"Patrick Collison, the C.E.O. of the electronic-payments company Stripe, likened Altman's brain to the claw machine on a carnival midway: 'It roams around but has the ability to plunge very deep when necessary.'"
— Friend, Tad (b. 1962)
Author
Work Title
Date
October 10, 2016
Metaphor
"Patrick Collison, the C.E.O. of the electronic-payments company Stripe, likened Altman's brain to the claw machine on a carnival midway: 'It roams around but has the ability to plunge very deep when necessary.'"
Metaphor in Context
At a hundred and thirty pounds, Altman is poised as a clothespin, fierce as a horned owl. Even in a Valley that worships productivity, he is an outlier, plowing through e-mails and meetings as if strapped to a time bomb, his unblinking stare speeding up colleagues until they sound like chipmunks. Though he is given to gee-whizzery about anything "super awesome"--Small amounts of radiation are actually good for you! It's called radiation hormesis!--he has scant interest in the specifics of the apps that many YC companies produce; what intrigues him is their potential effect on the world. To determine that, he'll upload all he needs to know about, say, urban planning or nuclear fusion. Patrick Collison, the C.E.O. of the electronic-payments company Stripe, likened Altman's brain to the claw machine on a carnival midway: "It roams around but has the ability to plunge very deep when necessary."
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Tad Friend, "Adding a Zero," The New Yorker (October 10, 2016). <Link to www.newyorker.com>
Date of Entry
10/12/2016
