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156 voters
The sun filtered down through the waters like an embarrassment of sapphires.
“Scholarly translations of the Tao Te Ching as a manual for rulers use a vocabulary that emphasizes the uniqueness of the Taoist “sage,” his masculinity, his authority. This language is perpetuated, and degraded, in most popular versions. I wanted a Book of the Way accessible to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful, and perhaps unmale reader, not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening for a voice that speaks to the soul.”
― Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
― Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
“The only thing worse than fixing the wrong thing is leaving an attempt to fix the wrong thing unfinished. Half-finished initiatives create confusing, poorly documented, and harder to maintain systems.”
― Kill It with Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems
― Kill It with Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems
“There was always a dark shadow around the San Francisco rainbow. From the very beginning, violence, desperation, and fear stalked the streets of the Haight, side by side with the euphoria. “When I hear about the Summer of Love, I say, ‘Where was that?’” remarked Lewis. “It was there, but always lurking below was this seething hatred and fear from Vietnam and the Cold War. There was always this feeling that we were going to die.”
― Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love
― Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love
“It is a mark of how far her species has come, that this is the only openly acceptable time when killing a male is considered appropriate. It is, however, quite true that packs of females—especially younger ones, perhaps newly formed peer groups seeking to strengthen their bonds—will descend to the lower reaches of the city and engage in hunting males. The practice is covertly overlooked—girls will be girls, after all—but overtly frowned upon.”
― Children of Time
― Children of Time
“One of the benefits of microservices, for example, is that it allows many teams to contribute to the same system independently from one another. Whereas a monolith would require coordination in the form of code reviews—a personal, direct interaction between colleagues—service-oriented architecture scales the same guarantees with process. Engineers document contracts and protocols; automation is applied to ensure that those contracts are not violated, and it prescribes a course of action if they are. For that reason, engineers who want to “jump ahead” and build something with microservices from the beginning often struggle. The level of complexity and abstraction is out of sync with the communication patterns of the organization.”
― Kill It with Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems
― Kill It with Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems
Code for America
— 44 members
— last activity Jan 10, 2013 07:31PM
Bookclub for anyone who wants to join and learn about cities, the people who live in them, and how to hack things. Feel free to add whatever books you ...more
Alex’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Alex’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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