From your lips...................

 

Our national debt is just shy of 100% of GDP ($31 trillion), but we are not on the brink of a fiscal abyss. On the contrary, it is not unreasonable to think that Congress can manage some degree of spending control, and it is not the case that the economy faces a crushing burden of debt in any event, as Chart #13 shows. The true burden of debt is not the size of our national debt, but the cost of servicing that debt as a percent of our national income. Today that burden is significantly less than it was during the 1980s, mainly because interest rates are far lower than they were back then. If Congress exercises even modest restraint and the Fed doesn't have to raise interest rates (which they won't have to if inflation remains under control), then we can gradually reduce our deficits and the burden of our debt

All things considered, things don't look so bad at all!

-Calafia Beach Pundit, from this chart-filled post

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

 

                  The Best of Mountain album

What the World needs now................

 

The algorithms are designed to keep us as “users,” but the world needs us to be creators. When we move from being passive consumers to active curators, we learn better and build a body of work that matters.

-Tanmay Vora

A Great Reset.......................?

 

If there is a common theme running though the actions of the US in the past year, it is fighting back against the institutions, governments, and entities which want to undermine capitalism. That would be a really Great Reset.

-Brian S. Wesbury, from this post

Fun with science..................

 

APOD offers the difference between mid-infrared (Webb) and ultraviolet (Hubble).  If you go to the site, you will be offered both a better description and the ability to toggle between the two views.  Much fun. 

Foggy...................

 

Forecasting the length and severity of war always seems easier with the benefit of hindsight, just like it is with markets.

-Ben Carlson, from this post

Applies to grandparenting as well......

 

Being a parent, Johnson insisted, isn’t about nobility or beauty, pride or pleasure. Rather, it is “the simple, nerve-wracking, mindless, battering-ram process of trying to teach a savage to use a fork.”

-Daniel Smith, from here

via

A whole lot of projecting going on........

 

We have no historically successful roadmap to go by, and in a sense this may be a situation like Hayek's critique of government planning -- that a perfect roadmap cannot exist because we don't understand the mass of individuals we are "liberating", or even how they define "liberated', or even if they really want to be "liberated."  As all of us humans do, we project our own preferences and outlooks and assumptions on people where they may well not fit at all.

-Warren Meyer, thinking a bit about Iran

Simple......................

 

Simple and shallow sound the same until you ask the second question. The person who earned their simplicity can go ten levels deep when challenged. The person who skipped the work falls apart at level two.

-Shane Parrish, from this episode

A nonzero chance...........

I don’t want to get sidetracked here, but I think there’s a nonzero chance that AI never gets much better than humans at most of the things that humans were better than computers at in 2021.

-Noah Smith, contemplating world domination

On intentional scheduling...............

 

Here’s the standard interpretation of this result: Social media is distracting, and if you’re distracted, it becomes harder to maintain control over your schedule. So, the more you use social media, the worse you become at time management.

But I’ve become interested in the reverse form of this argument: the better your planning system, the less time you’ll spend on engagement-based applications like social media.

-Cal Newport, as posted here

On big, shiny ideas..............

 If you find yourself wondering how no one has thought of this before, that’s a warning sign. Chances are, there’s a quiet graveyard of leaders who learned something expensive that you haven’t yet uncovered. Go talk to them.

I’m pro-innovation. I believe in big ideas. But I’m skeptical of shiny ones—too clean, too theoretical, too detached from human realities. The best strategies are forged in constraint, humility, and patience. They’re honest about how many variables they’re trying to solve at once.

-Mike Sharrow, from here

via

How is this even possible..................?

 

....................Roger Daltry turns 82.

Truth....................

 

...............war is a runaway train and we just don't know where it will take us.

Four pundits calmly discussing.........

 

.........................."decapitation strikes".   In the New York Times of all places.

Life its ownself...................

 

....................with a friend called Fish.

 I know intelligence when I see it. I’d recognize a Bigfoot, too, on sight, because it’s about as rare.

prolong and multiply.............

 

To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavor. The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a person alone reading a book that interests them; and all economics, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, are only valuable in so far as they prolong and multiply such scenes.

-C. S. Lewis, as culled from here

downstream......................

 

And that’s the funny thing: so many of our problems aren't even the actual problem. They are the downstream effect of some deeper, unseen problem. And the work to actually fix the problem usually has way less to do with fixing and way more with simply learning how to see it clearly in the first place.

-Mark Manson, from this episode

cognitive patience.......................

