more fun here

A bridge..............................

 

.....................................................too far.

Please..................................

 

.............................................don't wait.

seeing..........................

 

The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes.

-Marcel Proust

voids.................

 

Everyone in business wants to know, "What's new?"  But a better question for creating new market opportunities is to ask, "What's missing?"

     One of the major voids we see across demographics . . . is people's need and desire to make good friends, feel less isolated and lonely, and belong to something more meaningful.

-Kevin Ervin Kelly, Irreplaceable

Curiosity..............................

 

.............is supposed to fend for itself, apparently.

talking about..............................

 

....................................................gaps.

the way......................

 

Before listening to the way, do not fail to wash your ears.

Otherwise it will be impossible to listen clearly.

-reasoning here

imitation......................

 

We learn best through other people.  Our ability to learn from each other greatly exceeds our ability to solve problems on our own. . . . "The secret to our species' success lies not in our raw, innate intelligence or in any specialized mental abilities," writes Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich.  Instead, he argues it's the ability to learn easily from the innovations of others that makes us uniquely capable as a species. . . . Imitation is the foundation for human ingenuity.

-Scott H. Young, Get Better at Anything

Reexamine....................

 

Dismiss whatever insults your own soul

-Walt Whitman

better than you were...................

 

     The legendary music producer Rick Rubin was asked if there's anything the artists he's worked with (which includes some of the all-time greats: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, Run-D.M.C., Eminem, Adele, Dr. Dre, and on and on) have in common.

     They all struggle with self-doubt.

    To overcome self-doubt, Rubin tells them, "Make it your goal to just be better than you were."

     Make it your goal, he says, to focus on goals you have control over.  "Compete only with yourself.  If you say, 'I don't want to write unless I can write better than The Beatles,' that's a hard road.  But if you say, 'I want to write a better song today than I wrote yesterday,' that can be done."

-Paul Rabil, The Way of the Champion 

forces at work..................

 

     All art is a form of poetry.  It's always changing, never fixed.  We may think we know what a piece we made means, yet over time that interpretation may change.  The creator stops being the creator once they finish the work.  They then become the viewer.  And the viewer can bring as much of their own meaning to a piece as the creator.

     We will never know a work's true meaning.  It's helpful to remember that there are forces at work beyond our comprehension.  Let's make are, and let others make the stories.

-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

demands....................

 

If we accept that life is imperfect, we'll make fewer self-defeating demands for perfection on ourselves and others.

-Brad Jacobs

gentle...........................

 

1.  A gentle answer turns away wrath,

But a harsh word stirs up anger.

2.  The tongue of the wise man makes knowledge acceptable,

But the mouth of fools spouts folly.

-The Holy Bible, Proverbs, 15:1-2

an enormous refuse heap.............

 

The ideology of progress has led to barbarism, and modern science has become a tool of enslavement rather than a tool of liberation.  In this post-Nietzschean world, the enslavement was not restricted to dictatorships, the usual recipients of the epithet "totalitarian"; it was just as pervasive in the "democratic" countries of the West, where the all-embracing power of the culture industry had nearly buried the possibility of independent critical thought beneath an enormous refuse heap of commodified artifacts and reified minds.

-Wilfred M. McClay, Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (1994)

only in fairy tales.............

 

     "Of one thing, however, be certain," says Warren Buffett, "If a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance.  Only in fairy tales are emperors told they are naked."

-Peter Bevelin, Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger

this admirable order...............

 

In the heavens, therefore, there is nothing fortuitous, unadvised, inconstant, or variable:  all there is order, truth, reason, and constancy; and all the things which are destitute of these qualities are counterfeit, deceitful, and erroneous, and have their residence about the earth beneath the moon, the lowest of all the planets.  He, therefore, who believes that this admirable order and almost incredible regularity of the heavenly bodies, by which the preservation and entire safety of all things is secure, is destitute of intelligence, must be considered to be himself wholly destitute of all intellect whatever.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cicero's Tusculan Disputations

Learned skills.......................

