Imagine the Earth devoid of human life, inhabited only by plants and animals. Would it still have a past and future? Could we still speak of time in any meaningful way? The question "What time is it?" or "What's the date today?" - if anyone were there to ask it - would be quite meaningless. The oak tree or the eagle would be bemused by such a question. "What time?" they would ask. "Well, of course, it's now. The time is now. What else is there?" - Eckhart Tolle The Power of Now
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"The hardest thing is not doing what you want - it's knowing what you want." - Naval Ravikant
"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." - Marcus Aurelius
"You are much stronger than you think you are, and you don't know the upper limit to that." - Jordan Peterson
"In the short term, you are as good as your intensity. In the long term, you are only as good as your consistency." - Shane Parrish
B-1B's flying over Devils Tower in Wyoming. (Photo via) Headline stolen borrowed from Execupundit.
Paul Graham with an excellent essay on conformism and liberty. Well worth your time with many great points. This one about censorship and who would do the censoring jumped out at me:
The first is that any process for deciding which ideas to ban is bound to make mistakes. All the more so because no one intelligent wants to undertake that kind of work, so it ends up being done by the stupid.
He also makes an observation about freedom of thought at universities that rings true. The post was from 2020 but since Paul Graham hasn't posted anything new on his blog since the pandemic its good to play the hits.
Glenn Reynolds on the Army's recruitment problem.
He's 100% right - the damage the Biden Administration is doing to the military may be the hardest problem for the next administration to fix.
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - John F. Kennedy
"Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do), and desire (want to do)." - Stephen Covey
"I choose to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence." - Fredrick Douglas
"Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life." - Eckhart Tolle
Mattel has signed a multiyear agreement to make a SpaceX line of toys. Guessing Starman in a Roadster may be among the first toys produced.
I hope they include model rockets. I used to enjoy making model planes and rockets as a kid and I can see that hobby having a resurgence among both space enthusiastic kids and nostalgic adults.
When it comes to production of real tangible goods - America's not in a very good spot right now. Agree that the data not being on a per capita basis makes the findings a bit misleading. But, by the same token, the data does show why Russia's economy seems impervious to the West's sanctions and why the Ruble has actually gotten stronger vs the dollar.
GM is investing $1 billion in a new Chevy Blazer EV plant in Mexico - not the United States. GM can do what they like but to me this is wrong. That investment should be made in the US for US jobs.
I agree with UAW Vice President Terry Dittes:
"At a a time when General Motors is asking for significant investment by the U.S. government in subsidizing electric vehicles, this is a slap in the face not only for UAW members and their families but also for U.S. taxpayers and the American workforce."
Tesla has shown that EV's can be made in the US. I hope the Tesla Cybertruck sales wipe the floor with the Chevy Blazer EV. And I'm sure it will.
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"I always spent money on books. I never viewed that as an expense. That's an investment to me." - Naval Ravikant
"Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are right now, and we will never be here again." - Homer, The Iliad
"As I know more about mankind, I expect less of them." - Samuel Johnson
"Say 'yes' to life - and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you." - Eckhart Tolle
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." - Thomas Jefferson
Lost in the news about Elon Musk vs Twitter is another battle Musk is waging - SpaceX vs DISH Network.
My money is on SpaceX on this one.
Have a new miscellaneous thoughts and observations post up on Substack.
Have to wonder if the mushrooms were playing Pink Floyd or vice versa? Please subscribe, hit the Like button, and share with others. Thanks!
"To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week's newspapers." Nicolas Nassim Taleb
And I feel better. Way, way better. It feels like a war that used to be fought in my backyard is now being fought on Neptune instead. I feel relieved of my duty to keep track of the whole world, and now I realize I never had that duty in the first place. My brain got quieter and I started hearing myself think instead of hearing myself worry.
Read the whole thing - some interesting research. Makes me wonder what's worse for American society - all the sugar we consume in our diet - or all the news we consume?
