Raw Meat is a quoteblog by Aaron Swartz.

You refer to the Pentagon, as is usually done, as a defense organization. In 1947, when the National Defense Act was passed, the former War Department — the American department concerned with war which up to that time was honestly called the War Department — had its name changed to the Defense Department. I was a student then and didn’t think I was very sophisticated, but I knew and everyone knew that this meant that to whatever extent the American military had been involved in defense in the past — and partially it had been so — this was now over: since it was being called the Defense Department, that meant it was going to be a department of aggression, nothing else.

There are two ways of viewing the government’s duty in matters affecting economic and social life. The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and hopes that some of their prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small businessman. That theory belongs to the party of Toryism, and I had hoped that most of the Tories left this country in 1776.

But it is not and never will be the theory of the Democratic Party.

I’m flattered that you’re being paranoid.

I know young men who are constantly getting naked pictures from women they know on their phones,” she said. “They’re constant!

What is your true fear?”
I must achieve my full potential. If I don’t I… fail…
“What happens if you fail?”
Something terrible…
“What happens if you fail?”
I don’t know!
“Then it should not be frightening. What happens if you fail?”
I DON’T KNOW! BUT I KNOW THAT IT’S BAD!

From now on, consider me, us your competitor, and understand this, if you ever get into any of our businesses, I will destroy you.” And he said, “I work for a man who wants it all, and doesn’t understand anybody telling him he can’t have it all.” And that ended his discussion.

it’s worth downloading just to see how many photos the NYT art department could find of good-looking young people looking happy in minimalist houses.

Scotland Yard chose not to mount a formal inquiry. Instead a senior press officer contacted Brooks to ask for an explanation. She is understood to have told them they were investigating a report that Cook was having an affair with another officer, Jacqui Hames, the presenter of BBC Crimewatch. Yard sources say they rejected this explanation, because Cook had been married to Hames for some years; the couple had two children, then aged two and five; and they had previously appeared together as a married couple in published stories.

(via felixsalmon)

Monkeys have been shown in previous studies to really love photographs of alpha males and shots of genitals, and we think this will drive their purchasing habits.

No wonder it’s a rarity for correspondents to discuss their pain, and practically unheard of when it regards sexual harassment or assault. The handbook of the Committee to Protect Journalists didn’t even mention it—until 20 days ago, when the organization published an “addendum on sexual aggression.