("JP")

“And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You ge... See more

I am living a life of which Ernest Hemingway would be proud – a montage of cold plunges in the sea, gin at noontime, hearty lunches, and languid hours lazing in the afternoon sun.

Moving fast, let alone breaking things, is the last thing on my mind.

There’s an old story about Octavia Butler that I often return to: A young man once asked the visionary science fiction novelist the answer to ending all the suffering in the world. “There isn't one,” Butler replied. “So we’re doomed?” he asked, confused. “No,” said Butler. Then she delivered the words that would remake my understanding of the futur... See more

One of the things I do around the edge of the portfolio is mess with the energy weight. Some of this is old habits — most of my option trading career was being active in oil and gas. But I also see energy as fundamental to the concept of inflation and inflation is the largest tax on investment returns. I actually see the core of our portfolio not a... See more

This is a must-read essay by Dan Hill, introducing Adaptive Design: Insanely great, or just good enough? Originally published in Core77 in 2004, it’s a critique of the unadaptable, glued-closed Apple iPod and its non-user-replaceable battery.

Hill quotes Brian Eno:

An important aspect of design is the degree to which the object involves you in its ow

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The way of the tourist is to consume; the way of the pilgrim is to be consumed. To the tourist the journey is a means. The pilgrim understands that it is both a means and an end in itself. The tourist and the pilgrim experience time differently. For the former, time is the foe that gives consumption its urgency. For the latter, time is a gift in wh... See more

What’s missing from our map? Everything else. The forest has been made legible to lumber production. In the process, the entire ecological web of trees, shrubs, birds, bugs, moss, soil microbiota are stripped away. They didn’t fit into our map.

By the second generation of planting, there is a noticeable decline in forest health. Within one century: ... See more

This century is where enlightenment and romanticism must blend. A great idea that is born out of the mind and then goes through the soul — there is no doubt that the outcome is marvelous. If this idea is true, fair, beautiful, there’s no doubt that it is also a good idea. I think this applies to everything.