Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of ignorance and barbarism.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Well put...
Or so I've been told...
The best feeling in the world is being loved back by the person you love
~ found on the interwebs
Also good advice...
Show people respect, even when they don't deserve it.
Respect is a reflection of your character, not theirs.
~ Dave Willis
f I had a nickel for all the useless meetings I attended, I'd have many nickels!
Elon Musk reportedly send this mail to Tesla employees:
1) Avoid large meetings
- Large meetings waste valuable time & energy
- They discourage debate
- People are more guarded than open
- There’s not enough time for everyone to contribute
2) Leave a meeting if you’re not contributing
If a meeting doesn’t require your:
- Input
- Value
- Decisions
- Your presence is useless.
3) Forget the chain of command
Communicate with colleagues directly.
Not through supervisors or managers.
Fast communicators make fast decisions.
Fast decisions = competitive advantage.
4) Be clear, not clever
Avoid nonsense words and technical jargon.
It slows down communication.
Choose words that are:
- Concise
- To the point
- Easy to understand
Don’t sound smart. Be efficient.
5) Ditch frequent meetings
There’s no better way to waste everyone’s time.
Use meetings to:
- Collaborate
- Attack issues head-on
- Solve urgent problems
But once you resolve the issue, frequent meetings are no longer necessary.
You can resolve most issues without a meeting.
Instead of meetings:
- Send a text
- Send an email
- Communicate on a discord or slack channel
Don’t interrupt your team’s workflow if it’s unnecessary.
6) Use common sense
If a company rule doesn’t:
- Make sense
- Contribute to progress
- Apply to your specific situation
Avoid following the rule with your eyes closed.
Don’t follow rules. Follow principles.
The Feynman Method
Richard Feynman's method to learn about any subject:
- Choose a concept or a topic of your interest and start studying it
- Explain it to a 12-year-old
- Reflect, Refine, and Simplify
- Organize and Review
Willie gets it...
I turned in my bed and found myself reaching for you
Frost on the window and the warmth of the love we once knew
I reached out to hold you and feel your breath on my skin
But then I woke up and I knew you, I have been dreamin' again
What's the dream to dreamer?
The ghosts are the love is all gone
What's the song to the singer?
When the last of the crowd has gone home
What's a gift to the giver?
But there's nobody there to receive
What's faith to a lover?
When there's nothing left to believe
I remember the morning, I first woke up to the your smile
With your face like an angel and your body so reckless and wild
The day we were married we promised our love will never end
But you were just crazy, and I was just dreamin' again
What's the dream to dreamer?
The ghosts are the love is all gone
What's the song to the singer?
When the last of the crowd has gone home
What's a gift to the giver?
But there's nobody there to receive
What's faith to a lover?
When there's nothing left to believe
Tonight, I'm alone, and I know I'll be dreamin' again
~ Willie Nelson, Dreamin' Again
Sure, sure. But I already knew that!
You won't learn anything if you think you know everything already.
Humility is necessary for growth.
~ Richard Feynman
Regarding the 'Honey Do' list...
I said to my wife, "You can give me a list of things to do if I can give you a list of things to quit doing. How about that?"
~ Comedian Brad Upton
Indeed...
The problem with virtue signaling is, at some point, signaling your virtue becomes more important than the act of actually being virtuous.
~ Vivek Ramaswamy
True for the Universe AND in relationships!
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
Truth...
Stupidity is knowing the truth, and seeing the truth, but still believing the lies.
~ Richard Feynman
Ten Essential Rules of Critical Thinking
- Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
- Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
- Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
- When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
- Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
- Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
- Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
- Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
- Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
- Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
~ Bertrand Russell’s 10 Essential Rules Of Critical Thinking
But I can't because [fill in excuse here]
Three simple rules for personal finance:
- Spend less than you earn
- Keep everything as simple as possible
- Focus on building an emergency fund
~ Trent Hamm, Money Blogger
But I can't because [fill in excuse here]
Three simple rules to avoid poverty:
- Finish High School
- Get a full-time job
- Wait until 21 to get married and have children
~ The Brookings Institution found that these rules worked for 90 percent of those that followed them
I guess it all depends on your point of view...
Rome has never been this brightly lit at night!
~Nero
But I can't because [fill in excuse here]
Rules for Raising Fit Children
- No fast food ever
- No soda in the house
- Pack their lunch every day
- Sit down family dinner every night. Meats, fish, vegetables, fruit for dessert
- Talk about nutrition and lead by example
- Cakes and ice cream are for special occasions only - birthdays, Thanksgiving
- Get them into sports and activities that require exertion
- Limit TV and computer time
Argumentum Ad Baculum
The informal logical fallacy, where a person resorts to screaming, shouting, or yelling to persuade in an argument.
Also called an Appeal to Force fallacy
Oh, Tommy!