...............apparently, we are losing it:

. . . which is defined as the “ability to [maintain] focused and sustained attention and delay gratification, while refraining from multitasking.”

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

 

Ryan Tennis........Pack Light but bring Everything

On deciding...............

 

When you can’t decide, ask yourself: Which option minimizes future regrets?

Then do that.

-Mark Manson, from here

Two humilities...........

 

Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages.  One is the scientific spirit of adventure—the adventure into the unknown, an unknown which must be recognized as being unknown in order to be explored; the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered; the attitude that all is uncertain; to summarize it—the humility of the intellect.  The other great heritage is Christian ethics—the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual—the humility of the spirit.

 

These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent.  But logic is not all; one needs one's heart to follow an idea.  If people are going back to religion, what are they going back to?  Is the modern church a place to give comfort to a man who doubts God‑more, one who disbelieves in God?  Is the modern church a place to give comfort and encouragement to the value of such doubts?  So far, have we not drawn strength and comfort to maintain the one or the other of these consistent heritages in a way which attacks the values of the other?  Is this unavoidable?  How can we draw inspiration to support these two pillars of western civilization so that they may stand together in full vigor, mutually unafraid?  Is this not the central problem of our time?

-Richard Feynman, from this talk

Sounds about right...........

 

Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen.

-Ludwig Wittgenstein

translated as "The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy."

Or a shared drink................

 

The important thing is to sit down at the table and talk.  Some things are just easier to say across the remains of a shared meal.

-Jessica B. Harris

Parrish & Housel, Part 1.............

 

Parrish & Housel, part 2

 

Damn.......................

Your health and financial success hinge on a handful of big, boring decisions, not micro-optimization hacks.

The rightful meaning of...................

 

.........................a sovereign professional.

Sippican Cottage.....................

 

.................notes the times they are a changing';

. . . there are bound to be lots of casualties from the integration of leviathan computational machines into everyday life. It might not be you directly, but there’s bound to be a lot of collateral damage.

For even more fun.......................

 

.....................................write it in cursive.

And just as entertaining...............

 

Our country is often accused of rank imperialism, but in truth we’d rather putter around our own backyards.

Now and then, though, we need to peek over the garden wall and see how the rest of the world is doing.

If we do so today, we’ll find our sitting president, Donald Trump, feverishly rearranging the scenery and props on the geopolitical stage.

If the play he inherited from his predecessor was “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire,” Trump’s new production is an updated remake of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

-Martin Gurri, from this New York Post contribution

trailer for the 1963 movie by that name is here

Wait.............what?......

 

via

Clearing....................

 

When something throws you out of easiness, there's something you need to pay attention to.  The uneasiness is pulling up something that needs to be cleared.  We clear it by looking within ourselves and finding what makes us uneasy, owning it, and forgiving our self because one is a fallible human being.  One has to learn to show oneself kindness in the willingness to forgive.  This then transfers into willingness to forgive others.  Spiritual aspirants must learn to accept things the way they are, not the way they want them to be.

-David R. Hawkins

Ah, de Tocqueville......................

 

     As the rulers of democratic nations are almost always suspected of dishonorable conduct, they in some measure lend the authority of the government to the base practices of which they are accused.  They thus afford dangerous examples, which discourage the struggles of virtuous independence and cloak with authority the secret designs of wickedness.  If it be asserted that evil passions are found in all ranks of society, that they ascend the throne by hereditary right, and that we may find despicable characters at the head of aristocratic nations as well as in the bosom of a democracy, the plea has but little weight in my estimation.  The corruption of men who have casually risen to power has a coarse and vulgar infection to it that renders it dangerous to the multitude.  On the contrary, there is a kind of aristocratic refinement and an air of grandeur in the depravity of the great, which frequently prevents it from spreading abroad.

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

As a long-retired..........................

 

......................lacrosse goalie, I can attest to the critical nature of fractions of inches.  An amazing save:

quick video of it here

thanks rob

In praise (sort of) of........................

 

...............................us baby boomers:

It’s also true that Father Time is undefeated.

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

 

Tim Buckley....................Goodbye and Hello

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

 

Bystanders have no history of their own.  They are on the stage but are not part of the action.  They are not even audience.  The fortunes of the play and of every actor in it depend on the audience whereas the reaction of the bystander has not effect except on himself.  But standing in the wings—much like the fireman in the theater—the bystander sees things neither actor or audience notices.  Above all, he sees differently from the way actors or audience see.  Bystanders reflect—and reflection is a prism rather than a mirror; it refracts.

