Saturday, March 15, 2025
Friday, March 14, 2025
gain...............................
Has a man gained anything who has received a hundred favors and rendered none?
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay Compensation
spelling.....................
It is a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
-attributed to Andrew Jackson, Mark Twain, and others
grounds.............................
The civil service can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law. For the good of the service itself, for the protection of those who are intrusted with the appointing power against the waste of time and obstruction to the public business caused by the inordinate pressure for place, and for the protection of incumbents against intrigue and wrong, I shall at the proper time ask Congress to fix the tenure of the minor offices of the several Executive Departments and prescribe the grounds upon which removals shall be made during the terms for which incumbents have been appointed.
-James A. Garfield, as excerpted from his March 4, 1881 Inaugural Address
Thank you........................
Let's pause here to remember that you don't actually have to do any of this. Use your time in a worthwhile manner, I mean. Find ways to get around to what matters most. None of it is compulsory. You have my permission not to bother.
-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
pay it forward.................
Figure out what you're good at, and start helping other people with it. Give it away. Pay it forward. Karma works because people are consistent. On a long enough timescale, you will attract what you project. But don't measure—your patience will run out if you count.
-Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Maybe........................
All movements tend to extremes, which is approximately where we are today.
-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)
Thursday, March 13, 2025
Michael Wade..........................
............................opts for controversy:
The draft was not simply a way to augment the military. It was also one of the most important tools for strengthening the unity and fiber of the nation.
Us older guys probably should not get a vote here, but a pro-and-con debate over a few beers seems appropriate.
I really like Brooks's stuff...................
..........the fact that he is willing to read and think about Hegel makes him all the more impressive.
real freedom.............................
There are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty little unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom.
weight loss.............................
.................................and mind games:
What you’ll often notice is that the cravings aren’t coming from a growling stomach. They’re coming from your head. Your tummy isn’t saying “hungry”, it’s your brain saying “tasty.” Your body is like a buddy-cop movie where your stomach’s the by-the-book detective, and your brain is the loose cannon.
Want a stark illustration? Try “the broccoli test.” Next time you swear you’re hungry ask yourself, “Would I eat plain broccoli right now?” If you were truly starving, of course you would. But if you turn up your nose at this question, you don’t want sustenance — you want tasty.
Feels about right.........................
Whether Trump is an authentic carrier of radical change is absolutely the central question to any analysis of his administration. But how do we judge? Taibbi isn’t exactly wrong. The financial fortunes of the 70 million who voted for the president belong in that discussion—but in a minor way. Why so? Because a true revolution is an almost spiritual event. Ordinary persons in large numbers will seize on some ideal devoid of immediate economic benefit—liberty, equality, salvation—and mobilize under that flag.
-Martin Gurri, from here
beauty..........................
But in all its varieties beauty has a remarkable quality, which is that it offers consolation without consumption: your enjoyment does not destroy the beautiful object but simply amplifies its power.
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
the gift.......................
Seventy days on the river with a confusion between river turbulence and human tribulation. We are here to be curious not consoled. The gift of the gods is consciousness not my forlorn bleating prayers for equilibrium . . .
-Jim Harrison, In Search of Small Gods
drive...........................
Concern should drive us into action and not into depression. No man is free who cannot control himself.
this mode of love....................
When I was brought down from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy between two policemen, Robbie waited in the long dreary corridor, that before the whole crowd, whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might gravely raise his hat to me, as handcuffed and with a bowed head I passed him by. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek.
-Welty/Sharp, The Norton Book of Friendship, Oscar Wilde from De Profundis
just stay with it....................
To fill time in his stand-up routine, in 1963, comedian Steve Martin decided to try to learn an instrument.
For no particular reason, Martin chose the banjo. He bought a book called How to Play the 5-string Banjo, by Pete Seeger. The first lesson was how to strum a C chord. When Martin strummed a C chord, "I couldn't tell the difference," he admitted. To him, when he strummed a C chord, it sounded just like when he strummed without touching any strings.
"But I just stayed with it," he said. "And I kept telling myself, 'Well, if I just stay with it, one day, I will have played for forty years.' Anybody who sticks with the banjo for forty years will be able to play it."
Martin stayed with it, and in 2001, he won a Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Music Performance. It took thirty-eight years, one day at a time, staying with it.
When it gets tough, remind yourself that eventually the minutes and hours will add up.
Stick with it. Be patient.
-Paul Rabil, The Way of the Champion
first.......................
The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest. The first to move forward is the happiest. Be Brave. Be strong. Be happy. Be free.
-Marc & Angel Chernoff, 1000+ Little Things
without a compass......................
Never to examine, never to question: thus youth was taught at Cambridge. Many in the universities, wrote Bacon, "learn nothing there but to believe." From the sea of knowledge rose the classic Pillars of Hercules, boundary beyond which man durst not venture. To those with ambition to pass the Pillars—in Bacon's phrase to sail plus ultra—the University offered no compass.
-Catherine Drinker Bowen, Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
buying in.........................
Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules, and rewards.
Monday, March 10, 2025
Oracle.....................
In the center of the forest,
there is an unlikely stone that remembers when the mountains were new.
there is an unlikely stone that remembers when the mountains were new.
It waits in a circle of moss like the pupil of a green eye.
You kneel and ask it a wordless question.
It answers.
"Cherish exactly who you are. For there can never be another."
-Jarod K. Anderson, from Love Notes from the Hollow Tree
Life its ownself..........................
It’s a constant reminder that character isn’t tested only by poverty and hardship, but equally—and perhaps even more dangerously—by success.
-Rob Henderson, from here
On the importance of positioning.............
While most people understand that reputation matters, few recognize how it functions as a strategic asset that either unlocks opportunities or leaves you perpetually trapped. The mechanics of this process mirror an unlikely source of wisdom: the game of billiards.
A master billiards player approaches the table with dual vision. While amateurs focus solely on pocketing the immediate shot, professionals focus on how the current shot positions them for the next one. This deceptively simple insight—that present moves determine future options—perfectly captures how reputations function in our interconnected world.
-Farnam Street, from this week's episode
very few things.............................
What counts for most people in investing is not how much they know, but rather how realistically the define what they don't know. An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes.
If you have to start a week...............
Sunday, March 9, 2025
One can only hope....................
Yet even as the national party drifts off the reservation, there are hopeful signs of growing anti-woke pushback in the Democrats’ modern heartlands – namely, in America’s big cities.
-Joel Kotkin, from here
Democrats focusing on effective big city governance would be a major upgrade. Just saying.
a sensitivity........................
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
-Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, as cut-and-pasted from here
Let it go.....................
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
a sacred instrument...................
For myself, therefore, I desire to declare that the principle that will govern me in the high duty to which my country calls me is a strict adherence to the letter and spirit of the Constitution as it was designed by those who framed it. Looking back to it as a sacred instrument carefully and not easily framed; remembering that it was throughout a work of concession and compromise; viewing it as limited to national objects; regarding it as leaving to the people and the States all power not explicitly parted with, I shall endeavor to preserve, protect, and defend it by anxiously referring to its provision for direction in every action. To matters of domestic concernment which it has intrusted to the Federal Government and to such as relate to our intercourse with foreign nations I shall zealously devote myself; beyond those limits I shall never pass.
-Martin Van Buren, from his 1837 Inaugural Address
timing..............................
If you trap the moment before its ripe
The tears of repentance youll certainly wipe
But if once you let the ripe moment go
You can never wipe off the tears of woe
The tears of repentance youll certainly wipe
But if once you let the ripe moment go
You can never wipe off the tears of woe
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
