.....................................ten million stars looks like.
Saturday, July 26, 2025
individual effort......................
. . . words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.
Ah, human nature.........................
My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) … the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.
A really good question....................
Solvency is maintained by means of the national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?"
The challenge of living............?
The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.
A potential speedbump for AI.........?
The 19th century disruptions were severe, and many people suffered as their experience and skill set no longer matched the new economy. But eventually everyone, from the poorest to the rich, were better off for letting the industrial revolution run its course.
But in the 19th century, the disrupted were essentially powerless. What happens this time around, though, when the disrupted are the ruling elite themselves? These potentially disrupted professions include lawyers and doctors who already have shown themselves very willing to organize to block innovation, squash competition, and protect their high pay.
-Warren Meyer, from this blog post
Friday, July 25, 2025
In the background..........................
The basics..........................
The old advice of “Eat
Technique” nudges all of us to get to the point where key tasks are second
nature. We can then build from there.
-Michael Wade, as culled from here
here's a concept...........................
Ferrari will always deliver one car fewer than the market demands.
-from Ted Lamade as he observes the seduction of "growth"
a virtuous cycle........................
If you get good at something you tend to enjoy it. If you enjoy something you tend to get good at it. Which comes first? Doesn’t matter too much. . .
Thursday, July 24, 2025
the good life......................
There are many elements of living a good life, but the first and most foundational is to love yourself and enjoy spending time with yourself.
Go do things on your own so you learn to trust your mind and view it as a welcome companion. If someone declared, “Tomorrow you must spend the day alone” the hope is that you would reply, “That sounds like a good day!”
The person who is at ease within finds every other space larger and more enjoyable.
James Clear, from this edition
the extraordinary.................
No one yet has made a list of places where the extraordinary may happen and where it may not. Still, there are indications. Among crowds, in drawing rooms, among easements and comforts and pleasures, it is seldom seen. It likes the out-of-doors. It likes the concentrating mind. It likes solitude. It is more likely to stick to the risk-taker than the ticket-taker. It isn't that it would disparage comforts, or the set routines of the world, but that its concern is directed to another place. Its concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formless that is beyond the edge.
-Mary Oliver, from her essay Of Power and Time
Meaningfulness.....................
What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness . . .
-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
bad business.........................
Bad ideas refuse to die, misinformation is everywhere, and a very profitable industrial complex has arisen to spread outrageous, inflammatory ideas — their business model IS clickbait. The mainstream media may be problematic, but social media is oh so much worse.
-Barry Ritholtz, from here
Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Opening paragraphs..................
The straight-backed wooden chairs in Dottoressa Saviano's anteroom were instruments of torture. Chiara, try as she might, could find no arrangement of her limbs that provided even a moment of comfort. At present she sat with the erect carriage of a dancer, with her hands folded atop her knees and her feet together on the scuffed wooden floor. The dottoressa's secretary had cast several admiring glances at Chiarra's stylish pumps—and at her stylish husband as well. She was used to women staring at Gabriel; he was still impossible handsome. He also happened to be one of the world's finest art conservators, which conferred upon him an unwelcome local celebrity. Chiara managed the restoration company that employed him. For better or worse, they were among the most prominent couples in Venice.
-Daniel Silva, An Inside Job
little advantages..........................
As a result, Franklin was able to draw up a bill in the Assembly to pay for street paving, and he accompanied it with a proposal to install street lamps in front of each house. With his love for science and detail, Franklin even worked on a design for the lamps. The globes imported from London, he noticed, did not have vent on the bottom to allow air in, which meant the smoke collected and darkened the glass. Franklin invented a new model with vents and a chimney, so that the lamp remained clean and bright. He also designed the style of lamp, common today, that had four flat panes of glass rather than one globe, making it easier to repair if broken. "Some may think these trifling matters not worth minding," Franklin said, but they should remember that "human felicity is produced . . . by little advantages that occur every day."
-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
In praise of nimbleness and agileness.........
