“

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.




When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes.’

”
— Kurt Vonnegut (via hammerito) (via fuckyeahkurtvonnegut) (via crookedindifference, hammerito)

“I have felt for awhile that New York under Bloomberg has approached some sort of American ideal. Culturally libertarian, fiscally prudent, entrepreneurial to the Nth, and, yes, genuinely tolerant in the adult “that’s life” way rather than the treacly “we are all one” way lip-serviced by patriotic scoundrels left and right. The Cordoba House affair just encapsulates the difference between our America and much of the rest of it. We got hit on 9/11. And we did not let it change us. I can’t say that for the rest of the country.”
—

Tim Heffernan via James Fallows

Love ya, New York. Liberal, prudent, entrepreneurial, and tolerant.

(via fatmanatee) (via osmium) (via biteofpythias)

(via purns)

(via charlietodd)