It can be alarming to realize just how much of life gets shaped by what we're actively trying to avoid.
Friday, April 25, 2025
single-player game..............
Socially, we're told, "Go work out. Go look good." That's a multi-player competitive game. . . . We're told, "Go make money. Go buy a big house." Again, external multi-player competitive game. Training yourself to be happy is completely internal. There is no external progress, no external validation. You're competing against yourself—it is a single-player game.
Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
In theory, anyway...............
Nothing in science—nothing in life, for that matter—makes sense without theory. It is our nature to put all knowledge into context in order to tell a story, and to re-create the world by this means.
-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
most important................
. . . there were farsighted folks who knew how to ask one of the most important of political questions: “And then what?”
It looked so easy in the history books.....
But George Washington had a vision. At the war's end, he had circulated a letter to the thirteen governors outlining four things America would need to do to survive, if not to attain its rightful place on world stage: The states would have to be consolidated under a vigorous "federal" government; there would have to be timely payment of the staggering debts left over by the war; and army and navy needed to be created; and finally, there must be harmony among the people. This was the theory at least; in truth, the reality was a cyclone of bewilderment and confusion.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
grave, wise, and faithful men...........
Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison. They were what Pelatiah Webster observed was so necessary for the new country: "grave, wise and faithful men." Madison provided the architecture for the republic, Hamilton its masonry, and Jefferson its soul and poetry. And now, in the heady days of 1789 and 1790, with Washington as president and the three working together—none of them believed in political parties, which they feared would lead to "rage," "dissolution," and eventual "ruin" of the republic—it seemed that anything and everything was possible.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
Poor Louis XVI......................
His executive management was poor, and so were his arts of persuasion, so necessary in any leader, whether a king, emperor, tsar, or elected president. In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, leaders must sometimes be cruel or cold; he was neither. In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, leaders must sometimes be able to hate; he was not much of a hater either. In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, to some extent or another, most leaders must be fanatics: stubborn, steel-willed, driven, secretive yet able to inspire, fastidious and zealous. They must be prepared to act alone, without encouragement, relying on their own inner resolve. And they must be indifferent to approval, reputation, and even love, cherishing only their own person sense of honor or vision, which they allow no one else to judge.
But this was not the case with Louis XVI.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
Holding on....................
It’s not the things you buy and sell that make you money; it’s the things you hold.
-Howard Marks, as quoted here
Checking in with................
...............................Barry Ritholtz
There is a flaw in the human wetware that leads to a demand for predictions. The evolutionary propensity humans suffer from is the desire for specific claims from self-confident leaders.
To avoid bad advice, you must always ask yourself, "What is this person selling?" Once you figure out what the product is, you can put the sales "advice" into better context.
. . . we must constantly check our own knowledge base as it ages and decays over time.
Recognizing how little you know is a superpower. If we were less certain of ourselves and had more humility, we would all be better investors.
Pessimism is a bet against human ingenuity, and for half a million years, that has been a losing bet.
You might be surprised to learn that I believe the three most important words in investing are, "I Don't Know."
"I don't know" is a very powerful tool that will help keep you out of trouble a lot, if only you have the courage to say it.
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
weary.....................
A constitutional republic in its head and ultra-monarchical in all its other parts has always appeared to me to be a shortlived monster. The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin, and the nation, weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Fourth Book, Chapter VI
Good questions................
But now the machine has begun to encroach on domains of our intellectual lives that many had thought were essentially immune from competition with computing intelligence.
The potential threat to our entire sense of self as a species cannot be overstated. What does it mean for humanity when AI becomes capable of writing a novel that becomes a bestseller, moving millions? Or makes us laugh out loud? Or paints a portrait the endures for decades? Or directs and produces a film that captures the hearts of festival critics? Is the beauty or truth expressed in such works any less powerful or authentic merely because they sprang from the mind of a machine?
-Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West
On neglecting surface differences............
The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay History
Steady....................
Unlimited predictability is more valuable than intermittent quality.
-Dan Martell, Buy Back Your Time
Monday, April 21, 2025
On cheering the spectacle.................
The Trump administration’s
war on universities has been conducted with its signature
Japanese-monster-movie approach, full of smashed infrastructure, rivers of
screaming civilians, and battle scenes so spellbinding, questions of right and
wrong go out the window. You can try to weigh the administration’s law-flouting
(see below) against the universities’ appalling sense of entitlement, but I
suspect many Americans will abandon sides and just cheer the spectacle of
intractably self-regarding freaks joined in aerial combat over the
Constitution. Harvard vs. the Trump-Monster should have been the next
entry in the Shin Godzilla series, now it’s here.