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"In politics, never assume that because something is insane, it will not be done." - Thomas Sowell
"The duty of a leader is to serve the people, not for the people to serve them." - Elon Musk
"The lion is most handsome when looking for food." - Rumi
"Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear." - Ezra Pound
Love this. I will try to live an "old soul" life. HT Some It's Just as Well
As far as the environment is concerned it seems hydrogen cell cars would be the better answer but also the bigger shift from the way the world works today. There's only 48 hydrogen refueling stations in the US compared to 49,210 EV charging stations across the country.
Of the major car manufacturers - only Toyota is betting on Hydrogen cars so it doesn't take a genius to figure out who wins this battle.
Have a Five-Step common sense plan to save the Pac-12 up on Substack.
Thought about calling the post Five Easy Pieces but not sure how many would have gotten the reference.
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can't fathom." - Naval Ravikant
"The road to hell is not paved with good intentions. It is paved with lack of intention." - Dr. Gabor Mate
"Someone with half your IQ is making 10x as you because they aren't smart enough to doubt themselves." - Ed Latimore
"Anger is a hot coal you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at somebody." - Buddhist Saying
Interesting app that traces inflation - both overall and by categories.
Overall inflation is at 10.08% as I type this. Housing, utilities, and transport are the biggest offenders (I imagine gas prices contribute largely to utility and transport increases). The good news is that alcohol is at half the overall inflation rate and communications has barely budged at all.
Have a new miscellaneous thoughts and observations post up on Substack.
Today I joke around and talk some sports but there's also a very serious note - on Saturday the National Suicide Hotline transitioned from a 10-digit number to simply 988. Please share that bit of info with whoever you feel should be aware of the change. The 10-digit telephone number will remain active but all calls will now be routed to the 988 answering locations.
As always please subscribe, hit the Like button and share with others. Thanks.
I get that the inauguration was chosen for illustration purposes. It was an event Carter was intimately familiar with and so without much explanation showed the importance of the new spy satellite technology. I just find it amusing the the first use was to "spy" on a sitting president.
The more things change...
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body." - Joseph Addison
"An important daily chore is moving a sizable number of topics into a Zone of Indifference." - Michael Wade
"Everyone starts out innocent. Everyone is corrupted. Wisdom is the discarding of vices and the return to virtue, by way of knowledge." - Naval Ravikant
"To find a worthy mate, be worthy of a worthy mate." - Charlie Munger
Marshall Goldsmith: The Essentials of Leadership (Knowledge Project Episode #142).
Found this podcast to be both very informative and entertaining. Excellent life advice for anyone - not just managers.
I read a study once where the experts explained that putting ice cubes up the rectums of unconscious people has no physiological benefit and can even lead to seizures and stroke. Of course I laughed at such a silly study. And the more I thought about it – the funnier I thought it was.
After thinking about it for a while I came to the unmistakable conclusion that men were completely responsible for such a thing. In order for the study to be done in the first place people must have been putting ice cubes up the butts of unconscious people. Who would do such a thing? Men! A woman would never see an unconscious person and think – “Instead of calling an ambulance for help I think I will jam a large ice cube up the ass to see if that wakes the person up.” Say that to a guy and the chances are his response would be, “What the heck – give it a shot.”Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"Without the first amendment, there is no freedom. Without the second, there is no first." - Naval Ravikant
"Invest the best hours of your day on the biggest opportunity, not the biggest problem." - Shane Parrish
"More the knowledge lesser the ego, lesser the knowledge more the ego." - Albert Einstein
"Getting old doesn't make you fat and stiff. Getting fat and stiff makes you old." - Mark Sission
Some quotes that I hope may resonate with you.
"Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions." - Zig Ziglar
"Has every other century been like this one? Has man always confronted, as he does today, a world in which nothing makes sense? ... In which nothing any longer seems forbidden or allowed, honest or shameful, true or false?" - Alexis de Tocqueville (1835)
"Yelling at strangers that you will never meet is a mental disorder." - Naval Ravikant
"There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance." - Hippocrates
Glenn Reynolds with an excellent argument (and history lesson).
