violence
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On the Silk Road, Nick Bilton’s ‘American Kingpin,’ and the difference between being clever and being wise.
If someone is clever enough to build a billion-dollar website, should that person also get to decide who lives or dies?
addiction, American Kingpin, anarchist, anarchy, barter, clever, commissary, Dread Pirate Roberts, FBI, H, heroin, honey buns, intelligence, jail, jail bartering, jail economy, kinesthetic learners, libertarian, libertarianism, Nick Bilton, opiates, prison, property rights, Ross Ulbricht, spoons, The Silk Road, types of intelligence, Ulbricht, Variety Jones, violence, War on Drugs, wisdom, withdrawal
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On Alvaro Enrigue’s ‘Sudden Death,’ translation, and the power of narrative control.
Translators control our experience of stories; those who control stories, control the world.
Alvaro Enrigue, Aztec, conquest, conquistadors, Cortes, fall of the Aztecs, Geronimo de Aguilar, Hernan Cortes, history of Mexico, history of tennis, Hungary, Malinali Tenepatl, Maya, Natasha Wimmer, octopus literature, Ralph Robinson, Robert Adams, Roma, Stanford, Sudden Death, teaching English, tennis, Thomas More, Translation, underage drinking, Utopia, violence, xingar
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On theft and bullying.
Is it fair for the biggest kid on the playground to steal your lunch? What about the cleverest?
Bill Watterson, bullying, Calvin and Hobbes, Cathy O’Neil, civil war, contract theory, Darling I Love You, dumb money, equality, fairness, false belief, financial misconduct, graft, hedge funds, high-frequency traders, human nature, inequality, Leviathan, Ludwig Wittgenstein, might makes right?, Mutts, Patrick McDonnell, Philosophical Investigations, state violence, stealing, Syria, the natural world, theft, Thomas Hobbes, violence, Weapons of Math Destruction, white collar crime
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On fear.
Activating the neurons behind fear makes mammals attack. And 45 campaigned on fear.
amygdala, Chicago, civil war, climate change, climate strife, Clinton, Comoli, Daesh, Donald Trump, fear, Functional mapping of the prosencephalic systems involved in organizing predatory behavior in rats, gene expression, immigrant ban, Integrated Control of Predatory Hunting by the Central Nucleus of the Amygdala, ISIL, ISIS, Ivan de Araujo, Laboratory Animal Welfare Act, laser-activated neurons, Manchurian candidate, mind control, prejudice, refugee ban, Restaurant Depot, retrovirus, Syria, terror, terrorism, terrorists, Trump, violence, violence against conspecifics, voluntary research participation, war, Wenfei Han
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On Marlon James’s “A Brief History of Seven Killings.”
James created a striking depiction of some of the brutal homophobic lives eddying near Bob Marley.
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On child pornography & an odd coincidence in timing.
Reading about the prosecution of a well-known fast food spokesperson has felt unnerving to me. In part because it’s always sad to hear about the type of activity he was convicted of. And in part because that particular well-known fast food spokesperson is featured in my (unpublished) book & is described in dialogue as being…
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On Charleston, the morning after.
tl;dr — This is horrible. To anyone who lost someone yesterday, & to anyone who finds the world a little more terrifying after seeing this in the news, you have my sincerest condolences, although I know they count for very little. I’m sorry. ************************ Given that I’ve written several posts about race & racial conflict…
Frank Brown Cloud 