 

Once upon a time, social skills were acquired and honed during front porch conversations with neighbors, Little League games, bowling tournaments, poker or bridge nights, board games, and club meetings.

Those weren’t just meetings and events. They were training sessions in the soft skills that often are missing in the modern workplace. In those old-fashioned exchanges, we learned how to read one another, how to listen and tell jokes and stories along with how to deliver or receive sensitive news. Those are skills that require practice, often involving more than a few fumbles, and are rarely completely mastered.

-Michael Wade

All kinds.........................

 

The older I get the more I realize how many kinds of smart there are. There are a lot of kinds of smart. There are a lot of kinds of stupid, too.

-Jeff Bezos, as quoted here

Just say no............................

 

............................................to bad advice.

stop digging.................

 

Today, give yourself the most simple and doable of tasks: just don't make stuff worse.  Whatever happens, don't add angry or negative emotions to the equation.  Don't react for the sake of reacting.  Leave it as it is.  Stop digging.  Then plan your way out.

-Ryan Holiday

On parking apps........................

 

We do a lot of clerical labor to register ourselves with entities that have figured out ways to intervene in matters that were once direct and straightforward. For example, you have to download the Parkmobile app and set up an account before you can park your car in Santa Cruz, if you are anywhere near the boardwalk. Maybe you are ready to unwind on the beach after a hard day, or maybe you have a carload of kids with low blood sugar, two of whom desperately need to find a bathroom. But you are going to have to find a cell signal, register your credit card and make a password before you can go on your way. Of course, since the app freezes during the final step, you’re not sure you really did pay for parking, or if instead you will be paying an $85 parking ticket at some point in the future. It’s super relaxing. Ask me how I know.

If you don’t have a smart phone, you are out of luck. You may be paying taxes to maintain the street but you can’t park on it, since you are not quite a full citizen.

-Matthew B. Crawford, from this episode

the country we're visiting..........

The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we’re visiting, life.

-culled from this post at The Hammock Papers

Really look.......................

 

3.  Look beneath the surface:  never let a thing's intrinsic quality or worth escape you.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Six

Nature designed us...............

 

     But something incredibly human and essential to society gets lost in translation in the digital expression of life.  After all, we're social animals wired to be with and around other people in real life, not just from the chest up on a grainy 2D Zoom call.  Nature designed us to see each other face-to-face.  To make eye contact and sync up with others.  To gauge their body language, catch their ever-so-slight facial inflections, and to pick up on their tone of voice.

-Kevin Ervin Kelly, Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together

Fifty years ago.....................

       Earth, Wind & Fire....................Shining Star

 

a gentleman's agreement................

 

Up to then there had been something of a gentleman’s agreement among those who might be called The Good Journalists of Washington that the Kennedy Administration was one of excellence, that it was for good things and against bad things, and that when it did lesser things it was only in self-defense, and in order that it might do other good things.

-David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest

accepts.......................

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation, he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

a good society................

 

It may be, in the end, that a good society is defined more by how people treat strangers than by how they treat those they know.

-James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds

Let's see AI do this....................

 

We don't just need our brains and our brawn, we need a capacity for self-insight, trust, cooperation, and a mix of big-sky visioning with pint-sized actions.  And let me grab my megaphone for this one: We absolutely cannot talk about the future without inviting emotion, intuition, and awe back into our lives and our decision-making.

Ari Wallach, Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs

Epiphanies.....................

 

      Epiphanies are hidden in the most ordinary moments: the casting of a shadow, the smell of a match igniting, an unusual phrase overheard or misheard.  A dedication to the practice of showing up on a regular basis is the main requirement.

-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Fifty years ago...............................

             Rod Stewart.....................Sailing

 

narrowing.............................

 

Serendipitous connections become less likely as increased communication narrows our tastes and interests.  Knowing and caring more and more about less and less.  This tendency may increase productivity in a narrow sense while decreasing social cohesion.

-Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone

a place for us niche players.............

