Vocabulary

Wehrmacht

The Wehrmacht was made up of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy), and the Luftwaffe (air force). The term "Wehrmacht" is German for "defense force".

Committee

Vultures

Fluffle

Bunnies

Koan

a paradoxical anecdote or riddle used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.

Wehrmacht

The Wehrmacht was made up of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy), and the Luftwaffe (air force). The term "Wehrmacht" is German for "defense force".

Murmuration

Starlings

Rod of Asclepius

The Rod of Asclepius, also known as the Staff of Aesculapius, is a symbol of medicine and healing that depicts a rod with a single serpent wrapped around it. Re: Greek god Asclepius, who was the deity of medicine and healing. official insignia of the American Medical Association. It is also used by the World Health Organization and the American College of Physicians.

Empathy

...only came into popular use in the early twentieth century to describe the imaginative act of projecting oneself into a work of art in an effort to understand why art moves us

Omakase

a meal consisting of dishes selected by the chef.

Apostacy

the total rejection of Christianity by a baptized person who, having at one time professed the Christian faith, publicly rejects it.

Cloud

Bats (in flight)

Kaiseki

Multi-course Japanese meal

Elided

(of a sound or syllable) omitted when speaking. "elided consonants"

Mountebank

a person who deceives others, especially in order to trick them out of their money; a charlatan.

Encomium

a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly.

caisson

Military: A chest or wagon used to carry ammunition or to transport the casket of a fallen military member. The casket is carried in a horse-drawn caisson.

Flush

Mallards

a badling, a brace, a paddling, a plump, or a raft

Ducks

Hegelian Dialectic

Refers originally to a dialogue between people holding different ponts of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argumentation. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

Epic

Use e.g. he lacked that level of physical wit, physical improvisation, and epic, his story was a good one... .

Peregrinations

A journey, especially a long or meandering one.

Baader-Meinhof

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is a cognitive bias that causes people to notice something more often after they become aware of it. It's also kno

Recursive Self Improvement

AI ability to correct its own coding

Business

Ferrets

Apricity

The warmth of sun in winter

Anthropocene

a term used to describe the current period in Earth's history when human activity has had a significant impact on the planet. The term is used in a variety of contexts, including the Earth sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.

Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic.

- Aldous Huxley

misology

Misology is a noun that means a hatred of reasoning, argument, or enlightenment.

noblesse oblige

French phrase that means "nobility obligates". It's used to describe the idea that people of high social rank or wealth have a responsibility to help others.

Convocation

Eagles

Viticulture

the study, production, and practice of cultivating grapes, including the agricultural activities involved in growing them up to the time of harvest. It's a branch of horticulture

Tautology

The saying of the same thing twice in different words

Recrudesence

The renewal or reappearance of something, especially something dangerous or unhealthy. The return of something terrible after a time of reprieve.

catafalque

a decorated wooden framework supporting the coffin of a distinguished person during a funeral or while lying in state.

Remonstrance

An earnest expression of opposition or protest, a formal presentation.

To live is to war with trolls.

- Henrik Ibsen

Vituperative

bitter and abusive

Ken

one's range of knowledge or sight.

Disposessed

deprive (someone) of land, property, or other possessions.

Encomium

a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly.

Elided

(of a sound or syllable) omitted when speaking. "elided consonants"

Injunction

a judicial order that restrains a person from beginning or continuing an action threatening or invading the legal right of another, or that compels a person to carry out a certain act, e.g., to make restitution to an injured party.

Metacognition

An awareness that you don't know everything is often called "metacognition"; it essentially means "thinking about thinking" and includes the ability to recognize your own knowledge gaps and limitations

Internecine

destructive to both sides in a conflict.

Confusion

Weasels

Ineluctable

unable to be resisted or avoided; inescapable. "the ineluctable facts of history"

Recrudesence

The renewal or reappearance of something, especially something dangerous or unhealthy. The return of something terrible after a time of reprieve.

Eclat

brilliant display or effect.

Feijoada

Brazil's national dish, is a stew loaded with black beans and meats of every description: smoked pork loin, bacon and sausage such as chorizo.

Good artists copy; great artists steal

- Pablo Picasso

Parliament

Owls

Voussoir

Wegde shaped block used in construction of roman arch.

Ineluctable

unable to be resisted or avoided; inescapable. "the ineluctable facts of history"

Unkindness

Ravens

Probity

the quality of having strong moral principles; honesty and decency.

Extant

(especially of a document) still in existence; surviving. "the original manuscript is no longer extant"

Occam's Razor

The simplest explanation is usually correct.

