Sunday, February 16, 2025
Happy Anniversary Sweetie...........................
Saturday, February 15, 2025
a story to tell..................
To wit, people must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obliged by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.
-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
otherwise free.....................
Still one thing more, fellow citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government; and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
-Thomas Jefferson, from his first Inaugural Address
Living better than the Royalty of old..........
The great European cathedrals were built over generations by thousands of people and sustained entire communities. Similarly, the electric grid, the public-water supply, the food-distribution network, and the public-health system took the collective labor of thousands of people over many decades. They are the cathedrals of our secular era. They are high among the great accomplishments of our civilization. But they don’t inspire bestselling novels or blockbuster films. No poets celebrate the sewage treatment plants that prevent them from dying of dysentery. Like almost everyone else, they rarely note the existence of the systems around them, let alone understand how they work.
-from this Charles C. Mann essay
Friday, February 14, 2025
Thursday, February 13, 2025
On social bonds.................
Freedom and liberty always refer to interhuman relations. A man is free as far as he can live and get on without being at the mercy of arbitrary decisions on the part of other people. In the frame of society everybody depends upon his fellow citizens. Social man cannot become independent without forsaking all the advantages of social cooperation. The self-sufficient individual is independent, but he is not free. He is at the mercy of everybody who is stronger than himself. The stronger fellow has the power to kill him with impunity. It is therefore nonsense to rant about an alleged "natural" and "inborn" freedom which people are supposed to have enjoyed in the ages preceding the emergence of social bonds. Man was not created free; what freedom he may possess has been given to him by society. Only societal conditions can present a man with an orbit within the limits of which he can attain liberty.
Liberty and freedom are the conditions of man within a contractual society.
-Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
randomness...............
You'll be living a lesson that everyone should learn. Random stuff happens. All you can control is your response. Every day, you'll practice how to react to chaos: with dignity, poise, and grace.
-Derek Sivers: How To Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion
controlling.................
Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
You don't need to be a weatherman......
Is there “right-wing
misinformation”? Hell yes. It exists in every direction. But I grew up a
Democrat and don’t remember being afraid of it. At the time, we didn’t need
censorship because we figured we had the better argument.
Obviously, some of you lack
that same confidence. You took billions from taxpayers and blew it on programs
whose entire purpose was to tell them they’re wrong about things they can see
with their own eyes.
-Matt Taibbi, from here
and no solution in sight.............
Politics is about power, and at the heart of the Abrahamic vision is a critique of power. Power is a fundamental assault on human dignity. When I exercise power over you, I deny your freedom, and that is dangerous for both of us. The opening chapters of Genesis are about the abuse of power. Cain murders his brother Abel, and two chapters later we read, "The Earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence" (Genesis 6:11).
Abrahamic monotheism is based on the idea that the free God desires the free worship of free human beings. The historical drama of the Bible turns on the question of how to translate individual freedom into collective freedom. How do you construct a free society without the constant risk of the strong dominating and exploiting the weak? That is the issue articulated by the prophets, and it was never completely solved.
-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning
February 12, 1809.....................
..............Abraham Lincoln's birthday.
The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor — property is desirable — is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
Self-help............................
"Whenever you think that some situation or some person is ruining your life, it is actually you who are ruining your life. It is such a simple idea. Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life. If you just take the attitude that however bad it is in any way, it's always your fault and you just fix it the best you can - the so-called "iron prescription" - I think that really works.
-Charlie Munger, as channeled by Peter Bevelin
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Opening paragraphs.................
I remember very well the time I was captured by the dream of unified learning. It was in the early fall of 1947, when at eighteen I came up from Mobile to Tuscaloosa to enter my sophomore year at the University of Alabama. A beginning biologist, fired by adolescent enthusiasm but short on theory and vision, I had schooled myself in natural history with field guides carried in a satchel during solitary excursions into the woodland and along the freshwater streams of my native state. I saw science, by which I meant (and in my heart I still mean) the study of ants, frogs, and snakes, as a wonderful way to stay outdoors.
