“be. So I follow the Lindy effect as a guide in selecting what to read: books that have been around for ten years will be around for ten more; books that have been around for two millennia should be around for quite a bit of time, and so forth.”
― Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder
― Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder
“Every innovation—technological, sociological, or otherwise—begins as a crusade, organizes itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation. This is simply the life cycle of how human ingenuity manifests in the material world. What goes forgotten, though, is that those who partake in this system undergo a similar transformation: people begin as comrades and fellow citizens, then become labor resources and assets, and then, as their utility shifts or degrades, transmute into liabilities, and thus must be appropriately managed. This is a fact of nature just as much as the currents of the winds and the seas. The flow of force and matter is a system, with laws and maturation patterns. We should harbor no guilt for complying with those laws—even if they sometimes require a little inhumanity. —TRIBUNO CANDIANO, LETTER TO THE COMPANY CANDIANO CHIEF OFFICER’S ASSEMBLY”
― Foundryside
― Foundryside
“If humans fight the last war, nature fights the next one.”
― Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
― Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
“The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference”
― Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
― Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
“In the effort to understand, we may go too far in personalizing institutions, and even entire industries; we may forget that none of these things really exist. It is only individual human beings who have agendas—and these agendas are themselves complex expressions of political and personal drives, some unconscious. So long as institutions must be comprised of individuals, then, institutions will have fractures, gradients; they will be many things, and in combinations that will change over time. We speak and think in models. And so we say that “The New York Times” wants to accomplish this, or that “the CIA” is after that. So long as we recognize this as shorthand, necessary”
― My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous: A Memoir
― My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous: A Memoir
Thaddeus’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Thaddeus’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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