Zugzwang means “a compulsion to move”. It is a term used in chess to describe a situation where the player is forced to make a move, but every available move is a disadvantage.
If it wasn’t an obligation, the player would prefer not to move at all.
Scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter for the future, to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.
-Nikola Tesla
Never had an idea in my life. I’ve got no imagination. My so-called inventions already existed in the environment. I took them out. I’ve created nothing. Nobody does. Genius hangs around the laboratory day & night; if anything happens, he’s there to catch it.
-Thomas Edison
After he got up I asked how he was feeling. “Terrible,” he said, “hurt my wrist.” Then he ran up to the car which had pulled aside a few feet ahead on Curtner.
I was ambivalent about getting more involved because, although the driver was at fault, it was the bicyclist who ran into the car.
Tree of life on Earth is in the forest of our Milky Way, one of many large forests in the Universe. Volumes of Fruit are ripening.
@130story
Think of some definite object – suppose, as you sat down to it this morning, it is your breakfast-table. Consider carefully the picture that rises in your mind’s eye. Is the image dim, or clear? Are the colors of whatever may have been on the table, quite distinct & natural?
Americans, we have much to be grateful for. We have freedom, and freedom is everything.
Pete Campbell, San Jose
Loved ones we call the dead depart from us and for a while are absent. And then as if called back by our love, they come near us again. They enter our dreams. We feel they have been near us when we have not thought of them. They are simply here, simply waiting while we are distracted among our obligations. At last it comes to us: They live now in the permanent world. We are the absent ones.
Wendell Berry, The New Yorker, NOV 24, 2025
Both worked their entire lives in the steel mills. Andy was one of the very last relics of the Rust Belt. All the electricity, some at 13,800 volts, passed through his control room. This drawing above is his diagram of the main switches.
archaic : think
obsolete : believe
Zeus would sometimes come down from Olympus and walk incognito amongst mortals. Eventually he would be recognized and people would cry out “Hey! Zeus!” …
and He replied “gesundheit” to the faithful.
The future belongs to those who can use code and media effectively (leveraging permissionless content that scales without marginal cost). If you can build it, and you can sell it, you will be unstoppable!