-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
perspectives........................
The chief enemy of good decisions is a lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem.
artificial demands....................
The artificial demands of outlines, graphic organizers, and panning often subvert the creative process and force would-be writers to think about what they are writing before a word even hits the page rather than allowing them to spill their guts and evaluate the material later.
-Matthew Dicks, Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
fancier yarns...........................
A lot of fancier yarns come from people trying to tell the truth. It’s not easy once you’re out of the habit.
-Dashiell Hammett, channeling his inner Nick Charles
belief.............................
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue.
making lemonade...............
In 1819 Van Buren had read a series of pseudonymous articles from a western New York newspaper criticizing him. He wasn't bothered by the attacks. In fact, he was impressed by the author's writing skills, presentation of argument, and grasp of law and politics. Van Buren inquired whose pen was behind the series and was told it was a young Federalist attorney from Oneida County named Samuel A. Talcott, a Connecticut native and a graduate of Williams College. When Van Buren spotted him one day on a steamboat, he introduced himself, and they soon became friends. Van Buren told Talcott, who had just turned thirty, that he was "misplaced in the political field" and that "his chances for fame and public usefulness would be increased by joining us." Talcott accepted. The Skinner council made him the new attorney general.
-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician
Monday, February 10, 2025
maxims.........................
Unlike Clinton, who wasted precious capital after his 1817 landslide, Van Buren moved at once to consolidate his power. "It was one of Mr. Van Buren's maxims," Hammond wrote, "that that which ought to be done, should be done quickly."
-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician
gather strength...........................
I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
-Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776
being finite.....................
Consequences aren't optional. It's in the nature of being finite that every choice comes with some sort of consequences, because at any instant, you can only pick one path, and must deal with the repercussions of not picking any of the others.
-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
escape...................
But we demand a belief when we want to escape from a fact into an unreality.
-J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
Connections...................
To love something, first you have to connect with it.
Give it your full attention.
Deliberately appreciate it.
Try this with places, art, and sounds.
Try this with activities and ideas.
Try this with yourself.
Give it your full attention.
Deliberately appreciate it.
Try this with places, art, and sounds.
Try this with activities and ideas.
Try this with yourself.
unswervingly.........................
18. He who ignores what his neighbor is saying or doing or thinking, and cares only that his own actions should be just and godly, is greatly the gainer in time and ease. A good man does not spy around for the black spots in others, but presses unswervingly on towards his mark.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Four
Ah, planners.............................
.............Arnold Kling is feeling imposed upon:
What appalls me is the
arrogance of the project to alter other people’s lifestyle. When people moved
here, they showed a preference for living as we do. The plan replaces the
preferences of the residents with the preferences of the planners.
If a developer came along
and built a community where cars were disfavored, that he said would “repair
past injustices that disproportionately affected people of color” and “reduce
climate-related risks,” then people could decide whether or not to reside in
that community. I have no problem with that. But to take a community that
people chose to live in and completely remake it to suit the planners’ idea of
utopia to me seems un-American.
hard truths .................................
....................................from Farnum Street:
The hardest truth about happiness is that it's a choice.
Watch how people discuss their problems. They'll spend hours
explaining why things are terrible, how unfair life is, and how others need to
change. But suggest they might have the power to improve things and they
suddenly have countless reasons why that's impossible.
Self-pity feels safer than responsibility.
Financial advice................
This was some good father-son financial advice on Landman:
You got two choices in life: Get really good at balancing a check book or make enough money that you don’t have to.
Most personal finance experts focus on the former while most people would be better off striving for the latter.
-Ben Carlson, from this list
My business partner and I decided a long time ago that one of our goals in business was to be able to out-earn our mistakes. While it may not be a goal everyone would embrace, it's worked for us—so far.
Sunday, February 9, 2025
Fifty years ago..............................
serve.........................
