Bookmarker is a personal project by @dellsystem to help with retaining reading material. Source on GitHub.

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“It’s not a religion? These are people who believe the Invisible Hand of the Market runs everything. They fight holy wars against competing religions like Marxism. Against all evidence that the world is finite, this blind faith that resources will never run out, profits will go on increasing forever, just like the world’s population—more cheap labor, more addicted consumers.”

it's kinda mind-boggling that there are people who have been saying this for so long

—p.338 by Thomas Pynchon 6 years, 3 months ago

“OK”, soothingly, “like, total disclosure? It’s been happenin to me too? I’m seeing people in the street who are supposed to be dead, even sometimes people I know were in the towers when they went down, who can’t be here but they’re here.”

They gaze at each other for a while, down here on the barroom floor of history, feeling sucker-punched, no clear way to get up and on with a day which is suddenly full of holes—family, friends, friends of friends, phone numbers on the Rolodex, just not there anymore . . . the bleak feeling, some mornings, that the country itself may not be there anymore, but being silently replaced screen by screen with something else, some surprise package, by those who’ve kept their wits about them and their clicking thumbs ready.

—p.339 by Thomas Pynchon 6 years, 3 months ago

“You really think Bush’s people are behind this.”

“You don’t?”

“I’m just a fraud examiner. Bush, don’t get me started. The Arab angle, I have these Jewish reflexes, so I have to work to avoid paranoia on that subject also.”

—p.349 by Thomas Pynchon 6 years, 3 months ago

RIGHT, SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT. What has the alternative ever been? Reclaimed by the small-time day-to-day, pretending life is Back To Normal, wrapping herself shivering against contingency’s winter in some threadbare blanket of first-quarter expenses, school committees, cable-bill irregularities, a workday jittering with low-life fantasies for which “fraud” is often too elegant a term, upstairs neighbors to whom bathtub caulking is an alien concept, symptoms upper-respiratory and lower-intestinal, all in the quaint belief that change will always be gradual enough to manage, with insurance, with safety equipment, with healthy diets and regular exercise, and that evil never comes roaring out of the sky to explode into anybody’s towering delusions about being exempt . . .

damn. how does he do this

—p.424 by Thomas Pynchon 6 years, 3 months ago

I’ve known Reid Hoffman for years. Our friendship started on my visits to Silicon Valley to meet with Greylock Partners, the venture capital firm where Reid is a partner, so I could learn about the companies they were investing in. I was always impressed by his sharp mind and brilliant business sense. Reid is famous for hosting long dinners where the conversation runs late into the night, and we’ve spent many meals breaking down the technology industry, analyzing the promise of artificial intelligence, and more. When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella started talking about acquiring LinkedIn, I knew it would be an amazing fit.

lmao

—p.ix Foreword by Bill Gates (ix) by Bill Gates 2 years, 9 months ago

Here was the question weighing heavily on Brian and his team: Should Airbnb follow Groupon’s strategy and just buy the knockoff company? Brian’s gut instinct was to say no. Integrating Wimdu’s finance-centric and metric-driven team could harm Airbnb’s design-driven culture. He was also reluctant to reward what he saw as a legal extortion racket rather than a sincere attempt to create value in the market.

im just a girl, sincerely attempting to create value in the market

—p.4 Introduction (1) by Chris Yeh, Reid Hoffman 2 years, 9 months ago

Blitzscaling requires hypergrowth but goes beyond the blunt strategy of “get big fast” because it involves purposefully and intentionally doing things that don’t make sense according to traditional business thinking. In the Blitzscaling Era, you have to make a tough call:

• Take on the additional risk and discomfort of blitzscaling your company,
• Or accept what might be the even greater risk of losing if your competition blitzscales before you do.

—p.12 Introduction (1) by Chris Yeh, Reid Hoffman 2 years, 9 months ago

Disruption on its own is neither good nor bad, but it always involves change. Replacing a $10 product with a $1 product of equal or better quality looks like a disaster to an incumbent player, but, for society as a whole, it means greater productivity. The buyer gets the desired product, and now also has $9 available to invest in other things. Netflix has been bad news for broadcast and cable networks, but it has been great news for fans and creators of movies and television. Yes, disruption produces losers as well as winners, but, as a whole, it is a vital source of growth and opportunity that you can’t afford to ignore.

is that so??????

—p.13 Introduction (1) by Chris Yeh, Reid Hoffman 2 years, 9 months ago

Here’s a startling fact: the global economy will need to create six hundred million new jobs by 2030 to meet the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. That’s less than fifteen years away. The world needs more than just new companies and new jobs; it’s going to need entire new industries.

lol shut up

—p.18 Introduction (1) by Chris Yeh, Reid Hoffman 2 years, 9 months ago

With the power of blitzscaling, the adopted son of a Syrian immigrant (Steve Jobs), the adopted son of a Cuban immigrant (Jeff Bezos), and a former English teacher and volunteer tour guide (Jack Ma) were all able to build businesses that changed—and are still changing—the world.

ha ha fuck off. the word 'immigrant' is hereby banned

—p.20 Introduction (1) by Chris Yeh, Reid Hoffman 2 years, 9 months ago