Poor Richard knew a thing or two...............

 

The following bits of wisdom were culled from here:

There are three Things extreamly hard, Steel, a Diamond and to know one’s self.

He is a Governor that governs his Passions, and he a Servant that serves them.

A Cypher and Humility make the other Figures and Virtues of ten fold Value.

If it were not for the Belly, the Back might wear Gold.

Wouldst thou confound thine Enemy, be good thy self.

Pride is as loud a Beggar as Want, and a great deal more saucy.

Pay what you owe, and what you’re worth you’ll know.

Sorrow is good for nothing but Sin.

Many a Man thinks he is buying Pleasure, when he is really selling himself a Slave to it.

Tis hard (but glorious) to be poor and honest: An empty Sack can hardly stand upright; but if it does, ’tis a stout one!

He that can bear a Reproof, and mend by it, if he is not wise, is in a fair way of being so.

Sound, and sound Doctrine, may pass through a Ram’s Horn, and a Preacher, without straitening the one, or amending the other.

Clean your Finger, before you point at my Spots.

He that spills the Rum, loses that only; He that drinks it, often loses both that and himself.

Those that have much Business must have much Pardon.

Discontented Minds, and Fevers of the Body are not to be cured by changing Beds or Businesses.

Little Strokes, Fell great Oaks.

’Tis a Shame that your Family is an Honour to you! You ought to be an Honour to your Family.

Glass, China, and Reputation, are easily crack’d, and never well mended.

What signifies knowing the Names, if you know not the Natures of Things.

Tim was so learned, that he could name a Horse in nine Languages; So ignorant, that he bought a Cow to ride on.

The Golden Age never was the present Age.

You may be too cunning for One, but not for All.

Genius without Education is like Silver in the Mine.

Many would live by their Wits, but break for want of Stock.

Carl Jung was once asked.....................

"What do consider to be the more or less basic factors making for happiness in the human mind?"   His answer:

 1.   Good physical and mental health.

2.    Good personal and intimate relationships, such as those of marriage, the family, and friendships.

3.     The faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature.

4.     Reasonable standards of living and satisfactory work.

5.     A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life.

-as culled from here

no fixed rules......................

Money is less about numbers and more about stories—stories we tell ourselves about what matters, what makes us happy, and how we measure success.

     Spending money is more art than science.  There's no universal formula, no fixed rules.  What brings one person joy may leave another feeling empty.  And so, just as with investing, understanding our emotions—our biases, hopes and fears—can guide us toward smarter choices.  Choices that reflect who we are, what we value, and how we want to live.

-Morgan Housel, from the Author's Note to The Art of Spending Money

sits......................

 

In between the numbers, charts, and data sits the messiness and absurdity of the human mind.

-Morgan Housel, The Art of Spending Money

the mantle................

 

Science, right from the beginning of the modern enterprise, was allotted the role that the Church had previously claimed for itself: the primary guide to truth, and the enlightener of humanity.  More than a method, it was a faith.  It remains one today, which is why arguments around scientific questions, from COVID to climate change, are often so vexed and divisive.  Each of us wants to claim the mantle of 'science' for our perspective because of the authority it bestows.  'Follow the Science' usually translates in practice as 'follow me'.

-Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine

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

 

There is a price to be paid for fabricating around us a society which is as artificial and mechanised as our own, and this is that we can exist in it only on the condition that we adapt ourselves to it.  This is our punishment.

-Philip Sherrard

Just back............................

 

..............from spending a week in South Carolina with friends of 55 years.  Highly recommended.

October 5th...................

 

..........and the yard still looks pretty good.

My Sweetie......................

 

................loves pumpkin season.

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

 

Go out for a walk. It doesn't have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn't have to be a walk during which you'll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don't find meaning but “steal” some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn't make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.

-Albert Camus

We just don't talk like this anymore.....

 

     I cannot appease my melancholly commiseration for our Armies in this furious snow storm in any way so well as by studying your Letter of Oct. 28.

     We are now explicitly agreed, in one important point, vizt.  That "there is a natural Aristocracy among men; the grounds of which are Virtue and Talents."

