“If you hang around the subprime lending business long enough, you'll meet your share of interesting borrowers: strippers, cons, pimps, thugs and various other upstanding citizens of the community. These were not out typical customers. But if a borrower has credit problems and a checkered past, employment gaps and income from unverifiable sources, he usually ends up talking with a subprime lender.”
― Confessions of a Subprime Lender: An Insider's Tale of Greed, Fraud, and Ignorance
― Confessions of a Subprime Lender: An Insider's Tale of Greed, Fraud, and Ignorance
“We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know nothing real beyond the words. Nobody knows what suffering or sacrifice mean—except, perhaps the victims of the mysterious purpose of these illusions.”
― Tales of Unrest
― Tales of Unrest
“Hannah Arendt has argued that revolutions occur when contempt for bad governance becomes so widespread and corrosive that the system simply collapses -- a theory demonstrated by the fall of communism. So it may be useful to spread and intensify contempt for the boss by slyly fomenting sedition in the photocopying room.”
― The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy
― The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy
“If I gun down my boss in the carpark after work then he won't be able to terrorise all his other employees and the greater good will have been served.”
― How Good People Make Tough Choices
― How Good People Make Tough Choices
“following a [software development] process as agile as a cashier on Quaaludes.”
― I. M. Wright's Hard Code
― I. M. Wright's Hard Code
Michael’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Michael’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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