Saturday, February 27, 2021
Fifty years ago......................................
Richie Havens..........................................Here Comes The Sun
Toughen up................................
Humans are not built for a life of ease. This is a forgotten wisdom, one revered by the ancient Stoics and once fundamental to philosophical thought. Within the writings of Seneca and Epictetus lies the maxim that it is not our hardship that harms us, but how we relate to it. In choosing to learn and grow from affliction, we fortify our mind. As Seneca wrote, “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.” . . .
“Humans don’t mind hardship,” Junger remarks, “in fact they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.”
-Freya India, from this post on Generation Z and suffering
practice is necessary.........................
The archer allows many arrows to go far beyond the target, because he knows that he will learn the importance of bow, posture, string, and target only by repeating his gestures thousands of times and by not being afraid of making mistakes.
And his true allies will never criticize him, because they know that practice is necessary, that it is the only way in which he can perfect his instinct, his hammer blow.
And then comes the moment when he no longer has to think about what he is doing. From then on, the archer becomes his bow, his arrow, and his target.
-Paulo Coehlo, The Archer
What leadership is not....................
Today's American culture tells us that those most likely to rise to the most important positions of responsibility are the ones who graduate at the top in their classes and have long lists of extracurricular activities. Such countless engagements on a CV are somehow equated with leadership—though they may actually have as much to do with a fear of commitment, a preoccupation with image, or the inescapable desire to assure others that one can master everything at once.
It is ironic, perhaps, that many great, victorious military commanders in our history—Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant; Gen. John Pershing, World War I commander of U. S. forces; and Dwight Eisenhower, World War II supreme Allied commander in Europe—graduated from West Point well below the top of their classes.
-Susan Eisenhower, How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions
On the importance of Feynman..........
One of the most important things Feynman ever taught me was that some of the most exciting scientific surprises can be discovered in everyday phenomena. All you need do is take the time to observe things carefully and ask yourself good questions. He also influenced my belief that there is no reason to succumb to external pressures that try to force you to specialize in a single area of science, as many scientists do. Feynman showed me by example that it is acceptable to explore a diversity of fields if that is where your curiosity leads.
-Paul Steinhardt, as culled from here
Toward better..........................
One challenge is embracing the effective and generative approach of possibility when we’re sure that we’re entitled to grievance.
-Seth Godin, from his post Grievance and possibility
Thursday, February 25, 2021
Fifty years ago.......................................
John Denver..........................Take Me Home, Country Roads
One by one..............................
"As they say 'to be in the world, but not of the world.' You can go to the Himalayas and miss it completely, and you can be stuck in the middle of New York and be very spiritual. I mean, I noticed in certain places, like New York, it brings out a certain thing in myself. If I go to some place like Switzerland, I find a lot of uptight people because they're living amongst so much beauty there's no urgency in trying to find the beauty within themselves. If you're stuck in New York you have to somehow look within yourself - otherwise you'd go crackers. So, in a way, it's good to be able to go in and out of both situations. Most people think when the world gets itself together we'll all be okay. I don't see that situation arriving. I think one by one, we all free ourselves from the chains we have chained ourselves to. But I don't think that suddenly some magic happens and the whole lot of us will all be liberated in one throw."
-George Harrison
Ah, human nature...................
“To suppose that the value of a stock is determined purely by a corporation’s earnings discounted by the relevant interest rates and adjusted for the marginal tax rate is to forget that people have burned witches, gone to war on a whim, risen to the defense of Joseph Stalin and believed Orson Welles when he told them over the radio that the Martians had landed.”
-Jim Grant, as quoted in this brief essay
You don't come across writing like this every day
I have a friend blessed with an intellect as keen as a drill, who, though he takes an interest in aesthetics, has never during a life of almost forty years been guilty of an aesthetic emotion. So, having no faculty for distinguishing a work of art from a handsaw, he is apt to rear up a pyramid of irrefragable argument on the hypothesis that a handsaw is a work of art. This defect robs his perspicuous and subtle reasoning of much of its value; for it has ever been a maxim that faultless logic can win but little credit for conclusions that are based on premises notoriously false. Every cloud, however, has its silver lining, and this insensibility, though unlucky in that it makes my friend incapable of choosing a sound basis for his argument, mercifully blinds him to the absurdity of his conclusions while leaving him in full enjoyment of his masterly dialectic.