-Matt Taibbi, from here
Sunday, April 20, 2025
a good guess....................
So there's my guess at a set of principles to live by: take care of people and the world, and make good new things.
use of the mind.............
Many men are schooled, but few men are educated. An educated man is one who has learned how to use his mind so that he can get everything he desires without violating the rights of others. Education, therefore, comes from experience and use of the mind, and not merely from the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge is of no value unless and until it is expressed in some form of useful service.
-Andrew Carnegie, from here
less daunting...........................
History is a tale, Franklin came to believe, not of immutable forces but of human endeavors.
This outlook clashed with some of the tenets of Calvinism, such as the essential depravity of man and the predestination of his soul, which Franklin would eventually abandon as he edged his way closer to the less daunting deism that became the creed of choice during the Enlightenment. Yet, there were many aspects of Puritanism that made a lasting impression, most notably the practical, sociable, community-oriented aspects of that religion.
-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
a problem.....................
An expensive and recurring problem in the technology and investment communities is the simple inability to say those three words, "I don't know." . . .
Saying "I don't know" is a superpower.
-Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest
unite......................
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
Robert Frost, concluding Two Tramps In Mud Time
freedom......................
. . . the idea that the greatest freedom American society could grant to the individual was the freedom to create what they could for themselves and could only create for themselves; that this striving could save their souls and their sanity, was "play for mortal stakes" "for heaven and future's sake."
-Adam Plunkett, Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost's Poetry
Saturday, April 19, 2025
Wither go the hounds of AI..........
At President Trump’s request, Elon Musk has let loose the hounds of AI on the immobile carcass of the federal bureaucracy. For the first time in a century, the entire structure has become intelligible to the president. Horizontally, he can discover the endless cutouts and rabbit holes in which an agency’s taxpayer dollars have been wasted on bizarre causes and self-interested groups. Vertically, he can follow the funds allocated under his signature for—say—bridge repair to the actual bridge and track the actual repairs. Trillion-dollar players, accustomed to working in opaque and unaccountable bureaucratic lairs, find themselves exposed to the eyes of an angry public, as the walls around them turn to glass. The revolutionary character of this transformation is impossible to exaggerate. It’s as if AI suddenly shrank Leviathan to the dimensions of a guppy in a fishbowl.
-Martin Gurri, from here
trust......................
Smart leaders don't tell others how to do something. They tell them the end results that need to be achieved. Then they allow the other person to use their individual creativity to figure out the how.
-Dan Martell, Buy Back Your Time
About opportunities..............
In life, it doesn't really matter why you get an opportunity, only what you do with it.
-George Raveling, What You're Made For: Powerful Life Lessons from My Career in Sports
ever changing.....................
When experts are wrong, it's often because they're experts on an earlier version of the world.
forecasts........................
I come not to praise forecasters, but to bury them. . . .
There is a forecasting-industrial complex, and it is a blight on all that is good and true. The symbiotic relationship between the media and Wall Street drives a relentless parade of money-losing tomfoolery: Television and radio have 24 hours a day they must fill, and they do so mostly with empty nonsense. Print has column inches to put out. Online media may be the worst of all, with an infinite maw that needs to be consistently filled with new and often meaningless content.
Just because the beast must be fed, does not mean you must be dragon fodder.
-Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest
progress........................
A central theme of Bunyan's book—and of the passage from Puritanism to Enlightenment, and of Franklin's life—was contained in its title: progress, the concept that individuals, and humanity in general, move forward and improve based on a steady increase of knowledge and the wisdom that comes from conquering adversity. Christian's famous opening phrase sets the tone: "As I walked through the wilderness of this world . . ." Even for the faithful, this progress was not solely the handiwork of the Lord but also the result of a human struggle, by individuals and communities, to triumph over obstacles.
-Walter Isaacson, Franklin: An American Life
Friday, April 18, 2025
faith.............................
I’m not going to lie — I don’t have a lot of faith in our political leaders in either party these days.
But I still have faith in the American spirit of ingenuity and entrepreneurship. I still have faith corporations will do anything they can to turn a profit and grow.
That hasn’t changed.
Whatever you do with your money, just have a plan in place and don’t let your emotions drive your investment decisions.
-Ben Carlson, from here
Lord willing, we will do this..........
Counting the shooting stars in the night sky above the Mogollon Rim in Arizona.
kindling....................
As a rule there are in everyone all sorts of good ideas, ready like tinder. But much of this tinder catches fire, or catches it successfully, only when it meets some flame or spark from outside, i.e. from some other person. Often, too, our own light goes out, and is rekindled by some experience we go through with a fellow-man. Thus we have each of us cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flames within us.
today....................
