Saturday, March 8, 2025
When luxury is a problem.....................
Net Zero is dead. Keir Starmer must in whatever way he can to sway his backbenchers and the chattering class, put NZ into the side of the road. That might mean sacking energy secretary Ed Milliband. Deindustrialisation must stop. Windmills, solar energy and happy thoughts cannot build a submarine, artillery shell factory or a bunch of anti-missile batteries. And screwing the British economy to make a tiny dent in C02 emissions so we feel all virtuous is a luxury belief. Luxuries are out.
-from this Samizdata episode
smarts..................................
I make progress by having people around me who are smarter than I am and listening to them. And I assume that everyone is smarter about something than I am.
talking without speaking...........
One of the problems he had with living alone was all the talking to himself, talking without speaking and occasionally deluding himself into thinking that he was actually talking to someone else.
-Richard Price, Lazarus Man
Eternity......................
He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.
Friday, March 7, 2025
a bad habit..............
. . . their judgment was based more upon blind wishing that upon any sound prediction; for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire.
take the measure.........................
The fatal flaw in deism is thus not rational at all, but emotional. Pure reason is unappealing because it is bloodless. Ceremonies stripped of sacred mystery lose their emotional force, because celebrants need to defer to a higher power in order to consummate their instinct for tribal loyalty. In times of danger and tragedy especially, unreasoning ceremony is everything. There is no substitute for surrender to an infallible and benevolent being, the commitment called salvation. And no substitute for formal recognition of an immortal life force, the leap of faith called transcendence. It follows that most people would very much like science to prove the existence of God but not to take the measure of His capacity.
-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
avoid the anxious middle..............
Spend a handful of hours a day going fast. Crush a gym session. Do deep work on a project you care about. Spend the rest of the day going slow. Take walks. Read books. Get a long dinner with friends. Either way, avoid the anxious middle where you never truly relax or truly move forward.
-Charles Miller, as quoted here
forgetting..............................
"We all want to dissolve," the old Zen monk in red bobble cap and thin glasses tells me, with a wry chuckle, as he greets me in the chill mountains behind Los Angeles, three hundred miles south of Big Sur, where I've come at the end of December. "We all need the experience of forgetting who we are. I think that's what love is: forgetting who you are."
He flashes a crooked grin. "Forgetting who you are is such a delicious experience. And so frightening."
-Pico Iyer, Aflame
their eternal calm...................
To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself. The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Chapter III in his essay Nature
spare......................
There's an elephant in the room here that can't be tidied away, of course, which is that the consequences of any given choice might be vastly more sever for some people than for others. . . . But for most of us, if we're being honest with ourselves, the temptation is often to exaggerate the potential consequences, so as to spare ourselves of making a bold choice.
-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals
trade-offs.....................................
Whatever choice you make, so long as you make it in the spirit of facing the consequences, the result will be freedom in the only sense that finite humans ever get to enjoy it. Not freedom from limitation, which is something we unfortunately never get to experience, but freedom in limitation. Freedom to examine the trade-offs—because there will always be trade-offs—and then to opt for whichever trade-off you like.
-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals
Thursday, March 6, 2025
story telling.....................
Your job is not just to act, but to tell a fascinating story of how you did so, and inspire others to do it. Make great adventures, but tell greater stories.
-Derek Sivers, How To Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion
Thinking on paper........................
196. May a warning light start flashing whenever executives talk about how hard they work.
197. Pick a different country each year and focus on learning about its history, culture, and government.
198. New bias comes through more in what is not covered than in what is said.
199. A major advantage is the ability to attract followers in times of crisis. A major virtue is deserving those followers.
200. Have frequent reviews to make sure the "incrementals" are running in the right direction.
201. At certain points, it is not unusual to find that a good 60 to 80 percent of top management doesn't know what the hell is going on.
-Michael Wade, as snipped from here
a contest of opinion.......................
During the contest of opinion through which we have past, the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely, and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the constitution all will of course arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All too will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind, let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things.
-Thomas Jefferson, as excerpted from his March 4, 1801 Inaugural Address. We would do well to remember the nastiness of the 1800 presidential election. This was not a polite contest between friends.
Rob knows...........................
Here's a bottle and an honest friend!
What wad ye wish for maire, man?
Wha kens, before his life may end,
What his share may be of care, man.
What wad ye wish for maire, man?
Wha kens, before his life may end,
What his share may be of care, man.
Then catch the moments as they fly,
And use them as ye ought, man:-
Believe me, happiness is shy,
And comes not aye when sought, man.
-Robert Burns, A Bottle and An Honest Friend
insuring........................
Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.
thanks David
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
creative readjustments......................
You don't want to abandon the skills and experience you have gained, but to find a new way to apply them. Your eye is on the future, not the past. Often such creative readjustments lead to a superior path.
-Robert Greene, as quoted in The Way of the Champion
catalysts.........................
“I don’t know” is not an admission of ignorance. It’s an expression of intellectual humility.
“I was wrong” is not a confession of failure. It’s a display of intellectual integrity.
“I don’t understand” is not a sign of stupidity. It’s a catalyst for intellectual curiosity
-Adam Grant, as cut-and-pasted from here
Harder than it looks..............
The money I have accumulated I will give away, in due time, through sources that will do the least amount of harm and the greatest possible good; but my real wealth—that portion of it which I wish to donate for the good of mankind—consists of the principles of personal achievement which I am entrusting to you.
-Napoleon Hill, quoting Andrew Carnegie in How to Raise Your Own Salary
ideas.......................
To be successful, leaders must consciously work to stay in touch with the best ideas of the people they lead. . . . This is not just a process of installing a relief valve, and it's not just a way to harvest ideas. It's also a process of involving people in—and make them take responsibility for—the shaping of their ideas.
-Oren Harari, The Powell Principles: 24 Lessons from Colin Powell
Opening paragraphs (as a sentence).......
It was one of those nights for Anthony Carter, forty-two, two years unemployed, two years separated from his wife and stepdaughter, six months into cocaine sobriety and recently moved into his late parents' apartment on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, when to be alone with his thoughts, alone with his losses, was not survivable, so he did what he always did—hit the streets, meaning hit the bars on Lenox, one after the other, finding this one too ghetto, that one to Scandanavian-tourist, this one too loud, that one too quiet, on and on, taking a few sips of his drink in each one, dropping dollars and heading out for the next establishment like an 80-proof Goldilocks, thinking maybe this next place, this next conversation would be the trigger for some kind of epiphany that would show him a new way to be, but it was all part of a routine that never let him anywhere but back to the apartment, this he knew, this he had learned over and over, but maybe-this time is a drug, you-never-know is a drug, so out the door he went.
-Richard Price, Lazarus Man
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