     You very justly indulge a little merriment upon this solemn subject of Aristocracy.  I often laugh at it too, for there is nothing in this laughable world more ridiculous that the management of it by almost all of the nations of the Earth.  But while We smile, Mankind have reason to say to Us, as the froggs said to the Boys, What is Sport to you is Wounds and death to Us.  When I consider the weakness, the folly, the Pride, the Vanity, the Selfishness, the Artifice, the low craft and meaning cunning, the want of Principle, the Avarice the unbounded Ambition, the unfeeling Cruelty of a majority of those (in all Nations) who are allowed an aristocratical influence; and on the other hand,  the Stupidity with which the more numerous multitude, not only become their Dupes, but even love to be Taken in by their Tricks:  I feel a stronger disposition to weep at their destiny, that to laugh at their folly.

- John Adams, from a letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 15, 1813

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

     

             Ali v Frazier           The Thrilla in Manila

 

hard to tell........................

 

Just because........................

     

            A little bit of musical dance history.............

 

splintered.................

 

     The modern experiment has been the act of dethroning both literal human sovereignty and the representatives of the sacred order, and replacing them with purely human, and purely abstract, notions—'the people' or 'liberty' or 'democracy' or 'progress'.  I'm all for liberty, and it would be nice to give democracy a try one day too, but the dethroning of the sovereign—Christ—who sat at the heart of the Western sacred order has not led to universal equality and justice.  It has led, via a bloody shortcut through Robespierre, Stalin and Hitler, to the complete triumph of the power of money, which has splintered our culture and our souls into a million angry shards.

-Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

creators of value..............

 

     Becoming an entrepreneur and starting a business completely changed my life.  Almost everything I had believed about business was proven wrong.  The most important thing I learned in my first year at Safer Way was that business isn't based on exploitations or coercion at all.  Instead, I discovered that business is based on cooperation and voluntary exchange.  People trad voluntarily for mutual gain.  No one is forced to trade with a business.  Customers have competitive alternatives in the marketplace, team members have competitive alternatives for their labor, investors have numerous alternatives to invest their capital, and suppliers have plenty of alternative customers for their products and services.  Investors, labor, management, suppliers—they all need to cooperate to create value for customers.  If they do, the joint value created is divided fairly among the creators of value through competitive market processes based approximately on the overall contribution each stakeholder makes.  In other words, business is not a zero-sum game with a winner and loser.  It is a win, win, win, win game—and I really like that.

-John Mackey and Raj Sisodia, Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business

Misusing the language...............

 

     But did he see himself as ruthless?  Or as a ghoulish fiend?  This is unlikely.  For one thing, the Terror was an old Roman idea: If a roman legion did not do its duty, then indiscriminate punishment would be meted out.  For another, Robespierre preferred to preach virtue as Rousseau, his model, had done.  Virtue, of course, mandated dedication to family, to work, to civic zeal and the dreams of the revolution.  But it also meant getting rid of the enemies of virtue, whoever they were, wherever they were.  From as early as 1789, he trafficked in a world of conspiracy theories, warning about newly minted "patriots," old traitors and hypocrites ("who flatter you today to betray you tomorrow"), and the need for constant purges.  As the revolution wore on, as the gore deepened, as the daily tumbrels bore victims to the guillotine, Robespierre prophesied that for those who refused to adopt virtue, "the Razor of the republic" awaited.  The Terror, he also declared famously, is nothing, nothing "save justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.  It is an emanation of Virtue." . . .

. . . And even as head of the Twelve, he shrank from blood.  It has been duly noted that the only execution he ever attended was his own.

-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800

gone.......................

 

    Another of our friends of 76 is gone, my dear Sir, another of the Cosigners of the independence of our country.  And a better man, than Rush, could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer genius, or more honest.  We too must go; and that ere long.  I believe we are under half a dozen at present; I mean the signers of the Declaration.  Yourself, Gerry, Carroll, and myself are all I know to be living. I am the only one South of the Patomac.  Is Robert Treat Payne, or Floyd living?  It is long since I heard of them, and yet I do not recollect to have heard of their deaths.

-Thomas Jefferson, from a May 27, 1813 letter to John Adams

invested...................

 

The more useful a term is for marking my inclusion in a group, the less interested I will be in testing the validity of my use of that term against—well, against any kind of standard.  People who like accusing others of Puritanism have a fairly serious investment, then, in knowing as little as possible about actual Puritanism.  They are invested, for the moment anyway, in not thinking.

