Alaina > Recent Status Updates

"Did you ever wonder why the 21st century feels like we're living in a bad cyberpunk novel from the 1980s?” Stross asks. "It's because these guys [tech billionaires] read those cyberpunk novels and mistook a dystopia for a road map."

Section VII

White-collar criminals have always had more influence and power to prevent investigation and arrest, and that power extends to whether there are laws on the books that define their acts as crimes.

"if human beings are confined in ghetto compounds ofour cities, andare subjected to criminally inferior education, pervasive economic and job discrimination, committed to houses unfit for human habitation, subjected to unspeakable conditions of municipal services, suchas sanitation, thatsuch human beings arenot likely to be responsive to appeals to be lawful, to be respectful, tobe concerned with property of others."

“It did not escape notice that laws that were disproportionately applied to people of color were easy to pass, while laws that would primarily affect white criminals were not even suggested.”

“It is a fact of sombre significance in Russian history, that for half a century her greatest writer set his face like flint against any systematic reform of the Tsarist system and did his best to impede and ridicule those who tried to civilize it.”

“Karl Marx has had more impact on actual events, as well as on the minds of men and women, than any other intellectual in modern times.”

“He put ideas before people and his life is a testament to how heartless ideas can be.”

“You need me for I am rich and you are poor. Let us make an agreement:
I will allow you to have the honour of serving me, provided you give me whatever you have left for the trouble I shall take to command you.'”

“Most people are resistant to ideas, especially new ones. But they are fascinated by character. Extravagance of personality is one way in which the pill can be sugared and the public induced to look at works dealing with ideas.”

"...the greatest figures in history are never the ones who avoid failure, but those who march chin-up through countless failures, one after the next, until they come upon the occasional victory....Failure is not the opposite of success--it's a part of it."

"So often," Jackaby said, "people think that when we arrive at a crossroads, we can choose only one path, but--as I have often and articulately postulated--people are stupid. We're not walking the path. We *are* the path. We are all of the roads and all of the intersections. Of course you can choose both."

“I shouldn’t have thought a young lady would fit the role of murder suspect for a man like Marlowe. It’s almost refreshing to be mistreated equally.”

"Hatun sees a different world than you or I, a far more frightening one, full of far more terrible dangers, and still she chooses to be the hero whom that world needs. She has saved this town and its people from countless monsters countless times. That the battles are usually in her head does not lessen the bravery of it. The hardest battles always are.”

"The overall affect of the man was just a shade subtler than a sandwich board with the words BETTER THAN YOU written out in big block letters."

The footnotes in this book are hilarious. Basically every footnote is some variation of "the church denies this ever happened".

Not actually content-related: I got this book from the library, and it smells like perfume and cigarette smoke. Not cool.

"Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done."

I love Lalasa. She's basically all #banallmen

Best opening line ever.

What does John Rae have to do with 9/11? Nothing.

The parts of the book detailing Hall's actual expeditions are excellent. The parts where he's at home trying to raise money drag a bit.

Gods this book is too long. I think I'm going to be taking a whole star off my rating for the length.

The feminist in me wants to go back in time and Hulk!smash every male doctor in this book.

So far, I'm enjoying the writing style, but not enjoying the author's choice to put quotes from primary sources in italics instead of actually enclosing them in quote marks like a normal person.