The world has need of a philosophy, or a religion, which will promote life. But in order to promote life it is necessary to value something other than mere life. Life devoted only to life is animal, without any real human value, incapable of preserving men permanently from weariness and the feeling that all is vanity. If life is to be fully human it must serve some end which seems, in some sense, outside human life, some end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or truth or beauty.
-Bertrand Russell, Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1916
He is writing about baseball...........
........but it is a more apt description of football:
Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind’s noblest aim is the loving contemplation of worthy things, such as beauty and courage. By witnessing physical grace, the soul comes to understand and love beauty. Seeing people compete courageously and fairly helps emancipate the individual by educating his passions.
-George F. Will, Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball
Saturday, February 8, 2025
In the background......................
Romances for Alto Flute
Here be monsters..................
Musk had to be destroyed, or others might start to believe that they could also defy the groupthink. . . .
On a much higher level, Musk seems to have felt the same liberating aspects of being declared persona non grata. They turned Musk into the very monster they feared.
One upside...............................
.....................................of young children:
One of the best parts about having young children is so much of your time is devoted to their activities that you don’t have a lot of time to pay attention to the outside world. Some parents complain about being busy all the time but I find it to be a welcomed break from paying attention to all of the craziness this world has to offer.
Friday, February 7, 2025
On free speech......................
Whether Trump’s policies turn out to be right or wrong evidently matters. But the resumption of the great American debate, of speech that is unencumbered and unafraid, of a Jeffersonian open society, matters much more, since it will enable progress.
-Martin Gurri, from here
Thursday, February 6, 2025
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
landmines.......................
Investing would be a lot easier if there were no uncertainty. If someone could just kindly tell you where all of the landmines are buried ahead of time, you could side them completely and go on with your life.
Life doesn’t work like that, unfortunately. Uncertainty is always at all-time highs because no one knows what’s coming next. The hard part is there is this human need for control in life, even if that control is an illusion.
You have no control over what happens with taxes, trade, tariffs, the Fed, interest rates, economic growth, inflation, earnings or stock market returns. None. So it’s really your reaction to the uncontrollable events that determines your success or failure as an investor.
-Ben Carlson, from here
man, this sounds familiar...............
Williams also got the politicians. The Junto consistently elected Federalists to local seats—often by playing dirty. One corrupt practice of the era was called "making votes." Since many people couldn't meet the state's stringent property requirements, Federalist attorneys created fake deeds that voters presented to poll inspectors. "In this cursed crooked world," Williams wrote Ebenezer Foote, "if our institutions are worth preserving, we must preserve them by use of such means as alone can sustain them."
-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician
unflagging diligence...............
Making votes was one example of how corruption evolved—one could even say became democratized—in post-Revolutionary New York. Given that land was no longer the sole path to wealth, politics became another pipeline. Elites funded newspapers that promoted their interests. They bribed legislators in exchange for votes on banks, turnpikes, and chartered corporations. Van Buren saw this "implied alliance" between monied interests and the state as a means of restoring colonial-era oligarchy under a different guise. Columbia's "money power" was, he believed, the essence of Federalism, whose raison d'etre was to "combat the democratic spirit of the country . . . an object which it has pursued with unflagging diligence."
-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician
still.............................
This idea was at the core of Van Buren's worldview. It would never change. Collusion between government and private interests, he believed, would always enrich the few at the expense of the many.
-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician
separation..........................
. . . Separation between God or reality and yourself is brought about by you, by the mind that clings to the known, to certainty, to security. This separation cannot be bridged over, there is no ritual, no discipline, no sacrifice that can carry you across it; there is no savior, no Master, no guru who can lead you to the real or destroy the separation. The division is not between the real and yourself; it is in yourself.
-J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
delight.........................
26. A man's true delight is to do the things he was made for. He was made to show goodwill to his kind, to rise about the promptings of his senses, to distinguish appearances from realities, and to pursue the study of universal Nature and her works.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: Book Eight
Monday, February 3, 2025
Tariffs.............................
I'm probably wrong about all this, but methinks he mis-reads Trump.