-Alan Jacobs, How To Think

Checking in with.......................

 

.......................................Alan Watts:

. . . only doubtful truth needs defense.

. . . to know truth one must first get rid of knowledge . . .

Logic, intelligence, and reason are satisfied, but the heart goes hungry.

Man, as a being of sense, wants his life to make sense, and he has found it hard to believe that it does so unless there is more than what he sees—unless there is an eternal order and an eternal life behind the uncertain and momentary experience of life-and-death.

If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp . . .

For it is the essence of scientific honest that you do not pretend to know what you do not know, and of the essence of scientific method that you do not employ hypotheses which cannot be tested.

At once new myths come into being—political and economic myths with extravagant promises of the best of futures in the present world.  These myths give the individual a certain sense of meaning by making him part of a vast social effort, in which he loses something of his own emptiness and loneliness.  Yet the very violence of these political religions betrays the anxiety beneath them—for they are but men huddling together and shouting to give themselves courage in the dark.

Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.  Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown.  Belief clings, but faith lets go.

Belief has thus become an attempt to hang on to life, to grasp and keep it for one's own.  But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it.

To "have" running water you must let go of it and let it run.  The same is true of life and of God.

weary..........................

 

     I am weary of contemplating Nations from the lowest and most beastly degradations of human Life, to the highest Refinement of Civilization:  I am weary of Philosophers, Theologians, Politicians, and Historians.  They are immense Masses of Absurdities, Vices and Lies.  Montesquieu had sense enough to say in Jest, that all our Knowledge might be comprehended in twelve Pages in Duodecimo: and, I believe him, in earnest.  I could express my faith in shorter terms.  He who loves the Workman and his Work, and does what he can to preserve and improve it, shall be accepted of him.

-John Adams, from his June 28, 1812 letter to Thomas Jefferson

oriented....................

 

      When it comes to the purpose of the Socratic method, Socrates had colossal ambitions.  He believed that all of the trouble we have leading our lives, all of our dissatisfactions, all of our failures to progress, all of our moral imperfections, all of the injustices we commit, large and small, stem from one source: ignorance.   Socrates' claim that "I know that I know nothing" isn't an empty gesture of skepticism, but rather a plan for life.  It tells you that the key to success, whether you are navigating difficulties in your marriage, your terror at the prospect of death, or the politicized minefield of social media, is to have the right kind of conversations.  Given that we cannot lead lives based on knowledge—because we lack it—we should lead the second-best kind of life, namely, the one oriented toward knowledge.

-Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Live

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

When I was a child, I wanted to live in a pine forest.  Or, to be more accurate, a pine plantation.  We have a lot of these in Britain, sown across the hills and mountains during the twentieth century for cheap paper and pulp.  The tight ranks of conifer trees, planted so close together that most of their branches die for lack of light, and which acidify the soil for miles around, are hated by ecologists, landscape lovers and most of the local wildlife, which barely ventures into them.  Perhaps that's what I liked about them.  There seemed to be some kind of dark, mossy mystery in the maze of pillarlike trunks.  Maybe I'd been reading too much Tolkien (this was a perennial problem), but I could imagine myself pitching camp in there, making a small tent of branches and leaves, wandering the soft forest floor, drinking from streams, becoming something other than myself. 

-Paul Kingsnorth, from his Introduction to Against The Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

began to glide....................

 

He went to find a shooting star
Around the bend that's where they are
I went along just for the ride
Suddenly I began to glide

Standing in a slide zone
I could be steppin' through a time zone

The air raced by there was no sound
We drifted high above the ground
And then said you know this place
And then a smile lit up his face

Standing in a slide zone
I could be steppin' in a slide zone . . .

Help me please I thought I said
Then something happened in my head
Music came from all around
And I knew what I had found

-John Lodge, The Moody Blues, Steppin' In A Slide Zone

image via

webs...................

 

It riles them to believe

that you perceive

the web they weave

And keep on thinking free.

-Justin Hayward, The Moody Blues, In The Beginning

We decide......................

Cold-hearted orb that rules the night

Removes the colours from our sight.

Red is grey and yellow white,

But we decide which is right

And which is an illusion.

-Graham Edge, The Moody Blues, Late Lament

Thinking...................

