Weeknote 50, 2023

§1 Quotations

“Sometimes the most interesting aspect of a scientific or cultural product is not its overt content but rather its unexamined assumptions.”—Andrew Gelman

“Why would anyone go skiing when they could sit in the comfort of their own homes and break their kneecaps with a hammer?”—Dylan Moran

“[W]e’ve underestimated just how much of a worldwide trauma the pandemic was. I don’t just mean closures [related to the pandemic]; I mean everything. People getting sick is traumatic. People dying is traumatic. Not knowing what’s going to happen is traumatic. COVID skeptics lying about the whole thing is traumatic.”—Michael Siegel

“How you play is what you win.”—Ursula LeGuin

“I know when my client work is valuable[, ]because they rehire me.”—RJ Andrews

§2 A first-world problem

If one happens to possess all the material objects one ever wanted, one then must sit with having learned that possession of those objects does not bring with it everything else one once imagined possession would bring.