Priorities......................

 

...choosing grandparenting over blogging.  Back later.

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

        Richard Elliot.............the Chill Factor album

 

occasional messiness........................

 

     Modern election campaigns are often criticized for being negative, and today's press is slammed for being scurrilous.  But the most brutal of modern attack ads pale in comparison to the barrage of pamphlets in the 1764 Assembly election.  Pennsylvania survived them, as did Franklin, and American democracy learned it could thrive in an atmosphere of unrestrained, even intemperate, free-expression.  As the election of 1764 showed, American democracy was built on a foundation of unbridled free speech.  In the centuries since then, the nations that have thrived have been those, like America, that are most comfortable with the cacophony, and even occasional messiness, that comes from robust discussion.

Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

54%....................................

 

The best in the world are not the best because they win every point... It’s because they know they’ll lose... again and again… and have learned how to deal with it.

-Roger Federer

Who knew..............................?

 

.....................the unsettled science of preparing bacon.

thanks Ray

Putting the chores.................

 

...............................in their proper place.

My crystal ball is a bit cloudy...........

 

We’ll get another recession someday. Maybe in a year. Maybe in 7 years. Who knows?

Whenever an economic contraction occurs, we’re likely to see lower rates. These things aren’t scientific but mortgage rates have fallen by an average of around 1-2% during past recessions.

If that happens this time around I think you’re going to see an explosion of housing activity from pent-up supply and demand that has been sitting on the sidelines. We could also see a big uptick in cash-out refis and HELOCs if rates are at more reasonable levels because so much equity is tied up in homes these days.

People would be very confused by this but the housing market already went through a recession so it wouldn’t surprise me to see it lead us out of the next one.

-Ben Carlson, as cut-and-pasted from here

Starting to hot up again.......................

Janis Joplin...................Summertime

Seven learnings ......................................

.............from a week spent with legends: 

1. Intuition is earned.

2. You’re judged by your peaks, not your sums.

3. We need to look back more often.

 4. Most people don’t know what they want.

5. Stop doubling down on a losing hand.

6. Vulnerability is contagious (and breeds strength).

7. Maybe you can have it all.

-Sahil Bloom, extrapolated from this post

cheap, not rare....................

 

People think good decision-making is about being right all the time. It's not. It's about lowering the cost of being wrong and changing your mind.

When the cost of mistakes is high, we're paralyzed with fear. When the cost of mistakes is low, we can move fast and adapt.

Make mistakes cheap, not rare.

-Shane Parrish, from this episode

the great conciliator................

 

"When one has so many different people with different opinions to deal with in a new affair," he explained to his friend Cadwallader Colden, "one is obliged sometimes to give up some smaller points in order to obtain greater."  It was a sentiment he would express in similar words when he became the great conciliator at the Constitutional Convention thirty-three years later.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

progress...................

 

We don't abandon our pursuits because we despair of ever perfecting them.

-Epictetus, Discourses, 1.2.37b

We're never going to be perfect—if there is even such a thing.  We're human, after all.  Our pursuits should be aimed at progress, however little that it's possible for us to make.

-Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic

On work.........................

 

4.  Poor is he who works with a negligent hand,

but the hand of the diligent makes rich,

5.  He who gathers in summer is a son who acts wisely,

But he who sleeps in harvest is a sone who acts shamefully.

-The Holy Bible, Proverbs 10: 4-5

disquiet.........................

 

8.  Look at the inmost causes of things, stripped of their husks; note the intentions that underlie actions; study the essences of pain, pleasure, death, glory; observe how man's disquiet is all of his own making, and how troubles come never from another's hand, but like all else are creatures of our own opinion.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Twelve

life its ownself................

 

Sometimes life sends you back to where you began so you can choose a different path forward.

The most important lessons in life can’t be taught. Only learned.

-Patrick Rhone

prevail...............................

 

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

-William Faulkner, from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December, 1950