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did.

Quote from: p112The social conscience, the opinion of others, was the most powerful moral force motivating the behaviour of most Anarresti, but it was a little less powerful in him than in the rest of them. So many of his problems were of a kind other people did not understand that he had got used to working them out for himself, in silence. So he did with the problems, which were much harder for him, in some ways, than those of temporal physics. He asked no one's opinion.

archiving my emails will never feel as good as shuffling around papers.

Quote from: p91In 2007, Couchsurfing, a precursor site to Airbnb, [..] measured success in the "net positive hours that were created between two people's lives." [..] By Couchsurfing's calculus, the time two people initially spent searching profiles, sending messages, and setting up a stay on the Web site was factored as a negative, because "they didn't view that as a contribution to people's lives." That time was therefore subtracted from the original gains.

Quote"if you surrender to the default setting of the world, they are designed to take advantage of you. Everything requires vigilance..

Quotes from Tristan Harris

E02. Murder in DC

This was a miserable fucking episode. More than anything else it makes me hate self-aggrandizing liars.

Quote> You don't consider gaming a hobby?

> I see it as a secular activity that has little application elsewhere. The skills or connections you build end when you turn off the console. I'm looking for something more concrete.

> I disagree. If you played starcraft, you would learn coordination, resource management, time management, multitasking. If you played RPGs, it would teach you new words that you wouldn't otherwise see. But yeah judge them all you want. "Secular."

This is an interesting exchange. I feel lately like I can tell the difference between a thing I'm consuming for pleasure and a thing that helps me to grow. Why do I engage in an activity, or with a work? I'm really enjoying reading The Dispossessed right now, but certainly some of my interaction with it is 'unnecessary' in the way that grinding in an RPG is secular, is a thing that ends when you turn off the console.

I wonder how responsible decades of processing/analyzing gameplay is for making me a system nihilist.

Therapy is about getting better, right? Not just feeling better for a bit

E01. Death by SWAT

Quote from: Francis FinchI like [videogaming] because it takes me out of the world.
It takes me into my own mindset.
I have full control of everything that I do.
I can do whatever I want within the parameters of that game.
I can go beat the shit out of somebody, over and over and over again.
And then I'm not angry anymore.
I feel as if it's a therapy for me.
It's not something that I do just for fun.
It keeps me from thinking about the situation, pretty much.
[I forgot to write down the last bit - but he says he can't do anything about his situation. There's nothing he can do about it. But in games, he can do something about it, and "That's pretty cool"]

I don't like this. It's not... up to me to decide what people should do with their lives, and this is a goddamn tragic scenario. But is coping the same as therapy? I don't know.

p.s. this is, i think, my first time putting a film or show in 'close reading' but i really really just had to capture this one quote and my thoughts on it.

Quote from: p65, uncredited monks, nuns. via PangWhy is it that you think technologies are any more distracting than your own mind or anything else in the world?

Quote from: p62, Dr. Alex Soojung-Kim PangSmartphones behave like a four-year-old child. Their default is set to alert you to absolutely everything. [..] When they want your attention, they want it right now. They have no sense of social boundaries, that there are times when it's okay to interrupt you and there are times when it's not.