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

Renaissance.......................Turn of the Cards album

 

quick vs. fast.......................

 

But self-help quick fixes are bogus because they’re shallow. Not because change can’t happen fast. If you’re willing and able to get deep and honest about why you do the counterproductive, happiness-limiting things you do, there’s no automatic reason why it might not be possible to walk away from them today.

-Oliver Burkeman, from here

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

Bob Dylan/The Band...........Before the Flood album

 

On time......................

 You don't need more time because you already have all the time that you will ever get; you need more focus.

-Kevin Kelly

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

Fleetwood Mac...............Heroes Are Hard to Find album

 

Granny's Rule.......................

 Granny’s Rule, to be specific, is the requirement that children eat their carrots before they get dessert. And the business version requires that executives force themselves daily to first do their unpleasant and necessary tasks before rewarding themselves by proceeding to their pleasant tasks. 

-Charlie Munger

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

Billy Joel...............Streetlife Serenader full album

 

insulation....................

In ever more areas of life, algorithms are coming to substitute for judgment exercised by identifiable human beings who can be held to account. The rationale offered is that automated decision-making will be more reliable. But a further attraction is that it serves to insulate various forms of power from popular pressures.

-Matthew B. Crawford, from this essay

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

John Coltrane............................Interstellar Space

 

our finest moments................

 

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

-M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

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

Joni Mitchell.................................Court and Spark

 

A good question...............

 In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong.  A good question to ask yourself today is, "What might I be wrong about?"  This is the only worry worth having.

-Kevin Kelly

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

Neil Young........................On the Beach

 

worry....................................

 You don't need to worry about progressing slowly. You need to worry about climbing the wrong mountain.

-James Clear, from here

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

Steely Dan....................Pretzel Logic full album

 

an interesting collection..................

  I sought good judgment mostly by collecting instances of bad judgment, then pondering ways to avoid such outcomes. 

-Charlie Munger

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

Rush..................................................Rush album

 

borrowing........................

We borrow our atoms.
The universe owns them.

The universe borrows our love and wonder.
Those belong to us.

-Jarod K. Anderson

photo via

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

Supertramp....................Crime of the Century album

 

nonetheless...........................

 

When you stop believing in God, there is no sudden explosion of light or darkness. The world continues on its accustomed course. The sky does not fall. The sun still shines. Life goes on. But something is lost nonetheless, something important that gives life connectedness, depth and a sense of purpose; that gives you a feeling of participating in something vast and consequential.

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning

unsurpassable felicity...................

 Oh unsurpassed generosity of God the Father, Oh wondrous and unsurpassable felicity of man, to whom it is granted to have what he chooses, to be what he wills to be! The brutes, from the moment of their birth, bring with them, as Lucilius says, ``from their mother's womb'' all that they will ever possess. The highest spiritual beings were, from the very moment of creation, or soon thereafter, fixed in the mode of being which would be theirs through measureless eternities. But upon man, at the moment of his creation, God bestowed seeds pregnant with all possibilities, the germs of every form of life. Whichever of these a man shall cultivate, the same will mature and bear fruit in him. If vegetative, he will become a plant; if sensual, he will become brutish; if rational, he will reveal himself a heavenly being; if intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God. And if, dissatisfied with the lot of all creatures, he should recollect himself into the center of his own unity, he will there become one spirit with God, in the solitary darkness of the Father, Who is set above all things, himself transcend all creatures.

-Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, from his Oration on the Dignity of Man

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

Bob Marley & The Wailers...............Natty Dread album

 

Husband your..............................

 

.............................................power.

What, me worry.......................?

 

Americans are still not worried enough about the risk of world war.

mastery......................

 

Mastery is not only about getting better at your craft, but also about finding ways to eliminate the obstacles, distractions, and other annoyances that prevent you from working on your craft.

-James Clear, from here

Not much.....................

 Of what use is a philosopher who never offends anybody?

-Charlie Munger

time......................................

 

Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.

-M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

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

Bob James..................................One album

 

noses........................

 

      It sure does beat all how prosperity makes a man critical of all who are less prosperous.  Seems like some folks no sooner get two dollars they can rattle together than they start looking down their noses at folks who only have two bits.