-Clive Bell, from his little book, Art, found here
Wealthy 101...........................
74. soft wealth: health, relationships, creativity, art, books, deserts, perfect pizzas.
75. hard wealth: cash, enough to live on, finances managed.
And then there is real wealth..................
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Uh-oh..........................
Walter Russell Mead eyes the politics of a coming "Green" wave. Careful what you wish for - it gets complicated. A wee excerpt:
Those who dismiss ideas like the “green new deal” as mere left-wing fantasies miss the enormous appeal of these programs for corporations looking for new business opportunities. It isn’t only renewable energy companies looking for government mandates and funding. It’s major auto manufacturers dreaming of replacing every gasoline-powered car and truck on the planet with an electric vehicle—and reaping the public-relations reward of looking virtuous. It’s construction companies looking to replace the existing energy infrastructure.
Judgment.......................
"Whatever strengthens your ego weakens your judgement, and ultimately, your success."
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
On manners.............................
Technology, it might be said, by providing machines to do what used to be done by hand . . . has complicated our lives in as many ways as it has simplified and enriched them . . . but in committing ourselves to machine control we have sacrificed many of the pleasures of self-control—of manners, if you wish. . . .
Now and then someone I have just met, avoiding false coziness, calls me "Mr. Lynes." I am as astonished as I am pleased, but it's my age and white hair that evokes it. I think of a story told by Dame May Witty, the distinguished actress, who was in a London shop and was being waited on by an uppity salesgirl (there are two words that have vanished) who was offhand and rude. Dame May, piqued, said, "I suppose you know who I am," and the clerk replied, "Certainly." To which the actress said, "I suppose you think you're as good as I am," and the girl said, "Of course." "Then why," Dame May said, " can't you be civil to your equals?"
Civility is, of course, the root and branch of manners . . .
-Russell Lynes, from his 1986 essay, On Good Behavior, found here
Just think................................
Most of us take pride in our knowledge and expertise, and in staying true to our beliefs and opinions. That makes great sense in a stable world, where we get rewarded for having the conviction of our ideas. The problem is that we live in a rapidly changing world, where we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking.
Rethinking is a skill set, but it's also a mindset. We already have many of the mental tools we need. We just have to remember to get them out of the shed and remove the rust.
-Adam Grant: Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know
Investing with your heart.............
Money — the making of it — is never part of that purpose. It’s a byproduct of one or more of these other more lofty goals. The only purpose the money really serves for us is to allow us to do it all over again.
-Patrick Rhone, full story here
Sunday, February 21, 2021
Help From History..................
Please help me know it happened, that life I thought we had—
Our friends holding out their hands to us—
Our enemies mistaken, infected by unaccountable
prejudice—
Our country benevolent, a model for all governments,
good-willed—
Those mad rulers at times elsewhere, inhuman, and yet
mob-
worshipped,
leaders of monstrous doctrine, unspeakable
beyond belief,
yet strangely attractive to the uninstructed.
And please let me believe these incredible legends that
have
dignified our
lives—
The wife or husband helplessly loving us, the children
full of
awe and
affection, the dog insanely faithful—
Our growing up hard—hard times,
being industrious and
reliable—
The places we lived arched full of serene golden light—
Now, menaced by judgments, overheard revisions, let me
retain what ignorance it
takes to preserve what we need—
a past that redeems any
future.
That sound you hear..............................
........................is minds being blown all over the country.
On unconscious biases.....................
My left-leaning, environmentally conscious friends are justifiably critical of ad hominem attacks on climate scientists. You know the kind of thing: claims that scientists are inventing data because of their political biases or because they're scrambling for funding from big government. In short, smearing the person rather than engaging with the evidence. Yet the same friends are happy to embrace and amplify the same kind of tactics when they're used to attack my fellow economists: that we're inventing data because of our political biases, or scrambling for funding from big business. I tried to point out the parallel to one thoughtful person, and got nowhere. She was completely unable to comprehend what I was talking about. I'd call this a 'double standard', but that would be unfair—it would suggest it was deliberate. It's not. It's an unconscious bias that's easy to see in others and very hard to see in ourselves.