Oshibori

Hot hand towels, Japanese

Epic

Use e.g. he lacked that level of physical wit, physical improvisation, and epic, his story was a good one... .

Diffident

modest or shy because of a lack of self-confidence.

Scurry

Squirrels

Sugo

Flaneur

A person who strolls through the city often observing life and their surroundings with curiosity and without a specific purpose.

Voussoir

Wegde shaped block used in construction of roman arch.

Question inflection

the use of a rising pitch at the end of a sentence to indicate a question

Eclat

brilliant display or effect.

Peregrinations

A journey, especially a long or meandering one.

Flaneur

A person who strolls through the city often observing life and their surroundings with curiosity and without a specific purpose.

Polymath

an individual whose knowledge spans many different subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems

Instead of fighting the world, kill your ego.

- Rumi

Kenson

Self deprivation (Japanese)

Politics Take

Wednesday, July 29, 2026

222 Days

Trump Administration in Violation of Law Passed by Congress to Fully Release Epstein Files

152 Days

Start of Iran War

Quote

A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.

- Jean Genet

We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.

- Jim Rohn

The goal of meditation is not to control your thoughts, it's to stop letting them control you.

The road to hell is not paved with good intentions. It is paved with lack of intention.

- Gabor Mate

The single most vital step...is to learn to disidentify with your mind.

- Eckhart Tolle

It takes two years to learn to speak and sixty to learn to keep quiet.

- Earnest Hemingway

Negative energy is wasted energy.

- Roger Federer

It's 'you' vs 'you' every single day.

CHIPS Act (2022) - 80% to red (Republican) states

Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS)

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar.

Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don't serve them tea.

Shunryu Suzuki

open

Observe and learn instead of react and respond. Everything doesn't need your reaction. Conserve your energy for what matters.

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

- Earnest Hemingway

At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.

- Frida Kahlo

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

- Carl Jung

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

- Anton Chekhov

Hell is other people,

- Jean-Paul Sartre

To be truly radical is to make hope possible...

- Raymond Williams

It was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.

- Anais Nin

The cure for the pain is in the pain.

- Rumi

No man is free who is not master of himself.

- Epictetus

Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down.

- Eckhart Tolle

We learn from history that we don't learn from history.

- Hegel

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable. All these and other factors combined, if the circumstances are right, can teach and lead to rebirth.

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

- Rumi

Motivation is not the cause of action, it's the by-product of action.

- John L. Maxwell

You are not your thoughts, you are the observer of and intelligence behind your thoughts. When you understand this, you are operating from higher consciousness.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

All the goodness and the heroism will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn't that evil things win - it never will - but that it doesn't die.

- John Steinbeck

You're in charge of not letting people get to you. They can't pull the trigger if you don't give them the gun.

What fresh hell is this?

Dorothy Parker - Dorthy Parker

You don't have to attend every argument you're invited to.

With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of a man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.

- Jean-Paul Sartre

How you love, how you give, and how you suffer is just about the sum of who you are. Everything in life is a subset of one or a combinatorial function of all three. Seek people who love and give generously, who have the strength to suffer without causing damage. Seek to be such a person.

What is the secret of your serenity? Said the Master "Wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable."

- Anthony de Mello

Whenever the conscious and animal personality is in conflice with the inner process of growth, it suffers crucifixion.

- Carl Jung

Never seek revenge. Rotten fruit will fall by itself.

Look at your habits . . . are they the product of innumerable little cowardices and lazinesses or of your courage and inventive reason?

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

- Epictetus

Self discipline begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you don't control what you think, you can't control what you do.

Motivation is crap. Motivation comes and goes. When you are driven, whatever is in front of you will get destroyed.

- David Goggins

All cruelty springs from weakness.

- Seneca

Who needs these thoughts?

As Good As It Gets / Helen Hunt

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

- Charles Bukowski

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

What you feel is wrong or missing in your relationship is an indication that something is amiss within you.

- Wayne Dyer

Observe your thoughts, don't believe them.

- Eckhart Tolle

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

- Charles Bukowski

“Pay attention to what you’re thinking about. You are drawing in what you’re constantly dwelling on. Your thoughts are running your life. Is what you’re thinking about what you want?...”

Joel Osteen

Just be yourself. Nobody fucking likes you anyway.

To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem.

- Carl Jung

Boredom, anger, sadness, or grief are not 'yours,' not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

- Eckhart Tolle

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

- Sugar Ray Robinson

The ordinary man is the curse of civilization.

