Many paths up the mountain...

I think when we really talk about meaningful happiness, we talk about investments we make through the course of our lives and decisions in forgiveness we provide ourselves and other people, such that at the end of our life, we feel like we built a narrative of satisfaction.

~ Scott Galloway, in The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love and Meaning

A worthy goal

I hate my life less and less every day

~ Scott Galloway’s common response when asked “How are you doing?”

It's funny if you watch the show!

The situation seems dark,
But if my military career has taught me anything, it's that
you can always give up!

~ Captain Isaac Higgentoot, on Ghosts

Looks like I have work to do

Where your fear is,
there your task is.

~ Karl Jung

Peace

Sometimes, a man has to make a decision that will break his heart but give him peace for the rest of his life

~ interwebs wisdom

Especially late at night

Nothing kills a man faster than the weight of his own thoughts

~ interwebs wisdom

Maybe this time...

"...For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time.

Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago..."

~ William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust, 1948

One of those uncomfortable questions

How big would you dream if you knew you couldn't fail?

it hurts so bad

Nothing hurts a man like seeing himself getting older without seeing any progress in his life.

~ from the interwebs

Same

I love walking in the rain
because nobody can see my tears.

~ Charlie Chaplin

The Number One Cause of Divorce:

Uncommunicated expectations

~ according to Couples Therapists

Jazz...

There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.

~ Thelonious Monk

I'll be okay...

In English, we say: “I’ll be okay.”

But in poetry, we say: “I gather the shattered pieces of myself like broken glass, knowing someday, even scars can catch the light.”

~ Larson Langston

You're a ghost,

driving a meat-coated skeleton

made from stardust,

riding a rock,

hurtling through space.

FEAR NOTHING!

(found on the web)

Spicy! But true.

Science Literacy empowers you to know when someone else is full of shit.

~ Neil deGrasse Tyson

My mantra these days

"Signal versus Noise"

Learn to distinguish between performative acts and meaningful change.

Differentiate between what shocks people versus what affects people.

You'll never be criticized by someone who is doing more than you.

You'll always be criticized by someone doing less.

Remember that.

~ Denzel Washington

There is no way you will experience your best life if you try to operate out of your history or memories of your past.

~ Ed Mylett

Makes sense

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.

~ Jane Smiley

There is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

~ Alan Watts

Comparison is the thief of joy

~ JP Morgan

Two tigers cannot live on one mountaintop

~ Chinese saying

Published in 1997...

The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

~ Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

I, too, feel old...

The father: "Really, can't you see that we are in a loveless marriage?"

Logan: "Everyone can see that you're in a loveless marriage! But you are OLD - that is just marriage at this point!"

~ Our Little Secret (a Hallmark Christmas-type show on Netflix)

Generally a one-way trip

Best Russian aphorism to sum up the challenge that regional and global powers now face in fixing Syria:

“It is easier to turn an aquarium into fish soup, than to turn fish soup into an aquarium.”

~ Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times Opinion Columnist

Dec 2024

Ugh! I need to remind myself this every day

Don't ever say that you don't have time to train. I’d rather you just tell me that you don't want to train, that you don't care about getting stronger, that you are satisfied at being inadequate as a human.

If you say that to me, what can I say? It’s so much easier that way: just say it and I will respect you more than saying that you don’t have time to train.

~ Jim Steele, from the Starting Strength website

Back when leaders were leaders

I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing.

We're advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls.

~ George S Patton, June 1944

Advice when given two bad choices...

If we must have an enemy at the head of the government, let it be one whom we can oppose and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures.

~ Alexander Hamilton, to fellow Federalist the House speaker Theodore Sedgwick

Decent advice

You shouldn’t worry about criticism from somebody that you wouldn’t ask for advice.

~ Aaron Rodger

Hitched

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.

~ John Muir

Well...

A friend of mine told me to shoot first and ask questions later.
I was going to ask him why, but I had to shoot him.

~ John Wayne

Back when men were men

George Washington McLintock: [the two argue heatedly over whom their daughter will stay with] No go, Kate.

Katherine McClintock: I hate you. Oh, how I hate you.

George Washington McLintock: Half the people in the world are women. Why does it have to be YOU that stirs me? [passionately kisses Katherine]

Katherine McClintock: You animal!

~ John Wayne and Maureen OHara, in McLintock

Good advice

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

~ Voltaire

Inspired indeed

Make friends with people who want the best for you

Your friendships aren't just social circles.

They're projections of your future self.

After hanging out, do you feel inspired or drained?

The answer will reveal your relationship's quality.

~ Jordan Peterson

Start with your habits

Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world

Some people complain about everything but can't manage their own life.

Look at yourself first. This makes you confident to face bigger issues later.

Changing the world is hard, so start with your habits.