-Tim Harford: How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers
Reasonable...............................
"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do."
-Benjamin Franklin, as culled from his Autobiography
for ourselves.............................
What the patterns of an artist's progress show is the human capacity to find meaning and to make lasting work not by planning it but by remaining open to the possibilities they see inside and around themselves. This argues against forcing predetermined expectations and goals onto our experience of life and for an alert way of being, open to noticing and responding to the future as it emerges. We think ourselves efficient when we squeeze our lives into schedules, itineraries, and plans, asking of apps that they tell us what to do, where to go next. But what we lose is the freedom to notice for ourselves, to filter and reflect for ourselves, to craft our unique sense of who we are and what we wish to make of our lives.
-Margaret Heffernan, Uncharted: How To Navigate The Future
Checking in..............................
.....................................with Will Rogers (1879-1935):
"It's pitiful when you think how ignorant the founders of our Constitution must have been. Just think what a Country we would have if men in those days had the Brains and forethought of our men today!"
"We shouldn't elect a President; we should elect a magician."
"Washington, D.C. Papers say, 'Congress is deadlocked and can't act.' I think that is the greatest blessing that could befall this Country."
"If all politicians fished instead of spoke publicly, we would be at peace with the world."
"Lord, the money we do spend of Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one third the money twenty years ago."
"Things in our country run in spite of government. Not by aid of it."
"You know, Congressmen are the nicest fellows in the world to meet. I sometimes really wonder if they realize the harm they do."
"Elect 'em for a six-year term; not allow 'em to succeed themselves. that would keep their mind off politics."
Saturday, February 20, 2021
Four hours and forty-four minutes..........
.....................................of musical blissfulness. Thank you!
Effort................................
“no matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.”
Mindset: The New Psychology Of SuccessThe ultimate..................................
...........................................................choice.
Fifty years ago.............................
Gordon Lightfoot........................If You Could Read My Mind
As Louis L' Amour said......................
..........................there is always a faster gun:
12. Don’t worry about what everyone else is doing. There will always be someone getting richer than you in life and the markets. And with the advent of social media, that means people throwing this fact in your face constantly.
This one is not easy but defining what a rich life means to you can help avoid unnecessary envy and regret.
-Ben Carlson, from this list at this post
Phase of the Mood..............................
.............................waiting patiently for this essential mix.
Friday, February 19, 2021
Herds.................................
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
"ethnomathematics"..........................?
Warren Meyer opines on the latest unusual idea to come out of what passes for the educational industry these days - here. A wee excerpt here:
Steve Martin used to have a comedy routine where he would say something like, "wouldn't it be funny to teach your kids how to talk wrong. On their first day in Kindergarten class they would walk up to the teacher and exclaim, "Mumbo dogface in the banana patch!" That had a certain dark humor to it but teaching kids to do math wrong in real life is simply insane.
An explanation of "cargo cult thinking" is here
Always be learning...................................
..................................................................The 5-Hour Rule.
A few more books...................
..................................................I haven't read.
Tuesday, February 16, 2021
On the toxicity of brands..............
The future isn't something to be nailed down, defined, and programmed. The only way to influence it is to keep noticing. While an efficient mind-set prizes predictability and continuity, an artist's passion for exploration develops the capacity for change. For years now, we've been encouraged to develop "the brand you," to adopt, as businesses or individuals, an unwavering, fixed positioning that everyone can recognize and rely on. But for artists, brands are toxic, suppressing the lively evolution that keeps them growing. . . .
