Notes towards becoming a better investor

When you step into the Moat of Low Status, you also step away from the grinding of normalcy. On your first day of dance class, you don’t know how to move your body. Isn’t that exciting? You don’t know how to move your body. This thing you’ve been lugging around is now a whole new vehicle — it might move like a frenzied wolverine, or an indifferent... See more

The term at hand, umarell, is borrowed from Emilian and is rare enough for my word processor to display it underlined with a string of pink dots. Literally it means “little man,” but within my tiny sub-community it means “someone who spends time observing workspaces, typically construction jobsites.” I am an umarell. I love watching work being... See more

There is a divine nature inherent to labor. The key to finding professional success and happiness is in seeking that sacred thing. Some people find that the divine comes from only devoting their labor to missions they care about. For me, I’ve found something spiritual in delighting in the minutia of my work.

I’ve been thinking about the enduring, perhaps increasing currency of personal recommendations (practically artisanal craft now if you think about it!) as well as the value of connoisseurship and curation in a culture where unthinking automation has left us feeling drowned in a deluge of content.

I suspect that’s the core appeal of all the... See more

What is neoliberalism anyway? One common understanding of the term describes neoliberalism as an ideology of “free markets” and “deregulation.” But this definition mistakes advertising for reality. A better understanding, and the one Baradaran implicitly invokes, sees neoliberalism as re-regulating, not deregulating. Rather than getting the state... See more