Skip to content

Sign up for a small monthly payment and enjoy ads-free browsing at 3QD

Make a one-time donation and enjoy ads-free browsing at 3QD

Home
About Us
Monday Magazine
Archives
Support 3QD
Log In

Catspeak

Posted on Monday, Oct 5, 2020 1:30AMMonday, October 5, 2020 by Brooks Riley (Catspeak)

by Brooks Riley

Like what you're reading? Don't keep it to yourself!

Share on Facebook

Tweet about this on Twitter

Share on Reddit

Share on LinkedIn

Email this to someone

Post navigation

A View from Afar: Trump’s Presidency

This sentence is false.

Receive 3QD Posts by Email

Please fill out the form below to get our email with all the posts from the previous 24 hours, which is sent out a bit after midnight (NY City time) each day. This is completely free of charge for everyone.

	Name:
	Your email address:*

Please enter all required fields Correct invalid entries

Coronavirus COVID-19 Info

PLEASE CLICK HERE.

Search 3QD

Follow 3QD on Social Media

What People Say About 3QD

"I look at your site every day. It's where the two cultures meet."

—Suketu Mehta, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Maximum City, winner of the O. Henry Prize, and frequent contributor to various newspapers and magazines.

"I really appreciate your selection of generally sane and mostly stimulating articles. 3 Quarks Daily has been my goto website at the end of the day, and now also during the day!"

—Horst Ludwig Störmer, Nobel laureate in physics and emeritus professor at Columbia University.

"I'm a big admirer of 3 Quarks Daily!"

—William Dalrymple, award winning historian and travel writer, as well as distinguished broadcaster, critic, art historian, foreign correspondent and founder and co-director of Asia's largest literary festival.

"The algorithms that curate your social-media timeline do so with indifference and programmed greed. The humans who curate 3QD do so with love and well-aged wisdom. Read 3QD instead! It’s so much better!"

—Justin E. H. Smith, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Paris.

"It is a great honor to be mentioned in one of my two ONLY portals to the internet—and the world, since I do not read newspapers. My discipline, to avoid drowning in information, is not to cruise the web outside of these two points. I tried many sites; yours has CHARM."

—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. [The other site NNT is referring to is the excellent Arts & Letters Daily.]

“From my perspective as an early modernist, what you’re undertaking is akin to the heroic labors of Renaissance compositors, who would (like you) read widely and excerpt and synthesize vast amounts of knowledge for others. A real service to the republic of letters.”

—Scott Newstok, Professor of English, Director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment, Rhodes College, and author of How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education.

"3 Quarks Daily is terrific - many congratulations, and many thanks!"

—Alain de Botton, best-selling Swiss-British writer and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

"3 Quarks Daily is one of the most interesting and thoughtful websites out there."

—Sean Carroll, physicist at Caltech, author.

"3 Quarks Daily is a warm and often amusing home for intellectuals and other wags."

—Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer.

"I have placed 3 Quarks Daily at the head of my list of web bookmarks."

—Richard Dawkins, previously Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

