I knew being......................

 

............a history major would pay off:

By contrast, the invaluable abilities to distinguish fact from opinion, organize a logical argument, think creatively, and express oneself orally and in writing with clarity and verve — all of which a good liberal education bestows — never suffer obsolescence. Rather, these capacities equip liberal-arts graduates for high-paying positions by mid-career in management, law, and other fields, offering students durable advantages in work and in life. They are gained through exposure to a broad and rich curriculum, through the accretion of specific knowledge and concepts from the earliest grades.

Stellar Pacman............................?

 

    enlargeable photo and explanation here

a merger of stability..................

 

     As early as 1826, there were proposals to amend the Constitution by members who saw the legislative elections as fraught with corruption and delay.  At the start of the twentieth century, William Jennings Bryan and others pushed for direct elections, and many argued that the Senate was " a sort of aristocratic body too far removed from the people, beyond their reach, and with no special interest in their welfare."  It was an interesting argument, since that was precisely what it was designed to do.  The framers wanted to merge the stability of oligarchic and democratic systems.  This marriage was perfectly captured in a House with short terms of popular-election members and a Senate with longe terms of legislatively selected members.  That changed in 1913 with the Seventeenth Amendment specifying that senators would be chosen, like House members, in direct elections.  While there were clearly good arguments for direct elections to make senators more accountable to the voters, the change removed arguably the most important control of states in Congress.  With the expansive interpretation given interstate commerce, states would face increasing federal authority and decreasing political control.

-Jonathan Turley, Rage and the Republic:  The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution

On the importance.......................

 

................................of schools teaching writing.

Writing for an audience is a completely different cognitive exercise than writing for yourself. When you write for yourself, you can skip the hard parts. You already know what you mean when you say something, you don’t have to explain your logic, and you can be as elliptical and associative as you want. When you write for an audience, you have to think about what they need to understand. You have to structure your argument so it actually lands. You have to use a sentence that communicates, not just a sentence that feels right in your head.

AI..............................

 

...................................................washing.

(Except when noted, this blog remains AI-free)

Tiny Thoughts....................

 

We spend time chasing money, then spend money chasing time.

-Shane Parrish, from this edition

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

 

          Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky....Symphony No. 6

We've evolved a bit...........................

 

     The State Governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal Government; whilst the latter is nowise essential to the operation or organisation of the former.  Without the intervention of the State Legislatures, the President of the United States cannot be elected at all.*  They must in all cases have a great share in his appointment, and will perhaps in most cases of themselves determine it.  The Senate will be elected absolutely and exclusively by the State Legislatures.**  Even the House of Representatives, though drawn immediately from the people, will be chose very much under the influence of that class of men, whose influence over the people obtains for themselves an election into the State Legislatures.  Thus each of the principal branches of the federal Government will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the State Governments, and must consequently feel a dependence, which is much more likely to beget a disposition too obsequious, than too overbearing towards them.  On the other side, the component parts of the State Governments will in no instance be indebted for their appointment to the direct agency of the federal government, and very little if at all, to the local influence of its members.

-The Federalist #45, James Madison, January 26, 1788

*in 1800, the President was elected by the Electoral College.  In ten states, at that time, the Electors representing that state, were appointed by the State Legislatures.

**the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1913, established the direct election of U. S. senators in each state.

Aging.........................

 

................................like a fine wine:

The main culprit here is something called “genomic instability.” This is science’s polite way of saying that as we age, our cells go on a bender. They’re mutating left and right, spiraling out of control. Your cells go from reliable employees to either early retirees or anarchists, and the repair crew is phoning it in.

On Congress and money...................

 

In the end, the $300 billion question isn't really about Iran. It's about whether Congress will admit that nothing the federal government does is free, and that the bill always comes due. The only choice is who pays for it and when.

-Veronique de Rugy, from here

via

It bears repeating........................

 

.................If mainstream media (or Intertunnel) coverage of the various on-going wars doesn't satisfy your desire for knowing, visit The Institute for the Study of War.  It has become a daily stop.

Sippican.......................

 

Men need a god. Otherwise they get confused and start worshiping themselves. They climb into a booster seat in the back of Beelzebub’s Dodge Caravan and think they’re driving.

Activist judges......................?

 

And what I dare say our cunning Chief Justice [Marshall] would swear to, and find as many sophisms to twist it out of the general terms of our Declarations of rights, and even the stricter text of the Virginia 'act for the freedom of religion' as he did to twist Burr's neck out of the halter of treason.  May we not say then with him who was all candor and benevolence 'Woe unto you, ye lawyers, for ye lade men with burdens grievous to bear.'

