He seemed more like a succession of extraordinary events than a person.
“Dark pools were another rogue spawn of the new financial marketplace. Private stock exchanges, run by the big brokers, they were not required to reveal to the public what happened inside them. They reported any trade they executed, but they did so with sufficient delay that it was impossible to know exactly what was happening in the broader market at the moment the trade occurred.”
― Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
― Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
“Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have thus been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google.”
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“The appearance of new ways of thinking and communicating, between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago, constitutes the Cognitive Revolution.”
― Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
― Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
“Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud.”
― Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
― Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
“One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”
― Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
― Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
alex’s 2025 Year in Books
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