An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

Text in black are quotes; text in green are my notes. I sometimes write in Spanish.

• “Fun and full of truth. To be honest, I’m a little irritated at how good the book is. I don’t need this kind of competition.” #

• Being annoyed by carefully crafted internet personas was part of my carefully crafted internet persona. #

• The power that each of us has over complete strangers to make them feel terrible and frightened and weak is amazing. #

• “When you’re faced with something you don’t understand, I think the most natural thing but also the least interesting thing you can be is afraid,” #

• Most power just looks like an easier-than-average life. It’s so built-in that people mostly don’t realize how powerful they are. #

• With that nonquestion it was clear that it was my turn to talk, so I did the thing that everyone on these shows always did and ignored the prompt and said what I wanted to say: #

• If you tell people that they’re being attacked for their beliefs, then suddenly they want to defend their beliefs, even if they didn’t really believe them before. It’s pretty amazing, really. #

• Human beings are terrible at accepting uncertainty, so when we’re ignorant, we make assumptions based on how we imagine the world. #

• Beautiful was good too, though, because if people like looking at you, they will end up listening to you almost by accident. This is fucked up, but it’s true. #