 

And you can fly

High as a kite if you want to

Faster than light if you want to

Speeding through the universe

Thinking is the best way to travel

-Mike Pinder, The Moody Blues, The Best Way to Travel

Highly recommended.......................

 

. . . humans are "cognitive misers," relying on simple narratives instead of using complex analytic thinking.  The more compelling the narrative is, the more corrosive it becomes to our analytic abilities.

This is so wrong..............................

 

..................More than thirty days before Halloween and Macy's is offering Christmas decorations.  Stop it:

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

 

The worst smell in the world is dead badger.  He'd encountered it on his morning walk down a green lane; had caught the odour without seeing the corpse, but had guessed what it was before returning later with a shovel.  Whether they all smelled that bad or whether this one had expired of noxious causes he didn't know.  As it turned out, he couldn't do anything about it either—the creature had crawled into a tangled nest of roots to die, and it would require heavy machinery and a strong stomach to recover it.  Lacking the former, and not wanting to put the later to the test, Max opted for a third way; he'd walk a different route for a while, and see if one of the local farmers shifted it in the meantime.  Which was why he wasn't sure the badger would still be there a couple of nights later, when he was running for his life.

-Mick Herron, The Secret Hours

Ah, to be human...................

 

           more fun here

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

 

..............................roots (and wings).

a revolution............

 

Law's reputation as a brilliant economist rests on some pamphlets he authored a decade or so after his escape to the Continent.  In his Essay on a Land Bank (c. 1703-4) and Money and Trade Considered (1705), the fugitive Scot displayed novel insights about the nature of money.  Money, he said, did not derive its value from precious metals, as people like Locke believed.  Rather, money was simply a yardstick of value; or, as he put it, "Money is not the Value for which Goods are exchanged, but the Value by which they are exchanged."  This clever switching of the prepositions—by in place of for—amounted to a monetary revolution.  In essence, he was saying that since money lacked intrinsic value it need not be backed by gold or other precious metals.

     A constant theme in Law's writings is that trade depends on the circulation of credit, and that credit was "only lost by a scarcity of Money."  Here Law anticipates later monetarists.  He argued that prosperity could be achieved by establishing a bank that issued paper money, collateralized with land rather than gold and silver.  By severing the link between money and precious metals, Law opened the possibility of a managed currency.

-Edward Chancellor, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

experiments....................

 

Central bankers, who resort to printing money, manipulating interest rates and fueling asset price bubbles, exude a similar air of infallibility.  The fail to heed Cantillon's warning that it's all very well to embark on a grand monetary experiment, but there is no painless exit.  "What central bankers are doing now is exactly what Law recommended," Law's biographer Antoin Murphy wrote in the wake of the global financial crisis.  "From this perspective, it may be argued that, notwithstanding the failure of the Mississippi System, Law's banking successors have been Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi."

-Edward Chancellor, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

Who's running things......................

 

If you walk down the street and there are a thousand people in the street, all thousand are talking to themselves in their head at any given point.  They're constantly judging everything they see.  They're playing back moves of things that happened to them yesterday.  They're living in fantasy worlds of what's going to happen tomorrow.  They're just pulled out of base reality.  That can be good when you do long-range planning.  It can be good when you solve problems.  It's good for us as survival-and-replication machines.

I think it's actually bad for your happiness.  To me, the mind should be a servant and a tool, not a master.  My monkey mind should not control and drive me 24/7.

I want to break the habit of uncontrolled thinking, which is hard.

-Naval Ravikant

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

 

The idea of caring that someone is making money faster [than you] is one of the deadly sins.  Envy is a really stupid sin because it's the only one you could never possibly have any fun at.  There's a lot of pain and no fun.  Why would you want to get on that trolley?

-Charlie Munger

Highly recommended..................

 

   In his seminal work, Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl challenges us to reframe how we think about purpose and meaning in life.  He writes that the age-old question "What is the meaning of life?" is not one we ask—it is one we answer. . . .

     To truly live, then, is to embrace each moment with purpose and appreciation.  It's to recognize that our time is limited, but our potential for impact is not.  It's to understand that in the game of life, how we play those final moments can define our entire legacy.

True for life in general..................

 Personal contentment and happiness, combined with peace of mind and a social circle of friends, are in my opinion more often than not a better measure of someone’s retirement situation than the size and performance of their portfolio.

-Mark Crothers

About anger.................