Tariff wars are the measles of international economics—juvenile, contagious and inherently self-defeating.
-Roger Lowenstein, from here
-Roger Lowenstein, from here
A quick review of history shows Lowenstein is likely correct about tariff wars being bad from an economic perspective. But....it looks to me that Trump is using his willingness to unilaterally impose tariffs - on our allies as well as our foes - to get his way in international politics. Economics has nothing to do with it. But, I'm probably wrong.
On friendship...............
Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.
Understanding the concept..............
..........................................of enough.
The perfect level of wealth is the one you’re content with.
just do it..............................
Almost nobody wants to hear the real answer to the question of how to spend more of your finite time doing things that matter to you, which involves no system. The answer is: you just do them. You pick something you genuinely care about, and then, for at least a few minutes—a quarter of an hour, say—you do some of it. Today. It really is that simple. Unfortunately, for many of us, it also turns out to be one of the hardest things in the world.
-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
Die empty................................
The most valuable real estate in the world is the graveyard. There lie millions of half-written books, ideas never launched, and talents never developed. Most people die with everything still in them.
The way to live is to create. Die empty. Get every idea out of your head and into reality.
-Derek Sivers, How To Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion
Sunday, February 2, 2025
nourish............................
He admonished "young men of genius and ambition" seeking fame, money, and power—men much like himself—to nourish the mind first. Van Buren's successes "would have been much greater and more substantial if . . . I had first acquired a sound education and stored my mind with useful knowledge" as opposed to the lawyer's arsenal of facts, rulings, and precedents.
-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician
purpose........................
One day,
your story will end
and all the choices you made will be frozen
like an insect in the amber of history.
your story will end
and all the choices you made will be frozen
like an insect in the amber of history.
Friend, this isn't meant to be grim.
Just a reminder that you are building something that
will one day be
whole and complete,
So, build with purpose.
Jarod K. Anderson, "End Point"
I've always believed in it.........
The
“great man” theory of history lost favor a century ago, and for decades
university faculty have found it quaint, vulgar, or problematic. Like other
ideas that right-thinking people long ago discarded, its disreputable status
hasn’t stopped many from believing in it anyway.
Saturday, February 1, 2025
Ah, history..............................
The notion of a legitimate, loyal opposition had yet to take root. Schooled in the Revolution, each camp had a warrior's mentality. They argued that their rival's success jeopardized the nation's existence. They deemed the opposition not only wrongheaded but sinister, corrupt, even treasonous. Republicans accused Federalists of advocating a British-like monarchy. Federalists countered that Republicans sympathized with the French Revolution's violent radicalism. As strong as these passions were, even the most doctrinaire partisans thought the newfound party mania was temporary. They believed that the new constitutional order of separation of powers would stabilize government and cool men's fervency.
-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician
Victor Davis Hanson................
.....................always worthy of a look:
Last, Europe is mentally worn out by the war, and increasingly reneging on its once-boastful unqualified support for Ukraine, as it hopes the demonic Trump can both end the hated war and be hated for ending it. . . .
Trump’s success in resetting the United States will hinge not merely on outwitting the desperation of his enemies, but also on navigating the paradoxes of implementing his own maga agenda.
a potion.......................
I will reveal to you a love potion, without medicine, without herbs, without any witch's magic; if you want to be loved, then love.
-attributed to Hecato of Rhodes
Friday, January 31, 2025
self-education......................
Knowing is not enough; we must apply what we have learned. Willing is not enough: we must do.
-attributed to Bruce Lee
Bubble watch...........................
Two years ago everyone was convinced we were going into a recession. It was the most over-forecasted recession of all-time that never happened.
Radical.....................
....................The Office of Crisis Identification.
7. Finally, recognize that the job of an OCI is counter intuitive. It is to follow the method of hockey star Wayne Gretsky and skate to where the puck will be, not where it is. Traditionally, there is little, or no recognition given for preventing crises, and yet those bold actions are deserving of honor.
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Got that right...............
