Every once in a while............

 

...........................only Martin Gurri will do:

Social relations as they actually exist, and democratic politics as they are actually practiced, are repudiated. Everyone is against, but few can say what they stand for. The radical Left, which wields substantial influence within major institutions, loathes nearly every aspect of Western civilization—its history, its economic system, its racial and sexual norms—and would happily demolish the entire edifice. The populist Right is eager to smash whatever regions or organizations that the Left controls, with little regard for the consequences. And the institutional elites, who might be expected to defend the status quo, now feel compelled to strike insurgent poses and denounce the very structures that they oversee.

----------------------

Populism is a political by-product of the post-truth condition. Once presidents and TikTokers stand on the same plane of plausibility, with only the unruly public to choose between them, the temple of establishment authority is destined to tumble like the walls of Jericho. Sensing this, elites have succumbed to a reactionary panic—they want their twentieth century back. The first article of faith in “our democracy” is that the public must be pushed out of the commanding heights of the information sphere and that the power to construct a single, universal reality should return to those deemed properly trained for the task: the expert, the scientist, the politician, the journalist, the bureaucrat.

It's not discipline...................

 

................................it's enjoyment with boundaries.

thanks Kurt

To fear..............................

 

......................................AI—or not.

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes wrote “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” predicting that productivity growth would be so powerful that by the early twenty-first century the workweek would fall to fifteen hours. He was directionally correct about productivity growth, but profoundly wrong about labor market implications. Rather than working dramatically less, societies consumed dramatically more. Why? Because rising productivity lowered costs and expanded the consumption frontier. Preferences shifted toward higher quality goods, new services, and previously unimaginable forms of expenditure. Leisure increased modestly, but material aspiration expanded far more. History suggests productivity gains do not automatically translate into labor withdrawal or demand collapse as they alter the composition of demand, expand real incomes and generate new industries. Keynes underestimated the elasticity of human wants.

via

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

 

The Monkees...............Last Train To Clarksville

On fixing wrong turns................

 

The willingness to be corrected, to seek feedback, and to stay a perpetual student is the mechanism of mastery.

-Austin Scholar, from this substack

The fundamental laws...........

 

.............................of politics the Universe.

A wee sample:  Muggeridge’s Law: Satire can never compete with real life for its sheer absurdity.

A minor quibble:  the list omits the Unbreakable Law of Unintended Consequences.

   via 

quiets...........................

 

Throw the ball at the wall. Catch. Repeat. That’s the activity. But within that simplicity lies a calming that can help you feel relaxed and centred.

It’s meditative: the rhythm-throw, bounce, catch-creates the same focused attention as a breathing meditation. Your mind quiets because it’s occupied with simple repetition, not because you’re forcing it quiet.

-Nicholas Bate

Steve McQueen and his ball and glove, The Great Escape

It happens every......................

 

..................................almost-Spring:

As social critics......................

 

..................of our new age go, he is without peer.

Yep...........................

 

The big money is not in the buying and the selling, but in the waiting.

-Charlie Munger

As we've always said, real estate investing is a get-rich-slowly scheme

Upon.............................

 

...........................agreeing with Taylor Lorenz.

 

Tiny lessons..............

 

Success is creating dramatically more value for the world than you create for yourself.

-Vlad Tenev

It's a puzzle......................

 

That’s a major acceleration. 2.8% labor productivity growth is about equal to the best decades we’ve seen since World War 2. If that rate is sustained for a decade, or accelerates further, it’ll be pretty historic.

What’s driving the productivity boom? It’s tempting to conclude that AI is making white-collar workers more productive, but Ernie Tedeschi points out that the biggest swing has been in manufacturing productivity. For a long time, manufacturing productivity was basically flatlining in America; now it’s suddenly growing again.

Tedeschi argues that this is also probably AI-driven, but it’s not about people using ChatGPT and Claude Code at work — it’s about the fact that a ton of data centers are being built, and data centers are very valuable:

If you look at data centers’ contribution to growth itself, it looks pretty small, but this masks the value of the computers contained within the data centers. Together, the creation of data centers and computing equipment have been contributing about as much to GDP growth as they were during the dot-com boom:

-Noah Smith, as cut-and-pasted from here

Tim Ferriss........................

 

..........................visits the self-help trap.

Along the way, he suggests Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs 

should actually be Maslow's Hamburger of Needs.

..................worth the read.

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

 

ABBA........................................Dancing Queen

Let us pray.....................

 

They may love dogs, read Victor Hugo novels, and prefer suits from Savile Row, but they are not like us.

And we should pray that we are never like them.

-Michael Wade, from his latest

The Emperor's new clothes............

 

a condition..................

