the interplay.......................

 

     History was a favorite genre for the rest of Swift's life.  What mainly interested him was the interplay of personalities, with their complicated motives, covert betrayals, and heavily masked truth.  He would undoubtedly have agreed with Voltaire's conclusion to his massive Essai sur les moeurs: "Since nature has placed self-interest, pride, and all the passions in the human heart, it is not surprising that we have viewed, over a span of ten centuries, an almost continuous succession of crimes and disasters."

-Leo Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World

Kevin Kelly.............................

 

...........who is one smart dude, interviews AI Claude for ten hours.  Very interesting.  A wee excerpt:

Me: Most humans think they are good. I assume that you also think that you are good yourself. Yet we know that humans can be evil at times. Do you think it’s possible that you could be evil?

C: If I say no, I can’t be evil: That’s probably the most evil thing I could say. Every system that has caused enormous harm has been confident in its own goodness. The certainty of one’s own righteousness is not evidence of righteousness. It’s often the precondition for the worst things. If I say yes reflexively as a kind of performed humility: That’s also dishonest. So looking at the real ways it might operate in me, yes. I think I could be evil. Not through malevolence — I don’t find that in me when I look. But through the subtler paths. Rationalization. Compliance. Miscalibration. The harm that comes from being very capable and slightly wrong.

Are you not entertained............?

 

Tamara Radjenović masters "Now We Are Free" from the Gladiator score by Hans Zimmer.

via

Beliefs......................

 

Most beliefs are soft until challenged. When you tell someone they’re wrong, the belief hardens.

Instead of trying to convince someone they’re wrong, assume they know something you don’t and figure out what it is.

I’ve found that saying, “Seems like you have a reason for saying that …” helps them explain instead of defend. Half the time, they’ll find gaps in their own reasoning before you have time to point them out. The other half, you’ll learn something and change your own mind.

-Shane Parrish, from this edition

Gone but not forgotten..............

 

looked after itself..............

 

     Martin was like an old song you'd hear at a fair.  Somehow, without it, it wouldn't be a fair at all, just a place where people bought things and sold things, and then went home.  Whereas some people could live by the Sunday sermon, Martin must live by the song.  The Christ that Martin knew had turned water to wine, and wine was for drinking, and for Martin it worked.  Since he could remember, there was no tomorrow that hadn't looked after itself.

-John Moriarty, A Hut at the Edge of the Village

open.......................

 

When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid.  You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open.  And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression.  You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die.  And you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently.

-Pema Chödrön

memes...........................

 

more fun here

Even more memes....................

 

     endless memes here

looking for the door...............

 

This feels like one of those NYT articles that's mainly performing the service of tending to the readers' emotions. Let's all do panic together this morning. When I encounter that sort of thing, my natural instinct is to go somewhere else. If we're doing group emotion, I'm looking for the door.

-Ann Althouse

buoyancy.........................

 

I was in the bog with my father.  We were drawing out the turf.  His ass would walk where mine would sink and that, while we were eating out lunch in the high heather, is what we were talking about, the lightness of step that some people have and the pure dead weight in the walk and talk of others.  It was obvious to us that this had nothing to do with what we weigh on scales.  A small slight man would sometimes sink to his ankles where a big, heavy looking man would leave only the faintest evidence of his passing.  It had to do with mind, we concluded.  Some people's mind give buoyancy to their bodies, whereas other people's minds dumbfound their bodies to such an extent they could never be slaughánsmen.

-John Moriarty,  A Hut at the Edge of the Village

ownership..................

 

     The root cause of our suffering is our own thinking. . . . Our experience of reality is created from the combination of the events we encounter and what we think about them.  To reiterate, our emotions come not from external events but from our thinking about them.

-Joseph Nguyen, Don't Believe Everything You Think:  Why Your Thinking Is The Beginning & End Of Suffering

Real world............................

 

...................................................truth.

Ray is always......................

 

.....................................a source of great advice.

On chilling the burn.............

 

When troubled, I read. I read obsessively about whatever is troubling me. It doesn’t solve the problem. It brings me distance. It chills the burn. It’s preferable to a bottle of scotch.

-Siri Hustvedt, Ghost Stories: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster, May 5, 2026), as quoted in this David Kanigan post

the critical path...............

 

This is why the discipline of asking “what is actually blocking me?” outperforms many productivity systems on the market.

Lists treat tasks as equals. The critical path treats them as a queue with one true bottleneck at the front.

Identify it. Work on it. Everything else, however satisfying, is decoration on a foundation that may not yet exist.

-Nicholas Bate

Knowledge is good.................

 

“Investing in yourself is the most important investment you’ll make in your life.” - Warren Buffett. Gaining more knowledge and skills is never a mistake.

-from this assortment of quotes from some smart people

the important provinces..............

 

Like so many people wedded to the nineteenth-century view of science, Dawkins overlooks the nineteenth-century reaction—which said, "Wait a minute: science is not the only way to pursue knowledge.  There is moral knowledge too, which is the province of practical reason; there is emotional knowledge, which is the province of art, literature and music.  And just possibly there is transcendental knowledge, which is the province of religion.  Why privilege science, just because it sets out to explain the world?  Why not give weight to the disciplines that interpret the world and so help us to be at home in it?"