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead.
~ Thomas Paine
Long ago, indeed...
Sometimes I wonder, how I spend
the lonely nights,
dreaming of a song
The melody
haunts my reverie,
and I am once again with you,
when our love was new
and each kiss an inspiration.
But that was long ago,
and now my consolation is in the stardust of a song.
~ Stardust
The point, indeed...
Queen Elizabeth: What's that look?
Prince Phillip: You make a better person of me.
Queen Elizabeth: And you of me...Isn't that the point of marriage?
~ The Crown, Season 5, Episode 2
A twist on Occam's Razor
If you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras
~ a classic saying in medicine
William of Occam said the best explanation of any phenomenon is the one that makes the fewest assumptions.
Simple, profound, and correct...
Discipline is the difference between what you want now and what you want most.
~ Abraham Lincoln
Or in marriage...I mean retirement...
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.
~ General (and President) Dwight D. Eisenhower
Tell me again about how today's political climate is the WORST EVERRRR!
1800: "He is one of the most detestable of mankind" (Martha Washington, to a clergyman, about Thomas Jefferson)1800: He is “a hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, not the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” (James Thomson Callender, about John Adams)1860: ...and a horrid-looking wretch he is! - sooty and scroundrelly in aspect; a cross between the nutmeg salesman, the horse-swapper, and the nightman. (Harper's Weekly, about Abraham Lincoln)1864: Filthy story-teller, Ignoramus Abe, Despot, Old scoundrel, big secessionist, perjurer, liar, robber, thief, swindler, braggart, tyrant, buffoon, fiend, usurper, butcher, monster, land-pirate, a long, lean, lank, lantern-jawed, high-cheeked-boned, spavined, rail-splitting stallion (a compendium of insults lobbed at Abraham Lincoln, according to Harper's Weekly)1866: Grant is nothing more than a drunken trowser-maker!1967: Hey, hey, L-B-J. How many kids did you kill today?2022: Let's Go Brandon!
Well said...
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought - which they seldom use.
~ Søren Kierkegaard
Well...yeah...
Artillery men believe that the world consists of two kinds of people:
Artillery men and targets.
~ unknown
Nelson was one of the wise ones...
The world is not divided by race, color, gender, or religion.
Our world it divided into wise people and fools.
And fools divide themselves by race, color, gender, or religion.
~ Nelson Mandela
It's good in love and in finances
Tom: I love you
Shiv: I love you, too.
Tom: Well, it's good to know that we don't have an unbalanced love portfolio.
~ Succession
Music and Dancing
There is nothing more notable in Socrates
than that he found time, while he was an old man,
to learn music and dancing,
and thought it was time well spent.
~ Fritz Gilbert, the Retirement Manifesto
Wondering, indeed...
Shiv: What are you saying?
Tom: I wonder if the sad I'd be with you is less than the sad I'd be without you.
~ Succession, Season 2, Episode 10
If I had a nickel...
Aegon (to his mother): "Do you love me?"
Queen Alicent: "... ... ...You imbecile..."
~ House of the Dragon
My mantra for the next year...
I choose to be content.I realize that contentment is a choice.I am consciously choosing contentment in each moment.
Pretty good crystal ball...
The North can make a steam-engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make.You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth—right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared…At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, and shut out from the markets of Europe by blockade as you will be, your cause will begin to wane.
~ General William Tecumseh Sherman, 1860
Or with regard to today's economic forecast...
In the end, this shadow is but a small and passing thing.
There is light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.
Find the light. And the shadow will not find you.
~ Bronwyn, in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Rings of Power, to her son before a big battle
And again
Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.
~ e.e. cummings
What he said...
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
~ e.e. cummings
Now, where's my spoon?
Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the old man, "I do that too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
I do that too," laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
The old man nodded, "So do I."
But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
I know what you mean," said the little old man.
~ Shel Silverstein
But I've tried my best!
Learn from the mistakes of others.
You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Too short indeed...
Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets.So, love the people who treat you right, forgive the ones that don't, and believe that everything happens for a reason.If you get the chance, take it. If if changes you, let it.Nobody said it would be easy - they just promised it would be worth it.
~ Dr. Suess
Are you certain about that?
I am certain of nothing.
~ Greek saying, and Anthony Bourdain's operating principle
I disagree!
Never ague with an idiot, they will drag you down to their level and beat you down with experience.
~ Mark Twain
Well put...
The truth is rarely pure and never simple
~ in The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde
That applies to our current outrage culture, too.
Once you've slain all the big dragons, there's only little dragon to fight.
~ The St. Georgian Retirement Syndrome
He said 'stimulus'...
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
~ Viktor E. Frankl
Even relationships?
After you've done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion.And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.
~ Alfred Perlman, CEO Pennsylvania Railroad, 1958
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