Who’s Smart, Who’s Thought-Provoked?

Somewhen, I forget when, my Firefox browser started offering me articles from “Pocket: part of the Firefox family.” I believe they mean “Pocket: a company owned by Firefox” but let’s let that go, shall we? Not every hill can be one to die for.

Anyway. In curating THE MOST THOUGHT-PROVOKING ARTICLES, per their website, Pocket recommends ARTICLES on a curiously wide range of THOUGHTS. In my most-recent assortment . . .

Could Bruce Lee Win a Real Fight?

You know, this very question often dominates our dinner table. Maybe now we can get it settled. But I don’t want to give the impression that Pocket is low-brow. Oh no.

The Grandmaster Who Got Twitch Hooked on Chess

Is Twitch a rapper? Is chess now seen as having the potential to addict? Or am I missing the point entirely? Is “chess” some new synthetic drug? I am *so* out of touch. And *so* depressed: All the news seems bad bad bad.

Bad on the environmental front . . .

The 8 Most Endangered National Parks

Bad on the health front . . .

Coronavirus 2nd Wave?
Nope, The U.S. Is Still Stuck In The 1st One

Bad on the world-order front . . .

The Ungoverned Globe

This one is The Most Bad-Thought-Provoking Article in my options. Maybe The Most Bad-Thought-Provoking Article ever written. The way-ahead choices are “unleashed chaos” or “unconstrained economic suffering.” Gack! Can I have Door #3, Monty? I wonder in passing whether chaos is ever leashed. But I digress. Focus, Isabel, focus.

Your Ability to Focus Has Probably Peaked

Oh, see now, that’s not good either.

But I guess in a perverse way there is *some* good news. Ross Perot, please take note: That giant sucking sound is not, after all, our jobs leaving for Mexico.

Aboard the Giant Sand-Sucking Ships
that China Uses to Reshape the World

OK, on balance, maybe that’s not any better. No wonder I have trouble sleeping.

Read This if You Keep Waking Up at Night

Just as I’m about to click, I consider an alternative. Maybe I’ll just stop reading what Pocket recommends. Or figure out how to disable the app altogether. Could Twitch help with that, do you suppose? Once he kicks that chess habit and gets straight, I mean.

 

This entry was posted in Laughing Frequently, Wired and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

11 Responses to Who’s Smart, Who’s Thought-Provoked?

  1. barbara carlson says:

    As John Benn said, when I asked him what he had learned in his first 59 years, after some thought, “Don’t sweat the big stuff.”

  2. Tom Watson says:

    Isabel
    I assume you’ll let us know if your dinner table discussions ever solve whether Bruce Lee can win a real fight.

    The woods are full of people wanting to know that.
    Tom

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Tom – I’m sure the woods are full of them. They might even have set up competing communities . . .

  3. Dave says:

    The great sucking sound I have used to describe how wealth quickly reaches the top 1%. It does not matter whether the expenditure comes from the private or public sector. Almost all of the expenditures in the economy eventually reach the Plutocracy since they are the recipients of almost of all of the profits. See Michal Kalecki Polish Economist .
    Enjoy

    Dave

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Dave – And yet not all countries are the same in wealth concentration, at least in the sense that some have a large middle-class, no?

      • Dave says:

        But it is shrinking as the Precariat grows! Likely to be more so after some sort of normalcy returns.
        Middle class needs a definition here.

  4. Pocket drives me crazy. About once a week an article pops up that claims no one knows the answer to some state of consciousness or some condition or behaviour with which I beg to differ because I have sorted the neurological reasons for them. One day, when I am less busy sewing masks etc., I hope to write to my Pocket collection of pundits to correct their thinking. However, many of those articles are old and addresses for the authors are hard to locate. Like the bouquet of post-its stuck to my nearest filing cabinet, they are a reminder that I have promises to keep (although a Frost allusion is hardly appropriate in this heat wave).

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Laurna – That’s funny. I don’t know enough to challenge the content of the articles (I get hung up just on the titles – :-)), but I can at least understand your frustration. And yes, many are several years old – and not all of them weather well. Good luck with chasing down the ones that matter.

  5. Pingback: I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes to the Molehills | Traditional Iconoclast

Comments are closed.