The suburban mind cannot comprehend the emergent complexity of a New York sidewalk. - Robin Sloan

I could see why [Candide] appealed to Charlotte Clingstone. It was a rejection of ambition, a blueprint for her small, perfect, human-scale restaurant — a safe space set apart from the scrum of the world.

Books: boring. Codes: awesome. These are the people who are running the internet.

"Do people even look at one another?"
"Not really. Everything that matters is on your screen. There's an agenda that rearranges itself. There's a back-channel chat. And there's fact-checking! If you get up to speak, there are people cross-referencing your claims, supporting and refuting you — "
It sounds like an engineer's Athens.