95! Fuck time flies. Sadly he’ll exit the world with it in a far worse state than when he was most active. I’m quite confident that the same will be true for all who read this, whenever that might be.
Sadly he’ll exit the world with it in a far worse state than when he was most active.
Although that’s pretty on-brand for Chomsky.
Care to elaborate? Always thought of him as a rather sane person but would be interested to understand better if I’m just not informed enough.
Chomsky was very good at accurately predicting how things would only get worse.
Sad noises
I know his name from my computer science uni days. We did a lot of language theory.
Sad to hear, I wish him and his family the best.
95 is a hell of a run. Lived just enough to see Kissinger die.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Linguist, activist and social critic Noam Chomsky is hospitalized in his wife’s native country of Brazil recovering from a massive stroke he had a year ago, she confirmed Tuesday.
Valeria Chomsky said via email that her 95-year-old husband is in a Sao Paulo hospital, where she took him on an ambulance jet with two nurses once he could more easily travel from the United States following the June 2023 stroke.
Valeria Chomsky told the newspaper that her husband follows the news and when he sees images of the war in Gaza, he raises his left arm in a gesture of lament and anger.
Noam Chomsky, seen by many around the world as a symbol of protest and independence, is an influential activist and critic who has frequently challenged U.S. policy on everything from the Middle East to Central America, as well as what he considers a compliant media.
In 2017 he joined the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he is currently listed as Laureate Professor of Linguistics, Agnese Helms Haury Chair.
He transformed the study of linguistics with his landmark 1957 book, “Syntactic Structures,” in which he wrote that humans do not simply learn language but are born with an innate ability that explains how they can formulate and understand sentences never seen or heard before.
The original article contains 338 words, the summary contains 229 words. Saved 32%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It’s unfortunate that he’s lived to be 95 and still hasn’t managed to swallow his ego and admit the Bosnian or Cambodian genocides happened. I guess the ideological blindness is just too strong.
He’s also been a bafflingly strong proponent of Ukraine “just letting it happen” vis a vis the Russians invading. His geopolitical worldview is disappointingly Kissinger-esque.
His geopolitical worldview is disappointingly Kissinger-esque.
That’s a surprising take for some one on Nixon’s list of political opponents
He subscribes to the “great power” doctrine. His geopolitical calculus is unfortunately ossified with regards to military action potentially escalating to nuclear confrontation. It’s a mindset he shares with a TON of older politicians on both sides of the aisle, and it’s a key reason why Putin’s saber rattling is so effective at making the rest of the world mostly not get in their way in Ukraine, and why most western leaders are still shitting their britches over every single threat Putin makes. And in point of fact, that’s the reason Putin uses the strategy in the first place. He’s playing for an audience, and the audience is 70-80ish year old western politicians who have strong memories of the worst of the old Soviet saber rattling.
Just a few weeks ago this guys name was flying around in my head, and I didn’t know who he was. Weird.
I’ve had several “strokes” in Brazil, but I’ve never had to go to the hospital.
I was hoping it was the stroke causing his deranged comments on Russia/Ukraine but alas the stroke was months later.