 

Smith then inquired into wealth’s causes. He didn’t inquire into the causes of poverty. Smith understood that that poverty is humanity’s default mode. Nearly all people before Smith’s time — and still most people during his time — were mired in poverty. Poverty is simply the condition we suffer when wealth isn’t created. Wealth, not poverty, demands explanation because wealth, not poverty, has causes.

- Don Boudreaux, from here

Could work.....................

 

    more fun here

Can I get an...............................

 

...................................................Amen?

   via

A worthy goal................

 

      via

My uncle is pretty smart..................

 

He collected over 28,000 forecasts made by 284 political analysts, economists, foreign policy bigwigs, and all the usual loud-talking necktie people. What Tetlock found (and I’m condensing 20 years of depressing data here) is that the average talking head was terrible at predicting real-world outcomes.

Not “mildly off.” Not “in the ballpark.” I mean barely better than chance. Turns out your uncle screaming at the TV is statistically equivalent to a CNN pundit in a bowtie.

-Eric Barker, from his post, 4 Secrets to Smarter Thinking

Just the facts....................

 

If your favorite media outlet has you confused about what is going on in the Middle East, one idea would be to check in with the Institute for the Study of War blog.  Until proven differently, it will be my go-to site.

It's the little things..................

 

From ancient times until now, wise men and women who wanted to make the world a better place didn’t start with some grandiose plan for others. Instead, they practiced the “make your bed” philosophy, where real change most often starts with self-improvement.

-Jeff Minick, with his list of seven ways

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

 

The Beatles..................................Nowhere Man

Ten rules........................

 

.......................for dealing with uncertainty:

9. If all else fails, simplify. Einstein supposedly said the five levels of intelligence are smart, intelligent, brilliant, genius and simple.

As the world gets more complex you have to fight harder to keep things simple.

The solution to complexity is not more complexity. It’s simplicity.

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

 

Hootie & The Blowfish......Cracked Rear View

Um, no thanks....................

 

Cultural suicide..............

 

...............How can this be true right?

aim....................

 

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.

-Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo

an instructed mind...............

 

It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest assured with that degree of precision that the nature of the subject admits, and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible.

-Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

forgiving, forgetting, and responsibility...........

 

     Confusing forgiving with forgetting sets another trap: We become convinced that mistakes and wrongdoings not only can, but should, be forgotten.  Spiritual tradition sees it as a strange delusion that our problems have to be gotten rid of; instead, the sages and saints suggest, such difficulties are best put to use.  The offense is precisely what must not be forgotten, since it is through the act of facing what has happened and fitting it into a whole by re-membering it that the possibility of atonement (making at-one) occurs and forgiveness comes to fruition.  "Salvation lies in remembrance."

    And so, finally, because the past is important, there can be no "unconditional forgiveness."  Because we are human, and therefore limited, there can be no unconditional anything.  We are not God.  Forgetting that, as is our all-too-human tendency, we commit idolatry by assuming that since God loves and forgives unconditionally, we can be like God and do the same.  But all "idolatry" has ironic consequences, producing the opposite of the goal intended.  Thus the claim to "forgive unconditionally" is the antithesis of benign, for it devalues the one we are supposedly forgiving by implying that he is not responsible for his choices.

     Any understanding of forgiveness must include some notion of responsibility.  Forgiveness, divine or human, does not remove responsibility for our actions.  If we ignore the consequences of irresponsible actions by claiming or asking for unconditional forgiveness, then forgiveness loses its significance—it comes to be interpreted as not caring.  Every human being is responsible for his or her choices: which means, quite simply, that each of us has a need to matter—somehow, to someone.  We especially need to know that our actions have an effect on the people we love.

-Kurtz and Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning

hot-gospellers.................

 

No two more different people could be imagined than Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan: in appearance, in style, in manner, in speech and, it would seem, in what they stand for.  Fuller is short and round and speaks in epic poetry.  McLuhan is tall and angular and utters puns and epigrams.  But both men became cult heroes at the same time, in the 1960s.  And both for the same reason: they are bards and hot-gospellers of technology.

-Peter F. Drucker, Adventures of a Bystander

The Agenbite of Outwit ....................

 

When new technologies impose themselves on societies long habituated to older technologies, anxieties of all kinds result.  Our electronic world now calls for a unified field of global awareness; the kind of private consciousness appropriate to literate man can be viewed as an unbearable kink in the collective consciousness demanded by electronic information movement.

-Marshall McLuhan, as culled from here

adjustments..................

 

Technology paces industry, but there's a long lag in the process. Industry paces economics. It changes the tools, a great ecological change. And in that manner we come finally to everyday life.

The politician is someone who deals in man's problems of adjustment. To ask a politician to lead us is to ask the tail of a dog to lead the dog.

-Buckminster Fuller

untouched...............

 

"Why are you so wary of thought?" said the philosopher.  "Thought is the one tool we have for organizing the world."

"True.  But thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it."