 

While the Amazons of the world may have a lock on price, variety, and convenience, they don't have a monopoly on joy, delight, surprise, and social bliss.  There's a massive opportunity for those who design places, whom I call "place-makers," and those who fund and run places, whom I call "place-operators," to adopt a new frame of mind and equip themselves with the right set of tools for making the crucial places of our society irreplaceable.

-Kevin Ervin Kelly, Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together

be prepared....................

 

. . . the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all.

-Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum

"here to help"........................

 

The frustrations of entering into that Kafkaesque world of chatbots that are “here to help,” or phone menus that seem imported from some generic template, are such that it is worth taking an hour to drive to the CVS pharmacy, or the DMV, or the UPS store, or some medical practice, and collar a human being. Usually they are able to solve my problem in short order.

-Matthew B. Crawford, from this substack

Fifty years ago..........................

                

              Sweet....................Fox On The Run

 

born..........................

 

 So long as we continue to know the faults of our enemies, and to be ignorant of the faults of our friends and ourselves, it is possible for men who have no bad desires to join in the hatred produced by pride and fear, and to contribute, against their will, to the forces of antagonism which stand in the way of a better spirit. Righteousness cannot be born until self -righteousness is dead.

-Bertrand Russell, Justice In War-Time

teach yourself...................

 

36.  Observe how all things are continually being born of change; teach yourself to see that Nature's highest happiness lies in changing the things that are, and forming new things after their kind.  Whatever is, in some sense the seed of what is to emerge from it.  Nothing can become a philosopher less that to imaging that seed can only be something that is planted in the earth of the womb.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Four

adding by subtracting........................

 

Most people are too loyal to their distractions to ever meet their destiny.

The courage isn't in taking on more, it's in cutting off everything that doesn't feed your goal.

Focus requires subtraction.

-Farnum Street, from this episode

without.......................

 

Intelligence without social skills and the regular practice of interacting and cooperating with others makes for a dangerous society.

-Kevin Ervin Kelley, Irreplaceable:  How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together

interaction..........................

 

Nature's approach to growing a brain relies on receiving a vast set of experiences such as social interaction, conversation, play, exposure to the world and the rest of the landscape of normal human affairs.  This strategy of interaction with the world allows the colossal machinery of the brain to take shape from a relatively small set of instructions.

-David Eagleman, Livewired:  The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain

Wisdom.............................

8.   Does not wisdom call out?
       Does not understanding raise her voice?
2 2     At the highest point along the way,
    where the paths meet, she takes her stand;
3 3   Beside the gate leading into the city,
    at the entrance, she cries aloud:
4 4    “To you, O people, I call out;
    I raise my voice to all mankind.
5 5    You who are simple, gain prudence;
    you who are foolish, set your hearts on it.[a]
6 6    Lsten, for I have trustworthy things to say;
    I open my lips to speak what is right.
7 7    My mouth speaks what is true,
    for my lips detest wickedness.
8 8    All the words of my mouth are just;
    none of them is crooked or perverse.
9 9    To the discerning all of them are right;
    they are upright to those who have found knowledge.
10 10    Choose my instruction instead of silver,
    knowledge rather than choice gold,
11 11    For wisdom is more precious than rubies,
    and nothing you desire can compare with her.

-The Holy Bible, Proverbs 8: 1-11

the courage to change...........

 

Just because you've begun down one path doesn't mean you're committed to it forever, especially if that path turns out to be flawed or impeded.  At that same time, this is not an excuse to be flighty or incessantly noncommittal.  It takes courage to decide to do things differently and to make a change, as well as discipline and awareness to know that the notion of "Oh, but this looks even better" is a temptation that cannot be endlessly indulged either.

-Ryan Holiday

determined...................

 

What comes out of your mouth is determined by what goes into your mind.

-Zig Ziglar

Observe........................

 

6.  Go to the ant, O Sluggard,  

    Observe her ways and be wise,

7.  Which, having no chief, officer, or ruler,

8.  Prepares her food in the summer,

     And gathers her provision in the harvest.

-The Holy Bible, Proverbs 6:6-8

consistency......................

 

"Never buck the other man's game, Val," Reilly said, "but watch the percentages.  It is not one or two pots that make a poker player, but the consistency with which he plays."