-Thomas Jefferson, from his 1/14/1814 letter to John Adams

duties...............

 

You are not an isolated entity, but a unique, irreplaceable part of the cosmos.  Don't forget this.  You are an essential piece of the puzzle of humanity.  Each of us is a part of a vast, intricate, and perfectly ordered human community.  But where do you fit into this web of humanity?  To whom are you beholden?

     Look for and come to understand your connections to other people.  We properly locate ourselves within the cosmic scheme by recognizing our natural relations to one another and thereby identifying our duties.  Our duties naturally emerge from such fundamental relations as our families, neighborhoods, workplaces, our state or nation.  Make it your regular habit to consider your roles—parent, child, neighbor, citizen, leader—and the natural duties that arise from them.  Once you know who you are and to whom you are linked, you will know what to do.

-Epictetus, A Manual for Living

Even more............................

.....................................memes: 

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

 

                   the Jesus Christ Superstar album

The 85% rule.....................

 

If you push and strain at maximum effort at all times, you set yourself up for burnout and bad results.

When you adopt a mindset of smooth, balanced, relaxed effort, you stay in the game long enough to let compounding work its magic. You achieve higher heights.

-Sahil Bloom, from this effort

Us history majors...............

 

...........typically spend little time thinking about the interplay between comparative advantage and competitive advantage.  But, we are pleased that people like Noah Smith do.

Yes and no................

 

Saying yes to one thing is always saying no to something else. The cost of a bad yes isn't just the time it takes. It's whatever could have grown in that space instead.

The point isn't to say no to everything, but simply to recognize the difference between a good yes and a bad yes. Then, try to improve the ratio in your life.

-James Clear, from this edition

It's a brave new world.......................

 

1) "We are living through the first alt-war: a conflict in which the war fought online and the war fought in reality have diverged so completely that they might as well be happening on different planets. It’s not that people lack information, it’s more that they are constructing an entirely different alternate reality — one that confirms what they already believe."

-full post is here

Happy Memeday...................

 

more fun here

I still have.......................

 

................................a lot of work to do.

Minimizing regret, or..........................

 

.................................learning from Alfred Nobel.

On the art (and importance)...........

 

............................................of breaking dumb rules.

Noting the difference between................

 

..............................good advice and effective advice.

a sense of self...................

 

That's why having a strong sense of identity is important because everyday the world will try to convince you into being somebody you're not. Authenticity leads to divine order & success.

-via this Thrive post

Pondering.............................

 

...........................................utopia.

There is a tyranny in the womb of every Utopia.

-Bertrand De Jouvenel

In praise of friction......................

 

Easy isn’t always better. Sometimes it just gets you to the wrong place quickly.

three treasures.....................

 

Lao Tzu once said. “Simplicity. Patience. Compassion. These are your greatest treasures. He’s right and this has been known for thousands of years. Make these three treasures habits in your every day life.

-culled from Chris Lynch's substack

a mark.......................

 

It is the mark of an educated man to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

-Attributed to Aristotle

A lifetime of.........................

 

.........................................Kobayashi Maru:

Spent much of Saturday............................

 

............................................rearranging mine:

the quest........................

 

     Life is full of experiences—touching and seeing and looking and doing and acting—but you're going to lose the lessons of those experiences if you don't take time to reflect.

     We can all learn to gather up the past and invest in the future.  Gather up today and invest it in tomorrow.  Gather up this week and invest it in the next week.  Gather up this year and invest it in the next year.  Many people simply hang on one more year.  They are just hanging in there, seeing what's going to happen.  I am asking you to choose a different path, to learn, study, and reflect.  This is a major part of personal development: the quest to become better than you are now.

-Jim Rohn

proportionate....................

 

"Our rewards in life will always be in direct proportion to our contribution."  This is the law that stands as the supporting structure of all economics and of our personal well being. . . .

Most people concentrate on the bowl marked "Rewards."  That is, they want things—more money, a better home, education for the kids, travel, retirement and so on—all rewards.  They're hungering for the rewards, but the rewards aren't materializing because they're forgetting the bowl marked "Contributions."  In other words, they're concentrating on the wrong bowl.  They're like the man who sat in front of the stove and said, "Give me heat, and then I'll give you wood."  He could sit there until he froze to death.  Stoves don't work that way, and neither does life or economics.

-Earl Nightingale

I have wanted more......................

 

..............more than a few of the things on this list.

via

The best possible way to.............................

