Alexei

“My fellow Republicans acted like they’d been punched in the stomach. “You have them on the ropes, go in for the kill!” they said. This was my first real taste of the new Republican ideology that any compromise is a sign of weakness.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

“It took many months in court, but the tabloid eventually published a total retraction and paid substantial damages in an out-of-court settlement. The money went to the Special Olympics in Great Britain.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

“Even then, none of the line’s creators knew for sure how the line would be used. The biggest question about the line— Why?—remained imperfectly explored. All its creators knew was that the Wall Street people who wanted it wanted it very badly—and also wanted to find ways for others not to have it. In one of his first meetings with a big Wall Street firm, Spivey had told the firm’s boss the price of his line: $10.6 million plus costs if he paid up front, $20 million or so if he paid in installments. The boss said he’d like to go away and think about it. He returned with a single question: “Can you double the price?”
― Michael Lewis, Flash Boys

“In his searches, Schwall noticed something else, though at first he didn’t know what to make of it: A surprisingly large number of the people pulled in by the big Wall Street banks to build the technology for high-frequency trading were Russians. “If you went to LinkedIn and looked at one of these Russian guys, you would see he was linked to all the other Russians,” said Schwall. “I’d go to find Dmitri and I’d also find Misha and Vladimir and Tolstoy or whatever.” The Russians came not from finance but from telecom, physics, medical research, university math departments, and a lot of other useful fields. The big Wall Street firms had become machines for turning analytically minded Russians into high-frequency traders.”
― Michael Lewis, Flash Boys