The willingness to be corrected, to seek feedback, and to stay a perpetual student is the mechanism of mastery.
-Austin Scholar, from this substack
Monday, March 9, 2026
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.
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.
Steve McQueen and his ball and glove, The Great Escape
Yep...........................
The big money is not in the buying and the selling, but in the waiting.
As we've always said, real estate investing is a get-rich-slowly scheme
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
Sunday, March 8, 2026
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.
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
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
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
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