Estebantxo

Rather, I remember a scene from Tolstoy’s War and Peace , one I had not thought of in years. It is a scene wherein a character, Prince Andrei, suffers what is perhaps a mortal wound in the historical “Battle of the Three Emperors” in 1805 while fighting on the side of the Russians against his idol Napoleon:

"What is it? Am I falling? Are my legs giv

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I want to repeat this because it’s the most common misconception that comes up when I talk about AI’s ability to transform biology: I am not talking about AI as merely a tool to analyze data. In line with the definition of powerful AI at the beginning of this essay, I’m talking about using AI to perform, direct, and improve upon nearly everything b... See more

Bloggers, here's an idea. When you write a piece you're proud of, end it with a sentence like this: "And that's why I have a blog." It plants a seed, which through repetition and appearing in many places, might help people appreciate the purpose of a blog. We've had a lot of mud slung at us, let's start undoing that.

For if

once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think

little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and

Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once

begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop.

All this made me think of Joan Didion’s most famous sentence: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” It’s a sentence that has found its way onto Pinterest boards, T-shirts, and coffee mugs, as though it were a consoling affirmation of The Power of Storytelling. It is not.

The sentence is the first one of Didion’s essay “The White Album,” whi... See more