~ Jordan Peterson

Read online in a retirement blog

The Lone Wolf:

Radical independence is the other end of codependence.

It’s a different way to medicate your pain of not connecting and a lack of trust.

Seems to make sense

Three rules to remember:

1) When you give a government a power, it will never voluntarily relinquish it

2) If you give a government a power, it will ultimately abuse that power to the maximum extent possible

3) Nobody ever complied their way out of totalitarianism

~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Deep heart, yes...

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yep

If you’re bored, go on a walk.

If you’re anxious, go on a walk.

If you lack ideas, go on a walk.

If you need space, go on a walk

If you need exercise, go on a walk

If you need sunlight, go on a walk.

Walking is a medicine

Now you tell me...

Don’t chase, don’t beg, don’t stress, don’t be desperate.
When you relax, it will come to you.

~ Stoic Wisdon

Word...

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.

~ Thomas Paine

A child’s poem

They try to tell us stories of hatred, but I know a better one:

Once, I dreamed I carried love & temperance

alone through the sand toward your direction.

But I never made it, did I?

Long, but worth it and enlightening

Excellent speech by Dr. Marty Makary:

I'm trained in gastrointestinal surgery. My group at Johns Hopkins does more pancreatic cancer surgery than any hospital in the United States. But at no point in the last 20 years has anyone stopped to ask, why has pancreatic cancer doubled over those 20 years? Who's working on that? Who's looking into it?

We are so busy in our health care system billing and coding and paying each other and every stakeholder has their gigantic lobby in Washington D.C. and everybody's making a lot of money except for one stakeholder, the American citizen. They are financing this giant expense of health care system through their paycheck deduction for health insurance and the Medicare exercise tax as we go down this path of billing and coding and medicating.

And can we be real for a second? We have poisoned our food supply, engineered highly addictive chemicals that we put into our food. We spray it with pesticides that kill pests. What do you think they do to our gut lining and our microbiome? And then they come in sick. The GI tract is reacting. It's not an acute inflammatory storm. It's a low grade chronic inflammation. And it makes people feel sick and that inflammation permeates and drives so many of our chronic diseases that we didn't see half a century ago.

Who's working on it? Who's looking into this? Who's talking about it? Our health care system is playing whack-a-mole on the back end and we are not talking about the root causes of our chronic disease epidemic. We can't see the forest from the trees sometimes. We're so busy in these short visits, billing and coding. We've done a terrible thing to doctors. We've told them put your head down, focus on billing and coding. We're gonna measure you by your throughput. And good job, you did a nice job. We have all these numbers to show for it.

Well, the country is getting sicker. We cannot keep going down this path. We have the most over-medicated, sickest population in the world. And no one is talking about the root causes. The Pima Indians are the perfect example. Here is a group where the obesity diabetes rate was less than 1%. The land in New Mexico and Arizona had its rivers supplied, diverted by ranchers and settlers, and the land and the soil was destroyed. The government, recognizing this tremendous injustice, started to send free government food, but it wasn't organic kale and fruit and vegetables, it was processed and junk food. Instantly, the Pima Indians developed an obesity, diabetes rate of 90 percent. And what did the United States government do? What did our health care system do? The NIH dispatches its researchers to draw the blood of the Pima Indians to look for a gene that predisposes them to obesity and diabetes. What are our leaders doing?

The H in NIH is supposed to stand for health. Where are they spending their money on food as medicine and looking at the estrogen binding properties of pesticides that are driving our fertility rates down? They're funding research in Wuhan, China, and they're funding research on a new food compass to replace the misinformation they put out with the food pyramid, telling us lucky charms is healthier than steak. Somebody has got to speak up. Maybe we need to talk about school lunch programs not just putting every kid on obesity drugs like Ozempic.

Maybe we need to talk about treating diabetes with cooking classes, not just throwing insulin at everybody. Maybe we need to talk about environmental exposures that cause cancer, not just the chemo to treat it. We've gotta talk about food as medicine and research these areas. 20% of our nation's kids are on medication. And as you heard, half are obese or overweight. Are they more disobedient than children in Japan or have we poisoned the food supply? Is this a chronic disease epidemic that has been a direct result of what adults have done to children?

We like to blame people for their diseases, but maybe we need to look inward. We see all these shiny objects thrown at us. Politicians talk about, oh, we've got a new healthcare proposal. Medicare can now negotiate the prices of ten generic drugs. Don't be fooled. These are things in the periphery. It's not to say they don't have merits, but the proposed program savings in year one by their own description is six billion dollars. In a four point five trillion dollar economy that's expanding at eight percent per year in the commercial sector, that's a two hundred billion dollar expansion, we save six billion dollars.

The best way to lower drug costs in the United States are to stop taking drugs we don't need."