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.

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

 

Tim Buckley....................Goodbye and Hello

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

 

Bystanders have no history of their own.  They are on the stage but are not part of the action.  They are not even audience.  The fortunes of the play and of every actor in it depend on the audience whereas the reaction of the bystander has not effect except on himself.  But standing in the wings—much like the fireman in the theater—the bystander sees things neither actor or audience notices.  Above all, he sees differently from the way actors or audience see.  Bystanders reflect—and reflection is a prism rather than a mirror; it refracts.

-Peter F. Drucker, from the Prologue to Adventures of a Bystander: Memoirs

Ah, history..................

 

     In America—a constitutional republic that build barriers, checks and balances, and the separation of powers within the construct of the national government and between and among the national and state and local governments—the Constitution was established for the explicit intent of defending against the failed experiences of past republics, such as Athens and Rome, as well as the tyranny of the monarchy, such as Britain, or the mob, such as the French Revolution.  Nonetheless, even the best minds, armed with the most noble and prudent of purposes, are unlikely to birth a republic forever safe from the relentless manipulation, deceit, and plotting of tyrannical minds and forces.  The threat from within is real and always present.  I wish it were not so, but experience and history point otherwise.

-Mark R. Levin, On Power

Hopefully...............

 

more fun here

Tiny Lessons......................

 

...............................from Farnum Street:

1. “If you have really high ambitions, you achieve great things even if you fail. If you have low ambitions, you achieve nothing even if you succeed.”
2. “You don’t have to be disliked even though people disagree with you.”
3. The people who feel weird, different, and misunderstood are the ones who change the world.
4. Asking for advice makes people think you’re smart because you are clever enough to recognize how clever they are.
5. The faster you reply, the less you need to say. If you reply in a minute, you can say two words. If you wait a day, it’s a paragraph.

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

 

I taught religion once, many years ago, and I greatly enjoyed it.  But I never had much use for theology.  There are, I am told, some thirty-five thousand different species of flies.  But if the theologians had their way, there would only be one, the right Fly.  The Creator glories in diversity.  And no species is more diverse than those two-legged creatures, Men and Women.  Even as a small child I marvelled at their diversity.  And I have never met a single uninteresting person.  No matter how conformist, how conventional, or how dull, people become fascinating the moment they talk of the things they do, know, or are interested in.  Everyone then becomes an individual.  The most conventional person I can recall, a banker in a small New England town, who seemed to know nothing but the most hackneyed clichés, became fascinating when he suddenly started talking about buttons throughout the ages—their invention, their shapes, their materials, their functions and uses—with a fire and passion worthy of a great lyrical poet.  The subject did not interest me much; the man did.  He has become an individual.

-Peter F. Drucker, from the Preface to the New Edition, Adventures of a Bystander: Memoirs

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

 

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

-Nicolaus Copernicus 

thanks Rob

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

 

The Pat Metheny Group............Imaginary Day

Ideology...................

 

A group of political activists were attempting to show the Master how their ideology would change the world.

The Master listened carefully.

The following day he said, "An ideology is as good or bad as the people who make use of it.  If a million wolves were to organize for justice, would they cease to be a million wolves?"

-Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom

Checking in with........................

 

................................Matthew McConaughey:

If you cannot stop the lies, become less gullible.

With or without us the future is happening.  Tune in.

May our heart carry our feet.  Amen

Never give up your right to do the next right thing.  This is how we find our way home.

Life's a miraculous journey of false summits until the end.  Surrender to this fact.  And climb until then.

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

 

The Beatles................You Won't See Me

In praise of..................

..........................................constraints: 

Now, people will say, “But constraints are limiting.” Yes. That’s the point. A seatbelt “limits” your relationship with the windshield.

Interesting question...................

 

some thoughts on the question here.

It's whatever works for you...........

 

But recognize that the best writing involves re-writing. The first draft is usually bad and it gets you into the process of polishing, cutting, and supplementing draft after draft and that’s crucial to creating something readable.

Only when you commit to that, and do it time after time, can you become a writer.

Writing is more of a craft than a profession. You learn by doing.

-Michael Wade, from this substack

pairs...................

 

But it was more than the historically complex issue of the haves and have-nots.  It was a fundamental question of ignorance and intolerance.  Hemingway had always considered ignorance and intolerance to be like commas, because you often found them in pairs, and almost never did you find one, ignorance, without its evil twin, intolerance.

-David Baldacci, The Camel Club

Speed and patience..................

 

Speed creates opportunity. Patience compounds it.

Moving fast will generate more chances. But if you quickly jump from thing to thing, growth will stall.

Get moving and find what works, then do it for decades.

-James Clear

On avoiding anxiety-merchants................