Artists often change before they have to. Fans and followers frequently deplore these moments of evolution, when musicians adopt or abjure new technology, when painters change media, when writers shift style or genre. Ibsen was forever frustrating his champions by his furious refusal to be tied down by their definition of him. Picasso's shifts in style baffled critics. Fans of Schoenberg's gorgeous classicism were dismayed and disgusted by his adoption of the twelve-tone scale. Even James Joyce's staunchest supporters balked before diving into Finnegans Wake. Many Miles Davis fans never forgave his electric years. It took decades before Bob Dylan's fans got used to the idea that change was the point, that developing self was Dylan's subject.
-Margaret Heffernan, Uncharted: How To Navigate The Future
Perspectives...........................
Psychologists have a name for our tendency to confuse our own perspective with something more universal: it's called 'naive realism', the sense that we are seeing reality as it truly is, without filters or errors. Naive realism can lead us badly astray when we confuse our personal perspective on the world with some universal truth. We are surprised when an election goes against us: everyone in our social circle agreed with us, so why did the nation vote otherwise? Opinion polls don't always get it right, but I can assure you they have a better track record of predicting elections than simply talking to your friends.
-Tim Harford, How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers
Craving, not having..............................
One of the rules that emerges from a consideration of the factors that promote self-sacrifice is that we are less ready to die for what we have or are than for what we wish to have and to be. It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have "something worth fighting for," they do not feel like fighting. People who live full, worthwhile lives are not usually ready to die for their own interests nor for their country nor for a holy cause. Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements
An imaginary museum...................
Like many people with an interest in art, I carry an imaginary museum around in my head. I change exhibitions frequently, not in any orderly way, adding new pieces and putting old ones in storage. I throw away very little, so that the place, if it can be called that, is cluttered. One of the pleasant attributes of an imaginary gallery is that it can be any size, and there is no maintenance or upkeep and no worry about conservation. Nothing costs anything. If the pictures I put in it sometimes gain in value and sometimes decline, it is a matter of taste (call it whim, if your please)—my taste—and any arguments about it are between my taste today and my taste of yesterday.
It is almost impossible not to put what is in my museum in categories—landscapes, genre, nudes, portraits or nonrepresentational, religious, mythical, still life, and decorative paintings. Though I have some sculpture and some objets de vertu and a great many drawings, that is about it, except for a very few photographs and prints. My museum doesn't tend towards "mulitples" of any sort. It is a matter of playing favorites; I am under no pressure to put something in my museum because some critic, or generations of connoisseurs and dilettantes, have declared it to be a masterpiece. One generation's masterpiece can obviously be the next generation's colossal bore, which does not change the nature of the object in the least.
-Russell Lyne, Life In The Slow Lane: Observations On Art, Architecture, Manners, And Other Such Spectator Sports
Here are a few things hanging in my imaginary gallery:
Parenting.............................
One of the incidents in Ike's youth that he later said had a lasting impact on him revolved around Halloween. When he was in elementary school, hit two older brothers were given permission to go out and trick-or-treat. Ike wanted desperately to go, but was denied permission by his parents. In a spectacular display of what we would today call a "meltdown," Ike went into a rage—and essentially blacked out as he bloodied his fists by repeatedly hitting them against a tree. His parents, rightly concerned, took measures. His father probably gave Ike's backside a few strokes of a hickory stick, and he was sent to his room—the one he shared with the two brothers who were out on the town.
As Ike lay in bed sobbing pitifully, his mother came upstairs and sat quietly for a few minutes, waiting for him to settle down. When his tears had turned to occasional whimpers, Ida talked to him in a gentle but firm way. Did he know that his behavior had hurt only himself?
After a few quiet words she ended with a paraphrase from the Bible: "He who conquereth his soul is greater than he who taketh a city."
As his mother bandaged his hands, she continued to talk to her son, again calmly urging him to understand that in his anger he had hurt only himself; that the object of his anger (in this case his brothers) probably didn't even know of his resentment.
Eisenhower later wrote that the conversation was "one of the most valuable moments of my life."
-Susan Eisenhower, How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions
Happy Anniversary Sweetie.................
The Beatles...........................................................Michelle
Monday, February 15, 2021
an inner sense of captaincy..................