 

I don't believe in anger anymore.  Anger was good when I was young and full of testosterone, but now I like the Buddhist saying, "Anger is a hot coal you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at somebody."  I don't want to be angry, and I don't want to be around angry people.  I just cut them out of my life.  I'm not judging them.  I went through a lot of anger too. They have to work through it on their own.  Go be angry at someone else, somewhere else.

-Eric Jorgenson, channeling Naval Ravikant

True, until it's not..............

 

Through time and across countries, history has shown that there is a symbiotic relationship between those who have wealth and those who have political power, and that the type of deal they have between them determines the ruling order.  That ruling order continues until the rulers are overthrown by others who grab the wealth and power for themselves.

     Wealth and power are mutually supportive.

-Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order:  Why Nations Succeed and Fail

On human nature and history..........

 

     We cannot prevent insatiable desires from springing up in the heart of man.

     We cannot arrange things so that no work is required for these desires to be satisfied.

     We cannot avoid the fact that man's reluctance to work is as strong as his desire to have his needs satisfied.

     We cannot prevent the fact that, as a result of this state of affairs, there is a constant effort by men to increase their share of enjoyment while each of them tries by force or by fraud to throw the burden of labor onto the shoulders of his fellows.

     It is not up to us to wipe out universal history, to stifle the voice of the past that attests that things have been like this from the outset.  We cannot deny that war, slavery, serfdom, theocracy, abuse by government, privileges, frauds of all kinds, and monopolies have been the incontrovertible and terrible manifestations of these two sentiments that ar4e intertwined in the hearts of men:  attraction to pleasure, avoidance of pain.

     "By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread."  But everyone wants as much bread and as little sweat as possible.  This is the conclusion of history.

-Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms, Second Series, 1847ish

paying it forward...............

 

At every turn, there were people who saw potential in me and invested in my future.

     These blessings weren't just gifts—they came with a responsibility.  I knew I could never directly repay those who had helped me, but I could honor their generosity by paying it forward, by lifting others up and bringing them along the way, just as so many had done for me.

-George Raveling, What You're Made For

Ultimately.....................

 

Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.  These tasks, and therefore the meaning of live, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment.

-Viktor Frankl

still hard..............

 

Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.

-Shane Parrish, from this edition

On Social Security................

 

Ben Carlson takes an interesting look (with lots of charts and graphs) at us older Americans and our real estate, stock portfolios, and social security checks.

However, it’s crucial to recognize that Social Security remains a vital financial asset for a large number of Americans.

I hope we don’t screw it up someday.

Ed. Note:  Started getting Social Security checks at age 62.5.  As checks go, they are not very large.  Was only a W-2 employee for a handful of years.  By my Sweetie's calculation, if I live past 80, my net will be less than if I had waited longer to start collecting.  But, at age 62.5, we still had kids in college.  However meager the checks were, they came in handy then—the time value of money counts.

It's simple, really...................

 

Experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime.  A few major opportunities, clearly recognizable as such, will usually come to one who continuously searches and waits, with a curious mind that loves diagnosis involving multiple variables.  And then all that is required is a willingness to bet heavily when the odds are extremely favorable, using resources available as a result of prudence and patience in the past.

-Charlie Munger

curious..................

 

I was born curious.  If that doesn't work for you, figure out your own damn system.

-Charlie Munger

And the hard work...................

 

....................to go with that look:

Declining conversation skills, attention spans, courage, and patience are four areas that deserve a hard look.

real....................

 

Today, people struggle to find what's real. Everything has become so synthetic that a lot of people, all they want is to grasp onto hope.

-Bob Marley

thanks Ray

the essential things.............

 

As you continue to clear out the closet of your life, you will experience a reordering of what really matters.  Life will become less about efficiently crossing off what was on your to-do list or rushing through everything on your schedule and more about changing what you put on there in the first place.  Every day it becomes more clear than the day before how the essential things are so much more important that then next most important thing in line.

-Greg McKeown, essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Buckeyes have a bye.....................

 

..........but I suspect I'll watch some football anyway.

more fun here

Let us play...............

 

Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them. In Utopia, said Thoreau, each would build his own home; and then song would come back to the heart of man, as it comes to the bird when it builds its nest. If we cannot build our homes, we can at least walk and throw and run; and we should never be so old as merely to watch games instead of playing them. Let us play is as good as Let us pray, and the results are more assured.

