Optimistic infection..................

 Much of modern society, including our endlessly fragmented media, protects us from having to truly engage with those who don’t share our politics.

That’s why the development of a political rift between the genders is so promising. What’s the most compelling common project of all? Sex - sex and love. Short of a mass conversion to homosexuality, many or most of these people are still going to hook up together and form partnerships and families, caveats about declining birth rates aside. Conservative-leaning young men who only seek out conservative-leaning young women will be fishing in a small pool; liberal women will only diminish the size of their pool if they stick to men who are as liberal as they are. Both sides therefore have a powerful incentive to forge relationships with people who hold political views different to their own. They can then infect each other with their different ideas, generating new syntheses, and moving us all along.

-as culled from this Ian Leslie post

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On having skin in the game................

 Back in the 1950s, when the focal practice of baking was displaced by the advent of cake mixes, Betty Crocker learned quickly that it was good business to make the mix not quite complete.  The baker felt better about her cake if she was required to add an egg to the mix.

-Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soul Craft

Superpowers.....................

 It’s tempting to want to find the one big skill that will set you apart. But most incredible things come from compounding, and compounding isn’t intuitive because the incremental inputs are never exciting on their own. . . . Most things that look like superpowers are just a bunch of ordinary skills mixed together at the right time.

-Morgan Housel