// The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 // 28.07.17
What best protects privacy isn’t concealment, but apathy.
Anyone in a position of authority telling you something unpalatable is ‘temporary’ is a red flag.
To be dutiful without fail is taking out emotional insurance
Old people have a horrible habit of kicking it right after you ducked seeing them at the last minute with an excuse that sounded fishy, or on the heels of a regrettable encounter in which you let slip an acrid aside.
Receding hairline, true, but he exemplified that good looks were 50% conviction. He was neither as smart nor as entertaining as he thought he was either, but since he did think he was, other people did too.
Economists: modern day witchdoctors
Money excited the passions. He couldn’t think of a soul who did not have powerful feelings about his or her capital; why, try removing two bucks from a beggar’s hat and see what happens. To truly pull off proper apathy about the stuff would require so much energy, such contrived ideological zealotry, that the indifference would amount to a kind of caring.
For professional traders on the stock exchange, money had always been imaginary - just as notional, just as easy come and easy go, as the points in a video game. Wage earners thought money was real. Because the work was real and the time was real, it seemed inconceivable that what the work and the time had converted into would be gossamer. They had been promised that they could store the work and the time, later to exchange it, if only for other people's work, and other people’s time. But money was just an idea, and natural forces also acted on the abstract.
You mistake the raffle ticket for the prize
The only thing that bargain hunting wins is more money - which is solely valuable as a route to buying more expensive things.
Belle Duval had once reflected on the disconcerting discovery of coming into means: that above a surprisingly low threshold of primitive needs, “there isn’t that much to buy”. Since the affluent purchased up a storm anyway, the high-end detritus flooding American cities pressed Belle’s point: if it didn’t line your belly or protect you from the elements, it was junk.
These days, no one complains about the view
Clearly there was one situation direr than living in the country where the rest of the world wanted to live also: living in a country that everyone wanted to leave.
High rents had priced out the very service sector whose presence at ready-hand once helped to justify urban living.
Channels were streamed, but the format had survived - providing an open fire, the communal hearth, that a personal device could never quite replace.
If I wallop you over the head with a cudgel, you’ll get mad and might even hit me back. If I prick you over and over again with a pin, you’ll thank me when I stop.
What best protects privacy isn’t concealment, but apathy.
Anyone in a position of authority telling you something unpalatable is ‘temporary’ is a red flag.
To be dutiful without fail is taking out emotional insurance
Old people have a horrible habit of kicking it right after you ducked seeing them at the last minute with an excuse that sounded fishy, or on the heels of a regrettable encounter in which you let slip an acrid aside.
Receding hairline, true, but he exemplified that good looks were 50% conviction. He was neither as smart nor as entertaining as he thought he was either, but since he did think he was, other people did too.
Economists: modern day witchdoctors
Money excited the passions. He couldn’t think of a soul who did not have powerful feelings about his or her capital; why, try removing two bucks from a beggar’s hat and see what happens. To truly pull off proper apathy about the stuff would require so much energy, such contrived ideological zealotry, that the indifference would amount to a kind of caring.
For professional traders on the stock exchange, money had always been imaginary - just as notional, just as easy come and easy go, as the points in a video game. Wage earners thought money was real. Because the work was real and the time was real, it seemed inconceivable that what the work and the time had converted into would be gossamer. They had been promised that they could store the work and the time, later to exchange it, if only for other people's work, and other people’s time. But money was just an idea, and natural forces also acted on the abstract.
You mistake the raffle ticket for the prize
The only thing that bargain hunting wins is more money - which is solely valuable as a route to buying more expensive things.
Belle Duval had once reflected on the disconcerting discovery of coming into means: that above a surprisingly low threshold of primitive needs, “there isn’t that much to buy”. Since the affluent purchased up a storm anyway, the high-end detritus flooding American cities pressed Belle’s point: if it didn’t line your belly or protect you from the elements, it was junk.
These days, no one complains about the view
Clearly there was one situation direr than living in the country where the rest of the world wanted to live also: living in a country that everyone wanted to leave.
High rents had priced out the very service sector whose presence at ready-hand once helped to justify urban living.
Channels were streamed, but the format had survived - providing an open fire, the communal hearth, that a personal device could never quite replace.
If I wallop you over the head with a cudgel, you’ll get mad and might even hit me back. If I prick you over and over again with a pin, you’ll thank me when I stop.