-Will Durant, as quoted here

two eyes, one sight...................

 

People talk about their personal life and their professional life as if they are two separate entities.  But the fact of the matter is that we only have one life.  It's all connected, whether we want to admit it or not.

-George Raveling, What You're Made For

messy and complicated................

 

Reality is messy and complicated, so our tendency to simplify it is understandable.  However, if the aim becomes simplification rather than understanding we start to make bad decisions.

-Farnum Street (Shane Parrish), The Great Mental Models

the natural rate..........................

 

"That which they obtain too cheap they demand in too great quantity," lamented the prudent banker.  In so many words Thornton was suggesting that providing paper credit at below the natural rate of interest created the conditions for an unstable financial boom.

In Locke's day, at least, money was backed by rare metals.  In the modern world, however, money is created whenever a bank makes a loan and the link between acts of saving and lending has become more tenuous.

Even though it cannot be known with certainty, it is useful to hold in mind how the world would look if the natural rate held sway; a rate that was set, as Locke imagined, by individuals freely lending and borrowing money in the market, like any other commodity; a rate that accurately reflects society's time preference; which ensures that we neither borrow too much nor save too little; which ensures capital is used efficiently, and puts an accurate value on land and other assets; a rate which provides saver with a fair return and is not so low as to subsize bankers and their financial friends, nor so high as to bite borrowers.

-all excerpts from Edward Chancellor's The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

Us humans.....................

 

. . . the trends show how much more forceful the power of human inventiveness is relative to everything else.

-Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order

a life skill....................

 

Good questions all...................

 In your favour of April 8th, You “wonder for what good End the Sensations of Grief could be intended”? You “wish the Pathologists would tell Us, what the Use of Grief, in Our Œconomy, and of what good it is the Cause proximate or remote.” When I approach Such questions as this, I consider myself, like one of those little Eels in Vinaigre, or one of those Animalcules in black or red Peper or in the Horse radish Root, that bite our Tongues So cruelly, reasoning upon the το παν ["totality"].  Of what Use is this Sting upon the Tongue? Why might We not have the Benefit of these Stimulants, without the Sting? Why might We not have the fragrance and Beauty of the Rose without the Thorn?

-John Adams, from a letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 6, 1816

Apparently........................

 

............................this is our 23,326th post.  Apologies for littering all over the Intertunnel floor.

Trust me when I tell you...........

 

.................the absolute best exercise is the one you will actually do consistently.  Now that that is out of the way, Eric Barker is always worth reading:

The sheer volume of pseudoscientific drivel available on the subject of “getting in shape” is so dense, it could collapse in on itself and form a black hole of misinformation.

Fifty years ago (part two).................

 

................with Any Major Dude With Half A Heart.

It's simple..............................

 

Complexity is easier to sell but the more complex a financial plan or portfolio becomes, the harder it is for clients to stick with it. Simple strategies, when clearly defined and explained, work better in the long run.

But simple is harder than complex.

You have to fight to keep things simple because your natural tendencies make you susceptible to stories and narratives. Simplicity is more of a psychological exercise while complexity is more about trying to outsmart the competition.

Complex problems like the markets or financial plans don’t require complex solutions.

Charlie Munger once said, “Simplicity has a way of improving performance through enabling us to better understand what we are doing.”

-Ben Carlson, from this post

choose wisely.........................

 

All the time you spend worrying about the opportunities you don't have comes at the expense of maximizing the opportunities you do have.

-Shane Parrish, from this edition

Churchill and Bate.......................

Never give in, never give up....................

 

It’s the same three words : don’t give up. The challenging news continues to flow, few seem to know anything factual and winter beckons. But hang onto the powerful timeless mantra : don’t give up. Because you know you and this period has given you an opportunity to understand yourself even more. It’s a time which can be scary, frustrating and certainly stressful. But don’t give up, don’t let anyone spoil your day and take it one step at a time. Grab every bit of freedom you can, help others who need it. Oh, and don’t give up. Ever.

-Nicholas Bate

Hot streak............................

 

.....................................................declared.

a name of mystery..........

 

Most modern histories of mankind begin with the word evolution, and with a rather wordy exposition of evolution. . . . There is something slow and soothing and gradual about the word and even about the idea.

