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Al Gore called climate change "an inconvenient truth", which he defined as an inescapable fact that we would prefer to ignore. Yet the truth about climate change is inconvenient only if we are satisfied with the status quo except for the small matter of warming temperatures. If however, we see the need for transformation quite apart from those warming temperatures, then the fact that our current road is headed toward a cliff is, in an odd way, convenient - because it tells us that we had better start making that sweeping turn, and fast.

— This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein (28%)

Diesel’s ambition was to produce a light, small (about the size of a contemporary sewing machine), cheap engine that would be bought by independent entrepreneurs (machinists, watchmakers, restaurant owners) and would enable extensive decentralization of industry, one of his great social dreams:

A decade later ... he promoted worker-run factories and dreamed about the age of honesty, justice, brotherhood peacefulness, compassion, and love, and saw workers’ cooperatives as beehives and the workers themselves as bees...

Diesel told his son that his “chief accomplishment is that I have solved the social question” (Diesel 1937, 395)—but his engines did not find their most important uses in small workshops but in heavy machinery, trucks, and locomotives, and, after World War II, in large tankers, bulk carriers, and con- tainer ships, helping to create the very opposite of Diesel’s vision, an unprec- edented concentration of mass-scale manufacturing and the inexpensive distribution of its products in a new global economy...

— Energy and Civilization by Vaclav Smil (Page 255)

The global use of ad blockers grew 41 per cent in 2014 (when it prevented an estimated $21.8 billion dollars of advertising revenue) and 96 per cent in 2015.

— Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek (75%)

As one report notes, echoing colonialist ventures: ‘From a data-production perspective, activities are like lands waiting to be discovered. Whoever gets there first and holds them gets their resources – in this case, their data riches.’

— Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek (63%)

... in the first quarter of 2016, 89.0 per cent of Google’s and 96.6 per cent of Facebook’s revenues came from advertisers.

— Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek (36%)

"WhatsApp had 55 employees when it was sold to Facebook for $19 billion and Instagram had 13 when it was purchased for $1 billion."

— Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek (Page 9)