Developing an inner sense of captaincy is not about compensating for an incompetent leader—nor does it mean thinking we always know best. The better someone is at leading people, the more they create the conditions for their team to take initiative and be proactive about preventing problems. They show by example that they inhabit a state rather than a particular role. A stronger leader can mean a more independent team.
-from this Farnam Street post
The world...........................
.........................is just a better place when The Sovereign Professional is posting regularly. Do check in.
On being careful what you wish for................
It doesn’t matter how well-intentioned the program is. It doesn’t matter what a regulation was meant to do — it matters what it does. . . .
“Markets work!” is cartoon libertarianism, but you know what? Markets work. And if you don’t let them work, you end up with artificial scarcity, high prices, and rationing.
-Kevin D. Williamson, as culled from this post
Opening paragraphs...................
John Maynard Keynes was not an athletic man. Though a spirited debater, he had always suffered from fragile health. Overworked by choice and underexercised out of habit, he had acclimated himself to living in the constant shadow of head colds and influenza attacks. He was thirty-one years old on the first Sunday of August 1914 and had lived nearly all those years at Cambridge, where, like his father before him, he held a minor academic post. His friend and mentor Bertrand Russell was accustomed to seeing the younger man reviewing figures or buried in papers on weekend afternoons. A King's College man, Keynes might, in moments of extreme restlessness, calm himself with a walk through the Great Court of Russell's Trinity College, taking in the turrreted medieval towers of King's Gate, the soaring gothic windows of the chapel built during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and the steady waters of the fountain designed when William Shakespeare had composed Hamlet. Keynes was a man who savored tradition and contemplation. He was perfectly suited for a life at the timeworn university.
-Zachary D. Carter, The Price Of Peace: Money, Democracy, And The Life Of John Maynard Keynes
Saturday, February 13, 2021
Join...................
Join with all those who experiment, take risks, fall, get hurt, and then take more risks. Stay away from those who affirm truths, who criticize those who do not think like them, people who have never once taken a step unless they were sure they would be respected for doing so, and those who prefer certainties to doubts.
Join with those who are open and not afraid to be vulnerable: they understand that people can improve only once they start looking at what their fellows are doing, not in order to judge them, but to admire them for their dedication and courage
-Paul Coelho, The Archer
Election fraud......................
I am certain that voting shenanigans went on in the most recent election. Did it determine the outcome? Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, students of America will know that what occurred in 2020 was child's play in the context of our history. To wit:
Already, some two generations out of slavery, when statistically they had been three-fifths of a person, "Negroes" conducted an unrequited love affair with the republic that had, reluctantly at best, freed them in 1863. They fought in U.S. wars and paid taxes. They rendered cheap labor on railroads and docks, in factories, private kitchens, and cotton fields. Although fulfilling the obligations of citizenship, Negroes were systematically denied the benefits. White supremacy was certified and enforced as national policy by the full force of the Supreme Court, Congress, and the executive branch of the federal government, although in wholly different ways. The Court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson "separate but equal" ruling was a sham decision that froze in place an impregnable caste structure under legalized segregation. Negroes were repressed as a permanent underclass and were flagrantly denied equal access to housing, jobs, education, public accommodations, due process in the courts, and despite, the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, the guaranteed right to vote. Even when American women were granted the vote in 1920, Negroes across gender lines were largely denied the franchise, especially in the South, where some 80 percent of them lived.
-Les Payne, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
Friday, February 12, 2021
Just in case you forgot...........................
.....................................................the best story wins.
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Now that you mention it.....................................
.................................. a glass of wine would be nice.
It's a possibility......................
A curious paradox characteristic of every kind of courage here confronts us. It is the seeming contradiction that we must be fully committed, but we must also be aware at the same time that we might possibly be wrong. This dialectic relationship between conviction and doubt is characteristic of the highest types of courage . . .
People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one are dangerous. Such conviction is the essence not only of dogmatism, but of its more destructive cousin, fanaticism. It blocks off the user from learning new truth, and it is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt. The person then has to double his or her protests to quiet not only the opposition but his or her own unconscious doubts as well. . . .