     As a matter of fact, it is not, touching these primary things, a very practical word or a very profitable idea.  Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something.  Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else.  It is really far more logical to start by saying "In the beginning God created heaven and earth" even if you only mean "In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process."
For [the name of] God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could create one.

-G. K. Chesterton, from here

increase...............

 

4.  Where no oxen are, the manger is clean,

     But much increase comes by the strength of the ox.

-The Holy Bible, Proverbs 14:4

Your ownself.......................

 

I never met my greatest mentor.  I wanted so much to be like him.  But his message was the opposite.  Be yourself, with passionate intensity. . . .

Your goal in life is to find the people, business, project, or art that needs you the most.  There is something out there just for you.  What you don't want to do is build checklists and decision frameworks built on what other people are doing.  You're never going to be them.  You'll never be good at being somebody else.

-Naval Ravikant/Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

connections.......................

 

We are social beings, designed to live, work, and thrive within a community.  Our greatest joys, deepest sorrows, and most significant achievements gain meaning through our connections with others.

     As you contemplate your own path, remember this: You were made for connection.  You were made to be part of a team—whether it's a family by blood, a family by choice, or both.  You were made to support and be supported, to love and be loved, to challenge and be challenged. 

      You were made to build a team that lifts you up, celebrates your victories, and helps you become the best version of yourself.  A team that keeps you grounded and helps you navigate life's complexities.

     You were made to be part of something bigger than yourself—a family, a community, a legacy that extends beyond your individual achievements.

-George Raveling, What You're Made For

uniquely human..................

 

We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed.  For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement.  When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves.

-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

a nice pat on the head...........

 

     In Ken Blanchard's book The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, Blanchard calls these types of situations "other people's monkey."  As a leader, you must ensure you aren't accidentally taking on other people's monkeys (problems or projects).  Adam was (probably unintentionally) trying to put his monkey on my back.  I gave the monkey a nice pat on the head and told him to go back home.

     That's the basis for transformational leadership: start with the premise that this isn't your job, it's theirs.  You shouldn't be telling them how to do it because that is their role, and they own it.  Instead, they should be explaining to you the best way to solve it.

-Dan Martell, Buy Back Your Time

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

     softly with these songs:   the best of Roberta Flack

 

Fourteen.................................

 

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

A virtuous cycle....................

 

Regular meditation will support better sleep. Better sleep will allow deeper and more profound meditation.

-Nicholas Bate

opportunity........................

 

While we tend to think of inspiration as bolt-from-the-blue, God-given brilliance, this instant form of ideation tends to be much rarer than the other kinds—plenary, moral, mechanical, and dynamical—that the medieval intellectuals listed.  But most often, an opportunity begins as a failure.  That's why most of us miss it.

-Jay Heinrichs, Aristotle's Guide to Self-Persuasion

Yes..................

 

Isn't it essential precisely to refuse to embrace limitation, so as to surpass the status quo, to demolish the assumption that life as we know it is as good as we should ever expect it to get?

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals

It's personal.....................

 

My observation of people has forced me to the conclusion that personal initiative is largely based on personal desires and ambitions.  The man who appears to have no individual initiative, awakens and moves under his own initiative in a hurry when he becomes obsessed with some definite strong desire or purpose.

-Andrew Carnegie, as quoted here

The art .................................

 

..........................................of living well.

Choices..........................

     The prior writes back, overflowing as ever with spirit and new ideas.  "Like love, sometimes hope is a choice," he writes.  "Of course you will know the great Cornel West quote about that, yes?  The difference between hope and optimism?"  The former is a leap beyond all evidence while the other is simply an attempt to work with what it knows.

     "It's a choice I make," he continues, "There's a beautiful album I heard the other day on Spotify, mostly flute, a little vocal.  Called 'I Will Not Be Sad in This World.'"

-Pico Iyer, Aflame: Learning From Silence

a prisoner of hope....................

 

Hope and optimism are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there to believe things are gonna be better, much more rational, deeply secular, whereas hope looks at the evidence and says, "It doesn't look good at all. Doesn't look good at all. Gonna go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions always against the odds, no guarantee whatsoever." That's hope. I'm a prisoner of hope, though. Gonna die a prisoner of hope.

-Cornel West,  couldn't find the source of this quote, but it follows the same vein as this commencement address

Let me count the ways..............