These organizations also don't realize the criticalness of using speed and timing as a strategy to stay ahead of these monumental shifts barreling down on our culture. As a result, when faced with competitive threats or sudden consumer shifts, many established organizations pause, debate, set up task force committees, and get caught in analysis paralysis. When this happens, their more nimble and agile competitors find a hole in their defense system and exploit this weakness by picking off the most valuable customers.
-Kevin Ervin Kelley, Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together
Just paid last month's................
.................electric bill. Yeow. Apparently the cool-make machine was working on overtime. Last time the bill was this large was like last July. Hmmm.
Einstein's jewel............................
There are absolute masterpieces that move us intensely: Mozart's Requiem, Homer's Odyssey, the Sistine Chapel, King Lear. To fully appreciate their brilliance may require a long apprenticeship, but the reward is sheer beauty—and not only this, but the opening of our eyes to a new perspective upon the world. Einstein's jewel, the general theory of relativity, is a masterpiece of this order.
-Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
raising the veil........................
Every so often I would raise my eyes from the book and look at the glittering sea: it seemed to me that I was actually seeing the curvature of space and time imagined by Einstein. As if by magic: as if a friend were whispering into my ear an extraordinary hidden truth, suddenly raising the veil of reality to disclose a simpler, deeper order. Ever since we discovered that Earth is round and turns like a mad spinning-top, we have understood that reality is not as it appears to us: every time we glimpse a new aspect of it, it is a deeply emotional experience. Another veil has fallen.
-Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
an equation.........................
Einstein wrote an equation that says that R is equivalent to the energy of matter. That is to say: space curves where there is matter. That is it. The equation fits into half a line, and there is nothing more. A vision—that space curves—became an equation.
But within this equation there is a teeming universe. And here the magical richness of the theory opens up into a phantasmagorical succession of predictions that resemble the delirious ravings of a madman but all have turned out to be true.
-Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
indispensable................
Perhaps the most indispensable thing we can do as human beings, every day of our lives, is remind ourselves and others of our complexity, fragility, finiteness, and uniqueness.
-Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Winning....................
Sometimes, the only qualification you need is the willingness to figure it out.
-Shane Parrish, as extracted from here
choose wisely.......................
Underrated
life skill: Surrounding yourself with people who make you feel better.
Overrated
life skill: Surrounding yourself with people who make you look better.
Whither AI....................
“Tech Sector Sees 64,000 Job Cuts This Year Due to AI Advancement.”
“Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw,”
-Cal Newport, from this episode suggesting No One Knows Anything About AI
an infinitude................
That we are spirits that have descended into our bodies, of this Emerson was sure. That each man was utterly important and limitless, an "infinitude," of this he was also sure. And it was a faith that leads, as he shows us again and again, not to stasis but to activity, to the creation of the moral person from the indecisive person.
-Mary Oliver, from her essay Emerson: An Introduction
fitted...................
Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine heart unto my knowledge.
For it is a pleasant thing if thou keep them within thee; they shall withal be fitted in thy lips.
-The Holy Bible, Proverbs 22:17-18, King James Version
rooting against the status quo..........
But roughly every 120 years, global leadership shifts hands.
Why? Because success breeds complacency. Great societies, like great countries and companies, eventually get comfortable. They ride on the coattails of their success. They offshore everything to developing countries because they have the luxury of prioritizing returns and efficiency over resilience. It’s easy to chase lower costs abroad when the threats seem far away. But when it matters most, these societies find they’ve lost the capacity to build anything that counts.
-Chris Power, as culled from here
Oh, Argentina.......................
Since he burst onto the Latin American political scene a few years ago, Milei has added immeasurably to both the gaiety of nations and the public stock of harmless pleasure. With his shaggy sideburns and loopy facial expressions, there is more than a hint of the Mad Hatter about him.
Yet
there is a method to Milei’s madness. While the world fixates on Donald Trump’s
populist cocktail of reciprocal tariffs and big, beautiful deficits, Milei is
delivering a man-made miracle that should gladden the heart of every classical
economist and quicken the pulse of all political libertarians.
-Niall Ferguson, as cut-and-pasted from here
I'd like to add........................
...............................September 11th and the collapse of the Trade Towers, "Shock and Awe" in Iraq, and maybe the mini-series Roots to this list.
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