 

......................................argue about politics.

The promise of more to come...........

 

When drinking largely sobers us..............

 

A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,

In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts;

While from the bounded level of our mind

Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,

But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise

New distant scenes of endless science rise!

So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,

Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;

The eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

But those attained, we tremble to survey

The growing labours of the lengthened way;

The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,

Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! -Alexander Pope

Fire............................

 

...........................................meant everything.

If the Little Red hen asked......................

 

................................................I would come help.

Two old pals........................

....................................................hanging out.

 

The word for..........................

 

........................................yesterday.

A different sort..............................

 

.....................................of vocabulary.

Familiar..........................

 

......................................choices.

A (wait for it) sleeping aid...............

 

...........................................that never fails.

Sixty years ago...............

 

Dave Brubeck Quartet............Three To Get Ready

transmissions..............

 

     We have said that a great civilization does not entirely die—non omnis moritur.  Some precious achievements have survived all the vicissitudes of  rising and falling states: the making of fire and light, of the wheel and other basic tools; language, writing art, and song; agriculture, the family, and parental care; social organization, morality, and charity; and the use of teaching to transmit the lore of the family and race.  These are the elements of civilization, and they have been tenaciously maintained through the perilous passage from one civilization to the next.  They are the connective tissue of human history.

     If education is the transmission of civilization, we are unquestionably progressing.  Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.

-Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History

Debatable...............?

 

The standard of carving, of both the flesh and the draperies, is without precedent in human history, and it is not hard to imagine the astonishment and respect it produced among both cognoscenti and ordinary men and women alike.  The youth of the sculptor made him a wonder, and the acclaim given to the work was the beginning of Michelangelo's reputation as an artistic superman, larger than life—like some of his works—and endowed with godly qualities.

     Whether it benefits an artist to have this kind of reputation is debatable.

-Paul Johnson, The Renaissance: A Short History

reforming.....................

 

There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves.  Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us.  Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.  The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, health and so on.  "If anything ail a man," says Thoreau, "so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even . . . he forthwith sets about reforming—the world."

-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

perceptions awry................

 

Captured by a blend of multiculturalism and white guilt that has infected so many at the highest levels, their leaders never perceived that importing large numbers of military-age single men from nations that regard women as chattel and freedom of expression as a joke might not be a wise plan, especially over the long-term.

-Michael Wade, from this substack

Meaning........................

Again and again, people said that life was busy but not meaningful. That experiences and relationships felt meaningless. Or that they didn’t know what they were meant to do in work and life. And it’s worse for the strivers than anyone else: The richer, more technologically advanced the country, the greater the percentage of the population that answers “no” to the question “Do you feel your life has an important purpose or meaning?”

Here’s why: Strivers are great at solving technical problems and answering specific, hard questions. They have been educated and trained to believe that, while the world is incredibly complicated, with enough knowledge and hard work, every problem can be solved.

The truth is, many big, complicated problems can be solved with sheer intellectual horsepower. But meaning is not one of them. “What is the meaning of my life?” is a question that cannot be answered like “How do I build an app for finding concert tickets?” or “How do I create an effective six-month weight-loss program?” Meaning is a question that must be lived, not solved with a Google search or simulated using artificial intelligence. It requires deep contemplation and a commitment to living a real life, full of unsolvable secrets, puzzling riddles, unexplainable bliss, and terrible suffering.

But in all their technical excellence, strivers trivialize their humanness by reducing life’s magnificent inscrutability to a series of complicated but solvable problems. They aren’t just living in a simulation; they are also creating the simulation they are living in.

So, if you’re a young striver, here’s what you need to know: Your life does have meaning, and you can find it. But to find it, you’ll have to think and live fundamentally differently from how you’ve been trained by school, work, media, entertainment, and culture.

-Arthur Brooks, from this edition of The Free Press

If only.................

 

When you claim the merit for all the good that occurs, you incur responsibility for all the harm that arises.

-Frédéric Bastiat,  Economic Sophisms and "What is Seen and What Is Not Seen"

Choice..................

 

Remember, each individual has a choice.  You are always the one in control.  The cause of irritation—our notion that something is bad—that comes from us, from our labels or our expectations.  Just as easily, we can change those labels; we can change our entitlement and decide to accept and love what's happening around us.  And this wisdom has been repeated and independently discovered in every century and every country since time began.

-Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic

Action...................