-Louis L'Amour, The Courting of Griselda

On growing up.....................

 All my life I used to wonder what I would become when I grew up. Then, about seven years ago, I realized that I was never going to grow up—that growing is an ever-ongoing process.

-M. Scott Peck

Fifty years ago at the newsstand................

 

Aging like a fine wine.......................

 Anybody can grow older. That doesn’t take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change.

and what are the odds of that happening....

 

We can’t default on government debt unless a crazy politician does something stupid.

Serving as a Trustee....................

 

..............................................of other's time.

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

       Hank Aaron breaks the Babe's home run record

 

an edge..........................

 

You have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.

-Charlie Munger, from here

thanks Chris

The 2024 version........................

....................of a total eclipse of the sun. 

            via John's non-iPhone phone camera

Longing for leadership.......................

.................................capable of uniting.

As these events unfold, America’s global leadership role is being challenged outside by other nations and inside by our polarized electorate. We need to find ways to put aside our differences and work in partnership with other Western nations in the name of democracy. During this time of great crises, uniting to protect our essential freedoms, including free enterprise, is paramount. We should remember that America, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” still remains a shining beacon of hope to citizens around the world. JPMorgan Chase, a company that historically has worked across borders and boundaries, will do its part to ensure that the global economy is safe and secure.

-Jamie Dimon, from here

Asking questions [or not]......................

 

Questions are useful.  Entrepreneurs and innovators usually start their search for something new and better by asking, "What if?" or "Why not?"

Questions are how we avoid disasters.  Groupthink is nothing more than people not asking the questions they know they should.

So why is it so hard for companies [and people] to embrace the art of asking good questions?

-Alan M. Webber, Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self

Pretty smart guy..................

 

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.

-Isaac Newton

As projects go, this one is tougher..........

......than it looks.  I would have eaten half of them.

via

Repeatability....................

 In business and investing, you want to learn the big lessons about why things behave the way they do without assuming the past is a direct guide to the future, because it’s not – most of the details are not repeatable.

-Morgan Housel, from here

Evolution and micro-impairments..........

 

.....add this to the list of stuff I never thought of before.

On creating......................

 

.............................the conditions for success.

Tools..............................

 

.................................of versatility and adaptability.

The trouble with doing.......................

 

.................economics properly and wisely:

It’s tempting to do economics as if an omniscient and omni-benevolent god were able and willing to hire itself out as the faithful agent to follow the mortal’s policy recommendations. Imagining oneself tapping into god-like knowledge and power is heady, and from that high perch the real-world, with all of its messiness and imperfections, does indeed appear to be in dire need of divine intervention. But economics properly and wisely done . . . takes human nature, including humans’ limited cognitive abilities, as given. Most of the so-called “theoretical exceptions” to the economic case for free trade are relevant only in an alternative reality in which governance of humans’ daily economic and political affairs could actually be turned over to a god or to a mortal transformed into a god.

-Don Boudreaux, from this post

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

Viktoria Mullova.....Bach: 6 Solo Sonatas & Partitas

 

Thanks Kurt

Getting into...........................

 

................the nitty-gritty of trust:

It’s not a good idea to warily eye everyone like they’re potential contestants on “Who Wants to Betray Me Next?” Studies show expecting others to be selfish can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: “those who expect people to act selfishly, actually experience uncooperative behaviour from others more often.”

Meanwhile, displaying trust in others from the get-go can create the opposite type of self-fulfilling prophecy: people want to prove your trust in them to be justified. Research shows seemingly irrational displays of trust often prove quite rational because it leads others to trust you and not want to let you down.

I would guess that......................

 

...............................this is true.

Opening paragraphs.................

 

A hundred and fifty-seven castaways on a desert island in the South China Sea, the survivors of the wreck of HMS Diane, which had struck upon an uncharted rock and had there been shattered by a great typhoon some days later: a hundred and fifty-seven, but as they sat there round the edge of a flat bare piece of ground between high-water mark and the beginning of the forest they sounded like the full complement of a ship of the line, for this was Sunday afternoon, and the starboard watch, headed by Captain Aubrey, was engaged in a cricket-match against the Marines, under their commanding officer,  Mr. Welby.