There's a reason the saying "Good enough for government work" exists.
Very cool! Gavin Shapiro's Wingin' It.
Be sure to play the videos.
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land." - Michael Shaara
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." - Douglas Adams
"The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks." - Mortimer Adler
"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." - Soren Kierkegaard
Interesting profile of June Huh - the 2022 Fields Medal (the highest award in mathematics) winner.
I'm reminded of genius physicist Paul Dirac who was distrustful of any equation if it wasn't "beautiful."
Why isn't this bigger news? Oh - nevermind. Think we all know why this isn't more widely reported. (Graph via)
"In 2004, a handful of excited Nokia engineers created a new kind of phone: Internet ready, with a big color touchscreen display and a high-resolution camera. They proposed another crazy idea to go along with the phone: an online app store. The leadership team - the same widely admired, cover-story leadership team - shot down both projects. Three years later, the engineers saw their crazy ideas materialize on a stage in San Francisco. Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone. Five years later, Nokia was irrelevant." - Safi Bahcall Loonshots
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"The greatest superpower is the ability to change yourself." - Naval Ravikant
"Politics is a sadness generator." - Elon Musk
"People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures." - F.M. Alexander
"Our power comes not from suppressing others but from uplifting them." - Sakyong Mipham
Have a new miscellaneous thoughts post up on Substack.
Granted today's post is a bit on the silly side but I'm going to blame travel and the summer heat for that. Please subscribe, hit the Like button, and spread the word by sharing with others. Much appreciated!
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - John Steinbeck
"What I've learned in my life is if someone is acting badly, they're in pain. It's a really simple rule, they're either scared or in pain." - Sebastian Junger
"Journalists aren't neutral - they're the cavalry in the culture wars." - Naval Ravikant
"All of man's troubles arise because he cannot sit in a room quietly by himself." - Blaise Pascal
A Great Horned Owl (photo via). Headline stolen borrowed from Execupundit.
Condoleezza Rice joins Denver Broncos ownership group.
Good for her! I have long held that she'd be the perfect replacement as NFL Commissioner if they are ever able to get rid of human cockroach Roger Goodell. Officially becoming part of the Broncos helps her get her foot in the door and may be the first step in making that a reality.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69208859/ZachWilsonJets_AP_Ringer.0.jpg)
If you don't get the jokes - you need to look it up. But the situation also explains why Wilson picked the BYU COUGARS as his college team.
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
"Liberals claim not to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views." - William F. Buckley
"In any situation in life, you always have three choices.; you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it." - Naval Ravikant
"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom on heaven." - Gospel of Matthew
Have a new miscellaneous thoughts and observations post up on Substack.
As you head into the week remember the wise words of Frank Costello in The Departed, "Nobody gives it to you. You have to take it." Please Subscribe (if you haven't already), hit the Like button, or share with others.
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"Habits are the compound interest of self improvement." - Srinivas Rao
"Some theologians have denied this [the Garden of Eden myth], and I agree with them: that the supposed unproblematic state is a state without creative thought. Its other name is death." - David Deutsch
"Fly you fools!" - Gandalf
"Just set one day's work in front of the last day's work. That's the way it comes out. And the only way it does." - John Steinbeck
Interesting analysis of Elon Musk's attempt to back out of the Twitter deal. The author is clearly not a Musk fan and keeps insinuating Elon was doing this as a joke of some kind.
To me the Occam's Razor solution to this question is that yes the number of spam and bot accounts on Twitter is much higher than the less than 5% number Twitter has reported in federal filings for years. Where there's smoke there's often fire and there's a lot of smoke on this issue. One independent analysis had more than 19% of accounts being spam/bots. Another independent analysis showed half of Joe Biden's 22 million Twitter followers were fake.
