#ip

It was a time I slept in many rooms, called myself by many names. I wandered through the quarters of the city like alluvium wanders the river banks. I knew every kind of joy, ascents of every hue. Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs. ↗

— Roman Payne

#literature #payne #roman #rooftop-soliloquy #love

A painting is more than the sum of the parts,” he would tell me, and then go on to explain how the cow itself is just a cow, and the meadow by itself is just grass and flowers, and the sun peeking through the trees is just a beam of light, but put them all together and you’ve got magic. ↗

— Wendelin Van Draanen

#painting

Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient "coincidences" and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle, the distinguished cosmologist, once said it was as if "a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics". To see the problem, imagine playing God with the cosmos. Before you is a designer machine that lets you tinker with the basics of physics. Twiddle this knob and you make all electrons a bit lighter, twiddle that one and you make gravity a bit stronger, and so on. It happens that you need to set thirtysomething knobs to fully describe the world about us. The crucial point is that some of those metaphorical knobs must be tuned very precisely, or the universe would be sterile. Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms couldn't exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleuses and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life. Like Baby Bear's porridge in the story of Goldilocks, the universe seems to be just right for life. ↗

— Paul Davies

#chance #coincidence #fine-tuning #fred-hoyle #id

It was so typical. Whenever Blair did anything nice for someone else, she usually regretted it. Which kind of explained why she was such a bitch most of the time. ↗

— Cecily von Ziegesar

#regret

Shall there be truth between us, as two men? Not as friends, but as enemies and equals? ↗

— Stephen King

#equality

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print. ↗

— Karl Kraus

#diplomats #how #in print #journalists #led

Hate to disappoint, but no feathers. I came to Earth stripped naked. ↗

— Becca Fitzpatrick

#hate

Bienvenidos a mi barco pirata. Vamos rumbo a Venecia, a cazar vampiros. ↗