-Patrick O'Brian,  The Nutmeg of Consolation

Trends....................................

 

.........................................in the housing market (and other worthwhile stuff to think about).

There are 70 million baby boomers and they control something like $70 trillion in assets. We’re looking at 10-15 years of boomers buying places in Florida, Arizona, the Carolinas and other warm destinations.

Most of them have paid off mortgages and an obscene amount of home equity. Good luck betting against this trend.

Editor's Note:  There is nothing obscene about home equity.

The 20-5-3 rule.............................

 

......for experiencing the healing power of nature.

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

James Taylor....................the Walking Man album

 

On the strong dislike of power........

 

In a now-obscure 1960s BBC interview, Malcolm Muggeridge, the English satirist, journalist, and convert to anti-Communism (and later Christianity) declared: “I hate government. I hate power. I think that man’s existence, insofar as he achieves anything, is to resist power, to minimize power, to devise systems of society in which power is the least exerted.”

-from this review of Everyday Freedom

fun with the language........

 

   more fun here

magical reinventors.....................

 

Living things tend to change unrecognizably as they grow.  Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant?  Flora or fauna, we are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors.  Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves.

-Diane Ackerman

reality based..................

Franklin's humanity was based on no illusions about life—on no sappy opinions about the natural goodness of human beings, on no false hopes for the future.  Rather, it was based on seeing the world as it really is, and not as we want it to be.  Moreover, his deep skepticism was, in his view, the only means by which he or any other human being could be free of pride, envy, anger, and indignation, which distort the soul, separate us from others, and give rise to folly and human wickedness. 

-Jerry Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought

The slippery slope.................

Religion begins by offering magical aid to harassed and bewildered men; it culminates by giving to a people that unity of morals and belief which seems so favorable to statesmanship and art; it ends by fighting suicidally in the lost cause of the past. . . . Institutions which were at first in the hands of the clergy, like law and punishment, education and morals, marriage and divorce, tend to escape from ecclesiastical control, and become secular, perhaps profane.  The intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and - after some hesitation - the moral code allied with it; literature and philosophy become anticlerical.  The movement of liberation rises to an exuberant worship of reason, and falls to a paralyzing disillusionment with every dogma and every idea. 

-Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: The Renaissance

faith.................................

 

Faith is not certainty.  It is the courage to live with uncertainty.

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

How to be........................................

 

................................................powerful.

We may be suffering..................

.......................... from a lack of inculcation:

 In his sixties, Adams would say that vigilance in civic life had been inculcated in him at an early age.  "Let the people keep a watchful eye over the conduct of their rulers," he explained, "for we are told that great men are not all times wise.  It would be indeed a wonder if in any age or country they were always honest."

-Stacy Schiff,  The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

Would have liked the opportunity......

...........to have had a few beers with Samuel Adams: 

"By fretting at unfortunate events we double the evil."

"The censure of fools and knaves is applause."

Untroubled by perfectionism, he counseled friends not to overthink the details.

He excelled at friendship, which at its best he termed "thinking aloud together."

Though he bore the same name as his exemplary father, he invested little in bloodlines.  When traced far enough back, one bumped up against the inevitable horse thief.

He thought the best of people until he could no longer.  He shrugged off their opinions.

As affable in his manner as inflexible in his principals, he was at ease with everyone he met.

When he waxed rhapsodic it was about liberty and the rights of man.

Never in his life would he make a wise financial decision. Poverty was not so disagreeable a companion, he held, as the affluent seemed to believe.

Concerned.......................

 I’m not as concerned about artificial intelligence as I am about common stupidity.

-Arnold Schwarzenegger

The importance of correct eyewear.......

 

coldest...............................

 State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people'.

-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra; A Book for All and None

quotation forensics.....................

 Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught, . . .

-Winston Churchill, speaking in the House of Commons in 1952

re-boot.....................?

 

An important aspect..............................

 

...........................................of liberty.

imagine............................

 

Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists.  To be an optimist you don't have to ignore the multitude of problems we create; you just have to imagine how much our ability to solve problems improves.

