“And it turns out that nothing will crack this world harder than one gentle question.” ~ The Nevers (HBO TV Series) 1 The ‘The Nevers’ starts with the upper echelons of the society in Victorian England being alarmed by the “natural order” being threatened by people (mostly women) who are “touched” by some mysterious spores from above.

“Proof is what lies at the heart of maths, and is what marks it out from other sciences. Other sciences have hypotheses that are tested against experimental evidence until they fail, and are overtaken by new hypotheses. In maths, absolute proof is the goal, and once something is proved, it is proved forever, with no room for change.

“It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyze every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers. These were the words of Xerxes, Persia’s king of kings ..” — Admiral Emil Sauveterre, Season 5, Ep 2: Churn

“Like matter and antimatter, in the presence of unplanned work, all planned work ignites with incandescent fury, incinerating everything around it.” ~ Gene Kim, The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win1 The book makes the case for proper planning, rigor, and discipline as an antidote to getting out of the impossible quagmire of technical debt, tightly coupled systems and unachievable product deadlines.

“Into this wild abyss, The womb of nature and perhaps her grave, Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless the almighty maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds,

“Teams that are best at DevOps and continuous delivery can release software thousands of times more quickly and with a small fraction of the defects.” The above quote is from Dave Farley’s review1 of “The State of DevOps” report2. It rang so true that I tweeted it. Martin Fowler responded to the original Tweet from Dave asking if there was a transcript available.

“God needs no faint hearts for his ambassadors.” ~ Margaret Thatcher in The Crown Season 4, Episode 2 1 The Poem In the second episode of Netflix’s ‘The Crown’ 2, Margaret Thatcher recites a poem to the Queen, named ‘No Enemies’ by Charles Mackay. This was in response to the Queen saying that Thatcher is making a lot of enemies.

“It’s foolish to run the risk of going mad for vanity’s sake.” ~ French Philosopher Diderot (From Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit” 1) The Dream For the first time in so many years, I had a dream about Chess. Like many dreams, it is in the mind and is kind of difficult to exactly describe it.

“It’s really easy to settle for something that you don’t like. Because, if you never admit you’re unhappy with something, then you never have to change anything. Most of us don’t speak up when we’re dissatisfied and then things just accumulate until you can’t really imagine an alternative.” ~ John Wilson in Scaffolding (Episode 2 of ‘How to with John Wilson’1)

“In pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human.” ~ Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow 1 Thoughts As with Sapiens, Harari’s narrative is compelling. The book has a ton of facts and well researched material that he weaves into the story as a master folktale teller unraveling secrets one by one.