..................to more than investing:
It’s uncomfortable to say “I don’t know” but sometimes when it comes to investing that’s the safest place to be.
-Ben Carlson, from here
Friday, May 20, 2022
Opening paragraphs
Marriage was once represented as a field of battle rather than a bed of roses, and perhaps there are many who may still support this view; but just as Dr Maturin had made a far more unsuitable match than most, so he set about dealing with the situation in a far more compendious, peaceable and efficacious way than the great majority of husbands.
-Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission
One trait Reagan and Trump..................
.................................shared: they understood the power of positive psychology and unleashed it.
If you thought that the economic news was crazy during the first half of 2022, just wait until we get to the second half. So many of the problems that we are experiencing now are going to continue to intensify, and Americans are becoming more pessimistic about economic conditions with each passing day. In fact, as you will see below, a whopping 85 percent of us believe that it is “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that the economy will go through a recession at some point during the next year. Of course the truth is that if all we have to suffer through is a “recession”, we would be extremely fortunate. Our leaders have lost control of the economy, and many of us are extremely concerned about what is coming next.
-from this Zero Hedge post
Thursday, May 19, 2022
Rising........................
Think about that for a minute. The worst decade [the 70's] since the Great Depression, one defined by high prices, poor equity and bond returns, and an overall malaise led to the creation of four of the strongest businesses this country has ever seen and the dynamic industry that shaped the American economy over the past four decades.
It’s likely still too early to even be asking this question, but are we going to endure a repeat of the 1970’s? I don’t believe so, but even if we do, there will be opportunities to rise from the fall. There always are.
-Ted Lamade, from this post
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
the inward detachment............
“To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery (the media) that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed”
The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History (1928)In the background................................
The hopeful birth..........................
...................of a subdivision: Episode 22
Faithful readers will recall that we completed developed the 49 lots in Phase 1 of Conor's Pass sub-division late last fall. This past April we sold all of the lots to D. R. Horton, who is busily constructing houses on those lots. Horton asked us to start the 64 lot Phase 2 as soon as possible. While the weather could have been more cooperative, we are making progress. In a perfect world, we will be done laying the sanitary sewer mains next week.
 |
| The top of the photo shows the houses coming out of the ground in Phase 1. Phase 2 work is at the bottom of the photo |
On our active imaginations...........
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
Checking in ................
........................................Louis L'Amour
Do not let yourself be bothered by the inconsequential. One has only so much time in this world, so devote it to the work and the people most important to you, to those you love and things that matter. One can waste half a lifetime with people one doesn't really like or doing things when one would be better off somewhere else.
A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.
“Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, "This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.
The more one learns, the more he understands his ignorance.
Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you an education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child's coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.
The sunset was spectacular. The sky streaked itself with rose and the region of the sun became an indescribable glory. All my life I have used words, and yet I find times when they are totally inadequate.
Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.
Tuesday, May 17, 2022
The Wilds..................................
Not too long ago, my Sweetie and I took a day off and communed with the wild animals at the Wilds in Cumberland, Ohio. Occupying more than 10,000 acres of reclaimed coal strip mines, The Wilds is a jewel worth visiting. Just as a head's up: go after mid-May. They keep the giraffes indoors until the weather gets into the 60's.
 |
| View from our Yurt's porch |
 |
| Inside of "our" Yurt |
 |
| Bactrian Camel |
 |
| Persian Onager |
 |
| A hillside of Sichuan Takins |
 |
| Can't tell my rhinos apart |
 |
| Sichuan Takin |
 |
| Rhinos |
 |
| More rhinos |
 |
| some variety of deer |
 |
| Simitar-Horned Oryx |
 |
| Cheetahs |
 |
| even more cheetahs |
 |
| Grevy's Zebra |
 |
| Elands |
 |
| African Painted Dogs |
When we arrived home, the rookie camera operator shot these guys in the back yard:
Ah, experts.......................
But there are mistakes that only an expert can make. Errors – often catastrophic – that novices aren’t smart enough to make because they lack the information and experience needed to try to exploit an opportunity that doesn’t exist.
-Morgan Housel, from here
Ah, complexity..............
Everywhere you look in the universe, you see systems attaining greater complexity as they evolve. This is true in astrophysics. It is true of a puddle. Leave rainwater alone in a low spot and it will grow more complex. Advanced systems of every variety are complex adaptive systems without an authority in charge. Every complex system in nature, of which the market economy is the most evident social manifestation, depends upon dispersed capabilities. Systems that work most effectively under the widest range of conditions depend for their resilience upon spontaneous order that accommodates novel possibilities. Life itself is such a complex system. Billions of potential combinations of genes produce a single human individual. Sorting among them would confound any bureaucracy.
-Davidson and Rees-Mogg, The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
Some words to live by...............
He has sniffed out interesting data, but some of it does not smell right to me.
-Arnold Kling, as cut and pasted from here
More fun with the language..........
The good-intentions industry does seem especially busy these days, there being so much that is wrong with the world, a point on which everyone agrees while thinking to themselves of different wrongs.
-as taken from this essay on the New Language Police
From the always readable Chris Lynch.............
The slogan for the year 2022 should be "If Ayn Rand and George Orwell had a baby".
There's roughly 6 billion people in the world. You'd go crazy if you tried to make all their problems your own. Yet that's exactly what we often emotionally do when watching or reading "the news." Do yourself a favor - ignore the news and work on your own problems and issues. And when possible help out your friends, family and those around you. You'll be much happier for the change.
Local Socrates would be a good name for a band or backhanded insult to the guy at the bar who has an opinion on every subject.
Would be interesting to see a list of A-list celebrities and billionaires who attended the Kentucky Derby on Saturday and then the F1 race in Miami on Sunday traveling to both by private jet. Then to take that list to see what those people had to say publicly about climate change in the past.
The word for the day is "Akrasia" - a Greek word translated as a "weakness of will" but in practice means to know what should be done but still not doing it. I like this word.
If I could have after-dinner cigars and drinks........
.................with ten people I only know from the Intertunnel, Martin Gurri would be on the list.
And, when you think about it, the news media itself is something like an anxiety dream being dreamed by the articulate classes. Nobody should confuse the news with reality. Attention is fixed steadily on the predatory violence of the human animal, the record of war, crime and exploitation: with journalism, we are always a moment away from snapping awake, screaming. Sometime during the Trump years, that mood swallowed the internet. Once the gathering place of a peasant revolt, the web took on the rage, pettiness and mendacity of elite media and has since degenerated into the dictatorship of the rant.
-Martin Gurri, as culled from here
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
