Thursday, June 12, 2025

Learned skills.......................

 

Once upon a time, social skills were acquired and honed during front porch conversations with neighbors, Little League games, bowling tournaments, poker or bridge nights, board games, and club meetings.

Those weren’t just meetings and events. They were training sessions in the soft skills that often are missing in the modern workplace. In those old-fashioned exchanges, we learned how to read one another, how to listen and tell jokes and stories along with how to deliver or receive sensitive news. Those are skills that require practice, often involving more than a few fumbles, and are rarely completely mastered.

-Michael Wade


All kinds.........................

 

The older I get the more I realize how many kinds of smart there are. There are a lot of kinds of smart. There are a lot of kinds of stupid, too.

-Jeff Bezos, as quoted here


Just say no............................

 

............................................to bad advice.


stop digging.................

 

Today, give yourself the most simple and doable of tasks: just don't make stuff worse.  Whatever happens, don't add angry or negative emotions to the equation.  Don't react for the sake of reacting.  Leave it as it is.  Stop digging.  Then plan your way out.

-Ryan Holiday


Wednesday, June 11, 2025

On parking apps........................

 

We do a lot of clerical labor to register ourselves with entities that have figured out ways to intervene in matters that were once direct and straightforward. For example, you have to download the Parkmobile app and set up an account before you can park your car in Santa Cruz, if you are anywhere near the boardwalk. Maybe you are ready to unwind on the beach after a hard day, or maybe you have a carload of kids with low blood sugar, two of whom desperately need to find a bathroom. But you are going to have to find a cell signal, register your credit card and make a password before you can go on your way. Of course, since the app freezes during the final step, you’re not sure you really did pay for parking, or if instead you will be paying an $85 parking ticket at some point in the future. It’s super relaxing. Ask me how I know.

If you don’t have a smart phone, you are out of luck. You may be paying taxes to maintain the street but you can’t park on it, since you are not quite a full citizen.

-Matthew B. Crawford, from this episode


the country we're visiting..........


The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we’re visiting, life.

-culled from this post at The Hammock Papers


Really look.......................

 

3.  Look beneath the surface:  never let a thing's intrinsic quality or worth escape you.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Six


Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Nature designed us...............

 

     But something incredibly human and essential to society gets lost in translation in the digital expression of life.  After all, we're social animals wired to be with and around other people in real life, not just from the chest up on a grainy 2D Zoom call.  Nature designed us to see each other face-to-face.  To make eye contact and sync up with others.  To gauge their body language, catch their ever-so-slight facial inflections, and to pick up on their tone of voice.

-Kevin Ervin Kelly, Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together


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


       Earth, Wind & Fire....................Shining Star

 


a gentleman's agreement................

 

Up to then there had been something of a gentleman’s agreement among those who might be called The Good Journalists of Washington that the Kennedy Administration was one of excellence, that it was for good things and against bad things, and that when it did lesser things it was only in self-defense, and in order that it might do other good things.

-David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest


accepts.......................


The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation, he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

a good society................

 

It may be, in the end, that a good society is defined more by how people treat strangers than by how they treat those they know.

-James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds


Let's see AI do this....................

 

We don't just need our brains and our brawn, we need a capacity for self-insight, trust, cooperation, and a mix of big-sky visioning with pint-sized actions.  And let me grab my megaphone for this one: We absolutely cannot talk about the future without inviting emotion, intuition, and awe back into our lives and our decision-making.

Ari Wallach, Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs


Epiphanies.....................

 

      Epiphanies are hidden in the most ordinary moments: the casting of a shadow, the smell of a match igniting, an unusual phrase overheard or misheard.  A dedication to the practice of showing up on a regular basis is the main requirement.

-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being


Monday, June 9, 2025

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


             Rod Stewart.....................Sailing

 


narrowing.............................

 

Serendipitous connections become less likely as increased communication narrows our tastes and interests.  Knowing and caring more and more about less and less.  This tendency may increase productivity in a narrow sense while decreasing social cohesion.

-Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone


a place for us niche players.............

 

While the Amazons of the world may have a lock on price, variety, and convenience, they don't have a monopoly on joy, delight, surprise, and social bliss.  There's a massive opportunity for those who design places, whom I call "place-makers," and those who fund and run places, whom I call "place-operators," to adopt a new frame of mind and equip themselves with the right set of tools for making the crucial places of our society irreplaceable.

-Kevin Ervin Kelly, Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together


be prepared....................

 

. . . the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all.

-Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum


"here to help"........................

 

The frustrations of entering into that Kafkaesque world of chatbots that are “here to help,” or phone menus that seem imported from some generic template, are such that it is worth taking an hour to drive to the CVS pharmacy, or the DMV, or the UPS store, or some medical practice, and collar a human being. Usually they are able to solve my problem in short order.

-Matthew B. Crawford, from this substack


Sunday, June 8, 2025

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

                
              Sweet....................Fox On The Run

 


born..........................

 

 So long as we continue to know the faults of our enemies, and to be ignorant of the faults of our friends and ourselves, it is possible for men who have no bad desires to join in the hatred produced by pride and fear, and to contribute, against their will, to the forces of antagonism which stand in the way of a better spirit. Righteousness cannot be born until self -righteousness is dead.

-Bertrand Russell, Justice In War-Time


teach yourself...................

 

36.  Observe how all things are continually being born of change; teach yourself to see that Nature's highest happiness lies in changing the things that are, and forming new things after their kind.  Whatever is, in some sense the seed of what is to emerge from it.  Nothing can become a philosopher less that to imaging that seed can only be something that is planted in the earth of the womb.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Four


adding by subtracting........................

 

Most people are too loyal to their distractions to ever meet their destiny.

The courage isn't in taking on more, it's in cutting off everything that doesn't feed your goal.

Focus requires subtraction.

-Farnum Street, from this episode


without.......................

 

Intelligence without social skills and the regular practice of interacting and cooperating with others makes for a dangerous society.

-Kevin Ervin Kelley, Irreplaceable:  How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together


interaction..........................

 

Nature's approach to growing a brain relies on receiving a vast set of experiences such as social interaction, conversation, play, exposure to the world and the rest of the landscape of normal human affairs.  This strategy of interaction with the world allows the colossal machinery of the brain to take shape from a relatively small set of instructions.

-David Eagleman, Livewired:  The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain


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


8.   Does not wisdom call out?
       Does not understanding raise her voice?
2     At the highest point along the way,
    where the paths meet, she takes her stand;
3   Beside the gate leading into the city,
    at the entrance, she cries aloud:
4    “To you, O people, I call out;
    I raise my voice to all mankind.
5    You who are simple, gain prudence;
    you who are foolish, set your hearts on it.[a]
6    Lsten, for I have trustworthy things to say;
    I open my lips to speak what is right.
7    My mouth speaks what is true,
    for my lips detest wickedness.
8    All the words of my mouth are just;
    none of them is crooked or perverse.
9    To the discerning all of them are right;
    they are upright to those who have found knowledge.
10 10    Choose my instruction instead of silver,
    knowledge rather than choice gold,
11 11    For wisdom is more precious than rubies,
    and nothing you desire can compare with her.

-The Holy Bible, Proverbs 8: 1-11