To his disciples he later said, "A thought is a screen, not a mirror; that is why you live in a thought envelope, untouched by Reality."

-Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom

It's not about the Swiss watch...........

 

The way to find golden ages is not to go looking for them. The way to find them — the way almost all their participants have found them historically — is by following interesting problems. If you're smart and ambitious and honest with yourself, there's no better guide than your taste in problems. Go where interesting problems are, and you'll probably find that other smart and ambitious people have turned up there too. And later they'll look back on what you did together and call it a golden age.

-Paul Graham, from this essay

worship....................

 

He asked my religion and I replied 'agnostic'. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: 'Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God." This remark kept me cheerful for about a week.

Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell

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

 

Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.

-attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein

As my young son would say..........

 

..........................he cracks my head up!

Daring.....................

 

via

Checking in....................

 

.......with the Philosophy of Life X-files:

Questions not asked..............

 

An interesting study on the Labor Force in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was published last month.   It was noted that, in the past five years, there was an out-migration, with 182,000 "net domestic residents" leaving the Commonwealth.  Judging from the study, this is a problem.

As far as I can tell, they never asked the question: why did they leave?  It's a puzzle.

via

From your lips...................

 

Our national debt is just shy of 100% of GDP ($31 trillion), but we are not on the brink of a fiscal abyss. On the contrary, it is not unreasonable to think that Congress can manage some degree of spending control, and it is not the case that the economy faces a crushing burden of debt in any event, as Chart #13 shows. The true burden of debt is not the size of our national debt, but the cost of servicing that debt as a percent of our national income. Today that burden is significantly less than it was during the 1980s, mainly because interest rates are far lower than they were back then. If Congress exercises even modest restraint and the Fed doesn't have to raise interest rates (which they won't have to if inflation remains under control), then we can gradually reduce our deficits and the burden of our debt

All things considered, things don't look so bad at all!

-Calafia Beach Pundit, from this chart-filled post

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

 

                  The Best of Mountain album

What the World needs now................

 

The algorithms are designed to keep us as “users,” but the world needs us to be creators. When we move from being passive consumers to active curators, we learn better and build a body of work that matters.

-Tanmay Vora

A Great Reset.......................?

 

If there is a common theme running though the actions of the US in the past year, it is fighting back against the institutions, governments, and entities which want to undermine capitalism. That would be a really Great Reset.

-Brian S. Wesbury, from this post

Fun with science..................

 

APOD offers the difference between mid-infrared (Webb) and ultraviolet (Hubble).  If you go to the site, you will be offered both a better description and the ability to toggle between the two views.  Much fun. 

Foggy...................

 

Forecasting the length and severity of war always seems easier with the benefit of hindsight, just like it is with markets.

-Ben Carlson, from this post

Applies to grandparenting as well......

 

Being a parent, Johnson insisted, isn’t about nobility or beauty, pride or pleasure. Rather, it is “the simple, nerve-wracking, mindless, battering-ram process of trying to teach a savage to use a fork.”

-Daniel Smith, from here

via

A whole lot of projecting going on........

 

We have no historically successful roadmap to go by, and in a sense this may be a situation like Hayek's critique of government planning -- that a perfect roadmap cannot exist because we don't understand the mass of individuals we are "liberating", or even how they define "liberated', or even if they really want to be "liberated."  As all of us humans do, we project our own preferences and outlooks and assumptions on people where they may well not fit at all.

-Warren Meyer, thinking a bit about Iran

Simple......................

 

Simple and shallow sound the same until you ask the second question. The person who earned their simplicity can go ten levels deep when challenged. The person who skipped the work falls apart at level two.

-Shane Parrish, from this episode

A nonzero chance...........

I don’t want to get sidetracked here, but I think there’s a nonzero chance that AI never gets much better than humans at most of the things that humans were better than computers at in 2021.

-Noah Smith, contemplating world domination

On intentional scheduling...............

 

Here’s the standard interpretation of this result: Social media is distracting, and if you’re distracted, it becomes harder to maintain control over your schedule. So, the more you use social media, the worse you become at time management.

But I’ve become interested in the reverse form of this argument: the better your planning system, the less time you’ll spend on engagement-based applications like social media.

-Cal Newport, as posted here

On big, shiny ideas..............

 If you find yourself wondering how no one has thought of this before, that’s a warning sign. Chances are, there’s a quiet graveyard of leaders who learned something expensive that you haven’t yet uncovered. Go talk to them.

I’m pro-innovation. I believe in big ideas. But I’m skeptical of shiny ones—too clean, too theoretical, too detached from human realities. The best strategies are forged in constraint, humility, and patience. They’re honest about how many variables they’re trying to solve at once.

-Mike Sharrow, from here

via

How is this even possible..................?

 

....................Roger Daltry turns 82.

Truth....................

 

...............war is a runaway train and we just don't know where it will take us.