 

The questions whether society or the individual is to be considered as the ultimate end, and whether the interests of society should be subordinated to those of the individuals or the interests of the individuals to those of society are fruitless.  Action is always action of individual men.  The social or societal element is a certain orientation of the actions of individual men.  The category end makes sense only when applied to action.  Theology and the metaphysics of history may discuss the ends of society and the designs which God wants to realize with regard to society in the same way in which they discuss the purpose of all other parts of the created Universe.  For science, which is inseparable from reason, a tool manifestly unfit for the treatment of such problems, it would be hopeless to embark upon speculation concerning these matters.

-Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

dogma vs truth...........

 

However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.

-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

still shaping...........................

 

The society of the modern world, which I have sought to delineate and which I seek to judge, has but just come into existence.  Time has not yet shaped it into perfect form; the great revolution by which it has been created is not yet over; and amid the occurrences of our time it is almost impossible to discern what will pass away with the revolution itself and what will survive its close.  The world that is rising into existence is still half encumbered by the remains of the world that is waning into decay; and amid the vast perplexity of human affairs none can say how much of ancient institutions and former customs will remain or how much will completely disappear.

-Alexis de Tocqueville,  Democracy in America, Book Two, Chapter VIII, 1840

On guessing/investing.............

 

The difference between a good investor and a bad one isn’t access to some hidden truth. It’s the quality of the process. How disciplined is your research? How well do you manage risk when you’re wrong? How honest are you with yourself when a thesis breaks down? Good investors aren’t right more often because they know more. They’re right more often because they’re more rigorous about how they guess, and quicker to admit when they’ve guessed wrong.

-Eric Soda, from this newsletter

AI and the real estate business...................

 

The tools are getting smarter. The question is how do we get smarter about using them.

-Joe Stampone, from this "writing is thinking" post

We can be.................

 

........................................hard to please.

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

 

Queen............................You're My Best Friend

a craft.....................

I start my valuation classes with a question of whether valuation is an art or a science, and I argue that it is neither; it does not have the precision that characterizes a science and unlike an art, it does come with principles that constrain you on what you can and cannot do. I describe valuation as a craft, where you learn as you value companies, and in the process, there are times where you question how it is practiced, and try to find ways to do it better. I have learned my share of lessons in the four decades that I have practiced valuation, and I have often abandoned standard practices, in the hope of developing better ones.

-Aswath Damodaran, from this episode

wanting incompatible things.............

 

Individual voters bears essentially no cost for holding inconsistent political beliefs — wanting generous pensions and robust public services and low taxes is essentially free, since no single vote determines the outcome. The irrationality is individually rational and collectively ruinous. Voters are not necessarily confused about what they want; they simply face no price for wanting incompatible things.

-Alex Tabarrok, from read-worthy this post

All my life.....................

 

On the first night of the millennium, remnants of the tremendous blizzard that tore through northern France the day after Christmas claimed the Pyrénées and tumbled down the mountainsides, chilling the village in which I live.  the wind that followed was thin and bitter—nothing like the full-bodied storms of my native region—and for the first time since I retired here a year ago I wanted a dog at the end of the bed to warm my feet.

     I packed a sandwich in the pocket of my hunting jacket the next morning and followed a game trail a thousand meters up the steep slope behind my house until I reached the meadow that saddles the snow-capped peaks closest to the village.  There I witnessed a spectacle long since disappeared in Normandy: a pair of golden eagles soaring, long wings cupping and releasing the wind, yellow talons tangling in midair like old men shaking hands.  Icy clouds sailed past the raptors in shreds.  I smoked and watched and flapped my arms and closed my eyes.  All my life I've wanted to fly and for an hour that morning I was the monarch of the sky.  When I looked through the binoculars Vincent has given me for Christmas I saw sheep in the valley, sunlight fanning across the mountain slopes, and the silhouettes of eagles dancing.

-Guy de la Valdène, Red Stag

Discovery..............

 

"Help us to find God."

"No one can help you there."

"Why not?"

"For the same reason that no one can help the fish find the ocean."

-Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom

Scott Blitstein.................

 

and his site, The Sensory Dispensary, has long been a regular destination on my travels through the Intertunnel.  Over the years, I have learned a bunch about music, and a bit about cancer.  Scott has a GoFundMe page set up.  Please, do go visit it.   

Sixty years ago........................

 

The Ventures..................Where The Action Is

This sounds about right.......

 

Althouse seizes the opportunity....................

 

..........to break out the "charming bad logic" tag.

The catch.....................

 

Everyone has something to teach you, even if neither of you realizes it.

The catch is: it’s not their job to show you, it’s your job to figure out what you can learn.

-Mark Manson, from here

Cal Newport.......................