. . . The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt. To believe fully and and the same time to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment. To every thesis there is an antithesis, and to this there is a synthesis. Truth is thus a never-dying process. We then know the meaning of the statement attributed to Leibnitz: "I would walk twenty miles to listen to my worst enemy if I could learn something."
-Rollo May, The Courage To Create
Why enabling How...............................
I remember two cases of would-be suicide, which bore a striking similarity to each other. Both men had talked of their intention to commit suicide. Both used the typical argument—they had nothing more to expect from life. In both cases, it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them. We found, in fact, that for the one it was his child whom he adored and who was waiting for him in a foreign country. For the other it was a thing, not a person. This man was a scientist and had written a series of books which still needed to be finished. His work could not be done by anyone else, anymore that another person could ever take the place of the father in the child's affections.
This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life, He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."
-Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning
thanks Michael
Focusing on the chronic...........................
. . . as we strap into a rollercoaster of external change, we forget to work on the problems we have the opportunity to improve.
-Seth Godin, from this post
Tuesday, February 9, 2021
The Art of Accepting..................
The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has done you a small favor wish that he might have done a greater one.
Never accept flattery as though it were a compliment, and never accept a compliment as though it were a flattery.
The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it, laugh at it; if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved.
Always accept defeat as though it were defeat and success as though it were success, but never take either for granted; neither is permanent.
But if the art of accepting is, as I have suggested, the art of gratifying those who would be generous to you, "Thank you" has no peer.
-Russell Lynes, a few snippets culled from this essay contained in this book
Start...........................
Artists begin without being asked. That is the acid test of agency: not just having ideas, but acting on them. Where experimenters may carefully calculate need, passion, and resources, artists supply all three themselves. The need and passion are internally generated. The resources are ideas and time, but time is not infinite. So choosing one subject means abandoning the rest, with no guarantee that the choice is right. The only way to find out is to start. Almost every artist describes their way of working as a curious combination of invention, which is conscious, and discovery, which is not.
-Margaret Heffernan, Uncharted: How To Navigate The Future
On questions and answers...............
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and to try to love the questions themselves
like locked rooms and like books that are written
in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers,
which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day
into the answer.
Alone..................................
Unlike today, when people tailor even their most intimate moments for consumption on social media, Eisenhower believed that the task of overcoming any challenge must be a personal matter—a burden to be borne alone.
-Susan Eisenhower, How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions
Fifty years ago...............................
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.....................................Mr. Bojangles
Monday, February 8, 2021
Here's one risk I am willing to run.........
..................................................."longevity risk."
But till that morning..............................
Janis Joplin........................................................Summertime
Responsibilities..............................
It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing. The answer to big government is not private freedom, but private responsibility.
Undaunted........................
If artists have the capacity to make work that defies time, it is because instead of trying to force-fit a predetermined idea of the future, they have learned to live productively with ambiguity, to see it as a rich source of discovery and exploration. Instead of trying to reduce complexity, they mine it, undaunted by contradictions and paradoxes. . . . In this, artists have much to teach us about how we ourselves could address the future with imagination and independence. In addition to thinking about what to do, the artist's method suggest that we should think about how to be.
-Margaret Heffernan, Uncharted: How To Navigate The Future
Yep.............................
..............................................................a lot of people are.
Just a head's up......................................
If you’re not paying, you’re the product, not the customer. And sometimes, even if you are paying, the long-term impact of your quest for convenience might not be what you were hoping for.
-Seth Godin, from here
VDH revisits..............................................
..........................................Animal Farm:
Beware, he warns, of the powerful who claim to help the helpless.
One impossible.................................
........................................................................question.
Sunday, February 7, 2021
Lead me.........................
Lead me from dreaming to waking.
Lead me from opacity to clarity.
Lead me from the complicated to the simple.
Lead me from the obscure to the obvious.
Lead me from intention to attention.
Lead me from what I'm told I am to what I see I am.
Lead me from confrontation to wide openness.
Lead me to the place I never left,
Where there is peace, and peace
On lurching..........................
