The bigger the government gets, the less we get in return.
-Brian Wesbury, from here
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
a liberation...................
I just find when it comes to your finances, there is a liberation to limiting yourself where defining the things you won’t spend money on, won’t invest in, won’t pay attention to or won’t waste your time on are often more important than the things you will partake in.
-Ben Carlson, as cut-and-pasted from here
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
a perfect storm..................
In a society where many young people long to become “social influencers”, the news media misses a major White House cover-up which was conducted before their very eyes, and the population of those who are “famous for being famous” seems to grow, AI may be arriving during a perfect storm of shallowness.
-Michael Wade, from this substack episode
Martin Gurri is a national treasure.............
My moral sphere is a small world, a limited space. The necessary virtues aren’t complex: humility with my family, integrity at work, neighborliness in my community—add loyalty to friends, and one has the basic package.
beyond.......................
. . . he was a prophet of tolerance. Focusing on doctrinal disputes was divisive, he felt, and trying to ascertain divine certainties was beyond our mortal ken. Nor did he think that such endeavors were socially useful. The purpose of religion should be to make men better and to improve society, and any sect or creed that did so was fine with him.
-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
trained and developed..............
The idea of the imagination as a muscle—as a faculty of the mind that could be trained and developed—had lodged with me.
-Albert Read, from his Introduction to The Imagination Muscle: Where Good Ideas Come From (And How to Have More of Them)
less............................
In a world without digital privacy, even if you have done nothing wrong other than think differently, you begin to censor yourself. Not entirely at first. Just a little, bit by bit. To risk less, to hope less, to imagine less, to dare less, to create less, to talk less, to think less. The chilling effect of digital surveillance is profound and it touches everything. What a small, unimaginative world we would end up with. Not entirely at first. Just bit by bit.
-Tim Cook, from his 2019 speech at Stanford
Monday, May 19, 2025
feeling...........................
Crucially, aliveness isn’t the same as happiness. As the Zen teacher Christian Dillo explains in his engrossing book The Path of Aliveness, you can absolutely feel alive in the midst of intense sadness. Aliveness, he writes, “isn’t about feeling better; it’s about feeling better.” When I feel aliveness in my work, it’s not because every task is an unadulterated pleasure; and when I feel it in my close relationships, it’s not because I’ve transcended the capacity to get annoyed by other people – because believe me, I haven’t.
Part of the joy of living......
.........is exchanging good books with good friends.
Let’s talk for a minute about the etiquette of gifting books. The etiquette is that you probably shouldn’t do it. First of all, there is a 99% chance that you’re going to gift a book that someone won’t like. You’re gifting it because you like it, but you don’t know what the other person likes, so it will probably sit on a shelf somewhere. Second of all, it’s like gifting someone a vacuum cleaner. Great, but now I have to spend ten hours cleaning the house.
Provided the judgment...................
................doesn't come with condemnation:
A man is morally free when ... he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.
misuse........................
I would counter that the purpose of putting limits on yourself is not only to encourage the other side to reciprocate. It is to safeguard against your own fallibility. The problem with authoritarianism is not just that the other guy might misuse power. It is also that you might misuse it.
-Arnold Kling, from this episode
Friday, May 16, 2025
On immigration........................
Two things can be true at once (and yes, I should get this phrase tattooed on my person): The Trump administration can embrace a more eugenic immigration philosophy genuinely at odds with Episcopalian beliefs (all souls being equal and such) and the Afrikaners can be legitimate refugees who are in danger. We’ve grown so accustomed to refugee applying only to “young men seeking economic opportunity” that we forgot that not all refugees are ambitious 23-year-old Moroccans looking to enjoy the greatness of capitalism! Me, I’m balanced: pro-immigration but neither racist nor anti-racist. I don’t care if you’re a Dutchman or a Moroccan. I just believe our border entry should be determined by a combination IQ and physical fitness test, a quick grade on baby-rocking ability, see how long it takes you to down a Triple Dipper, then Jordan Peterson personally deciding if you’re too neurotic, and boom—welcome to America.
-Nellie Bowles, from this episode
Here's an idea................
....................................anti-Brahminization:
In reality, the party maintains a meticulous commitment to fiscal responsibility, democratic governance, and material populism.
On scorpions.......................
“It is crazy to want what is impossible,” Marcus Aurelius writes
in Meditations.