 

.........ponders an AI outcome no one was talking about:

This is a worst-case scenario: you work faster and harder, but mainly on shallow, mentally taxing tasks (because of all the context shifting they require) that only indirectly help the bottom line compared to harder efforts.

It’s not quite clear why AI tools are having this impact. One tantalizing clue, however, comes from Berkeley professor Aruna Ranganathan, who is quoted in the article saying: “AI makes additional tasks feel easy and accessible, creating a sense of momentum.”

This points toward a pattern similar to what happened when email first arrived. It was undeniably true that sending emails was more efficient than wrangling fax machines and voicemail. But once workers gained access to low-friction communication, they transformed their days into a furious flurry of back-and-forth messaging that felt “productive” in the abstract, activity-centric sense of that term, but ultimately hurt almost every other aspect of their jobs and made everyone miserable.

Hard lessons................

 

      Hippies were so dedicated to living in the moment that preventive maintenance was a difficult lesson for us.  Something breaking was a big event.  Repairing the broken thing is a big event.  But preventing the thing from breaking is a non-event.  Doing a responsible task like changing the oil doesn't come naturally.  It's a messy chore, tedious and thankless.  There's no reward when you do it and no reward later—just the unnoticeable absence of pain.

     To acquire the adult discipline of preventive maintenance, us flower children had to learn at soul depth the remorseless logic of "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." . . .

     Once the pain of avoidable repair is severe and repeated a few times, the attraction of heading off the pain with preventive maintenance becomes compelling.  Then all we need is knowledge of what to do and when and how to do it.

     The universal advice from professional maintainers to every impatient equipment misuser is an expletive: "Read the fucking manual!"  By which they mean: Part of taking proper ownership of something is to study the manual first.

-Steward Brand, Maintenance: Of Everything

Incentives matter.............

 

Unsustainable things can last longer than you anticipate.  Incentives can keep crazy, unsustainable trends going longer than seems reasonable because there are social and financial reasons preventing people from accepting reality for as long as they can.

-Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

Maybe.......................

 

To think independently of other human beings is impossible, and if it were possible it would be undesirable.  Thinking is necessarily, thoroughly, and wonderfully social.  Everything you think is a response to what someone else has thought and said.  And when people commend someone for "thinking for herself" they usually mean "ceasing to sound like people I dislike and starting to sound more like people I approve of." . . .

. . . it should remind us that all of us at various times in our lives believe true things for poor reasons, and false things for good reasons, and that whatever we think we know, whether we're right or wrong, arises from our interactions with other human beings.  Thinking independently, solitarily, "for ourselves," is not an option.

-Alan Jacobs, How To Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds

binding/blinding............

 

People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives.  Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.

-Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind

cruel resistance................

 

An idea of health that does not generously and gracefully accommodate the fact of death is obviously incomplete.  The crudest manifestation of modern medicine is its routine, stubborn, and finally cruel resistance to death.  This comes of the refusal to accept death not only as part of health, which it demonstrably is, but also as a great mystery both in itself and as part of the mystery that surrounds us all our lives.  The medical industry's resistance is only sometimes an instance of scientific heroism; sometimes it is the fear of what we don't know anything about.

-Wendell Berry, Life Is A Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition

The goal.....................

 

The goal was never to transform the external world by acting physically upon that world, but to transform it in producing better human beings, in allowing human beings to develop an inward knowledge of themselves.

-Matthieu Ricard, as taken from here

Fruitless, no doubt.....................

The only interesting philosophers are the ones who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness.

-Emil Cioran

I'm just trying.....................

 

...........................to live as long as Kurt:

In 2016, researchers in the Netherlands and at Harvard analyzed the available evidence on dairy and diabetes and found that half a cup of ice cream daily was linked to a 19 percent lower risk of diabetes. But researchers couldn’t handle the truth, as it contradicts official dietary guidelines. It can’t be right, right? So the truth was hidden from us. Countless ice cream opportunities, deprived. A doctoral student named Andres Ardisson Korat later found the same half-cup daily was linked to lower cardiovascular disease risk in diabetics too. In fact, ice cream has a lower glycemic index than brown rice.

The ice cream ends up being healthier for you than whatever lab-rat protein bar you fell for.

-as cut-and-pasted from here

Grit....................

 

Vague goals massively underperform. “Try hard” is basically no goal at all. Effective goals have to be specific enough that you can say with certainty whether you hit them, and challenging enough to actually require something from you.

-Austin Scholar, from this edition

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

 

   Willie Nelson..........The Troublemaker album

Simplicity......................