shorts, fragments, travel notes, culture, books, stray observations
life in Mediocristan is quite enjoyable. It reminds me of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria. The ocean is nearby, and the climate is pleasant. Never too cold, never too hot.
On principle, therefore, a small short position is in order. Small because we cannot time markets, and small because it's an expression of a philosophical view, not an attempt to make fuck you money with one trade.
against my (acquired) skepticism of anything published in the last 50 years (exceptions: Kazuo Ishiguro's novels, The Selfish Gene), I picked up Nassim N. Taleb's Antifragile.
more data--such as paying attention to the eye colors of the people around when crossing the street--can make you miss the big truck.
in day-to-day meetings and coffee chats, no big deal, but when it comes to making investing or hedging decisions, beware.
in every man's life, however splendid or modest, there are episodes that mark one's journey as a reader or as a person. Reading Samuel Johnson's essays is both a personal and a reader milestone.
for what would so soon destroy all the order of society, and deform life with violence and ravage, as a permission to every one to judge his own cause...
the ambition of petty accomplishments, in which we believe we’re advancing, but a wiser perspective offers the opposite diagnosis.
the assignment of prices by the invisible hand of the market reveals how we value certain things in relation to other things. This unveiling is quite amusing some times, harrowing in other occasions.
”The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.” (The Rambler, No.2, March 1750)
a sword is perpetually suspended over our head. We dread our very guards, we distrust our companions.
the guiding principle has been, and will continue to be, to seek knowledge and beauty in books that have been tested by time. Exceptions are granted in areas of technical knowledge (e.g., physics, computer science)