 

I’m not going to link to any of these contagious anxiety-spreading pieces, for the same reason I don’t go around actively sneezing in people’s faces when I catch a cold. But it’s fair to say I find the topic a little triggering. Because this basic stance toward life – the anxious attempt to scramble to a place of psychological safety, to avoid being condemned to disaster and cast into the void – goes back a long way with me. So it all feels rather personal, and important for me to say that you don’t, actually, have to live like this. It won’t make you happier. It probably won’t even aid your career. You have the option of living with vastly more creativity and calm than the anxiety-merchants would have you believe – provided you can summon the strength of mind to screen them out.

-Oliver Burkeman, from this edition

Emergence....................

 

The pattern is remarkably consistent. We either wildly overestimate the short-term impact of new technologies (remember when blockchain was going to replace every institution within five years?) or we catastrophically underestimate their long-term consequences. Nobody building the early internet imagined it would reshape elections, create trillion-dollar companies, or leave millions of people psychologically dependent on dopamine hits from their phones.

It isn’t just that we fail to predict which technologies will emerge; we fail spectacularly at predicting the second- and third-order effects of the technologies we already have. Social media was supposed to connect the world. It did. It also polarised it. The smartphone was a communication device. It became an anxiety machine for an entire generation of teenagers. Nobody planned these outcomes. They emerged.

-Nicholas Bate, from here

Or cutting-and-pasting............

 

Many people have asked me why the hell I spend so much time writing for free on the internet and that’s the honest reason. It helps me remember. I hope a lot of people read my work, but if they don’t, that’s ok.

-Matt Lakeman, Thoughts on Meaning and Writing

via

a series of stratagems.............

 

I understand there’s a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons and watch old movies. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid and outwit that guy.

-attributed to Anthony Bourdain

People don't talk this way...............

 

...............(or think this way) anymore:

Among the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my Country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years--a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions all I dare aver is that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected. All I dare hope is that if, in executing this task, I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives which mislead me, and its consequences be judged by my country with some share of the partiality in which they originated.

-George Washington, from his first inaugural speech

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

 

The Rolling Stones.....the Black and Blue album

now and then...................

 

A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.

-attributed to Roald Dahl

essential...................

 

     Play, which I would define as anything we do simply for the joy of doing rather than as a means to an end—whether it's flying a kite or listening to music or throwing a baseball—might seem like a nonessential activity.  Often it is treated that way.  But in fact play is essential in many ways.  Stuart Brown, the founder of the National Institute for Play, has studied what are called the play histories of some six thousand individuals and has concluded that play has the power to significantly improve everything from personal health to relationships to education to organizations' ability to innovate.  "Play," he says, "leads to brain plasticity, adaptability, and creativity."  As he succinctly puts it, "Nothing fires up the brain like play."

-Greg McKeown, essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

pick a story..................

 

     According to Illich, society fosters a consumerist mindset and diminishes the self in the process. The beauty of individualism is lost, like a field of spring flowers wilted to a dull grey.  It becomes harder to find satisfaction and happiness in life,

     That's why we should read books that preserve our sense of self.  Not just buy books, but to read them and understand the world.  Instead of blindly following what the media tells us, we should find our own happiness.  When we're feeling lonely, we shouldn't head to a shop but visit a friend.  When we crave stability, instead of dreaming of a perfect home, we should find perfection in a simple life within our means.

     Be aware of our own anxieties, know how to prioritize ourselves, understand and manage our inner desires, and books will help us find our way forward,

     The media is full of sensationalized stories and temptations.  To fight against its influence, we need to build a 'story vending machine' for ourselves. Each time we need something to lift our spirits, we can pick a story and let it play in our hearts.

-Hwang Bo-Reum,  Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books

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

The Rolling Stones..........the Aftermath album

the soulful gamble known as trust......

 

     Raising our children under the telescope of our permanent gaze is costly.  If you are trusting, you win some encounters and lose others, but in the long-term, you gain much more than you would from distrusting, which results in lost opportunities, says Hardin.  A panoptic culture teaches our children that we cannot take a chance on others.  Unintentionally, such a culture also teaches children that they are to be distrusted, and that we cannot take a chance on them.  Cameras, breathalyzers, software monitoring, GPS tracking, and other far-reaching paraphernalia of the eye take away our children's brief chance in life to gradually, with inevitable stumbling, to learn to take responsibility for their actions.  Surveillance erodes their freedom to fall.  "What I always say to parents is if you are giving your kids appropriate freedom, it will feel like neglect in our culture," says psychologist Wendy Mogel, author of The Blessings of a Skinned Knee.  We're setting up safe zones that are cages.  And we're substituting instamatic fragments for the homegrown mutual knowledge that slowly builds into the soulful gamble known as trust.  We've mistaken the monologue of surveillance for the dialogue that is care.

-Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age

flourishing.........

 

We have sold ourselves into a fast-food model of education, and it's impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies. . . . human talent is tremendously diverse.  People have very different aptitudes. . . . Human flourishing is not a mechanical process.  It's an organic process. . . . You cannot predict the outcome of human development.  All you can do is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish,

-Sir Ken Robinson, the link goes to a 2010 TED talk that is well worth watching.