 

Condorcet wrote as though social progress is inevitable, and wars and revolutions were just Europe's way of sorting itself out.

     His serene assurance arose from the conviction that culture is governed by laws as exact as those of physics.  We need only understand them, he wrote, to keep humanity on its predestined course to a more perfect social order ruled by science and secular philosophy. . . .

     Condorcet, however mistaken in details and hopelessly trusting of human nature, made a major contribution to thought through his insistence that history is an evolving material process.  "The sole foundation for belief in the natural sciences," he declared, "is the idea that the general laws directing the phenomena of the universe, known or unknown, are necessary and constant.  Why should this principle be any less true for the development of the intellectual and moral faculties of man than for other operations of nature."

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience:  The Unity of Knowledge

Smarts.......................

 

The smartest person in the room, I’ve learned, is usually the person who knows how to tap into the intelligence of every person in the room.

-Scott Kelly, as quoted here

Scenes from the back yard................

 

Highly recommended........................

 

bred...........................

 

      There were many specific events that pushed Franklin across the line to rebellion: personal slights, dashed hopes, betrayals, and the accretion of hostile British acts.  But it is also important to take note of the core causes of Franklin's evolution and, but extension, that of a people he had come to exemplify.

      When Englishmen such as his father had immigrated to a new land, they had bred a new type of people.  As Franklin repeatedly stressed in his letters to his son, America should not replicate the rigid ruling hierarchies of the Old World, the aristocratic structures and feudal social orders based on birth rather than merit.  Instead, its strength would be its creation of a proud middling people, a class of frugal and industrious shopkeepers and tradesmen who were assertive of their rights and proud of their status.

     Like many of these new Americans, Franklin chafed at authority, which is why he had run away from his brother's print shop in Boston.  He was not awed by establishment elites, whether they be the Mathers or the Penns or the peers in the House of Lords.  He was cheeky in his writings and rebellious in his manner.  And he had imbibed the philosophy of the new Enlightenment thinkers, who believed that liberty and tolerance were the foundation for a civil society.

     For a long time he had cherished vision of imperial harmony in which Britain and America could both flourish in one great expanding empire.  But he felt that it would work only if Britain stopped subjugating Americans through mercantile trading rules and taxes imposed from afar.  Once it was clear that Britain remained intent of subordinating its colonies, the only course left was independence.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

one archetype......................

 

     Over the years, Franklin had been developing a social outlook that, in its mixture of liberal, populist, and conservative ideas, would become one archetype of American middle-class philosophy.  He exalted hard work, individual enterprise, frugality, and self-reliance. On the other hand, he also pushed for civic cooperation, social compassion, and voluntary community improvement schemes.  He was equally distrustful of the elite and the rabble, of ceding power to the well-born establishment or to an unruly mob.  With his shopkeeper's values he cringed at class warfare.  Bred into his bones was a belief in social mobility and the bootstrap values of rising through hard work.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Not so subtle parenting......

 

     This was obviously directed at an audience beyond that of his son, who was already 40 and the governor of New Jersey.  There was, however, a subtext directed at him:  William had taken on airs since becoming governor, and he was far more enamored of the aristocracy and establishment than his father.  The autobiography would be reminder of their humble origins and a paean to hard work, thrift, shopkeeping values, and the role of an industrious middle class that resisted rather than emulated the pretensions of the well-born elite.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Early industrial espionage...........

 

     His tour of midland and north England in the company of two fellow scientists gave Franklin the chance to study the Industrial Revolution that was booming there.  He visited an iron and tin factory in Rotherham, the metal casting shop in Birmingham, and a silk mill in Derby where 63,700 reels were turning constantly "and the twist process is tended by children of about 5 to 7 years old." . . .

     Franklin had denounced English mercantile trading laws, which were designed to suppress manufacturing in her colonies, by arguing (a bit disingenuously) that she would never have to fear that America would become an industrial competitor.  In his letters from his tour in 1771, however, he sent detailed advice about creating silk, clothing, and metal industries that would make the colonies self-sufficient.  He had become "more and more convinced," he wrote his Massachusetts friend Thomas Cushing, of the "impossibility" that England would be able to keep up with America's growing demand for clothing.  "Necessity therefore, as well as prudence, will soon induce us to seek resources in our own industry."

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life