“And impossible for the wicked not to do so.” This is what Aesop’s fable about
the scorpion and the frog is about. It’s what so much of the ancient literature
tries to remind us of. That cruel people do cruel things. That selfish people
act selfishly. That destructive people do destructive things.
Yet we don’t listen. We fail to learn the lesson and so we get
hurt. The world painfully, painfully shows us the perils of not heeding this
basic warning.
The wicked do what wicked people have always done. They are who
they are. Stop expecting them to be anything else.
-from today's entry from the Daily Stoic
Thursday, May 15, 2025
license....................
. . . a playful attitude is fundamental to creative thinking. I'll bet that you generate most of your new ideas when you're playing in your mental playground. You give yourself license to try different approaches without fear of penalty. Your defenses are down, and your likely to have little concern with the rules or being wrong. You try one thing, and then another—often not getting anywhere. You ask "what if" and "why not," put things is different contexts, and look at them backwards. Eventually, you may come up with a worthwhile idea.
-Roger von Oech, A Whack on the Side of the Head
elegant furnishings........
A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one's life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself. You have a chance to select from some pretty elegant furnishings.
-Louis L'Amour, Bendigo Shafter
enjoyable expressions..................
This is the lesson we insecure overachievers could do with getting into our skulls: actions don't have to be things that we grind out, day after day, in order to inch ever closer to some elusive state of finally getting to qualify as adequate humans. Instead, they can just be enjoyable expressions of the fact that that's what we already are.
-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals
crazy-making...............
. . . perhaps you've tethered your self-esteem to the most crazy-making standard of all, 'realizing your potential'—which means you'll never get to rest, because how can you ever be sure there's not a little more potential to realize?
-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals
work or play...................
You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.
-attributed to Warren Beatty
Thursday, May 8, 2025
shaper.......................
It is the sovereign individual who is shaper and potentially master of the indeterminate future—or, more accurately, it is the consciousness manifesting itself within each individual who is such a master.
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine
a Medium of Exchange.................
"The dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power over the last century." This statement is the most misleading claim in all of finance. Full stop.
The collapse of purchasing power of the US dollar is used to scare investors, sell dubious products, and fool people into believing nonsense. . . .
Let's begin with the biggest issue: The US dollar (USD) is not a long-term Store of Value. That was never its intended purpose. Rather, the USD is a Medium of Exchange. There is an enormous difference between these two cases, and those who seek to mislead people rely on their not understanding the difference.
-Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest: The Ideas, Numbers, and Behaviors That Destroy Wealth—and How to Avoid Them
Robespierre.......................
The allure of Robespierre is that he transformed himself into a stoic, but he was also a romantic to the end. Doctrinaire and calculating, he was a master of sowing differences among his rivals, waiting patiently for them to unravel on their own. He would then get his chance, proving to be a stern disciplinarian, a capable organizer, and a fearless leader. He instinctively believed that he would one day rule—he was right—and remarkably, he prophesied that he would one day be killed; he was right there as well.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
the virtue of free expression........
The opinions people have, Franklin wrote, are "almost as various as their faces." The job a printers is to allow people to express these differing opinions. "There would be very little printed," he noted, if publishers produced only things that offended nobody. At stake was the virtue of free expression, and Franklin summed up the Enlightenment position in a sentence that is now framed on newsroom walls: "Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter."
-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
an idea.............................
That is the continual manifestation, within each of us, of the Divine Word that generated the cosmos when time and space themselves began. That is the initial biblical characterization of the spirit of what is highest; the initial manifestation of the spirit of the one God. This is a stunning idea, a revolutionary idea, a world-ordering idea, a civilization-engendering idea—an idea that is a precondition for optimized psychological and social order alike. It is from that presumption of our implicit individual value—to say it again—that we derive our infinite set of natural rights (and, let us not forget, as we are so prone to, natural responsibility).
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine
Models.......................
But if you follow any modeled data series, you must always keep in mind statistician George E. P. Box's warning: "All models are wrong, but some are useful." . . .
Yet we place a great deal of faith in models. The problem occurs when, as journalist Jonathan V. Last observes, we forget that models are "not a report sent back from the future." He observes the three types of inputs that go into models:
1. Stuff we know;
2. Stuff we think we know:
3. Stuff we have no idea about.
-Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest: The Ideas, Numbers, and Behaviors That Destroy Wealth—and How to Avoid Them
This won't end well.........................
