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Author Archives: not another Rob?

About not another Rob?

Syndicated content from the Tumblr where Rob Friesel collects miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam from around the web and elsewhere.

about that rejected Sanders campaign donation

by not another Rob?

Bernie Sanders rejects CEO Martin Shkreli’s campaign donation:

  1. Good for Bernie for rejecting the donation; doubly good for donating it to a clinic.
  2. I think it’s a mistake not to meet with Shkreli though. Regardless of whether he is the “poster boy for drug company greed”, rejecting someone out of hand without even hearing them out seems wrong. (And has a smell of rejecting due process.)
    1. Which, granted, I don’t think Shkreli has a leg to stand on w/r/t/ justifying his actions in the slightest – at least not in context of his much-publicized price hike on Daraprim ($13.50 to $750).
    2. AND/BUT/SO all the more reason to meet with him – because if nothing else, can you imagine the Good Laugh™ Bernie would get from listening to such a screed? (And/or maybe his physician recommended against such a meeting because it would just put him to foaming at the mouth?)

      SIDE NOTE: So about Shkreli’s justification… I would love to hear this one. How exactly do you justify an approx. 5555% increase in a drug that was developed 62 years ago, NOT by your company, and has been unencumbered by patents for many years?

  3. You can tell Shkreli is a shill because all his quotes seem to employ “sort of” and “kind of” as modifiers. Like he isn’t willing to just come out and say what he means.
  4. As for Shkreli’s remark about “[taking] risks for innovation” – maybe actually (you know) take those risks instead of trying to mooch off of the success of a drug developed in 1958 and not by you.

“the most innovative cities are looking at ways to facilitate in-person interactions”

by not another Rob?

“It might seem paradoxical that in a world where media and technology are bringing people together in more ways than ever before, the most innovative cities are looking at ways to facilitate in-person interactions. People still crave that physical proximity and the energy and transfer of ideas that happen in these environments; a nod to the enduring potency of local, human-scaled interactions. There’s a balance to be found between high-tech and lo-fi, analog and digital.”

–

Katherine Oliver, “Think Global Act Local: It’s More Relevant Than Ever”

I think about what’s happening in my own town (e.g., the efforts to build a “more walkable downtown”), and this resonates in a big way with me. I think about how I work best at the office, and again: a big resonance.

“People still crave that physical proximity…”

by not another Rob?

“It might seem paradoxical that in a world where media and technology are bringing people together in more ways than ever before, the most innovative cities are looking at ways to facilitate in-person interactions. People still crave that physical proximity and the energy and transfer of ideas that happen in these environments; a nod to the enduring potency of local, human-scaled interactions. There’s a balance to be found between high-tech and lo-fi, analog and digital.”

–

Katherine Oliver, “Think Global Act Local: It’s More Relevant Than Ever”

I think about what’s happening in my own town (e.g., the efforts to build a “more walkable downtown”), and this resonates in a big way with me. I think about how I work best at the office, and again: a big resonance.

“simply take up elsewhere with no change in thinking”

by not another Rob?

“And, to be honest, if I could be uploaded tomorrow into some AI version of the internet or become a nascent Mars colonist, I would reject both options as morally, ethically wrong. You cannot trash an entire planet, kill billions of organisms (often for no reason at all), and then simply take up elsewhere with no change in thinking or accountability.”

– Jeff VanderMeer, Redefining Utopia and Dystopia or Post-Apoc

small, helpless and stunned

by not another Rob?

“The rabbits are small, helpless and stunned. One has floppy ears. As we spend an hour watching them hop and hide, I realize that I’ve never really looked at a rabbit before. They — or at least ours — aren’t quite as elegant as the ones in picture books. They are goofy, with little disapproving mouths. Their back legs look as if they are wearing pantaloons or old-fashioned britches. Although they make me laugh, before I go to bed I swear that I will make sure that they leave tomorrow.”

– Ivy Pochoda, “What the Rabbits Taught Us” (in NYTimes Blogs)

“…they haunt it.”

by not another Rob?

“In his introduction to the collection [“Beyond Armageddon”], Miller noted that the stories shared a nostalgia for things that have been lost. “Post-Megawar stories are about an afterlife,” Miller wrote. “Survivors don’t really live in such a world; they haunt it.””

– Jon Michaud, A Science-Fiction Classic Still Smolders (The New Yorker)