Knowledge.......................

 

Knowledge, he realized, "was obtained rather by the use of the ear than that of the tongue."

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

In the background.................

    Bad Company.................Bad Company album

 

filling in........................

We don't live in objective reality, we function in a model of our own construction.  Our brains generate mental outlines, continually filling in missing information to create a 360-degree world within which we operate.  This useful evolutionary trait has allowed the human species to thrive in a world that his hostile to us soft, chewy creatures lacking claws, fangs, or armor.

-Barry Ritholtz, How Not To Invest

Reflection.................

 

The danger in trying to hide who you are is that you'll succeed, and you'll start to see a stranger in the mirror of other people.

-Jarod K. Anderson

Hot streak..................................

 

................................................declared.

Checking in with........................

 

...................................Philosophy of Life:

Wisdom......................

 

Go find some more options and question some assumptions.

anti-excitement..........................

 

Investing isn’t supposed to excite you every day. In fact, the more exciting it feels, the more likely it is that you’re not actually investing but just speculating, with a fancier vocabulary.

-Vishal Khandelwal

   via

Whose...........................?

                        via

added to the menu.............

 

                   more fun here

A public service...........................

 

.......................................announcement.

On avoidance..............

 

It can be alarming to realize just how much of life gets shaped by what we're actively trying to avoid.

-Oliver Burkeman

single-player game..............

 

Socially, we're told, "Go work out. Go look good."  That's a multi-player competitive game. . . . We're told, "Go make money.  Go buy a big house."  Again, external multi-player competitive game.  Training yourself to be happy is completely internal.  There is no external progress, no external validation.  You're competing against yourself—it is a single-player game.

Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

In theory, anyway...............

 

     Nothing in science—nothing in life, for that matter—makes sense without theory.  It is our nature to put all knowledge into context in order to tell a story, and to re-create the world by this means.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

In the background................

Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons Greatest Hits album

 

most important................

 

. . . there were farsighted folks who knew how to ask one of the most important of political questions: “And then what?”

-Michael Wade

It looked so easy in the history books.....

 

But George Washington had a vision.  At the war's end, he had circulated a letter to the thirteen governors outlining four things America would need to do to survive, if not to attain its rightful place on world stage:  The states would have to be consolidated under a vigorous "federal" government; there would have to be timely payment of the staggering debts left over by the war; and army and navy needed to be created; and finally, there must be harmony among the people.  This was the theory at least; in truth, the reality was a cyclone of bewilderment and confusion.

-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800

grave, wise, and faithful men...........

 

     Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison.  They were what Pelatiah Webster observed was so necessary for the new country: "grave, wise and faithful men."  Madison provided the architecture for the republic, Hamilton its masonry, and Jefferson its soul and poetry.  And now, in the heady days of 1789 and 1790, with Washington as president and the three working together—none of them believed in political parties, which they feared would lead to "rage," "dissolution," and eventual "ruin" of the republic—it seemed that anything and everything was possible.

-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800

Poor Louis XVI......................

 

His executive management was poor, and so were his arts of persuasion, so necessary in any leader, whether a king, emperor, tsar, or elected president.  In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, leaders must sometimes be cruel or cold; he was neither.  In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, leaders must sometimes be able to hate; he was not much of a hater either.  In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, to some extent or another, most leaders must be fanatics: stubborn, steel-willed, driven, secretive yet able to inspire, fastidious and zealous.  They must be prepared to act alone, without encouragement, relying on their own inner resolve.  And they must be indifferent to approval, reputation, and even love, cherishing only their own person sense of honor or vision, which they allow no one else to judge.

     But this was not the case with Louis XVI.

-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800

Holding on....................

 

It’s not the things you buy and sell that make you money; it’s the things you hold.

-Howard Marks, as quoted here

Checking in with................

 

...............................Barry Ritholtz

There is a flaw in the human wetware that leads to a demand for predictions.  The evolutionary propensity humans suffer from is the desire for specific claims from self-confident leaders.

To avoid bad advice, you must always ask yourself, "What is this person selling?"  Once you figure out what the product is, you can put the sales "advice" into better context.

. . .  we must constantly check our own knowledge base as it ages and decays over time.

Recognizing how little you know is a superpower.  If we were less certain of ourselves and had more humility, we would all be better investors.

Pessimism is a bet against human ingenuity, and for half a million years, that has been a losing bet.

You might be surprised to learn that I believe the three most important words in investing are, "I Don't Know."

"I don't know" is a very powerful tool that will help keep you out of trouble a lot, if only you have the courage to say it.

Fifty years ago................

Average White Band................Pick Up the Pieces

 

On calculations..................

 

I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.

-Isaac Newton, as quoted here

weary.....................

 

     A constitutional republic in its head and ultra-monarchical in all its other parts has always appeared to me to be a shortlived monster.  The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin, and the nation, weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Fourth Book, Chapter VI

Good questions................

 

But now the machine has begun to encroach on domains of our intellectual lives that many had thought were essentially immune from competition with computing intelligence.

     The potential threat to our entire sense of self as a species cannot be overstated.  What does it mean for humanity when AI becomes capable of writing a novel that becomes a bestseller, moving millions? Or makes us laugh out loud?  Or paints a portrait the endures for decades?  Or directs and produces a film that captures the hearts of festival critics?  Is the beauty or truth expressed in such works any less powerful or authentic merely because they sprang from the mind of a machine?

-Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West

On neglecting surface differences............

 

The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay History

Compounding.....................

 

Continual incremental improvement is the gateway to success.

-Paul Rabil, The Way of the Champion

Steady....................

 

Unlimited predictability is more valuable than intermittent quality.

-Dan Martell, Buy Back Your Time

On cheering the spectacle.................

 

The Trump administration’s war on universities has been conducted with its signature Japanese-monster-movie approach, full of smashed infrastructure, rivers of screaming civilians, and battle scenes so spellbinding, questions of right and wrong go out the window. You can try to weigh the administration’s law-flouting (see below) against the universities’ appalling sense of entitlement, but I suspect many Americans will abandon sides and just cheer the spectacle of intractably self-regarding freaks joined in aerial combat over the Constitution. Harvard vs. the Trump-Monster should have been the next entry in the Shin Godzilla series, now it’s here.

-Matt Taibbi, from here

sooner or later......................

 

Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.

-Robert Louis Stevenson, from here

thoughts....................

 

What you’re taught isn’t always what matters.

-Farnum Street

The latest in.........................

 

...........................................weaponry.

a good guess....................

So there's my guess at a set of principles to live by: take care of people and the world, and make good new things.

-Paul Graham

use of the mind.............

 

Many men are schooled, but few men are educated.  An educated man is one who has learned how to use his mind so that he can get everything he desires without violating the rights of others.  Education, therefore, comes from experience and use of the mind, and not merely from the acquisition of knowledge.  Knowledge is of no value unless and until it is expressed in some form of useful service.

-Andrew Carnegie, from here

less daunting...........................

 

History is a tale, Franklin came to believe, not of immutable forces but of human endeavors.

     This outlook clashed with some of the tenets of Calvinism, such as the essential depravity of man and the predestination of his soul, which Franklin would eventually abandon as he edged his way closer to the less daunting deism that became the creed of choice during the Enlightenment.  Yet, there were many aspects of Puritanism that made a lasting impression, most notably the practical, sociable, community-oriented aspects of that religion.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

a problem.....................

 

An expensive and recurring problem in the technology and investment communities is the simple inability to say those three words, "I don't know." . . .

     Saying "I don't know" is a superpower.

-Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest

unite......................

 

But yield who will to their separation, 
My object in living is to unite 
My avocation and my vocation 
As my two eyes make one in sight. 
Only where love and need are one,  

And the work is play for mortal stakes, 
Is the deed ever really done 
For Heaven and the future's sakes. 

Robert Frost, concluding Two Tramps In Mud Time

freedom......................

 

. . . the idea that the greatest freedom American society could grant to the individual was the freedom to create what they could for themselves and could only create for themselves; that this striving could save their souls and their sanity, was "play for mortal stakes" "for heaven and future's sake."

-Adam Plunkett, Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost's Poetry