In Paris the convention beamed. Feeling invincible, it thus announced its most ambitious stroke yet: the December 15, 1792, "Edict of Fraternity," decreeing "war on castles, peace for cottages," and promising fraternal aid to any nation wishing to recover its liberty. It stated wondrously, "the French nation proclaims the sovereignty of the people [in all cooperating regions]. . . . You are, from this moment, brothers and friends, all are citizens, equal in rights, and all alike are called to govern, to serve, and to defend your country.
France was no longer simply a great nation; this decree made it a revolutionary state abroad as well—the first in European history. World revolution was now its stated goal, republicanism its guiding star. With chilling precision, Brissot put it this way: "We cannot be calm until all Europe is in flames." But there were consequences for such ambition: As is so often the case, the newly "liberated" territories began to chafe under French rule, suggesting that one taskmaster had simply taken over for another. And by this stage, the rulers of Europe, angry and bewildered, no longer could stand idly by. Having little choice, they saw the convention's actions as the unmistakable sound of war against all monarchs.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
peace of mind........................
I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of uncertainty about different things. But I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about. I don't feel frightened not knowing things.
surrounded....................
When working, surround yourself with people more successful that you.
When playing, surround yourself with people happier than you.
that salutary fear................
. . . for a long time they will prevent the establishment of any despotism, and they will furnish fresh weapons to each succeeding generation that struggles in favor of the liberty of mankind. Let us, then, look forward to the future with that salutary fear which makes men keep watch and ward for freedom, not with that faint and idle terror which depresses and enervates the heart.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 2, Chapter VII (1840)
a bad habit.....................
The victors of history have a habit of growing complacent at precisely the wrong moment.
-Alexander C. Carp and Nicholas W. Zamiska, The Technological Republic
recognize......................
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay, Self-Reliance
life its ownself.....................
On a long enough timescale, everything is transitory. As we work our way through the detritus and minutia of life, we should not lose sight of that.
Monday, May 5, 2025
to absorb and consider................
In today's world, the art of listening seems to be under threat. Social media has trained us to believe that what matters most is what we have to say. We're talking more than ever, broadcasting our thoughts to the world with every post, tweet, and status update. But in this cacophony of voices, it often seems like nobody is truly hearing each other.
We've become so focused on crafting our next response, our next witty comment, that we've forgotten how to listen. We skim, we scan, we scroll, but we rarely stop to absorb and consider what others are saying. We're more connected than ever, yet in many ways, we're more isolated, trapped in echo chambers of our own making.
This is why the skill of listening—real, active, engaged listening—is more crucial than ever. It's a skill that can set you apart in a world where everyone is clamoring to be heard. It's a skill that can open doors, build relationships, and lead to insights and opportunities that you might otherwise miss.
-George Raveling, What You're Made For: Powerful Life Lessons from My Career in Sports
beyond the ken......................
But history would not wait for Louis. Newly arrived in Paris, Gouverneur Morris, one of the central drafters of the American Constitution and among the keenest observers of the age, echoed the dispatches that his Russian counterpart, Baron Simolin, was sending to Catherine the Great. Morris was stunned by what he saw. "We stand on a vast volcano," he observed. "We feel it tremble, we hear it roar, how and when and where it will burst, and who will be destroyed by its eruptions, is beyond the ken of mortals to discern." On July 31, 1789, he also added: "This country is at present as near to anarchy as society can approach without dissolution." He was right.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
responsibility
As creatures formed in God's image, we have the responsibility to continue the act of creation in the best manner imaginable.
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine
that divine proposition.....................
Is the idea of man as an image of God not utterly preposterous? How could flawed man, even the lowliest man or woman, possess a direct relationship to the divine? Man, with his propensity for decrepitude, suffering, and death; his self-evident insignificance contrasted with nature and the cosmos; the brevity of his life—why attribute value to something so fleeting in its existence and contemptible in its inadequacy? But, in the absence of that divine proposition, where would we be? . . . How could we possible manage without the tradition of inalienable rights and intrinsic individual responsibility that is the logical consequence of that axiomatic proclamation of our sacred worth?
-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine
longer........................
Irrational trends rarely follow rational timelines. Unsustainable things can last longer than you think.
-Morgan Housel, from here
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Above all else—union....................
