Join 📚 Hadar's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Hadar's read, .
The fifth time Wang Miao logged on to Three Body, it was dawn as usual, but the world was unrecognizable. The great pyramid that had appeared the first four times had been destroyed by the tri-solar syzygy. In its place was a tall, modern building, whose dark gray shape was familiar to Wang: the United Nations Headquarters. In the distance were many more tall buildings, apparently dehydratories. All had completely reflective mirror surfaces. In the dawn light they appeared as giant crystal plants growing out of the ground. Wang heard a violin playing something by Mozart. The playing wasn’t very practiced, but there was a special charm to it, as though saying: I play for myself. The violinist was a homeless old man sitting on the steps in front of the UN Headquarters, his fluffy silver hair fluttering in the wind. Next to his feet was an old top hat containing some scattered change. Wang suddenly noticed the sun. But it rose in the opposite direction from the dawn light, and the patch of the sky around it was still completely dark. The sun was very large, its half-risen disk taking up a third of the horizon. Wang’s heart beat faster: Such a large sun could only mean another great catastrophe. But when Wang turned around, the old man continued to play as though nothing odd was happening. His silver hair shone brilliantly in the sun, as though it was on fire.
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu and Ken Liu
In a manufacturing laggard such as the United Kingdom, the real value of manufacturing output is currently two and a half times what it was at the end of the Second World War. This expanded output is produced by less than one-tenth of the British workforce, compared with the one-third of employees who worked in manufacturing as recently as 1960.4 None the less, the productivity gains do not mean it is easy for a country like Britain to further expand its manufacturing sector. This is because many machine-based tasks are most efficiently undertaken by the kind of low-skilled, cheap workers that rich countries are short of. And that is precisely where the opportunities lie for emerging nations. Their manufacturing is nothing like as efficient as it is in advanced economies, but nor does it need to be because poor countries can throw highly motivated, cut-price, fresh-off-the-farm labour at the task.
How Asia Works
Joe Studwell
Ye accepted Yang’s proposal mainly out of gratitude. If he hadn’t brought her into this safe haven in her most perilous moment, she would probably no longer be alive. Yang was a talented man, cultured and with good taste. She didn’t find him unpleasant, but her heart was like ashes from which the flame of love could no longer be lit. As she pondered human nature, Ye was faced with an ultimate loss of purpose and sank into another spiritual crisis. She had once been an idealist who needed to give all her talent to a great goal, but now she realized that all that she had done was meaningless, and the future could not have any meaningful pursuits, either. As this mental state persisted, she gradually felt more and more alienated from the world. She didn’t belong. The sense of wandering in the spiritual wilderness tormented her. After she made a home with Yang, her soul became homeless.
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu and Ken Liu
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise