Fun times in downtown Newark this evening.....

..................as thousands of folks lined the streets to meet and greet the Budweiser Clydesdales.

many thanks to Matesich Distributing

curve balls.....................

 

      This cartoon perfectly encapsulates the conflict that occupies nearly every financial decision you make in life.  The essence of successful investing, retirement planning and life in general is balance.  You have to plan for the future but live in the present.  You have to enjoy the moment but plan for old age.  You have to invest for the long run but survive the short run.  It's difficult to balance enjoying life now and ensuring you have the resources to enjoy life later.

     There is no ideal balance for everyone because we all have different goals, needs, resources, expectations, and desires.  The hardest part about planning for your financial future is the simple fact that you don't know what will happen.  No one has it all figured out because no one knows what various curve balls life is going to throw at them.  So you do the best you can.

-Ben Carlson, Risk & Reward: How to handle market volatility and build long-term wealth

On complexity and complications........

 

     One way to understand the numinous right hemisphere is that it manages life's complexity.  Complex challenges in life are easy to understand but impossible to solve, so they can only be lived and understood.  This is in contrast to the complicated parts of life (managed in the left hemisphere), which can be hard to understand but are solvable once and for all.

     Life is full of both kinds of challenges.  I need to understand others' emotions (a complex challenge), but I also need to make smart decisions, which in many cases means acting in spite of these emotions (a complicated challenge).

-Arthur C. Brooks, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness

More things I never knew..............

 

     Many Frenchmen served in America during the Revolution.  There were more French combatants at Yorktown than Americans.*  Lafayette personified all his countrymen in the American mind because he had come early, before the formal alliance, and stayed late.  His French comrades were professionals and, to the extent they had opinions, realpolitikers, serving in obedience to orders and to advance French interests, Lafayette was a volunteer and an enthusiast.  He had the ability to engage and impress people, which might be called a talent if that did not suggest skill and practice, whereas with him the effect was as artless as his intentions were sincere.

-Richard Brookhiser, The Hero Returns: Lafayette and the Legacy of Revolution

*If one queries ChatGPT, one reads that the numbers of foot soldiers at Yorktown were fairly even between French and American (and, combined, significantly outnumbered the British).  When adding the number of French sailors, who blockaded the British and prevented their escape, then ChatGPT says the statistic is correct.

worthy......................

 

     After which, satisfied with the way in which he had conducted himself at Meung, without remorse for the past, confident in the present, and full of hope for the future, he retired to bed, and slept the sleep of the brave.

-Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

Good question.................

 

We all become stories. The question becomes how will yours end?

-Tony Isola, from his post, On The Clock

Just another one of those things I've never given much thought about............

 

The underlying idea here is energy and power aren’t the same. Energy is how much you’ve got. Power is how fast you can use it.

-as culled from today's Stephen McBride post

unlearning............................

 

. . . economics professor Roberto Serrano gave his class a take-home midterm, the way he had for years. The class average came back at 96% in a course where midterms historically averaged 65 to 80. Suspicious that the students were using AI, he made the final exam in-person. The average collapsed to 48.6%, the lowest he’d ever seen. Dozens of students had likely used AI on the midterm, and the final exam revealed how little they actually knew. These are Ivy League students holding the most powerful learning tool ever built, and instead of using it to learn, they used it to skip learning because thirteen years of school didn’t teach them how to learn, or even why it’s important.

-Austin Scholar, from this episode