But that would not be the end of the matter. If Congress did not end this "slave business," the head of the select committee quietly communicated to his antislavery colleagues, then the entire South might "rise up in a flame." No one was willing to take this chance. While Madison himself thought the proslavery arguments "shamefully indecent," he cherished the union even more. And as Madison went, so went the moderates. As the moderates went, so went Congress. After several days of debate, on March 23, the majority that had favored Franklin's petition disintegrated, and an exhausted House voted 29-25 to accept a heavily amended report that basically buried the matter. More starkly, it said in effect that slavery in the South would be out of bounds of congressional discussion—forever. The founding generation, always obsessed with its capacity to set precedents, had inadvertently set a strong precedent on the very matter they hoped to avoid. Without intending it, Congress had determined that the new republic should—indeed it would—sanction, even underwrite, bondage. The stage was thus set for a collision one day between the integrity of republican government and the right to hold, sell, and buy men, women, and children as though they were cattle.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
Saturday, May 3, 2025
this aged well.................................
The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so.
-William F. Buckley, Jr., from this 1955 mission statement
Martin Gurri........................
..................has questions about our government:
Did the government of the United States, conqueror in two world wars and a Cold War, first to place humanity on the moon, really fund transgender comic books in Peru?
yearning for integration................
There are things in life that come over you sudden as a flash flood, total as an eclipse — the great loves, the great creative passions, the great urges to conquer a mountain or a theorem. They can feel like an alien invasion, like the immense hand of some imperative has seized your soul from the outside. But when you look back on them once they have had their way with you, if you are awake enough to your own life and conscious enough of your unconscious, you come to realize that they were not a possession by some external force but dispossessed parts of you yearning for integration. This is why our states of possession are some of the most profound experiences we can have as human beings — they are both revelations and transformations of the self, those eruptions of the psyche that raise new summits of possibility for our creativity and our vitality.
-Maria Popova, from this episode
Friday, May 2, 2025
Got it half right............................
I would love to see a situation where politicians make housing their entire platform. Tear up all of the red tape. Incentive homebuilders to build more homes. Offer first-time homebuyers low mortgage rates they missed out on.
-Ben Carlson, from this post
The affordability problems in our current housing market is being caused by that pesky law of supply and demand. The supply has been constrained for the past thirteen years for multiple reasons.* Demand was unleashed seven or eight years ago by absurdly low interest rates and by a generation that ignored the experts that said they would be "urbanized." Left to their own devices, our kids said "screw the big cities, we want a single-family house with a two-car garage and a yard." When overheated demand meets constrained supply, you get doubling of prices in a very short time frame—and an affordability problem. Slowly but surely, supply is picking up—but it will likely take another five years before the supply actually meets the demand. Be very careful of offering subsidies to buyers in a market like this. Those subsidies will just end up in the pockets of sellers. Stoking demand in a tight housing market is a recipe for higher home prices.
If you want to solve the affordability problem, subsidize homebuilders and developers. They will then do what they always do when incentivized—over build. Then, and only then, will affordability stand a chance.
*The supply of housing has been constrained by a combination of factors that include, but is not limited to, the following:
1. The Great Recession of 2008ish was caused in part by super-heated housing construction. After the dot.com bubble burst, the construction industry became a major engine for keeping the economy perky. By 2003 more homes were being built than could be sold to traditional home buyers. Not wanting to stop the gravy train, politicians decided we should sell those new homes to buyers who could not afford them. This was cleverly done by fiddling with the requirements for securing a mortgage. 2004-05 was the wild west of mortgage lending. All you needed to get a loan was to be able to fog a mirror.
2. The Great Recession caused multiple defaults on those non-traditional mortgages. All of a sudden there was a massive supply of available homes and no demand. Naturally, prices fell. Homebuilders could not compete with prices of this surplus inventory, so they did the sensible thing and left the industry.
3. About the same time all this was going on, our society decided that everyone needed a four-year liberal arts college experience. We suffered a collective amnesia about the importance of training the next generation of plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, carpenters, roofers, etc.
4. In 2003 there were probably 15 home building companies in our community (of about 80,000 folks). By 2013 there were only three remaining.
5. Guess what happens when there are only a handful of tradespeople in a market that needs a bushelful? Those trades people, for the first time in memory, had pricing power. All of a sudden, construction labor prices started rising—quickly.
6. The onset of Covid led to the snarling of supply lines and the interruption of the production of building materials. The just-in-time theory of inventory doesn't work very well when there are disruptions. Those building product suppliers, for the first time in memory, also had pricing power. Prices for plywood, concrete, drywall, etc. all shot through the roof.