-Kevin Kelly

pillars.....................

 Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.

-George Washington, from his 1796 Farewell Address letter

via

blogging..............................

Auguste Rodin    The Walking Man    c 1877         bronze

 Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

-Auguste Rodin

On limitations...............

 I do not mean by this that there has been, or can be, any progress in an attempt of the people to exist without a strong and vigorous government. That is the only foundation and the only support of all civilization. But progress has been made by the people relieving themselves of the unwarranted and unnecessary impositions of government. There exists, and must always exist, the righteous authority of the state. That is the sole source of the liberty of the individual, but it does not mean an inquisitive and officious intermeddling by attempted government action in all the affairs of the people. There is no justification for public interference with purely private concerns.

-Calvin Coolidge, from this 1922 speech

via

Bet......................

 Our fingers are built more for feeling than fighting.
Nerve endings prioritized over talons or claws.

Our relatively modest strength.
Our long, vulnerable road to adulthood.

Our species' success is the story of betting
on understanding over brutality.

It's the wise, patient bet.

-Jarod K. Anderson,  Soft

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

Jesus Christ Superstar...............the 1970 album

 

On the tension.........................

 

...................between creativity and management.

What cigars and bourbon are for.........

      Getting things right requires triangulating with other people.  Psychologists therefore would do well to ask whether "metacognition" (thinking about your own thinking) is at bottom a social phenomenon.  It typically happens in conversation—not idle chitchat, but the kind that aims to get to the bottom of things.  I call this an "art" because it requires both tact and doggedness.  And I call it a moral accomplishment because to be good at this kind of conversation you have to love truth more than you love your own current state of understanding.  That is, of course, an unusual priority to have, which may help to account for the rarity of real mastery in any pursuit.

-Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

On perception.............

Perceiving is a way of acting.  Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us. It is something we do. 

-Alva Noë

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

The Beach Boys..................Endless Summer album

 

Goodness.......................

Human goodness is widely distributed, and I have no respect for religious people who cannot see this. . . . Religion, as I explain it there, is a principled opposition to the will to power.  Faith is about the forms of gracious coexistence that abjure the use of power. 

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning

discharged........................

 Man enjoyed no greater blessing, he argued, than civil government.  It protected him both from his neighbor's self-interest and his own "propensity to superiority."  To resist a ruler was treason.  Adams rejoiced in the security their sovereign extended to his subjects.  It was "the duty of every subject, for conscience's sake, to submit to his authority, while he acted according to the law." Should he imperil the natural right and liberties of his subjects, however, "he overthrows the very design of government, and the people are discharged from all obedience."

-Stacy Schiff, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

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

 To know the most important things was, for Franklin, to answer two questions (to borrow an expression from John William Ward).  Who am I? And how did I get to be me? . . . in his mind the most important truths could be understood only by investigating our most immediate and concrete experiences of life—life as real people live it and not as we might see it through the dark glass of intellectual sophistication.

-Jerry Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought

Prayers...................

 Prayers to the Holy Spirit are all fundamentally a plea for the Spirit's coming. . . . The Holy Spirit is the unrestricted presence of God in which our life wakes up, becomes wholly and entirely living, and is endowed with the energies of life.

-Jürgen Moltman, The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life

A Man for Our Times......................

 Socrates was always suspicious of the obvious, and he can nearly always show that the obvious is untrue, and the truth is very rarely obvious. 

-Paul Johnson, Socrates: A Man for Our Times

How did they build................

.............................all those cathedrals?

 Despite the acceleration of technological progress, indeed because of it, one of the few scarcities in the future will be a long attention span. There will be no shortage of amazing materials that can do magic, astounding sources of energy to make anything happen, and great reserves of knowledge and know-how to accomplish our dreams. But the gating factor for actually completing those big dreams may be the distractions that any society feels over the centuries. What your parents and grandparents found important you may find silly, or even embarrassing.

-Kevin Kelly, from here

Financial rules..........................

 Holding a credit card balance from month to month is one of the worst financial decisions you can make.

The first rule of personal finance is you pay off your credit card balance every month.

The second rule is don’t forget rule number one.

-Ben Carlson, from here

 The greatest trick the devil ever played was making you believe that the pessimists are the good guys.