-Louis L'Amour, Reilly's Luck

waiving.............................

 

True forgiveness is waiving the right to ever bring it up again.

-Sebastian Rusk

up for grabs..................

 

A wave of revolutionary change emanating from the human/AI mind is about to crash into the institutions, inaugurating a cycle of demolition and reconfiguration. The experience will feel excruciating, like open-heart surgery without anesthetics. The objective will be in part nihilistic—wrecking the hated hierarchies—and in part utopian—democratizing and rehumanizing the ruling structures. The actual outcome remains in doubt, but we know that the whole of society, as it has functioned during the “long 20th century,” is up for grabs.

-Martin Gurri, as excerpted from here

Hobbes shows some good sense.............

 

             via

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

 

You don't stop exercising because you get old, you get old because you stop exercising.

-Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Will be reading this book carefully.......

 

Whether you are in your twenties, or your nineties, or anywhere in between, a high-performance brain that is protected from degeneration is your most important possession—especially if it comes with a life-time guarantee.  Until very recently, that has simply not been feasible.  But times have changed—dramatically—and in this book I'll show you how to keep your brain youthful for a very long lifetime.

-Dale E. Bredesen, The Ageless Brain: How to Sharpen and Protect Your Mind for a Lifetime

Trade......................

 

Time is the broker through which we trade our youth and vitality for experience and wisdom.

-Dale E. Bredesen, The Ageless Brain: How to Sharpen and Protect Your Mind for a Lifetime

While certainly not an early...................

 

.............adapter to Chat GPT, I have been entertaining myself with it lately.  The assignment given was: "Write a 1000 word essay, in the style of William F. Buckley, Jr., about Donald Trump and Tariffs." 

     Much fun resulted.  Here are a few paragraphs:

 I am, as the reader may know, no neophyte in the realm of economic dialectics. I have, with considerable constancy, allied myself with the venerable edifice of classical liberal economics—an edifice first sketched by Smith and polished by the manicured hands of Hayek and Friedman. It is from the lofty watchtower of this ideological architecture that I peer, somewhat dyspeptically, at the resurgent specter of protectionism, not as it was once preached by wool-coated McKinleyites or argued by ink-smudged populists, but as it is now theatrically brandished by one Donald J. Trump.

God, I miss Buckley's use of the language.  Nobody talks like this anymore.

Mr. Trump, whom one cannot ignore however strenuously one might try, has made a veritable catechism of tariffs. With the fervor of a man who has discovered a new form of ancient fire, he has resuscitated the dusty implements of economic nationalism and presented them to the American polity with all the solemnity of a patriarch offering stone tablets. One would think he had conjured the tariff ex nihilo, so untroubled is he by precedent or nuance.

Not an expert on the subject myself, but I think Chat GPT misses the extent that Trump uses the threat of tariffs as a cudgel to bring the "art of the deal" into play.

Here we arrive at the crux of the matter, and I must tread delicately, lest I be accused of ivory tower disdain. It is true that many Americans have been ill-served by the globalization of the last three decades. Factories have closed, communities have suffered, and a certain elite consensus has too often ignored the cultural and economic dislocation wrought by untrammeled free trade. But the solution to this malaise is not to embrace the economic equivalent of bloodletting. . . .

Let us, therefore, speak with clarity: trade, like liberty, is messy. It does not guarantee equal outcomes, nor does it always flatter our national pride. But it is, on the whole, a generator of wealth, innovation, and peace. To embrace it is not to surrender sovereignty but to recognize that prosperity is not a zero-sum game.

adept...........................

The human mind is incredibly adept at rationalizing pleasurable but unhelpful behavior.

Self-restraint is also, on present evidence, not universally distributed.

-Clay Shirky, from this essay on the impact of AI on education

via

the notion of originality..............

 

. . . in the quest for ideas, the entrepreneur should not overly obsess with the new.  That we tend to venerate the original without always penetrating the notion of originality.  Sometimes, if not frequently, the best idea is a refinement of something that already exists or a recombination of parts that no one else has thought to assemble.  And success comes so often in the remorseless perfection of execution.