7. Increasing governmental regulations (zoning and NIMBY opposition to change, density restrictions, subdivision regulations, green space requirements, turn lanes and deacceleration lanes, impact fees, sewer/water tap fees, and a myriad of other useful improvements) confronting developers of subdivisions has made the development process more expensive and more time consuming—a tough combination which impacts affordability,
8. We should not forget that residential real estate markets are local in nature, and while your results may vary, the affordability problem is a supple and demand problem, and it will take time to resolve.
Start.......................
Someone will start with more money than you. Someone will get into a better school. Someone will inherit connections you need to build from scratch. Someone will get picked before you. In other words, you’ll have no problem finding people with a head start. That’s not the point.
The point is: when you get your opportunity, you make the most of it.
Thursday, May 1, 2025
uncompromising.............
For these reasons, as much as any, his signature carried stentorian weight when at age eighty-four, wracked by gout, seized by pain, barely able to walk or sit and subsisting on laudanum, a dying Franklin now south to be uncompromising on one matter facing the young republic: slavery. Here, as in so many other areas, Franklin seemed ahead of his time. When a South Carolina delegate argued slaves were property, akin to sheep or dogs, Franklin shot back: "there is some difference. . . . Sheep will never make insurrections."
So, on that grim winter day in 1790, could Franklin's endorsement of the petition once again move the country and make it whole?
It was not to be.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
Compounding...............
All benefits in life come from compound interest, whether in money, relationships, love, health, activities, or habits. I only want to be around people I know I'm going to be around for the rest of my life. I only want to work on things I know have long-term payout.
-Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Naval Ravikant.....................
Understand ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.
Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.
You're not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity—a piece of a business—to gain your financial freedom.
-Naval Ravikant, from this Twitter thread
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
rattle together..............
It sure does beat all how prosperity makes a man critical of all who are less prosperous. Seems like some folks no sooner get two dollars they can rattle together than they start looking down their noses at folks who only have two bits.
-Louis L'Amour, The Courting of Griselda
First, ourselves....................
People can change. The only limit on what you can learn in a lifetime is how many years you get. There is not a hard stop on openness or curiosity. Change is difficult but people can change. It is right to ask them to do so because things change when people change.
It is right to ask ourselves to change, too. There are a few things in my life, in my heart, that are non-negotiable. The rest is up for discussion. It is good to require ourselves to be humble and curious and willing to learn. It is good to say things like I don’t know. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I’m learning. I could have done better. I will do better.
We could use more "detached observers"...
There are many types of newspaper editors. Some are crusading ideologues . . . Some are the opposite: they like power and their proximity to it . . .
And then there are those who are charmed and amused by the world and delight in charming and amusing others. They tend to be skeptical of both orthodoxies and heresies, and they are earnest in their desire to seek truth and promote public betterment (as well as sell papers). There fits Franklin. He was graced—and afflicted—with the trait so common to journalists, especially ones who have read Swift and Addison once too often, of wanting to participate in the world while also remaining a detached observer. As a journalist he could step out of scene, even one that passionately engaged him, and comment on it, or on himself, with a droll irony. The depths of his beliefs were often concealed by his knack for engaging in a knowing wink.
-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
part of the journey.................
Being a trailblazer often means venturing into the unknown, where the way forward isn't always clear. You'll encounter dead ends, false starts, and paths that seem promising but ultimately lead nowhere. This is all part of the journey. Each setback and wrong turn is not a failure, but a lesson that brings you closer to finding your true path. The key is to keep moving, keep exploring, and learn from every experience along the way.
-George Raveling, What You're Made For: Powerful Life Lessons from My Career in Sports
All.......................
. . . Success isn't about comparing yourself to others or trying to be something you're not. It's about finding your unique path, your special contribution, and giving it your all.
-George Raveling, What You're Made For: Powerful Life Lessons from My Career in Sports
Opening paragraphs...............
Brunetti found that counting silently to four and then again and again allowed him to block out most other thoughts. It did not obscure his sight, but it was a day rich with the grace and favour of springtime, so as long as he kept his eyes raised about the heads of the people around him, he could study the tops of the cypress trees, even the cloud-dappled sky, and what he saw he liked. Off in the distance, if only he turned his head a little, he could see the inside of the brick wall and know that beyond it was the tower of San Marco. The counting was a sort of mental contraction, akin to the way he tightened his shoulders in cold weather in the hope that, by decreasing the area exposed to the cold, he would suffer it less. Thus, here, exposing less of his mind to what was going on around him might diminish the pain.