For you and me, today is all we have; tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality.
-Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum
Highly recommended...............
Nine good friends from the Class of '73 at Denison University just gathered for 3+ days of laughter, storytelling, food, friendship, and general comradery. A celebration of life its ownself. Looking forward to the next time.
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
As Jim Rohn once said...............
Taxation: It's the care and feeding of the goose that lays the golden eggs. . . . Some might say the goose eats too much, but we could all lose a little weight and let one appetite not accuse another.
Monday, April 14, 2025
On uncertainty......................
We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength.
-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
incrementally..........................
If you want to effect change in the world, well, there is a whole science around this, but you have to do it incrementally. And our influence is extraordinarily small. Being rich and successful means you get to fly private and you never have to stand in line for stuff. You have earned it. But you don’t get to tell everyone what to do and what to think.
better.........................
We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.
-Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony
Sunday, April 13, 2025
essence.......................
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
randomness..........................
We too easily mistake randomness for skill. We imagine we see the future when we hardly understand today. We readily convince ourselves we are in control of our own destinies, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Recognizing your own ignorance is an advantage. Most of Wall Street hates this fact.
-Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest
pondering.......................
Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.
-Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum
fun with the language.............
This was a leap forward in computing—or it would have been, if not for the moths. Because vacuum tubes glowed like lightbulbs, they attracted insects, requiring regular "debugging" by their engineers.
-Chris Miller, Chip War
On discomfort...................
Most people mistake discomfort as a signal to stop; the great
ones see it as evidence they’re on the right track. Excellence is just pain
tolerance disguised as genius. The real advantage isn’t talent but cultivating
a perverse appreciation for the discomfort others instinctively avoid.
-Farnum Street, from here
Saturday, April 12, 2025
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
Friday, April 11, 2025
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.
Thursday, April 10, 2025
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
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
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
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
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Monday, April 7, 2025
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.”
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.
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
Sunday, April 6, 2025
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.
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
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.”
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.
Saturday, April 5, 2025
lingered..........................
Frost, when especially playful or vulnerable, was liable to conduct himself like an unfinished poem. He lingered on the strange within the familiar, the penumbra of doubt at the edge of the known. He let his mind rest in uncertainties such as the space between feeling and impulse, impulse and notice, between motives real and recalled.
-Adam Plunkett, Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost's Poetry
In the background...........................
Dire Straits......................On Every Street album
deliberate decisions.................
Holding the global economy hostage to one of the world's most dangerous political disputes might seem like an error of historic proportions. However, the concentration of advanced chip manufacturing in Taiwan, South Korea, and elsewhere in East Asia isn't an accident. A series of deliberate decisions by government officials and corporate executives created the far-flung supply chains we rely on today. Asia's vast pool of cheap labor attracted chipmakers looking for low-cost factory workers. . . . Washington's foreign policy strategists embraced complex semiconductor supply chains as a tool to bind Asia to an American-led world. Capitalism's inexorable demand for economic efficiency drove a constant push for cost cuts and corporate consolidation. The steady tempo of technological innovation that underwrote Moore's Law required ever more complex materials, machinery, and processes that could only be supplied or funded via global markets.
-Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology
artful dodgers.............................
People hunger for meaning.
The majority of them want to go home at night with the sense that their
presence that day made a positive difference.
-Michael Wade, from here
This is known...................
.....................................as hitting a home run.
from Chris Lynch's substack. Well done today my friend, well done.
Friday, April 4, 2025
staggeringly...........................
The global network of companies that annually produces a trillion chips at nanometer scale is a triumph of efficiency. It's also a staggering vulnerability.
-Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology
Opening paragraphs....................
Silicon Valley has lost its way.
The initial rise of the American software industry was made possible in the first part of the twentieth century by what would seem today to be a radical and fraught partnership between emerging technological companies and the U. S. government. Silicon Valley's earliest innovations were driven not by technical minds chasing trivial consumer products but by scientists and engineers who aspired to see the most powerful technology of the age deployed to address challenges of industrial and national significance. Their pursuit of breakthroughs was intended not to satisfy the passing needs of the moment but rather to drive forward a much grander project, channeling the collective purpose and ambition of a nation. This early dependence of Silicon Valley on the nation-state and indeed the U. S. military has for the most part been forgotten, written out of the region's history as an inconvenient and dissonant fact—one that clashes with the Valley's conception of itself as indebted only to is capacity to innovate.
-Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West
unlike.........................
Unlike the legions of lawyers who have come to dominate American politics in the modern era, many early American leaders, even if not practitioners of science themselves, were nonetheless remarkably fluent in matters of engineering and technology.
-Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West
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