Scott > Scott's Quotes

“His sales philosophy revolved around focusing on features (technical aspects of products) over benefits (why what we’re selling matters). It’s the classic what versus why sales contrast, in which focusing more on the why has been proven time and again to be the better option.”
― John Couch, My Life at Apple: And the Steve I Knew

“To human eyes turned toward the sky 100,000 years ago, they appeared identical in size, as they do to our eyes today. In a total solar eclipse, the disc of the moon fits so precisely over that of the sun that the naked eye can see solar flares leaping into space from behind. But while they appear precisely the same size to terrestrial observers, scientists long ago determined that the true diameter of the sun is about four hundred times that of the moon. Yet incredibly, the sun’s distance from Earth is roughly four hundred times that of the moon’s, thus bringing them into unlikely balance when viewed from the only planet with anyone around to notice.22 Some will say, “Interesting coincidence.” Others will wonder whether there isn’t an extraordinary message contained in this celestial convergence of difference and similarity, intimacy and distance, rhythmic constancy and cyclical change. Like our distant ancestors, we watch the eternal dance of our sun and our moon, looking for clues to the nature of man and woman, masculine and feminine here at home.”
― Christopher Ryan, Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships

“We can list more than 20 dimensions we’ve found in successful leaders: the ability to create a vision, thinking strategically, building influential internal and external networks, courage to make tough decisions, and so on. Successful leadership is multidimensional for sure. But most of the traits of successful leaders can be distilled down to two elements. They know how to: bring multiple teams together make great decisions And these two elements have a lot to do with whether organizations are agile.”
― Jim Clifton, It's the Manager: Gallup finds the quality of managers and team leaders is the single biggest factor in your organization's long-term success.

“The problem is, while conversion of the energy grid to solar would make a lot of money for the companies building and installing solar panels, the total carbon footprint and environmental impact may not be so much better—if at all. The sun may be a renewable energy source; solar panels are anything but. They don’t grow on trees, but require the mining of aluminum, copper, and rare earth metals, already in low supply. The manufacturing of solar panels is itself an extremely energy-intensive process that involves the superheating of quartz into silicon wafers, vast quantities of water, and large quantities of toxic byproducts and runoff. The solar panels themselves begin degrading just a few years after installation, and need to be replaced every decade or two. Solar panel disposal creates a host of other toxicity and environmental problems, and as long as it remains cheaper for manufacturers to dump them as landfill, we won’t be seeing a robust recycling program for them anytime soon.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

“Even accepting that EVs and solar panels are or will one day be more energy-efficient than coal- and gas-burning technologies, the bigger question is how fast we attempt to transition. For renewables to provide a majority of our power, we would have to increase wind and solar twenty-fold. But there are not enough rare earth metals on the planet to build such an energy system and then replace it every couple of decades. Replacing a majority of our coal and gas industries with electric ones would exhaust all of our power and resources at one time, massively increasing emissions and environmental degradation in the short run. It could also increase energy inequality, by diverting power and resources to the rebuilding of the energy sector itself. Transitioning slowly, on the other hand, as things wear out, might not create such stresses, but would take many decades to bring us to zero net emissions. Both approaches result in catastrophe. The”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

“The only real answer, the really simple one that neither philanthrocapitalists nor green technologists want to hear, is that we have to reduce our energy consumption altogether.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

“In the late eighteenth-century, German educationalist Friedrich Froebel found that the best way to promote learning in children was through play. His studies found that people are naturally creative, and that their creativity was best brought out inside educational environments that included materials (which he called “gifts”) that encouraged learning through hands-on play. The idea was to teach young children through ways they valued and enjoyed rather than through ways they viewed as useless and boring.”
― John Couch, My Life at Apple: And the Steve I Knew

“The next day—Christmas Eve—Musk called in reinforcements. Ross Nordeen drove from San Francisco. He stopped at the Apple Store in Union Square and spent $2,000 to buy out the entire stock of AirTags so the servers could be tracked on their journey, and then stopped at Home Depot, where he spent $2,500 on wrenches, bolt-cutters, headlamps, and the tools needed to unscrew the seismic bolts. Steve Davis got someone from The Boring Company to procure a semi truck and line up moving vans. Other enlistees arrived from SpaceX.”
― Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk