One of my ................................

 

.......................................favorites.

On immigration........................

 

Two things can be true at once (and yes, I should get this phrase tattooed on my person): The Trump administration can embrace a more eugenic immigration philosophy genuinely at odds with Episcopalian beliefs (all souls being equal and such) and the Afrikaners can be legitimate refugees who are in danger. We’ve grown so accustomed to refugee applying only to “young men seeking economic opportunity” that we forgot that not all refugees are ambitious 23-year-old Moroccans looking to enjoy the greatness of capitalism! Me, I’m balanced: pro-immigration but neither racist nor anti-racist. I don’t care if you’re a Dutchman or a Moroccan. I just believe our border entry should be determined by a combination IQ and physical fitness test, a quick grade on baby-rocking ability, see how long it takes you to down a Triple Dipper, then Jordan Peterson personally deciding if you’re too neurotic, and boom—welcome to America. 

-Nellie Bowles, from this episode

Here's an idea................

 

....................................anti-Brahminization:

In reality, the party maintains a meticulous commitment to fiscal responsibility, democratic governance, and material populism.

On scorpions.......................

 

“It is crazy to want what is impossible,” Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations. “And impossible for the wicked not to do so.” This is what Aesop’s fable about the scorpion and the frog is about. It’s what so much of the ancient literature tries to remind us of. That cruel people do cruel things. That selfish people act selfishly. That destructive people do destructive things.

Yet we don’t listen. We fail to learn the lesson and so we get hurt. The world painfully, painfully shows us the perils of not heeding this basic warning.

The wicked do what wicked people have always done. They are who they are. Stop expecting them to be anything else.

-from today's entry from the Daily Stoic

license....................

 

. . . a playful attitude is fundamental to creative thinking.  I'll bet that you generate most of your new ideas when you're playing in your mental playground.  You give yourself license to try different approaches without fear of penalty.  Your defenses are down, and your likely to have little concern with the rules or being wrong.  You try one thing, and then another—often not getting anywhere.  You ask "what if" and "why not," put things is different contexts, and look at them backwards.  Eventually, you may come up with a worthwhile idea.

-Roger von Oech, A Whack on the Side of the Head

elegant furnishings........

 

A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one's life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself.  You have a chance to select from some pretty elegant furnishings.

-Louis L'Amour, Bendigo Shafter

enjoyable expressions..................

 

       This is the lesson we insecure overachievers could do with getting into our skulls: actions don't have to be things that we grind out, day after day, in order to inch ever closer to some elusive state of finally getting to qualify as adequate humans.  Instead, they can just be enjoyable expressions of the fact that that's what we already are.

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals

crazy-making...............

 

. . . perhaps you've tethered your self-esteem to the most crazy-making standard of all, 'realizing your potential'—which means you'll never get to rest, because how can you ever be sure there's not a little more potential to realize?

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals

work or play...................

 

You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.

-attributed to Warren Beatty