- John Fowles

When an unpleasant feeling, physical or mental, arises in him, the wise man... is aware that it is only a feeling. he knows that he is not that feeling, and he is not caught by the feeling. Therefore, the pain cannot bind him.

- Thick Nhat Hanh

The language of society is conformity: the language of the creative individual is freedom. Life will continue to be a hell as long as the people who make up the world shut their eyes to reality.

- Henry Miller

If you want to escape the burdens that oppress you, you should not be somewhere else, but someone else.

Seneca

Evil people need stupid people to do their work for them

Dietrich Bonfoffer

Unconditional Positive Regard

- Carl Rogers

The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

- Carl Jung

11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

1 Corinthians 13:11

"So what, no fucking ziti now!?"

Sopranos 1999

If a person gave away your body to some passerby you’d be furious. Yet you handover your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled—have you no shame in that?

- Epictetus

Quod Obstat Via Fit - The obstacle is the way.

- Marcus Aurelius

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

- Leo Tolstoy

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established intitutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, carless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.

- Bertrand Russell

Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.

- James Baldwin

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Then I realized something. I was keeping my old wounds fresh and open, as evidence for a trial that would never come.

- Mark Nepo

If you're going through hell, keep going.

- Winston Churchill

I must go home periodically to renew my sense of horror.

- Carson McCullers

The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.

- Socrates

You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you cannot control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.

Marcus Aurelius

The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.

- Rumi

Daily pick up your cross.

- Luke

My father used to say: 'Don't raise your voice, improve your argument.'

- Desmond Tutu

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.

- Robert Benchley

I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware.

- Alan Watts

Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.

The Buddha

Care about what other people think, and you will always be their prisoner.

- Lao Tzu

Your mistakes can also lead you to the truth.

- Rumi

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

- Dante Alighieri

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

- Margaret Atwood

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

The greatest difficulty is the mental resistance to things that arise, and the underlying assumption that they should not.

- Eckhart Tolle

Observe your thoughts, don't believe them.

- Eckhart Tolle

I used to feel like my side of the story needed to be told to keep the facts straight. Now I don't mind what people choose to believe.

Your comfort zone is the prison you built to protect yourself from growth.

IRA (2022) Reduce deficit, cost of prescriptions, promote clean energy spending

Inflation Reduction Act - Viktor Shvets

Everything doesn't need your energy, your reaction or your response. Protect yourself.

He who cannot obey himself will be commanded.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Weak people revenge. Strong people forgive. Intelligent people ignore.

- Albert Einstein

No feeling is final.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

- Tom Robbins

Nothing seems more conformist or more servile to me these days than the hackneyed mythology of 'revolt'.

- Rene Girard

Feel the feeling but don't become the emotion. Witness it. Allow it. Release it.

Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.

- Zadie Smith

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

- Aldous Huxley

It's not things that upset us but our judgements about things.

- Epictetus

I should be suspicious of what I want.

- Rumi

Excuses make today easy, but they make tomorrow hard. Discipline makes today hard, but it makes tomorrow easy.

When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. The pain if felt by others. The same thing happens when you're stupid.

Being aware of the sound of a bell does not mean the bell belongs to you. Likewise, being aware of your thoughts does not mean the thoughts belong to you.

Wu Hsin

Receive without pride, let go without attachment.

- Marcus Aurelius

The happy man is satisfied with his present situation, no matter what it is.

- Seneca

To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

- Kurt Vonnegut

He suffers unnecessarily, who suffers before it is necessary

Seneca

...suffer in the right direction.

Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all a fucking miracle.

- Louise Erdrich

It is hard to understand yourself properly since something that you might be doing out of generosity and goodness is the same as you might be doing out of cowardice and indifference.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Your brain is an asshole.

Pete Holmes

If you think there's a solution you're part of the problem, that's what I believe.

- George Carlin

Excessive thought...often creates scenarios of things going wrong that are not happening now, may never happen, and often probably will never happen.

- Eckhart Tolle

You can only fight the way you practice.

- Miyamoto Musashi

If you think someone has ruined your life, you're right. It's you.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

We will become our opposite if we do not learn to accommodate the opposition within us.

- Carl Jung

Listening is not simply hearing the words that are spoken. Listening is understanding why the words were spoken.

- Simon Sinek

Anything that is concealed is a secret. The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates their possessor from the community.

- Carl Jung

Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice.

- Epictetus

The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.

- Carl Jung

It is essential that we not respond impulsively...take a moment before reacting, and you will find it is easier to maintain control.