-Packy McCormick, as culled from this list

On fishing in different ponds...........

 This country has challenges and the higher education system is near the top of the list. However, one thing that is far from challenged is its vast depth of talented, driven, hopeful, and resourceful young people. The key for businesses looking to hire young talent or investors trying to find the next great company is to seek out and identify these young people and give them the opportunity to shine.

-Ted Lamade, from this post

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

Four Tops.........................Greatest Hits album

 

Luxury..........................

 

    via

Damned if I know..............................

     more fun here

Seven............................

 

..................ways to be different:

7.  Zag when others Zig

It is not called Boyle's Guideline...

 There’s no such thing as work life balance. There’s simply life. And you spend part of your life at work.

-Seth Godin offers more here

On stress................................

 

...........................................relief.

Chris Lynch.......................

 

..................suggests that we choose wisely:

Riddles...............................

 And who are we to solve it? All the same, we ourselves form a particle of it, of the society of which we ask, Where is it going, to the devil or to God?

-as Rob Firchau channels Vincent van Gogh

We can only hope..................

 

.......................that the answer is "yes."

Stephen Landry.......................................

 

........................posted an exceptionally good week.

Our friend at Sippican Cottage........

 ........................makes some observations:

When I returned, I looked around, and realized the world I was born into was completely gone. I’d been watching it sluice down some sort of drain for so long, that I wondered if I was some sort of involuntary antichrist, making each tomorrow worse than today, every day since I was born. The whole 200,000,000- way handshake seems to have been totally replaced with nothing but a Balkan competition to see which sect could pull themselves to the top of a greasy pole with nothing but a Netflix login screen at the top. The competition was desultory, because no one wanted any job but greasing the pole. Climbing is a lot of work.

Pondering the future...........................

 ............of the commission-based real estate market.

Ben Carlson asks some good questions.  We've been pondering this idea for a while.  The current system has been in place my entire career, so please forgive any bias you find here.

We have long believed that real estate agents bring value to the marketplace.  Going forward we will find out if the marketplace agrees.  

Long overlooked in this discussion is the amount of "free work" real estate agents provide.  If you know a real estate agent, ask them how many properties they have shown and offers they have written that don't materialize into a sale.  You may be surprised by how often that happens.  The current system allows for - accounts for - all of the "free work."  Will it be missed if it goes away?   Do you believe prospective real estate buyers will be willing to incur costs even if they are unsuccessful in buying?   

An enlightened way to look at this commission business is to say that the transaction pays the fee.  Not the seller and not the buyer, the Transaction.  No meeting of the minds between buyer and seller - no deal and no commission.  No successful completion of the buyer's due diligence inspections - no deal and no commission.  No successful arrangement of financing - no deal and no commission.  The transaction costs typically have been funded on the seller' side of the settlement statement, primarily because it eases the transaction's completion.  Reasonable people can disagree on what "fair and reasonable" transaction costs should be.  Fees have always been negotiable (you can look through my past files and see the truth in that), but, generally in the marketplace with individual seller and buyers, incentives matter.  Just remember - the transaction is paying the fees.

It strikes us that, for all the noise about commissions and who is going to benefit, the true seismic change coming out of the court action and settlement agreements will be the impact on the National Association of Realtors (NAR) itself.   As a trade association with over a million and a half members scattered all over the country, NAR has had some success in the political arena over the years.  The Realtors Political Action Committee (RPAC) raises significant dollars every year from the Realtor membership.  Those dollars go to support politicians and positions considered to be beneficial to NAR's perceived interests.  While not monolithic (I stopped giving RPAC money years ago because of their "fight to the death" attitude on mortgage interest deductions), NAR does speak for an awful lot of folks.   One outcome from the lawsuits and settlement may be to fracture the association membership, weaken RPAC, and break the back of NAR's perceived political influence.  If I was a more cynical person, I might believe that was the end game with this whole thing.

Anyway, this post started out by saying Ben Carlson asks some good questions. It will take some time for the real estate marketplace and industry to find the answers to those questions.

Sunday...........................

 ..............................................seven:

5. You do not need permission to change.