If you do want to go full conspiracy theory on this - how about if some of Twitter's biggest investors were also some of the people who were short selling Tesla stock? A $1 billion break-up fee would be a small price to pay to get some revenge on those folks. Twitter stock sits at $36.81 a far cry from the $54.20 Elon offered for the company.
I'm going to stick with the number of spam/bot accounts being much higher than 5% and I'm guessing Musk's team can prove that in court.
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet." - Stephen Hawking
"'I don't have time' is just another way of saying 'It's not a priority." - Naval Ravikant
"We survive, and thrive, by solving each problem as it comes up. And, since the human ability to transform nature is limited only by the laws of physics, none of the endless stream of problems will ever constitute an impassible barrier." - David Deutsch
"Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most." - Abraham Lincoln
Elon Musk notifies Twitter that he's terminating deal to buy Twitter.
"There is no way Elon Musk is going to buy Twitter at such a ridiculous price, especially since realizing it is a company largely based on bots and spam accounts." - Donald Trump May 2022
Once again the Donald proves prophetic.
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is the allotted span for all we must cram into it!" - Winston Churchill
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." - Plutarch
"Nothing like a health problem to turn up the contrast dial for the rest of your life." - Naval Ravikant
"Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life." - Jerzy Gregorek
"The real truths are heresies. They cannot be spoken. Only discovered, whispered, and perhaps read." - Naval Ravikant (Image via)
Mill almost immediately adds "especially if the writer has a conscience."
It was ever thus.
1. The Godfather
2. Brian's Song
3. Misery
4. Rollerball
5. (tie) Honeymoon in Vegas (tie) Gardens of Stone
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"It's just that I'd rather die of drink than of thirst." - Ian Fleming
"Politics are almost as exciting as war and quite as dangerous.... in war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times." - Winston Churchill
"Most of the time, someone saying that you 'have to invest' has a financial interest in 'having you invest.'" - Jack Raines
"None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." - Thomas Edison
Interesting and well done profile of Jordan Peterson. This is the bit that resonated my thinking on Professor Peterson:
"The storm that surrounds him is as much an indicator of how far the elite establishment in our culture has shifted," [Carl] Trueman told me. "The things that Peterson is saying 30 or 40 years ago would have passed without notice. Or they would have been regarded as common sense and good manners. The fact that he's now the center of a storm is a remarkable sign of the times. And, to be honest, a rather depressing and disturbing one."
California is cutting cannabis taxes in hopes of saving struggling pot businesses.
Regulations have been driving prices so high that a person buying from the unregulated "legacy market" is likely to pay 50% less than if they buy from a licensed dispensary...
In plain English if you buy a bag of weed from a street dealer you may pay $25 but that same amount of weed would cost you $50 at a "legal" dispensary. The article estimates that 80% of pot is still bought on the "underground, legacy, unregulated market."
California really has screwed up a wet dream.
Morgan Housel on external benchmarks vs internal measures of happiness.
He uses the tales of two sailors to emphasize his point.
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm." - Winston Churchill
"Sworn to no master, of no sect am I. As drives the storm, at any door I knock." - Alexander Pope
"A pupil for whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can." - John Stuart Mill
"The challenges you face introduce you to your strengths." - Epictetus
Have a new miscellaneous thoughts and observations post up on Substack.
Insert pithy thing here. If anything I wrote made you smile or think - please subscribe, hit the Like button, and share with others.
How Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill inadvertently became a Hollywood soundtrack staple.
Big fan of both Peter Gabriel and Solsbury Hill. Always thought the song was based upon the book I Heard the Owl Call My Name but I'm probably mistaken on that (though the book and song do synch up very nicely).
While we're talking about Peter Gabriel - I should mention that I consider his 1986 album So to be one of the so called "perfect albums" where every song is great and it would be hard picturing changing anything.
Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.
"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we can imagine." - J.B.S. Haldane
"Equipped with his five sense, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science." - Edwin Hubble
"A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals." - Larry Bird
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - Charles Darwin