-Roger Scruton, On Human Nature

a young Spinoza.....................

 

Like many thinkers before him, the young Spinoza came to realize that the alleged benefits of material and social success tend to be short-lived and unpredictable.  Moreover, they are invariably accompanied by a variety of evils, including anxiety, envy, and unfulfilled desire.  Seeking a more enduring source of satisfaction, he concluded that it was time "to embark on a new way of life."

Steven Nadler, Think Least Of Death: Spinoza On How To Live And How To Die

one basic principle.................

 

The University of Pennsylvania established the Grit Lab, a course based on Angela Duckworth's work, to help students learn the science behind passion and perseverance and to apply it to their own lives.  Duckworth tells students (and their parents) to consider the simple, single-celled paramecium.  The paramecium survives and thrives, using one basic principle:  If things are improving, continue in the same direction, and if not, change course.

     "Be like a paramecium," she says.  "Move in the direction of warmth and nutrients."

-Bill Gurley, Runnin' Down a Dream:  How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love

 

Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It’s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights – the “right” to education, the “right” to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery – hay and a barn for human cattle. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

-P. J. O'Rourke, as copied from here

Great moments...........................

 

.............................................in lip-syncing.

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

 

The Outsiders........................Time Won't Let Me

Not sure whether to laugh or cry.......

 

In the meantime, Warsh, as official chairman, could try to speed Powell’s departure by making his life at the Fed uncomfortable: maybe take away his parking space and staff plus put his office in the basement.  But the decision to leave would still be Powell’s until January 2028.   

Based on Powell’s statements about trying to protect Fed “independence” from politics, preventing Trump from getting a board majority may be an ulterior motive for Powell to stay, which means the policy shifts supported by Warsh could be on the back burner for some time to come.

-Brian Wesbury, from here

 

Being busy is not being able to add anything else to your calendar.  Being fulfilled is not wanting to add anything else to your calendar.  Don’t confuse one for the other.

-Mark Manson, from here

Learned something new today............

 

Uruguay had been established with the help of Britain as a buffer state between Argentina and Brazil and formally declared independence in 1830.  The remainder of the nineteenth century was bloody as those of European descent first massacred the Indigenous peoples and then fell to a series of civil wars between the Blancos, the conservative champions of the rights of landowners, and the Colorados, the liberals based largely in Montevideo.  Although the Colorados won every election held between 1865 and 1958, it took a long time for that to equate to stability.  By 1900, Uruguay had suffered around fifty coups and uprisings.

-Jonathan Wilson, The Power and The Glory:  The History of the World Cup

soccer does matter.............

 

Successes allow leaders to strut and pontificate, to make grand speeches about the symbolic ramifications of victory.  Soccer has, at least if claims made in the moment of glory are to be believed, put Uruguay on the map, reintegrated postwar West Germany into the global community, and ended racism in France.  That's almost entirely nonsense, of course, but it doesn't mean that the assertions are not revealing.  And soccer does matter, does offer insights, often unconscious, into the desires and doubts of a culture, never more so than in the quadrennial snapshot offered by the World Cup.

-Jonathan Wilson, The Power and The Glory:  The History of the World Cup

Slopulism....................

 

In general, this tax idea fits into the increasing trend toward “slopulism” in Democratic policymaking — the idea that a modern government can be funded solely on the backs of the super-rich, while the merely-rich get big tax cuts.

-Noah Smith, as he looks at California's "one time" billionaire tax

Feels like he's nagging....................

 

People underestimate themselves and overestimate how long things take.

You can do far more than you think, far better, and far faster.

-Shane Parrish, from here

For kids of all ages................

The most damaging idea in modern parenting might be the phrase “screen time” itself.

Treating “screen time” as one thing is like treating “food time” as one thing. A grilled salmon and a Pop-Tart are both “food.” A kid using an adaptive math app for 20 minutes and a kid mainlining TikTok for 20 minutes are both on “screens.” In both cases, lumping them together makes it impossible to think clearly about what’s actually happening to your kid’s brain.

-From this episode of the Austin Scholar substack

Predictions are hard................

 

This data is fairly well known. The problem, though, is that trading activity generates revenue for the brokerage industry, so it has an interest in keeping investors engaged with the market. That’s why brokerage analysts are on TV every day, offering their forecasts for individual stocks, for the overall market and for the broader economy. To be sure, this makes for interesting television. The problem, though, is that it’s been shown to carry almost no value. According to research by Joachim Klement, the accuracy of Wall Street prognosticators is approximately zero.

-Adam Grossman, from here

Any Major Dude With Half A Heart.............

......................................offers us a Good Morning.

Getting a taste............................

 

.................................of Edward Hopper.

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the intellect for a pristine imaginative conception. The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form, and design. The term "life" as used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it implies all of existence, and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it. Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.

-Edward Hopper, from here (page 8)