character.........................

 

     Although he understood power and knew how to use it, unlike the case with almost every other political leader of his importance, there is no strong evidence that George Washington loved power, either for its own sake or for the prerequisites it brought him.  He was a thoughtful but not a speculative man, and neither is there any serious evidence that he had a strong vision for America, a vision of stately grandeur or of human happiness.  Why then did he accept the most arduous service his nation offered, not once but over and over again?

     Because, the only answer is, of a profound sense of duty that derived from his, Washington's, moral character.

-Joseph Epstein, Essays in Biography, George Washington: An Amateur's View

quality....................

The 4 qualities of a great career:

1.      I enjoy it

2.     I'm good at it

3.     I make good money

4.     I’m around fascinating people

-James Clear, from here

Four horsemen memes, why not.......?

 

                    more fun here

following memes, most likely........

 

                                            more fun here

limited.....................

 

What is not yet known
those limited by bad faith
can never learn.

-Heraclitus, Fragments

obstacle.....................

 

The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today.

-attributed to Seneca

outsourcing........................

 

     There is an endless torrent of media advice.  It is an overwhelming firehose of speculation and opinion.  Most of it can be safely ignored. . . .

     The bigger issue is not the bad advice, but rather, the outsourcing of your thinking to a third party.  You need to do your own thinking.

-Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest

On time and majorities..........

 

Everyone hopes for an immediate solution, but the only solution to social problems comes through time.  We in America always believe we have only to pass a law and everything will be changed. . . . People only obey a law the majority have already decided to obey, and it must be a very large majority.

-Louis L'Amour, Bendigo Shafter

stop right there.....................

 

My only line of thinking right now is the range of outcomes has increased substantially in the past month or so.

-Ben Carlson

Oh no.................................

 

                  Back story here.

About experts................

 

Experts have their role, but when it comes to foretelling the future,  they are as bad as everybody else.  This is true for movies, music, and technology, as well as stocks and the economy.

-Barry Ritholtz, How Not To Invest

practical..............

 

     One aspect of Franklin's genius was the variety of his interest, from science to government to diplomacy to journalism, all of them approached from a very practical rather than theoretical angle. . . .

     Herman Melville would one day write that Franklin was "everything but a poet."  His father, no romantic, in fact preferred it that way, and he put an end to Benjamin's versifying.  "My father discouraged me by ridiculing my performance and telling me verse-makers were generally beggars; so I escaped being a poet, most probably a bad one."

-Walter Isaacson,  Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

fortuitous circumstances...................

 

In the spring of 1946, when Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. resigned as head of the American delegation to the UN, Hermon Dunlap Smith, Stevenson's longtime friend, launched a campaign to secure the post for him.  Since Truman promptly appointed Warren Austin to the job, that effort came too late, but the manner in which it was begin is of some interest.  "The group I was able to approach," Smith wrote in a memoir of his late friend, "was augmented by the fortuitous circumstance of my going east to my twenty-fifth Harvard reunion, where, in t he locker room of the Essex Country Club, I solicited the support of three classmates who represented an incredible combined circulation and influence: Roy Larsen, executive of Time, Life, and Fortune; John Cowles, of the Cowles newspaper family; and Ralph Henderson of Reader's Digest."  This is not what the boys at ward headquarters would call grassroots support.

-Joseph Epstein, Essays in Biography, Adlai Stevenson

genius.......................

Napoleon’s definition of a military genius was quote, the man who can do the average thing when everyone else around him is losing his mind. I’m going to repeat that because it is such a ridiculously good quote. A military genius is the man who can do the average thing when everyone else around him is losing his mind.

It is the exact same in investing to be a good investor over time. You don’t need to make a lot of genius decisions. You just need to be merely average when everyone else is making bad decisions, as many people are.

-Morgan Housel, from this blog post

messy..........................

 

     What I love about Barry's work is that he views investing as a game of emotions and behavior, rather than one driven by intelligence and data.  That's important, because a) it's accurate and b) behavior is messy (if not sloppy), unpredictable, varies from person to person, and—unlike data—doesn't pretend to offer a simple answer.

-Morgan Housel, from his introduction to this book

richer......................

 

The one law that does not change is that everything changes, and the hardship I was bearing today was only a breath away from the pleasures I would have tomorrow, and those pleasures would be all the richer because of the memories of this I was enduring.

-Louis L'Amour, Galloway

No harm.........................

 

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.

-David McCullough

Washington.......................