-Peter F. Drucker, from the Prologue to Adventures of a Bystander: Memoirs

Ah, history..................

 

     In America—a constitutional republic that build barriers, checks and balances, and the separation of powers within the construct of the national government and between and among the national and state and local governments—the Constitution was established for the explicit intent of defending against the failed experiences of past republics, such as Athens and Rome, as well as the tyranny of the monarchy, such as Britain, or the mob, such as the French Revolution.  Nonetheless, even the best minds, armed with the most noble and prudent of purposes, are unlikely to birth a republic forever safe from the relentless manipulation, deceit, and plotting of tyrannical minds and forces.  The threat from within is real and always present.  I wish it were not so, but experience and history point otherwise.

-Mark R. Levin, On Power

Hopefully...............

 

more fun here

Tiny Lessons......................

 

...............................from Farnum Street:

1. “If you have really high ambitions, you achieve great things even if you fail. If you have low ambitions, you achieve nothing even if you succeed.”
2. “You don’t have to be disliked even though people disagree with you.”
3. The people who feel weird, different, and misunderstood are the ones who change the world.
4. Asking for advice makes people think you’re smart because you are clever enough to recognize how clever they are.
5. The faster you reply, the less you need to say. If you reply in a minute, you can say two words. If you wait a day, it’s a paragraph.

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

 

I taught religion once, many years ago, and I greatly enjoyed it.  But I never had much use for theology.  There are, I am told, some thirty-five thousand different species of flies.  But if the theologians had their way, there would only be one, the right Fly.  The Creator glories in diversity.  And no species is more diverse than those two-legged creatures, Men and Women.  Even as a small child I marvelled at their diversity.  And I have never met a single uninteresting person.  No matter how conformist, how conventional, or how dull, people become fascinating the moment they talk of the things they do, know, or are interested in.  Everyone then becomes an individual.  The most conventional person I can recall, a banker in a small New England town, who seemed to know nothing but the most hackneyed clichés, became fascinating when he suddenly started talking about buttons throughout the ages—their invention, their shapes, their materials, their functions and uses—with a fire and passion worthy of a great lyrical poet.  The subject did not interest me much; the man did.  He has become an individual.

-Peter F. Drucker, from the Preface to the New Edition, Adventures of a Bystander: Memoirs

Knowledge is good.............

 

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

-Nicolaus Copernicus 

thanks Rob

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

 

The Pat Metheny Group............Imaginary Day

Ideology...................

 

A group of political activists were attempting to show the Master how their ideology would change the world.

The Master listened carefully.

The following day he said, "An ideology is as good or bad as the people who make use of it.  If a million wolves were to organize for justice, would they cease to be a million wolves?"

-Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom

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

 

................................Matthew McConaughey:

If you cannot stop the lies, become less gullible.

With or without us the future is happening.  Tune in.

May our heart carry our feet.  Amen

Never give up your right to do the next right thing.  This is how we find our way home.

Life's a miraculous journey of false summits until the end.  Surrender to this fact.  And climb until then.

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

 

The Beatles................You Won't See Me

In praise of..................

..........................................constraints: 

Now, people will say, “But constraints are limiting.” Yes. That’s the point. A seatbelt “limits” your relationship with the windshield.

Interesting question...................

 

some thoughts on the question here.

It's whatever works for you...........

 

But recognize that the best writing involves re-writing. The first draft is usually bad and it gets you into the process of polishing, cutting, and supplementing draft after draft and that’s crucial to creating something readable.

Only when you commit to that, and do it time after time, can you become a writer.

Writing is more of a craft than a profession. You learn by doing.

-Michael Wade, from this substack

pairs...................

 

But it was more than the historically complex issue of the haves and have-nots.  It was a fundamental question of ignorance and intolerance.  Hemingway had always considered ignorance and intolerance to be like commas, because you often found them in pairs, and almost never did you find one, ignorance, without its evil twin, intolerance.

-David Baldacci, The Camel Club

Speed and patience..................

 

Speed creates opportunity. Patience compounds it.

Moving fast will generate more chances. But if you quickly jump from thing to thing, growth will stall.

Get moving and find what works, then do it for decades.

-James Clear

On avoiding anxiety-merchants................

 

I’m not going to link to any of these contagious anxiety-spreading pieces, for the same reason I don’t go around actively sneezing in people’s faces when I catch a cold. But it’s fair to say I find the topic a little triggering. Because this basic stance toward life – the anxious attempt to scramble to a place of psychological safety, to avoid being condemned to disaster and cast into the void – goes back a long way with me. So it all feels rather personal, and important for me to say that you don’t, actually, have to live like this. It won’t make you happier. It probably won’t even aid your career. You have the option of living with vastly more creativity and calm than the anxiety-merchants would have you believe – provided you can summon the strength of mind to screen them out.

