#singular

It took them only an instant to cut of that head, but it is unlikely that a hundred years will suffice to reproduce a singular one. ↗

— Antoine Lavoisier

#head #hundred #instant #only #reproduce

Whether you listen to a piece of music, or a poem, or look at a picture or a jug, or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own. ↗

— Basil Bunting

#common #jug #kind #listen #look

Beauty is the result of having been through an experience all the way through to the end - therefore it has a poignancy. Beauty that is singular always comes from following an experience to the point where you can go no further. ↗

— Joan Chen

#beauty #been #comes #end #experience

Turing presented his new offering in the form of a thought experiment, based on a popular Victorian parlor game. A man and a woman hide, and a judge is asked to determine which is which by relying only on the texts of notes passed back and forth. Turing replaced the woman with a computer. Can the judge tell which is the man? If not, is the computer conscious? Intelligent? Does it deserve equal rights? It's impossible for us to know what role the torture Turing was enduring at the time played in his formulation of the test. But it is undeniable that one of the key figures in the defeat of fascism was destroyed, by our side, after the war, because he was gay. No wonder his imagination pondered the rights of strange creatures. ↗

— Jaron Lanier

#artificial-intelligence #computers #gay #homosexuality #singularity

The stammer was a way of telling the world that he was not like others, a way of expressing his singularity. ↗

— Ted Morgan

#his #like #others #singularity #stammer

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect. ↗

— Joan Didion

#back #expectations #free #give #great

The first is called insuperable, the second inseparable, the third singular. ↗

— Richard Rolle

#first #inseparable #insuperable #second #singular

The residence of the Plymouth settlers in the Netherlands, and the later conquest of the Dutch colonies, had brought the Americans into contact with the singularly wise and free institutions of the Dutch. ↗

— Albert Bushnell Hart

#colonies #conquest #contact #dutch #free

Why can't you summon a command line and search your real-world home for 'Honda car keys,' and specify rooms in your house to search instead of folders or paths in your computer's home directory? It's a crippling design flaw in the real-world interface. ↗

— Richard Dooling

#singularity #the-singularity #design