In Gettysburg I still feel close to my grandparents, and I still go to these rolling hills for reflection. Yet so much has changed since that time—not just the disappearance of the Stuckey's souvenir shops or the Rexall drugstore on Gettysburg's main square—the fabric of our society today has a different texture than it did in the 1950s: some of it stronger but much of it badly frayed.
Engaging one's deepest self was easier in those days—with long waits between letters and long-distance phone calls deferred until Sunday when the rates were cheaper. Today, tethered to smartphones and transfixed by Twitter and Instagram, we lurch from one demand to another with scarcely a moment to think. Our impulses are reactive, not considered. They are short-term rather than strategic. We have lost our capacity to act in the present while thinking into the future. We are struggling.
-Susan Eisenhower, from her Introduction to How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions
Conversation starters (or maybe stoppers)..............
.............100 more questions that don't get asked.
Important questions............................
........................nobody is asking:
Why aren't there any left-handed catchers in the Major Leagues?
Generosity of spirit...............
The most important thing is love of others. Not necessarily a sugary, let's-all sing-'We-Are-The-World' kind of love, but a stable, meaningful generosity of spirit that enables us to do things for others—those we know and those we don't—because at base level we choose to give of ourselves. . . . So here's my working definition of generosity of spirit: It is the commitment to treat a person with dignity and kindness regardless of how you feel about him or her.
-Mark Sanborn, The Fred Factor
Look.............................
Look beneath the surface: never let a thing's intrinsic quality or worth escape you.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6:3
this huge and unparalleled modern wrong........
My forthcoming work in five volumes, `The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature,' is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful whether I shall live to finish it.
-Gilbert Keith Chesterton, as he begins this short essay
Bezos..........................
The initial start-up capital for Amazon.com came primarily from my parents, who invested a large fraction of their life savings in something they didn't understand. They weren't making a bet on Amazon or the concept of a bookstore on the internet. They were making a bet on their son. I told them I thought there was a 70 percent chance they would lose their investment, and they did it anyway. It took more than fifty meetings for me to raise $1 million from investors, and over the course of all those meetings, the most common question was, "What's the internet?"
Unlike many other countries around the world, this great nation we live in supports and does not stigmatize entrepreneurial risk-taking. I walked away from a steady job into a Seattle garage to found my startup, fully understanding it might not work. It feels like just yesterday I was driving the packages to the post office myself, dreaming that one day we might be able to afford a forklift.
Amazon's success was anything but preordained. Investing in Amazon early on was a very risky proposition. From our founding through the end of 2001, our business had accumulated losses of nearly $3 billion, and we did not have a profitable quarter until the fourth quarter of that year. Smart analysts predicted Barnes & Noble would steamroll us, and branded us "Amazon.toast." In 1999, after we'd been in business for nearly five years, Barron's headlined a story about our impending demise "Amazon.bomb." My annual shareholder letter for 2000 started with a one-word sentence" "Ouch."
-Jeff Bezos, Invent & Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos
Saturday, February 6, 2021
Thursday, February 4, 2021
More than you want to know...................
...............................about hedge fund managers.
My point here is more about politics than finance. Our class enemy are not evil geniuses practising some arcane magic; investing successfully requires little intellect. Instead, they are beneficiaries of emergent processes such as principal-agent failures and deference towards the rich and of the cronyism that gives them special treatment from the state. There are no wizards, just common little humbugs.
Only one question..................................
..................................is this a surprise to you?
On parasites and charity..................
Up here in the High Doganate, we are reactionaries, not squishy “conservatives.” True, there is only one of us up here, but I speak for the majority. The number of politicians we trust is even smaller. We don’t think there is a political solution, to anything.
-David Warren, from this blog post
Charlie Munger teaches............
..........................the importance of learning to make fewer stupid decisions. Morgan Housel concurs:
Most of this industry is devoted to finding greatness, which is inevitable because it’s what captures attention. But an occasional great decision can quickly become irrelevant unless you consistently avoid the blunders that move the needle even more. It’s not exciting, but we should spend more effort on ensuring we’re capable of doing the average thing all the time before we spend a moment trying to do a great thing some of the time.
Only one question................................
........................................is this a surprise to you?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
