…proximity to hardware gives software a bad rap, like an extremely attractive friend who makes you feel inadequate: “The anomaly is not that software progress is so slow but that computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude price-performance gain in 30 years”.

— Adam Barr, The Problem With Software

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

— Francis Bacon, Of Innovations

Thus I dispelled the diseased notion of selflessness, observing introspectively that the reasons behind all my actions, even those done for other people, were invariably rooted in my own self, and that it was psychologically impossible for it to be otherwise. And because these same psychological factors that existed in me also existed in all other people (as well as animals), I could see that absolutely all actions were at their core selfish, and that this universally accepted and commonly used concept of selflessness (as the opposite of, and mutually exclusive from, selfishness) simply didn’t exist in reality.

— Roman Gelperin, The Master Mind of the Self-Actualizing Person

…gathering is about connection, but it’s also about power, pretending power dynamics don’t exist will make you a less artful gatherer.

— Priya Parker, The Art of the Gathering

A second line of research has shown that economic stress robs us of cognitive bandwidth. Worrying about bills, food or other problems, leaves less capacity to think ahead or to exert self-discipline. So, poverty imposes a mental tax.

— Martin Meadows, 365 Days With Self-Discipline