Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
“There’s something about forty bucks,” Shader argued, “that has to do with the fact that’s the price above which you start getting nervous about lack of recourse.” He proposed a business that would provide eBay traders with escrow and payment services—“a branded infrastructure for safe and convenient person-to-person commerce.” It would make people
... See moreRandall E. Stross • eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work
Hollywood studios were filled with a “strange conglomeration of a few excellent overtired men making the pictures and as dismal a crowd of fakes and hacks at the bottom as you can imagine.” The consequence, Scott said, “is that every other man is a charlatan, nobody trusts anybody else, and an infinite amount of time is wasted from lack of confiden
... See moreA. Scott Berg • Max Perkins: Editor of Genius
“So you guys are asking me to delay the start? Okay. I can give you 15 minutes to get organized. But if we can’t start by then, then let’s just call it a day.”
Oren Klaff • Pitch Anything
Eisman, predisposed to suspect fraud in the market, wanted to bet against Americans who had been lent money without having been required to show evidence of income or employment.
Michael Lewis • The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Apart from a shared alarm at his recklessness, the members of the management team were not perfectly unified in their opinions of Sam. Tara had long since decided that he was dishonest and manipulative. Ben still thought him well-intentioned—but terrible at his job. But all felt themselves on a suicide mission.
Michael Lewis • Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
This political base could be mobilized through the positives of religion and cultural nationalism and negatively through coded, if not blatant, racism, homophobia, and anti-feminism. The problem was not capitalism and the neoliberalization of culture, but the ‘liberals’ who had used excessive state power to provide for special groups (blacks, women
... See moreDavid Harvey • A Brief History of Neoliberalism
A lot of what we do is designed to annoy people to the point where they might just for a second question enough of their environment to do something about it. As long as they don’t feel their environment, they don’t worry about it, they’re not going to do anything to change it. And something’s got to be done before America scarfs up the world and s
... See moreNeil Slaven • Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story Of Frank Zappa: The Story of Frank Zappa
“Exactly. So I took certain measures to deal with such a situation. Take a look at this.” Rey Diaz raised his left hand and displayed his wristwatch to the assembly. It was entirely black, and the dial was twice as large and thick as a normal men’s watch, although it didn’t appear large on his thick wrist. “This is a transmitter sending a signal th
... See moreCixin Liu • The Dark Forest (The Three-Body Problem Series Book 2)
Movies are an authoritarian medium. They vulnerabilize you and then dominate you.