Here be monsters..................

Musk had to be destroyed, or others might start to believe that they could also defy the groupthink. . . .

On a much higher level, Musk seems to have felt the same liberating aspects of being declared persona non grata. They turned Musk into the very monster they feared.

-Jonathan Turley

Be careful what you pray for........................

 

          more fun here

fragility.........................

 

. . . the dissociative or abstract quality of children's television in general these days—makes it an ideal vehicle for psychological adjustment; for constructing and managing the kind of selves that society requires, without meddling interference from the nature of things. . . . when dumb nature is understood to be threatening to our freedom as rational beings, it becomes attractive to construct a virtual reality that will be less so, . . .With this comes fragility—that of a self that can't tolerate conflict and frustration.  And this fragility, in turn, makes us more pliable to whoever can present the most enthralling representations that save us from direct contact with the world.

-Matthew B. Crawford,  The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming An Individual In An Age Of Distraction

bees.............

 If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey, it will yield us bees.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay Prudence

This qualifies.......................

 ................as dangerous behavior today:

It seemed like a good opportunity to understand the crux of this conflict and hear multiple perspectives directly from those who hold them, as opposed to how they’re described by others. I listened, I found it enlightening, and I shared it.

-Mo Perry, from here

thanks Patrick

What happens when.......................

 .............................money is free?  A list of eleven things here.

We experienced a decade of quantitative easing and declining interest rates that culminated with an unprecedented multi-trillion-dollar infusion of capital in 2020. But three years later, the party had to end.

The Fed is raising rates, money isn't free anymore, and companies have to once again rediscover the lost art of "turning a profit." Outrageous stuff, isn't it?

-via

A veneer really......................

 Everywhere in the West there are subversive minorities who, sheltered by our humanitarianism and our sense of justice, hold the incendiary torches ready, with nothing to stop the spread of their ideas except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population.  One should not overestimate the thickness of this stratum.

-C. G. Jung, from his 1957 work, The Undiscovered Self

Unplugged...............................

  “I do not see that computers are bringing us one step nearer to anything that does matter to me: peace, economic justice, ecological health, political honesty, family and community stability, good work.”

-Wendell Berry, from here

Be careful out there......................

 Ben’s rule number one of the unfortunate realities of the investment business is a talented sales staff will trump a talented investment staff when attracting capital from investors.

-Ben Carlson, from his Investments as a Status Symbol post

My favorite optimist..................

…........................…….takes a turn toward pessimism:

It is very easy, in other words, to bet on the tendency of journalists and their readers to engage in a competitive auction of unjustified alarm. “The whole aim of practical politics,” said H.L. Mencken, “is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” And no, the fact that the millennium bug was a damp squib was not because we were well prepared; some countries and industries did nothing and were still fine.

So why don’t I think this hobgoblin is imaginary? First, because lethal plagues have a long track record. From the plague of Justinian to the Black Death to the Spanish flu of 1918 to the HIV epidemic, new diseases have proved they can burn through the human population with frightening efficiency. It’s true we have got better at eradicating infectious diseases through vaccinations, pills and public health, but most viruses are still very hard to cure and some are very easy to catch.

On self-fulfilling prophesies........

         via

Sacrificial...........................

To the disciples' embarrassment the Master once told a bishop that religious people have a natural bent for cruelty.

"Why?" demanded the disciples after the bishop had gone.

"Because they all too easily sacrifice persons for the advancement of a purpose," said the Master.

-Anthony de Mello,  One Minute Wisdom

About the "Butterfly Effect"......................

Instead, we should humbly evaluate to what extent it is possible to steer complex systems at all.

Isn't it that "humbly" part that causes us all the trouble?

via

Lessons learned...................

"Never taunt your enemies; especially when they are more numerous and have been drinking."

-David Warren, from this post (in which he sent me scurrying to the dictionary, looking up the word usufructuary)

Meaning through caring.................

"I understand that people want there to be meaning in their lives. But you don’t necessarily need altered states of consciousness to find meaning. You can find meaning from caring – about family, friends, art, science, sports, philosophy, religion, politics, nature, you name it. My guess is that the more you care about what you are close to, like your family, and the less you try to derive meaning from caring about distant phenomena, like celebrities or politics, the better off all of us are.

-Arnold Kling, as extracted from here

Handle with care.....................

It's fun to think about the future.  It's easy to ruminate on the past.  It's harder to put the energy into what's in front of us right now at this moment - especially if it's something we don't want to do. ... There is an old saying:  "How you handle anything is how you do everything."  It's true.  How you handle today is how you will handle every day.  How you handle this minute is how you'll handle every minute.

-Ryan Holiday, from today's entry in The Daily Stoic

Interesting times.................

"Many of the qualities that make Trump seemingly unfit for the presidency in fact increase his attractiveness as a weapon in the hands of a mutinous public:  his utter lack of experience, for example, his disdain for history and tradition, even his vulgarity.  The people who voted for Trump expect him to humble the elites and break a lot of institutional crockery in the process.  They demand different."

-Martin Gurri, as culled from here

Choose wisely......................

We are not our thoughts. Nope, quite the opposite.

We have a constant stream of thoughts meandering through our minds. That’s part of being human. However, we get to choose which of those to engage with.

Author and blogger Pam Grout has a brilliant analogy for thoughts: They’re like a line of ants marching across your picnic blanket. You can choose to observe them as they keep on marching straight off the other side of the blanket and disappear, or you can choose to scoop them up and interact with them. Make them your focus. Fuss over them. And they’ll probably bite you too.

But there’s your power: It’s your choice.

You decide which thoughts you pay attention to.

Because thoughts come and go. All the time. And that’s normal.

-as liberated from here

To the glory................................

.....................................................................that is INK.

On creeptitude................................

......................................Our man in Maine has a few thoughts:


Twitter is really, really creepy. Uber was creepy long before you found out exactly how it was creepy. The only human thing about anyone who worked there was their hamhanded attempts to grope the help, now that I think of it. When that's the top of your interpersonal heap, Dante Alighieri should write your yearly reports. Facebook, and the avaricious little twerp that runs it, is the creepiest thing I've ever encountered on this world, and I've renovated apartments that had a dead body in them. Google is creepy turtles, all the way down.