-Donna Leon, The Girl of His Dreams: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Music.....................
Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance.
-Eric Clapton, The Autobiography
understanding..............
We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength.
-Eric Hoffer, True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
arbiter...............................
In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.
-Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell), as lifted from here
the very condition...................
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
-Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics
One.....................
On Saturday, he ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon. That night he had a stomach ache.
-Eric Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Monday, April 28, 2025
Ben Franklin, a complicated guy.......
For all his simplicity he loved the good life: In Paris alone he had 1,041 bottles of wine in his cellar, nine indoor servants, and he spent freely, on food, on women, on luxuries. While his circle of friends was among the most fascinating in history—his acquaintances included David Hume, Bishop Berkeley, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Voltaire, Noah Webster, Sir Isaac Newton, Jeremy Bentham, Diderot, and Immanuel Kant, as well as the Enlightenment princess Ekaterina Dashkova of Russia, an intimate of Catherine the Great herself—his colleagues often couldn't stand him. John Adams thought him "lazy," "insignificant," and devious, not to mention too accommodating to the French. Arthur Lee, a fellow commissioner to France, despised him, and was convinced that their secretary was a British spy, a charge that Franklin abruptly dismissed (Lee was right).
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
death spiral.......................
Career advancement required becoming a better bureaucrat, not devising new products or identifying new markets.
-Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology
essence..........................
All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
Sunday, April 27, 2025
begin..........................
The willingness to figure things out as you go is often the only
difference between those who achieve difficult things and those who never
begin.
-Farnum Street, from this episode
On the "killer instinct".....
I saw a screenshot of a Reddit post recently from a person who wondered aloud why rich people continue to work, because this person said that the whole point of getting rich was that you wouldn’t have to work anymore. I know one thing for sure—that person is never going to be rich.
-Jared Dillian, from this substack post
Stoop.........................
As they were making their way out, they went through a narrow passage and Mather suddenly warned, "Stoop! Stoop!" Franklin, not understanding the exhortation, bumped his head on a low beam. As was his wont, Mather turned it into a homily" "Let this be a caution to you not always to hold your head so high. Stoop, young man, stoop—as you go through this world—and you will miss many hard thumps."
-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
On doing good....................
According to the common notions, and common practice of mankind, "doing good" implies, whatever removes pain or imparts pleasure. But this is evidently a mistaken view of the subject; for pain is frequently a great blessing, and pleasure is frequently a serious evil. The amputation of a limb, though attended with severe agony, may be the means of saving the patient's life; and that which yields the sweetest gratification to the palate, may speedily terminate in disease and death. The discipline which is administered to a child may issue in his future and permanent advantage; while the indulgence of his wishes may subject him to a perpetuity of suffering.
-Andrew Thompson, from his Preface to Cotton Mather's Essays To Do Good
amending....................
Every man upon earth may find in himself something that wants mending; and the work of repentance is to inquire, not only "What we have done?" but also, " What we have to do?" Frequent self-examination is the duty and the prudence of all who would know themselves, or would not lose themselves. The great intention of self-examination is to find out the points wherein we are to "amend our ways."
Cotton Mather, from this essay
design..................
He lamented that because he had never outlined a design for how he should conduct himself, his life so far had been somewhat confused. "Let me, therefore, make some resolutions, and some form of action, that henceforth, I may live my life in all respects like a rational creature."
-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Saturday, April 26, 2025
Knowledge.......................
Knowledge, he realized, "was obtained rather by the use of the ear than that of the tongue."
-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
filling in........................
We don't live in objective reality, we function in a model of our own construction. Our brains generate mental outlines, continually filling in missing information to create a 360-degree world within which we operate. This useful evolutionary trait has allowed the human species to thrive in a world that his hostile to us soft, chewy creatures lacking claws, fangs, or armor.
-Barry Ritholtz, How Not To Invest
Reflection.................
The danger in trying to hide who you are is that you'll succeed, and you'll start to see a stranger in the mirror of other people.
anti-excitement..........................
Investing isn’t supposed to excite you every day. In fact, the more exciting it feels, the more likely it is that you’re not actually investing but just speculating, with a fancier vocabulary.
Friday, April 25, 2025
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
