Quotes

meximonk

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"“Here’s the thing, there’s about 150 people that rule the world. Anyone that wants to go into politics they’re all f*cken puppets, okay? There are 150 — and they’re all men — that run the world. Period. Fullstop. They control most of the important assets — they control the money flows. And these are not the tech entrepreneurs. Now, they are going to get rolled over, over the next 5-10 years by the people that are really underneath pulling the strings.”
— Chamath Palihapitiya, Nov 10, 2017, Stanford Graduate School of Business
 

meximonk

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"Life is like a train. It's barring down on you and guess what? it's gonna hit you. So you can either start running when it's far off in the distance or you can pull up a chair, crack open a beer and just watch it come."
- Eric Foreman, character on "That 70s Show"
 

meximonk

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Once a man was walking along a beach. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. Off in the distance he could see a person going back and forth between the surf's edge and the beach. Back and forth this person went. As the man approached he could see that there were hundreds of starfish stranded on the sand as the result of the natural action of the tide.

The man was struck by the apparent futility of the task. There were far too many starfish. Many of them were sure to perish. As he approached, the person continued the task of picking up starfish one by one and throwing them into the surf.

As he came up to the young man he said, "You must be crazy. There are thousands of miles of beach covered with starfish. You can't possibly make a difference." The young man looked at him. He then stooped down and picked up one more starfish and threw it back into the ocean. He turned back to the man and said, "It made a difference to that one!"

-Author unknown
 

Red Sky at Morning

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55C38CAE-3539-406B-9D02-7EB08839DF49.jpeg

 
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meximonk

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I was one of the kids that constantly challenged the narrative in class if it wasn't logical. This pissed most teachers off. (But delighted a select few others, but that's another story). As a result, my desk was often moved out in the hall because my grades were good and they didn't know how to discipline me. (Which ironically, meant I was by myself and which was exactly they way I preferred it).

...all that could be said as a metaphor for my life as an adult, and I'm willing to bet for most of the people on this forum too.
 

meximonk

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==Phrack Inc.==
Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The following was written shortly after my arrest...
\/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/
by
+++The Mentor+++
Written on January 8, 1986
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.
I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms.
Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.
And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is
found.
"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...
You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils,
but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

+++The Mentor+++
 

Red Sky at Morning

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“We have become a civilization based on work—not even “productive work” but work as an end and meaning in itself.”

“We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens—like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It’s never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?”

- David Graeber, RIP
Shakespeare is credited with inventing the word “loneliness”, yet I dare say that the emotion of loneliness predated his use of the word somewhat.
 
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"Even if you have the whole world, you're gonna die one day. One day everything's gonna be gone. A few people will come to your grave and put you inside your grave. For life, I don't need too much. Even if you're a billionaire, you 'never eat more than one bread in a day'. I want to be free, I want to fly. I want to do whatever I want, whatever I need [for] when I die because I really believe in the next life. Everything that you've done, everything that you're going to do; you have to do things that are important for you in the next life. My father always spoke about this with me [and] he always tried to do something good for people around him, for people in his village, for people in his country, for his family. He always did something and he always said: 'I hope this is going to help me in the next life'."

- Khabib Nurmagomedov, the undefeated, undisputed UFC lightweight champion, 29-0
 

DesertRose

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“The most important (thing) for us is to stay connected with God, (it) doesn’t matter what happens with you, you always have to pray. You always have to stay humble and stay focused and stay connected with God. This is very important for us.”
Khabib Nurmagomedov
 
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