#ability

We need to defend the interests of those whom we've never met and never will. ↗

— Jeffrey D. Sachs

#humanity-and-society #life #sustainability #wealth #life

I just read this great quote by Junot Diaz, he was talking about true intimacy, and he was saying that it was the willingness to be vulnerable and to be found out. That’s what I felt that YA did. It wasn't pretentious, and it wasn’t hiding its heart. It wanted to be found out... It felt like those moments when you go to a party and you're standing around for a long time, going, I don't fit in here, what am I going to talk to these people about? And everybody's getting drunk, and then you find this one person, and you end up sitting in some corner talking about all these arcane things. And then before you know it you're having a conversation about the meaning of life and it's four o’clock in the morning. That kind of feeling, that kind of intimacy — I felt like that's what I got from YA. ↗

— Libba Bray

#junot-diaz #vulnerability #ya #young-adult-fiction #life

Common sense should tell us that there is no reason for civilians to have access to easily concealable handguns with the capability to shoot through body armor. ↗

— Carl Levin

#armor #body #capability #civilians #common

I understand that computers, which I once believed to be but a hermaphrodite typewriter-cum-filing cabinet, offer the cyber literate increased ability to communicate. I do not think this is altogether a bad thing, however it may appear on the surface. ↗

— David Mamet

#altogether #appear #bad #bad thing #believed

I'm a horrible drawer. I have no artistic ability in my hands. ↗

— Katharine McPhee

#artistic #drawer #hands #horrible #i

Defenders of the status quo will argue that this system has served us well over the centuries, that our parliamentary traditions have combined stability and flexibility and that we should not cast away in a minute what has taken generations to build. ↗

— Ferdinand Mount

#away #build #cast #centuries #combined

I think that Paul Gasol is the most skilled big man in the NBA today with his ability to post on either block, the way he runs the floor, and the way he can shoot the mid-range jump shot. ↗

— Doug Collins

#big #block #either #floor #his

Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger's touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body. But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality. In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh. The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves. In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber.

— Diana Gabaldon

#children #motherhood #parenting #vulnerability #love

This heated (environmental) debate is fundamentally about numbers. How much energy could each source deliver, at what economic and social cost, and with what risks? But actual numbers are rarely mentioned. In public debates, people just say “Nuclear is a money pit” or “We have a huge amount of wave and wind.” The trouble with this sort of language is that it’s not sufficient to know that something is huge: we need to know how the one “huge” compares with another “huge,” namely our huge energy consumption. To make this comparison, we need numbers, not adjectives. ↗

— David Mackay

#environment #sustainability #money

My mother has rheumatoid arthritis. I don't want to lose the ability to jump up and walk across the room or move around with the energy I'm used to having. That's far more important to me than a wrinkle or two. ↗

— Cheryl Ladd

#across #around #arthritis #energy #far