-Oliver Burkeman, from this edition

Emergence....................

 

The pattern is remarkably consistent. We either wildly overestimate the short-term impact of new technologies (remember when blockchain was going to replace every institution within five years?) or we catastrophically underestimate their long-term consequences. Nobody building the early internet imagined it would reshape elections, create trillion-dollar companies, or leave millions of people psychologically dependent on dopamine hits from their phones.

It isn’t just that we fail to predict which technologies will emerge; we fail spectacularly at predicting the second- and third-order effects of the technologies we already have. Social media was supposed to connect the world. It did. It also polarised it. The smartphone was a communication device. It became an anxiety machine for an entire generation of teenagers. Nobody planned these outcomes. They emerged.

-Nicholas Bate, from here

Or cutting-and-pasting............

 

Many people have asked me why the hell I spend so much time writing for free on the internet and that’s the honest reason. It helps me remember. I hope a lot of people read my work, but if they don’t, that’s ok.

-Matt Lakeman, Thoughts on Meaning and Writing

via

a series of stratagems.............

 

I understand there’s a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons and watch old movies. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid and outwit that guy.

-attributed to Anthony Bourdain

People don't talk this way...............

 

...............(or think this way) anymore:

Among the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my Country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years--a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions all I dare aver is that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected. All I dare hope is that if, in executing this task, I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives which mislead me, and its consequences be judged by my country with some share of the partiality in which they originated.

-George Washington, from his first inaugural speech

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

 

The Rolling Stones.....the Black and Blue album

now and then...................

 

A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.

-attributed to Roald Dahl

essential...................

 

     Play, which I would define as anything we do simply for the joy of doing rather than as a means to an end—whether it's flying a kite or listening to music or throwing a baseball—might seem like a nonessential activity.  Often it is treated that way.  But in fact play is essential in many ways.  Stuart Brown, the founder of the National Institute for Play, has studied what are called the play histories of some six thousand individuals and has concluded that play has the power to significantly improve everything from personal health to relationships to education to organizations' ability to innovate.  "Play," he says, "leads to brain plasticity, adaptability, and creativity."  As he succinctly puts it, "Nothing fires up the brain like play."

-Greg McKeown, essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

pick a story..................

 

     According to Illich, society fosters a consumerist mindset and diminishes the self in the process. The beauty of individualism is lost, like a field of spring flowers wilted to a dull grey.  It becomes harder to find satisfaction and happiness in life,

     That's why we should read books that preserve our sense of self.  Not just buy books, but to read them and understand the world.  Instead of blindly following what the media tells us, we should find our own happiness.  When we're feeling lonely, we shouldn't head to a shop but visit a friend.  When we crave stability, instead of dreaming of a perfect home, we should find perfection in a simple life within our means.

     Be aware of our own anxieties, know how to prioritize ourselves, understand and manage our inner desires, and books will help us find our way forward,

     The media is full of sensationalized stories and temptations.  To fight against its influence, we need to build a 'story vending machine' for ourselves. Each time we need something to lift our spirits, we can pick a story and let it play in our hearts.

-Hwang Bo-Reum,  Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books

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

The Rolling Stones..........the Aftermath album

the soulful gamble known as trust......

 

     Raising our children under the telescope of our permanent gaze is costly.  If you are trusting, you win some encounters and lose others, but in the long-term, you gain much more than you would from distrusting, which results in lost opportunities, says Hardin.  A panoptic culture teaches our children that we cannot take a chance on others.  Unintentionally, such a culture also teaches children that they are to be distrusted, and that we cannot take a chance on them.  Cameras, breathalyzers, software monitoring, GPS tracking, and other far-reaching paraphernalia of the eye take away our children's brief chance in life to gradually, with inevitable stumbling, to learn to take responsibility for their actions.  Surveillance erodes their freedom to fall.  "What I always say to parents is if you are giving your kids appropriate freedom, it will feel like neglect in our culture," says psychologist Wendy Mogel, author of The Blessings of a Skinned Knee.  We're setting up safe zones that are cages.  And we're substituting instamatic fragments for the homegrown mutual knowledge that slowly builds into the soulful gamble known as trust.  We've mistaken the monologue of surveillance for the dialogue that is care.

-Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age

flourishing.........