 

     "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma," Churchill's fine formulation for the complexity of the old Soviet Union applies nicely to Washington, except you might take the entire package—riddle, mystery, enigma—and double wrap it inside a conundrum.  Less talented than other generals, less intelligent than other politicians, not at all well-educated to begin with, parochial in both his background and interests, a man with a strong sense of amour-propre but no complex vision, either political, religious, or economic, here was this man, George Washington, without whom, everyone who has thought at all about it agrees, the experiment in government known as the United States would, as like as not, almost certainly have failed.

-Joseph Epstein, from his Essays in Biography

Life...........................

 

...........................................its ownself.

On the willingness to listen..........

 

Oh no.............................

 

           via

artful..........................

 

Be artful with your knowledge.  We've all known people who knew many things but who never did anything very innovative with their learning.  Heraclitus realized that the key to being more creative is being able to work and play with our knowledge.  Using our knowledge is a lot like cooking.  Getting a satisfying result depends on what things we add together and how we mix them.

-Roger Von Oech, Expect the Unexpected (Or You Won't Find It): A Creativity Tool Based on the Ancient Wisdom of Heraclitus

parenting...........................

 

     My dad and I fished together when I was young, and those are among my most treasured memories of him.  He taught me first to fish with a worm on a bobber, and then to cast a spinning rod.  He was not a fly fisherman, but I wanted to be.  Around the age of twenty-five, I bought myself a rod and reel and began to try to teach myself—a pattern by which, unfortunately, I have learned most of what I've learned in life.  We often speak of a man who's done this successfully as a "self-made man."  The appellation is usually spoken with a sense of admiration, but really it should be said in the same tones we might use of the dearly departed or of a man who recently lost an arm—with sadness and regret.  What the term really means is "an orphaned man who figured how to master some part of life on his own."

-John Eldredge, Fathered by God

On toxic compassion...............

 

 ...................the prioritisation of short-term emotional comfort over everything else.

-Chris Williamson, from here

a balancing act..................

 

Loving others requires knowing how to say “yes.”

Loving yourself requires knowing when to say “no.”

-Mark Manson

Darwinian........................

 

     The rebirth of America's chip industry after Japan's DRAM onslaught was only possible thanks to Andy Grove's paranoia, Jerry Sanders's bare-knuckle brawling, and Jack Simplot's cowboy competitiveness.  Silicon Valley's testosterone and stock option-fueled competition often felt less like the sterile economies described in textbooks and more like a Darwinian struggle for the survival of the fittest.  Many firms died, fortunes were lost, and tens of thousands of employees were laid off.  The companies like Intel and Micron that survived did so less thanks to their engineering skills—though these were important—than their ability to capitalize on technical aptitude to make money in a hypercompetitive, unforgiving industry.

-Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology

enough......................

 

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

-Theodore Roosevelt

extremes................

 

All bad things in life come from extremes.  Too much of this.  Too little of that.

Derek Sivers, How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion

On education..........................

 

What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay, Spiritual Laws

1001 albums......................

 

..........................so much music, so little time.

Checking in...........................

 

.........................................with Bari Weiss:

If there is someone that's skeptical about karma, this turn of events may lead you to believe in it.

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

     Dire Straits....................Making Movies album

 

Checking in..........................

 

............................with the Daily Stoic:

Focus on the essential. Marcus believed this was the key to being productive and happy. “If you seek tranquility,” he said, “do less.” Not nothing. Less. Do only what’s truly important. Which brings a double satisfaction he said: you get to do fewer things and you get to do those fewer things better. Remember this rule daily. Keep a reminder in a place you’ll often see: focus only on what’s essential.

choices.......................

 

'I don’t have enough time' is not a useful phrase when it comes to anything related to your dream. It’s okay to actively choose to do something or not, but don’t blame time.

-Alexi Pappas, as quoted here

Some say..............................

 

...........................................why not?

thanks Chris

The Great Clarification...................

 With The Great Clarification of what was really going on with lawfare, back-channel understandings between Big Tech and Big Govt, and questionable conduct by the FBI and the CIA, fear of him was replaced by fear of them.

By 2024, Trump’s main opponent was the Establishment, and the billionaire outsider embraced one of the most powerful themes in American political history by declaring, “They’re not after me, they’re after you, and I just happen to be standing in their way.”

-Michael Wade

On the importance..............

 

................of telling our younger selves stories:

I still get emotional reading these scenes. The whole point of the classic adventure novel is that, when the time comes, the protagonist discovers his inner strength; and as the reader, we get to soar with him.