Tashna Downes

“This is true freedom: to be capable of leaving ourselves, crossing the boundaries of our little world to open up the universe.”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky, Psicomagia

“Joseph Cassano of AIG Financial Products—known as “Mr. Credit-Default Swap”—led a unit that required a $99 billion bailout while simultaneously distributing $1.5 billion in year-end bonuses to his employees—including $34 million to himself. Robert Rubin of Citibank received a $10 million bonus in 2008 while serving on the board of directors of a company that required $63 billion in federal funds to keep from failing. Lower down the pay scale, more than 5,000 Wall Street traders received bonuses of $1 million or more despite working for nine of the financial firms that received the most bailout money from the US goverment. Neither”
― Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

“This strange new test called PISA, which stood for the Program for International Student Assessment. Instead of a typical test question, which might ask which combination of coins you needed to buy something, PISA asked you to design your own coins, right there in the test booklet.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

“PISA was developed by a kind of think tank for the developed world, called the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the scientist at the center of the experiment was Andreas Schleicher.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way