 

We have sold ourselves into a fast-food model of education, and it's impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies. . . . human talent is tremendously diverse.  People have very different aptitudes. . . . Human flourishing is not a mechanical process.  It's an organic process. . . . You cannot predict the outcome of human development.  All you can do is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish,

-Sir Ken Robinson, the link goes to a 2010 TED talk that is well worth watching.

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

 

The Dave Brubeck Quartet.................Jackpot

To pay attention

 
How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted 
trout lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the 
earth. I think serenity is not something you just find in 
the world, like a plum tree, holding up its white petals.

The violets, along the river, are opening their blue faces, 
like small dark lanterns.

The green mosses, being so many, are as good as brawny.

How important it is to walk along, not in haste but 
slowly, looking at everything and calling out

Yes! No! The

swan, for all his pomp, his robes of grass and petals, 
wants only to be allowed to live on the nameless pond. 
The catbrier is without fault. The water thrushes, down 
among the sloppy rocks, are going crazy with 

happiness.  Imagination is better than a sharp 

instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and 

proper work.

-Mary Oliver, Yes! No!

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

 

Dave Brubeck.............All The Things We Are

Treasures................

 

. . . it is impossible to get high-quality products from low-quality processes. 

-Rob Firchau

Sounds about right......................

 

     In those two days, I pushed out more than ten boxes of books, but within a few months, my shelves are packed again.  Even though I resolved to buy only books I need, the problem is that when I'm shopping online, every book looks like something I need.

-Hwang Bo-Reum,  Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books

The fundamental question..............

 National security, which this conference is largely about, is not merely series of technical questions – how much we spend on defense or where, how we deploy it, these are important questions.  They are.  But they are not the fundamental one.  The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions.  Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation.  Armies fight for a way of life.  And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.

-Marco Rubio, from this speech

thanks Kurt

the presence of the unforethinkable.....

 

Contingency, or the "presence of the unforethinkable," is at the heart of earthly reality, according to philosopher Albert Borgman.  Contingency doesn't make life random or meaningless, he says, adding that in ancient times contingency meant something like consummation.  Rather, it attests to the "unsurpassable eloquence" of a reality that often asks us to confront what we cannot control or even understand.  A face-to-face meeting, which demands a mutual reading of body language, emotion, and soul, is harder to fathom, and less predictable than a virtual encounter.  But by losing the will to face one another, we are turning away from the messy, unpredictable, and real in life.

-Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age

illusions...............

 

The greatest menace to progress is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.

-Daniel Boorstin, Cleopatra's Nose

Let it go...............

 

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

-William James, The Principles of Psychology

Snippets ....................

 

....................from Maggie Jackson's Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age:

Cyberspace, in science fiction writer William Gibson's words, is a "consensual hallucination."

The fear was that the Internet would turn us all into hermits, and maladjusted hermits at that.

"I don't think people know how to socialize anymore, to sit down and come together, because there are so many alternatives.  They like to be entertained, not socialize."

We become attentional wanderers, sated by the mirage.

As economist Jeremy Rifkin reminds us, "the great turning points in human history are often triggered by changing conception of space and time."

A culture of divided attention fuels more than perpetual searching for lost threads and loose ends.  It stokes a culture of forgetting, the marker of a dark age.

Without safety nets of trust or secure traditions, he says, relations crumble into obsession and compulsion.  Or revenge.

Can we Google our way to wisdom?

But what constitutes a distraction? Are we paying attention to the screen or are we distracted by it?  The answer is slippery, tantalizing, daunting, for distraction is in the eye of the beholder.

We can create a culture of attention, recover the ability to pause, focus, connect, judge, and enter deeply into a relationship or an idea, or we can slip into numb days of easy diffusion and detachment. . . . The choice is ours.

pondering the future.......

 

Albert Robida         The Release of the Opera in the Year 2000       c. 1882, lithograph

Their every day will be caught in the wheels of mechanized society, to the point where I wonder how they will find the time to enjoy the most simple pleasures we had at our disposal: silence, calm, solitude.  Having never known them, they shall not be able to miss them.  As for me, I do—and I pity them.

-Albert Robida, from his short story "1965," written in 1920

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

 

The Alan Parson Project. . .Tales of Mystery etc . . .

finding....................

 

Spirituality is not just about finding quiet in a noisy world. It is about finding the sacred in the mundane.

-Tara Mohr

via

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

 

I am not at all persuaded by skepticism.

-Arnold Kling, from this substack edition

Happy Valentine's..............

 

more here