- Epictetus

Contentment is natural wealth; luxury is artificial poverty.

- Socrates

Nothing can provoke one's anger if one does not add to one's pile of troubles by getting angry.

Seneca

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life - becoming a better person.

- Leo Tolstoy

Be the person who breaks the cycle. If you were judged, choose understanding. If you were rejected, choose acceptance. if you were shamed, choose compassion. Be the person you needed when you were hurting, not the person who hurt you. Vow to be better than what broke you - to heal instead of becoming bitter so you can act from your heart, not your pain.

- Lori Deschene

You're never ready for what you have to do. You just do it. That makes you ready.

- Flora Rheta Schreiber

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth. and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge of what it is not.

- Carl Jung

Every fragment of self-talk is a little story in the head that goes around, and then you look at reality through the lens of the little story.

- Eckhart Tolle

The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.

- Socrates

The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

- Marcus Aurelius

The best answer to anger is silence.

- Marcus Aurelius

Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions, not outside.

Marcus Aurelius

I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.

- Michael Crichton

Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that's why life is hard.

- Jeremy Goldberg

Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much.

- Oscar Wilde

Love forgives many mistakes, while hatred imagines mistakes where they do not exist.

- St. John Chrysostom

There is no way to happiness - happiness is the way.

- Thick Nhat Hanh

Eisenhower (1950s) Operation "Wetback", 1.1 million Mexicans expelled

- Viktor Shvets

Wage Peace

Former President Jimmy Carter's Funeral, Carter's grandson

Noticing is a practice. Meditation begins with noticing each breath. Mindfulness begins with noticing change. Gratitude begins with noticing good.

- Omar Brownson

Even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play.

- Roger Federer

The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.

- Carl Jung

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

IRA (2022) Reduce deficit, cost of prescriptions, promote clean energy spending

Inflation Reduction Act - Viktor Shvets

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

- Marcus Aurelius

Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

- Elie Wiesel

Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light.

- Carl Jung

"A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. But marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That’s why it’s a sacrament: you give up your personal simplicity to participate in a relationship. And when you’re giving, you’re not giving to the other person: you’re giving to the relationship.

Joseph Campbell

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

- Albert Camus

Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life.

- Eckhart Tolle

Don't expect to be motivated every day to get out there and make it happen. You won't be. Don't count on motivation. Count on discipline.

- Joko Willinik

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.

- Winston Churchill

Just be an observer of your thouggts. You are the one who observes, not what is observed.

The Buddha

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

- Oscar Wilde

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.

- Michael Crichton

One of the most persistent of all delusions is the conviction that the source of our dissatisfaction lies outside ourselves.

B. Alan Wallace

We undervalue health if we have not recently experienced illness. We undervalue wealth if we have not recently experienced poverty. We undervalue kindness if we have not recently experienced cruelty. What might you be undervaluing right now?

- James Clear

It's not about feeling better, it's about getting better at feeling.

- Gabor Mate

All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed them must rely exclusively on force.

- George Orwell

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you should feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic ther is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief the evidence warrants.

- Bertrand Russell

Joy comes to us from whom we love even when they are absent.

- Seneca

Knowing your own darkness is the best way of dealing with the darkness of other people.

- Carl Jung

What should each of us say to every trial we face? This is what I've trained for, for this is my discipline!

- Epictetus

Well-being is realized by small steps, but is truly no small thing.

- Zeno

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer to every question.

- Edward Abbey

The world is violent and mercurial - it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love - love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must same from it, all the time, is love.

- Tennessee Williams

You have to let other people be right... it consoles them for not being anything else.

Andre Gide

No man is free who is not master of himself.

- Epictetus

Anybody can do something once and a while but to be consistent in what you do is a big difference. It's what you do consistently not occasionally that makes the difference.

. . . tyranny of completion . . .

- Adam Phillips

Pain is compulsory. Suffering is optional.

The Buddha

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.

- Zig Ziglar

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

- Thomas Edison

Every act of courage is the work of an unbalanced man. Animals, normally by definition, are always cowardly except when they know themselves to be stronger, which is cowardice itself.

- Emil Cioran

One, to a some degree, creates their own reality with their own thoughts. Be careful what you think about. Steer your thoughts, to the degree possible, towards the positive rather than negative.

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”

William James

Filter Posts

🆕 NEW

Dissent | Creative Community

New York

New Yorkers know Donald Trump the best.

July 29, 2026

Trump's War on Laughter

Political Satire

July 24, 2026

Page 1 of 1