“Christopher Nolan took a story of war and magic and monsters and homecoming, and he turned it into a story where civilization collapses when people fail to welcome the stranger. He took a story where people honor strangers lest they entertain the gods in disguise, and gently suggests that perhaps every person is worthy of welcome and guest-friendship. He took a story where the gods manipulate everything people do, and gently suggests that people should take some fucking responsibility for their own actions, and along the way shows us what happens when someone betrays the god he claims to worship”  --Leah Schnelbach, “The Eyes of Athena and the Disenchanted World of The Odyssey,” REACTOR, July 22, 2026, https://reactormag.com/the-odyssey-movie-review

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called ‘leaves’) imprinted with dark-pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time - proof that humans can work magic.”  --Carl Sagan 

"The aliens are already here. They are algorithms and they landed more than twenty years ago."  --Mark Stahlman

“Fidel Castro was a billionaire. Putin is a billionaire. The leaders of communist regimes are always rich. They steal and rob from those they govern.”  --Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)

(Trump made over $2 billion in 2025 alone, while in office.)

And happiness is not overrated. It is everything.

We’re constantly trying not to get scammed these days. It’s too expensive to do anything. The planet is too hot. The wars are still happening and certain families are still getting rich off of said wars. The world is uninspiring – even downright depressing – if you look at it from a wide angle, but what are we to do in between fighting the good fight? We should celebrate each other. We should remember that we each have something to offer this world. We should – we must – do something for ourselves. And maybe we should put it out there for others. And whatever happens as a result will be such an adventure.  --Yasmin Aliya Khan, Excerpt from "Audacity and Adventure"

https://yazzzzzk.substack.com/p/audacity-and-adventure

“Speak softly and carry a big stick—you will go far.” If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power. In private life there are few things more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly boasting; and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words his position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it is with the nation. It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples."  --Teddy Roosevelt uttered these words at the Minnesota State Fair on September 2, 1901. 

Reporter: “what are your plans for the housing bill?”

Trump: “I don’t— know. I think it’s so— unimportant by compared to— by compared to the Save America Act. the housing bill is a bill that can get approved. they worked on it long and hard. it’s very— bipartisan. that means Democrats like it. and it’s uhhhhh— maybe— even— uhhhhh, it’s, it’s probably maybe more that way, they’re getting things that I wouldn’t necessarily agree to. nobody knows more than housing in the history of the presidency, nobody, nobody, no— well like me, in housing. I made a lot of— I made a lot of money. I made a lot of money with housing.”