-Albert Read, The Imagination Muscle

possible..........................

 

     Sony had the benefit of cheaper wages in Japan, but its business model was ultimately about innovation, product design, and marketing.  Morita's "license it" strategy couldn't have been more different form the "copy it" tactics of Soviet Minister Shokin.  Many Japanese companies had reputations for ruthless manufacturing efficiency.  Sony excelled by identifying new markets and targeting them with impressive products using Silicon Valley's newest circuitry technology.  "Our plan is to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kind of products they want," Morita declared.  "The public does not know what is possible, but we do."

-Chris Miller, Chip War

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

Jimmy Buffett Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes

 

Opening paragraphs.............

 

     A cold day in December.  Long afterward, after the assassination and all the pain, the older man would remember with great clarity the young man's grace, his good manners, his capacity to put a visitor at ease.  He was concerned about the weather, that the old man not be exposed to the cold or to the probing questions of the freezing newspapermen, that he not have to wait for a cab.  Instead he had guided his guest to his own car and driver.  The older man would remember the young man's good manners almost as clearly as the substance of their talk, though it was an important meeting.

-David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest

the trail.................

 

The thing to remember when traveling is that the trail is the thing, not the end of the trail.  Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for.

-Louis L'Amour, Ride the Dark Trail

Memorial Day........................................

 

human dignity.........................

 

It's like the greatest painting in the modern world, which is Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son.  The story's in place.  All the conflict and tension are there, but the narrative was in place.  Rembrandt can take that for granted.  Mennonites, Jews, and others there in the Netherlands all connect to this particular way of understanding human dignity at its deepest level.  You go beyond Christianity, beyond Judaism, just human and raw, and le lays it out right before he dies, lays it down.  Now jump to our period where, existentially, we got so much conformity, complacency, and cowardliness being rewarded that courage, they squeeze out.  Now courage is the enabling virtue of all other virtues—all of them.  So, even we Christians, okay, we got faith, we got hope, and the greatest of these, love.  But where's courage?

None of them work without courage.  You can't love without courage.  God can't use cowards.  You can't sustain your faith without courage.

-Cornel West, as excerpted from Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division by Robert P. George and Cornel West

 

The Return of the Prodigal Son     1669 by Rembrandt

    painting details may be found here

Fifty years ago......................

At the movies: Charles Bronson in Breakheart Pass

 

from first page to last...........

 

His life shows, the Yale scholar A. Whitney Griswold has noted, "what Puritan habits detached from Puritan beliefs were capable of achieving."

     He was also far less inward looking than Cotton Mather or other Puritans.  Indeed, he poked fun at professions of faith that served little worldly purpose.  As A. Owen Aldridge writes, "The Puritans were known for their constant introspection, fretting about sins, real or imaginary, and agonizing about uncertainty of their salvation.  Absolutely none of this soul-searching appears in Franklin.  One can scrutinize his work from first page to last without finding a single note of spiritual anxiety."

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Sixty years ago...............................

On the TV: The Avengers hire Diana Rigg

   

in trust.................

 

. . . we who pass do not own this land, we but use it, we hold it briefly in trust for those yet to come.  We must not reap with seeding, we must not take for the earth without replacing.

-Louis L'Amour, The Lonesome Gods

everything........................

 

Everything is a test.  Because how you do anything is an indication of how you do everything.

-Paul Rabil

Creed.....................

 

     This plan for pursuing virtue, combined with the religious outlook that he had simultaneously been formulating, laid the foundation for a lifelong creed.  It was based on pragmatic humanism and a belief in a benevolent but distant deity who was best served by being benevolent to others.  Franklin's ideas never ripened into a profound moral or religious philosophy.  He focused on understanding virtue rather than God's grace, and he based his creed on rational utility rather than religious faith.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

freedom.........................

Instant gratification will kill your dreams.   You have to sacrifice short-term freedom in order to earn long-term freedom.

-Sahil Bloom

start noticing.......................

 

Problems scream for attention while successes only whisper. We're wired to chase whatever's loudest.

