RIP Volition

The Volition team has proudly created world-class entertainment for fans around the globe for 30 years.  We've been driven by a passion for our community and always worked to deliver joy, surprise, and delight.

This past June, Embracer Group announced a restructuring program to strengthen Embracer and maintain its position as a leader in the video game industry.  As part of that program, they evaluated strategic and operational goals and made the difficult decision to close Volition effective immediately.

To help our team, we are working to provide job assistance and help smooth the transition for our Volition family members.  We thank our customers and fans around the world for all the love and support over the years.  You will always be in our hearts.

 -- Volition Games, in a message posted to Volition's official LinkedIn page, GEMATSU.com, Volition Shuts Down After 30 Years, 31 August 2023

Criticize & Praise

Criticize by category -- praise by name.

-- Warren Buffett (1930 -), American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist, "CNBC's Becky Quick interviews Warren Buffett", CNBC Television (25 February 2019), YouTube (quote at 48:00 of 2:00:00)

The Last Link

An aphorism is the last link in a long chain of thought.

-- Marie Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830 - 1916), Moravian writer, Aphorisms (1890), p. 19

Speed Up That Day

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last.  Free at last.  Thank God almighty, we are free at last.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 - 1968), African American clergyman, civil rights activist, and Nobel laureate, final paragraph of his "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as part of the March on Washington, 28 August 1963

Chandrayaan-3

India is now on the moon.  India has reached the south pole of the moon -- no other country has achieved that.  We are witnessing history.

-- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in comments on the success of India's Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission, launched July 14th.  The mission cost just $75,000,000, and today successfully deployed a lunar rover, 25 August 2023

P01135809

The most basic principles of a strong democracy are accountability and respect for the Constitution and rule of law.  You either have it, or you don't.

-- Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, commenting on the indictment of former president Donald Trump, The New Republic, 15 August 2023

Least Disappointing

Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.

-- Bernard Baruch (1870 - 1965), American financier, stock market speculator, statesman, and presidential advisor, as quoted in Meyer Berger’s New York (1960)

Not A Fool Today

We think, I'm not a fool today.  I've learned my lesson.  I was a fool yesterday but not this morning.  Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too.  I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly.

-- Ray Douglas Bradbury (22 August 1920 - 5 June 2012), American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer, The Illustrated Man (1951) No Particular Night or Morning

No Education

There is no education like adversity.

-- Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (1804 - 1881), British politician, novelist, and essayist, twice UK Prime Minister, Endymion (1880) Ch. 61

Not Be Attached

Most people find attachment being to something that they love.  But you can also attach yourself to something that you hate.  And I think we need to learn to let go of the thing, to find a process to let that go, and not be attached. 

-- Ken Gullette of Internal Fighting Arts, on the Kung Fu Conversations podcast, Episode #41 (18 August 2023)

Tardy Pace

Justice, though moving with tardy pace, has seldom failed to overtake the wicked in their flight.

-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BC - 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace, leading lyric poet in Latin, Carmina, III. 2. 31

One Great Advantage

The fool has one great advantage over a man of sense -- he is always satisfied with himself.

-- Napoléon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821), French military general who became the ruler of France, Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916), Ch. II : Psychology and Morals

Grace

That Trump will be tried for his coup attempt is not a violation of his rights.  It is a fulfillment of his rights.  It is the grace of the American republic.  In other systems, when your coup attempt fails, what follows is not a trial.

-- Yale History Professor Timothy Snyder (18 August 1969 -), posting on Twitter as @TimothyDSnyder, 3 August 2023 (h/t Josh Paley)

Clean And Healthful

Today, for the first time in US history, a court ruled on the merits of a case that the government violated the constitutional rights of children through laws and actions that promote fossil fuels, ignore climate change, and disproportionately imperil young people.  This is a huge win for Montana, for youth, for democracy, and for our climate.  More rulings like this will certainly come.

-- Julia Olson, chief legal counsel and executive director of Our Children’s Trust, which brought the case, after District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled that a provision in the Montana Environmental Policy Act has harmed the state’s environment and the young plaintiffs by preventing Montana from considering the climate impacts of energy projects, violating a clause in the state constitution that guarantees citizens the right to a "clean and healthful environment", CNN.com

Traffic Theory

The person who invented the stop sign, the pedestrian crosswalk, the traffic circle, the one-way street, the taxi stand, and the pedestrian safety islands, William Phelps Eno, never learned to drive.

-- Summary of the life of William Phelps Eno (1858 - 1945) by Midnight Fact on Facebook [Fact-checked for accuracy]

Avoidable Misery

Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship.  We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle -- the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.

-- Sir Karl Popper (1902 - 1994), Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator, As quoted in 1,001 Pearls of Wisdom (2006) by David Ross

Such Character

It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.

-- Jean de La Bruyère (1645 - 1696), French essayist and moralist, Les Caractères (1688) Du mérite personnel, Aphorism 21

Without Undue Haste

There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honours too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.

-- Jean de La Bruyère (1645 - 1696), French essayist and moralist, Les Caractères (1688) Des jugements, aphorism 108

Deep Springs Of Life

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

-- Samuel Ullman (1840 - 1924), American businessman, poet, and humanitarian, Youth (1918)

Friendship

Friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), Roman philosopher, politician, and political theorist, De Amicitia - On Friendship (44 B.C.)

A Fair Trial

I can guarantee everybody that there will be a fair process and a fair trial in this case.

-- Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya, speaking to the court during the arraignment of Donald Trump, 3 August 2023

A Good Question

My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to.  Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: So? Did you learn anything today?  But not my mother.  "Izzy," she would say, "did you ask a good question today?"  That difference -- asking good questions -- made me become a scientist.

-- Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898 - 1988), American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance, which is used in magnetic resonance imaging, as quoted in "Great Minds Start With Questions" in Parents Magazine (September 1993)

This Time

The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020. The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election.

Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway -- to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.

-- Introduction to the most-recent Federal indictment of Donald Trump, this time for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, 1 August 2023

Once In A Lifetime

Youth comes but once in a lifetime.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882), American poet and one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside Poets, Hyperion (1839), Book II, Chapter X