Recent Comments on 3QD

Peter Since writing this article and taking part in the discussion afterwards my attention has been drawn to this article:...
Judging the Past versus Saving the Statues · Thursday, January 21, 2021
Peter Thanks for joining in, Larry and Jim. I know exactly what you mean, and I have a lot of sympathy with your feelings. I'm a comparatively new convert...
Make Love, not War · Thursday, January 21, 2021
Ash Jogalekar Sound suggestions, if well trodden ones. What I find remarkable is how this country fails to pass legislation that is impressed upon us by people as...
Bernie Sanders: Joe Biden must put an end to business as usual and here’s where to start · Thursday, January 21, 2021
S. Abbas Raza Yes, but unlike many others, Eric is willing to listen when others who know more about a given subject tell him he is wrong about something, and he...
What’s The Plan? An Open Letter To Secretary Of Education, Dr. Miguel Cardona · Thursday, January 21, 2021
Leanne Ogasawara Thank you for sharing this!
Bernie Sanders: Joe Biden must put an end to business as usual and here’s where to start · Thursday, January 21, 2021
Michael Liss The tougher question is, what's worse? The reality of the Trump Presidency, on both policy and personality, or the fact that so many millions of...
Obituary for a Failed Presidency · Thursday, January 21, 2021
Odibex well, I guess I'm employing a little hyperbole there, but the promotion of cures & treatments which haven't been proved effective is kind of a...
What’s The Plan? An Open Letter To Secretary Of Education, Dr. Miguel Cardona · Thursday, January 21, 2021
jim birch I told you this would end badly.
Obituary for a Failed Presidency · Thursday, January 21, 2021
Joel Grant I wonder - time will tell - if any of the MAGA cultists have been watching what most of America has been watching and, if so, is it beginning to dawn...
The times they are a changin’: Congratulations to President Biden and to the Indian-American girl who just became the Vice President of the United States · Thursday, January 21, 2021
Ruchira A lovely photo and indeed a historic milestone.
The times they are a changin’: Congratulations to President Biden and to the Indian-American girl who just became the Vice President of the United States · Thursday, January 21, 2021
David Evans The best opening line and the best closing paragraph I have read for some time. That was a great read.
Why George MacDonald Matters · Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Ash Jogalekar Mary, I am very glad! Thank you.
On the varieties of change · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Ash Jogalekar Thanks for your comment, and especially for "impermanence can be a wonderful gift". We treasure moments precisely because they are temporary.
On the varieties of change · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Ash Jogalekar Thanks Leanne. Did you know there is a new updated version of The First Three Minutes out this year? It was supposed to be out at the end of December...
On the varieties of change · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Ash Jogalekar Thanks for your comment Brooks (I could finally manage to log in to respond). The line from Handel's Messiah is beautiful and I thoroughly enjoyed...
On the varieties of change · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Joan Harvey That really is the question. And you are right, Boebert is just the tip of the iceberg. I grew up in that district, but in the liberal part, though a...
My Cousin Daryl Pens a Paean to Lauren Boebert · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Ruchira "The good people of Colorado’s Third District weighed those two platforms carefully and chose FREEDOM!" And now it has emerged that she acted as...
My Cousin Daryl Pens a Paean to Lauren Boebert · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Bill Benzon Yes, agreed.
My Cousin Daryl Pens a Paean to Lauren Boebert · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Michael Liss "Till April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom Holiday tables under the trees April in Paris, this is a feeling That no one can ever reprise."
Catspeak · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
aachukay What an incredibly rich life the subject has lived! Such a pleasure to read about him, I can only assume how proud Mrs Shamsie must be to have had...
In memoriam: Sahabzada M. Yaqub Khan, my uncle · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Mary Hrovat I enjoyed this so much. I loved the grand scale of this piece, from the daily changes of newborns (which I especially loved reading about) to the...
On the varieties of change · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Joan Harvey Thanks, Bill!
My Cousin Daryl Pens a Paean to Lauren Boebert · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Bill Murray Brilliant.
My Cousin Daryl Pens a Paean to Lauren Boebert · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Android Pitanga Nicely done. Poignant and insightful, with a dash of the speculative. The "luxury of dignity" has great sound to it. Impermanence can be a wonderful...
On the varieties of change · Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Larry Franz Michael Strevens, who teaches philosophy at NYU, argues in his new book The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, that what...
Science and magic · Monday, January 18, 2021
S. Abbas Raza Thanks so much, Paul.
Monday Photo · Monday, January 18, 2021
Paul Bigioni Thank you! This is so oddly beautiful. How many of us stop, even for a second, in a given day to see the simple delights with which even the most...
Monday Photo · Monday, January 18, 2021
Leanne Ogasawara Wonderful essay, Ash! It’s a blessing that you’ve got to spend so much time with your newborn daughter. My son was born right after 911 and I...
On the varieties of change · Monday, January 18, 2021
jimculleny I wonder if vilification is never morally called for. If you have a dedicated vilifier on one side of the equation and a dedicated non-vilifier on the...
Make Love, not War · Monday, January 18, 2021
jimculleny It'd be uncommonly considerate if Trump would stop going in the latrine he thinks of as the USA. And, if he would encourage his insurrectionist...
Catspeak · Monday, January 18, 2021

3QD Design History and Credits

The original site was designed by S. Abbas Raza in 2004 but soon completely redesigned by Mikko Hyppönen and deployed by Henrik Rydberg. It was later upgraded extensively by Dan Balis in 2006. The next major revision was designed by S. Abbas Raza, building upon the earlier look, and coded by Dumky de Wilde in 2013. And this current version 5.0 has been designed and deployed by Dumky de Wilde in collaboration with S. Abbas Raza.

3 Quarks Daily

3 Quarks Daily started in 2004 with the idea of creating a curated retreat for everything intellectual on the web. No clickbait, no fake news, not just entertainment, but depth and breadth —something increasingly hard to find on the internet today. If you like what we do, please consider making a donation.