Unlike his contemporaries, he did not consider the human animal the pinnacle of nature’s imagination. “Never say higher or lower,” he scribbled in the margin of a book, arguing with the author. “Say more complicated.”
DeepSeek anyone................?
At the risk of repeating myself ad nauseam, this is as good a time as any to remind ourselves how little we know about the present and how completely unexpected events can be in the future.
-Barry Ritholtz, from here
Certain......................
I will never be certain about the future. I’ve read too much about the past to be confident about the future. History is full of unpredictable events so the only thing I am confident about is that the future will be full of them too.
For us aficionados of Southern Rock.........
............................Any Major Dude With Half A Heart posts his Volume 2 mix tape. As a public service, Volume 1 is here.
Happy Birthday Sweetie...........................
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
rearranged their brains...............
I've come to know a lot of extremely successful people in my life, and while their temperaments run the gamut—lovable, aloof, enigmatic, even eccentric—they all have one thing in common. They think differently than most people. All of them, to a person, have rearranged their brains to prevail at achieving big goals in turbulent environments where conventional thinking often fails.
-Brad Jacobs, How to Make a Few Billion Dollars
Checking in with................................
................................................Julian
Who knows but they serve as
a useful reminded about (a) the mystery of life and (b) the limited time we’ve
left — and my life appears to be racing faster and faster right now and I decry
the fact that so much of it has been riven with the dread and despair about
doing meaningless, repetitive work.
manage.......................
That orientation is a spirit; a process or pattern that inhabits us, piques our interest, directs our intention, and motivates our action. What do we want to happen there, in our gardens, if and when we get it right? We may be incapable of tending the whole world, but we can manage our own small private natural spaces, and that is far from nothing.
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God
born to thrive.....................
Our muscles are prompted to grow by failure,
healing from countless micro-injuries.
healing from countless micro-injuries.
Our minds, science, and technology
are similarly nourished by defeat.
are similarly nourished by defeat.
We are creatures born to thrive
on the borderlands of ruin.
on the borderlands of ruin.
Home is a valley between saw-toothed peaks of loss.
Here we sow failure and harvest miracles
Here we sow failure and harvest miracles
Jarod K. Anderson, "Losing"
Monday, January 27, 2025
senses......................
And contemplation, I come to see, does not in any case mean closing your eyes so much as opening them, to the glory of everything around you. Coming to your senses, by getting out of your head.
-Pico Iyer, Aflame: Learning from Silence
delivery..................................
Someone must have brought her makeup supplies, or she had ordered them in. Maybe Uber delivered cosmetics now the way it delivered everything else except good government.
-Mike Lupica, Hot Property
readily.......................
Lead me, Zeus, and you too, Destiny,
To whatever your decrees have assigned me.
I follow readily, but it I chose not,
Wretched though I am, I must follow still.
Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling.
On various acting individuals.........
Philosophers had long since been eager to ascertain the ends which God or Nature was trying to realize in the course of human history. They searched for the law of mankind's destiny and evolution. But even those thinkers whose inquiry was free from any theological tendency failed utterly in these endeavors because they were committed to a faulty method. They dealt with humanity as a whole or with other holistic concepts like nation, race, or church. They set up quite arbitrarily the ends to which the behavior of such wholes is bound to lead. But they could not satisfactorily answer the question regarding what factors compelled the various acting individuals to behave in such a way that the goal aimed at by the whole's inexorable evolution was obtained.
-Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
to heal........................
In order to heal the stark divisions in our country, we need to approach one another with compassion and understanding. It’s baffling to see how many members of both parties have never taken the time to understand the other point of view and learned to say, “I disagree, but I understand.” This is vital for the future of constructive discourse in our nation.
Christine Schueckler, from here
Sunday, January 26, 2025
on winging it...................
You might believe you need more experience or qualifications in order to feel confident among your peers, but the truth is that even the most experienced and qualified people feel as though they're winging it much of the time—and that if you're ever going to make you unique contribution to the world, you'll probably have to do it in a state of feeling unprepared.
-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals
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