Four pundits calmly discussing.........

 

.........................."decapitation strikes".   In the New York Times of all places.

Life its ownself...................

 

....................with a friend called Fish.

 I know intelligence when I see it. I’d recognize a Bigfoot, too, on sight, because it’s about as rare.

prolong and multiply.............

 

To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavor. The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a person alone reading a book that interests them; and all economics, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, are only valuable in so far as they prolong and multiply such scenes.

-C. S. Lewis, as culled from here

downstream......................

 

And that’s the funny thing: so many of our problems aren't even the actual problem. They are the downstream effect of some deeper, unseen problem. And the work to actually fix the problem usually has way less to do with fixing and way more with simply learning how to see it clearly in the first place.

-Mark Manson, from this episode

cognitive patience.......................

...............apparently, we are losing it:

. . . which is defined as the “ability to [maintain] focused and sustained attention and delay gratification, while refraining from multitasking.”

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

 

Ryan Tennis........Pack Light but bring Everything

On deciding...............

 

When you can’t decide, ask yourself: Which option minimizes future regrets?

Then do that.

-Mark Manson, from here

Two humilities...........

 

Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages.  One is the scientific spirit of adventure—the adventure into the unknown, an unknown which must be recognized as being unknown in order to be explored; the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered; the attitude that all is uncertain; to summarize it—the humility of the intellect.  The other great heritage is Christian ethics—the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual—the humility of the spirit.

 

These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent.  But logic is not all; one needs one's heart to follow an idea.  If people are going back to religion, what are they going back to?  Is the modern church a place to give comfort to a man who doubts God‑more, one who disbelieves in God?  Is the modern church a place to give comfort and encouragement to the value of such doubts?  So far, have we not drawn strength and comfort to maintain the one or the other of these consistent heritages in a way which attacks the values of the other?  Is this unavoidable?  How can we draw inspiration to support these two pillars of western civilization so that they may stand together in full vigor, mutually unafraid?  Is this not the central problem of our time?

-Richard Feynman, from this talk

Sounds about right...........

 

Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen.

-Ludwig Wittgenstein

translated as "The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy."

Or a shared drink................

 

The important thing is to sit down at the table and talk.  Some things are just easier to say across the remains of a shared meal.

-Jessica B. Harris

Parrish & Housel, Part 1.............

 

Parrish & Housel, part 2

 

Damn.......................

Your health and financial success hinge on a handful of big, boring decisions, not micro-optimization hacks.

The rightful meaning of...................

 

.........................a sovereign professional.

Sippican Cottage.....................

 

.................notes the times they are a changing';

. . . there are bound to be lots of casualties from the integration of leviathan computational machines into everyday life. It might not be you directly, but there’s bound to be a lot of collateral damage.

For even more fun.......................

 

.....................................write it in cursive.

And just as entertaining...............

 

Our country is often accused of rank imperialism, but in truth we’d rather putter around our own backyards.

Now and then, though, we need to peek over the garden wall and see how the rest of the world is doing.

If we do so today, we’ll find our sitting president, Donald Trump, feverishly rearranging the scenery and props on the geopolitical stage.

If the play he inherited from his predecessor was “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire,” Trump’s new production is an updated remake of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

-Martin Gurri, from this New York Post contribution

trailer for the 1963 movie by that name is here

Wait.............what?......

 

via

Clearing....................

 

When something throws you out of easiness, there's something you need to pay attention to.  The uneasiness is pulling up something that needs to be cleared.  We clear it by looking within ourselves and finding what makes us uneasy, owning it, and forgiving our self because one is a fallible human being.  One has to learn to show oneself kindness in the willingness to forgive.  This then transfers into willingness to forgive others.  Spiritual aspirants must learn to accept things the way they are, not the way they want them to be.

-David R. Hawkins

Ah, de Tocqueville......................

 

     As the rulers of democratic nations are almost always suspected of dishonorable conduct, they in some measure lend the authority of the government to the base practices of which they are accused.  They thus afford dangerous examples, which discourage the struggles of virtuous independence and cloak with authority the secret designs of wickedness.  If it be asserted that evil passions are found in all ranks of society, that they ascend the throne by hereditary right, and that we may find despicable characters at the head of aristocratic nations as well as in the bosom of a democracy, the plea has but little weight in my estimation.  The corruption of men who have casually risen to power has a coarse and vulgar infection to it that renders it dangerous to the multitude.  On the contrary, there is a kind of aristocratic refinement and an air of grandeur in the depravity of the great, which frequently prevents it from spreading abroad.

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

As a long-retired..........................

 

......................lacrosse goalie, I can attest to the critical nature of fractions of inches.  An amazing save:

quick video of it here

thanks rob

In praise (sort of) of........................

 

...............................us baby boomers:

It’s also true that Father Time is undefeated.