Your biggest opportunity isn't hiding in what's broken; it's hiding in what's working that you've stopped noticing.

-Farnum Street

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

.......................................with Scott Adams:

Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.

The office is designed for "work," not productivity. Work can be defined as "anything you'd rather not be doing." Productivity is a different matter. Telecommuting substitutes two hours of productivity for ten hours of work.

I have a saying: "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

Of all the things that influence elections, it appears that information is the least significant. Elections are won by the candidate whose staff members are the most skilled at manipulating the voters. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because you have to be quite smart to figure out the best way to manipulate millions of individuals into marching in the same direction.

I predict that news outlets will try to compensate for the loss of relevant news by focusing on stories that are more shocking and depressing than ever. At least that way they'll get your attention and sell advertising even if the stories aren't "news" in the traditional sense.

Unless you work alone, one of the biggest assaults on your happiness is something called a meeting. A meeting is essentially a group of people staring at visual aids until the electrochemical activity in their brains ceases, at which point decisions are made.

People think they follow advice but they don't. Humans are only capable of receiving information. They create their own advice. If you seek to influence someone, don't waste time giving advice. You can change only what people know, not what they do.

Express gratitude. Give more than is expected. Speak optimistically. Touch people. Remember names. Don't confuse flexibility with weakness. Don't judge people by their mistakes; rather, judge them by how they respond to their mistakes. Remember that your physical appearance is for the benefit of others. Attend to your own basic needs first; otherwise you will not be useful to anyone else.

Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.

A bit over-optimistic..................

 

It is, I think, as I survey the picture from every angle, a simple fact that the chief hindrance to progress comes from three elements which, thank God, grow less in importance with the growth of a clearer understanding of our purposes on the part of the overwhelming majority. These groups are those who seek to stir up political animosity or to build political advantage by the distortion of facts; those who, by declining to follow the rules of the game, seek to gain an unfair advantage over those who are willing to live up to the rules of the game; and those few who, because they have never been willing to take an interest in their fellow Americans, dwell inside of their own narrow spheres and still represent the selfishness of sectionalism which has no place in our national life.

-President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Memorial Day Address at Gettysburg, 1934, as culled from here

Roger Federer's really good commencement address at Dartmouth, 2024......

      "Negative energy is wasted energy"

 

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

 

......................................with Albert Ellis:

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.

You never truly need what you want. That is the main and thoroughgoing key to serenity.

Convince yourself that worrying about many situations will make them worse rather than improve them.

The trouble with most therapy is that it helps you feel better. But you don't get better. You have to back it up with action, action, action.

You mainly feel the way you think.

There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.

Being assertive does not mean attacking or ignoring others feelings. It means that you are willing to hold up for yourself fairly-without attacking others.

There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.

The goal of all life is to have a ball.

On self-care........................

 

Spending your days, day after day, not caring is a tragedy.

-Seth Godin

A few more books...........................

 

.............................in the mail.

thanks Chris

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

          R.E.M.........................Around the Sun

 

On sorting out the future..................

 

In fact, many of its founding faculty were misfits in the most productive sense: outsiders in their own disciplines, a veritable Salon des Refusés. We weren’t solving problems. We were developing solutions without knowing the problems. That’s how breakthroughs happen, at the edges, where curiosity is free to wander and orthodoxy is politely ignored.

-Nicholas Negroponte, from this post

reality...........................

Eventually, reality rears its ugly head, and we recalibrate around what reality permits

-Mark Mills, as excerpted from here

Might depend on who "we" is...........

 

 The bigger the government gets, the less we get in return.

-Brian Wesbury, from here

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

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.

-from this Discourse post

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

A pretty good speech............

Tim Cook's 2019 Stanford Commencement address

 

start.......................

 

Success today starts last night.

-Jacob Emery

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.

-Oliver Burkeman

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.

-Jared Dillian

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

........................................Mt. Joy

 

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.

-George Santayana

Be not afraid of being wrong.........

 

Being wrong isn’t something to fear but rather something to expect.

-Farnum Street

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