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On the Necessity of Rest and Relaxation
Greg McKeown, from his book, Essentialism:
If you believe being overly busy and overextended is evidence of productivity, then you probably believe that creating space to explore, think, and reflect should be kept to a minimum. Yet these very activities are the antidote to the nonessential busyness that infects so many of us. Rather than trivial diversions, they are critical to distinguishing what is actually a trivial diversion from what is truly essential.
HT: Shawn Blanc
Socially Accepted Disassociation
Reading is socially accepted disassociation. You flip a switch and you’re not there anymore. It’s better than heroin. More effective and cheaper and legal.
― Mary Karr
HT: Patrick Rhone
Stumbling Off Alone
JK Rowling on writing.
I haven’t got ten rules that guarantee success, although I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end… So forget the ‘must do’s’ and concentrate on the ‘you probably won’t get far withouts’…
Trump Doesn’t Understand Consequences
Jonathan Chait, writing in New York Magazine, outlines what everyone who’s paying attention already sees―Trump bumbled his way to a government shutdown with no end game in sight, with a losing hand, and with members of his party looking to break ranks at their earliest opportunity.
The reality is that the effects of a shutdown compound over time. Government agencies can creatively stretch their budgets to mask gaps in funding, but at some point, their capacity to maintain services snaps. The relationship between the length of a shutdown and its impact is not linear. A 30-day shutdown is not ten times as damaging as a three-day shutdown. It is probably 100 times as damaging.
The impending reality of millions of Americans going hungry and homeless is just one aspect of the horrors that await us. At some point, the shutdown will impinge upon Trump’s C-suite constituency. Employees of the Transportation Security Administration have had to work without pay, but that cannot continue indefinitely. Already, employees at some airports have begun staging sick-outs. At some point, air travel will grind to a halt, and with it large segments of the economy. By next month, tax refunds will be in jeopardy.
Now this evening Trump will be given valuable television time to tell those who tune in that The Wall™ will keep us safe and those against the wall want terrorists, rapists, and drugs to come through our porous southern border. I’m sure a rebuttal is being prepared right now, but it can’t be delivered by Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Shumer. Both are important politicians, but they aren’t particularly photogenic and they aren’t speakers that inspire.
If it was up to me (and it isn’t), I’d have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez deliver it. There isn’t anyone who gets the right’s panties in a bunch more. They fear her. They don’t understand her. She is smart, a woman of color, telegenic and will speak in a language everyone will understand. She’s the perfect foil.
Coolest Things I Learned in 2018
David Perell writes a weekly email called the Monday Musings. He says the most popular part of the newsletter is a section called “Coolest Things I Learned This Week.”
It’s fun and eclectic, interesting and intriguing. This is a collection of the most popular insights I shared in 2018.
He’s not wrong.
Reboot 2019
Nicholas Bate has finished his seven days of rebooting for 2019. They are pretty great.
A Prediction
Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing presents a prediction by Fred Wilson found in his email newsletter, A VC. Wilson is a venture capitalist who invested in Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Zynga, and Kickstarter. Frauenfelder quotes Wilson’s prediction from one of his recent issues:
I believe that we will have a different President of the United States by the end of 2019. The catalyst for this change will be a devastating report issued by Robert Mueller that outlines a history of illegal activities by our President going back decades, including in his campaign for President.
The House will react to Mueller’s report by voting to impeach the President. Which will set up a trial in the Senate. That trial will go so badly for the President that he will, like Nixon before him, negotiate a resignation that will lead to him and those close to him being pardoned for all actions, and Mike Pence will become the President of the United States sometime in 2019.
I believe this drama will play out through most of 2019. I expect the Mueller report to be issued sometime in the late winter/early spring and I expect an impeachment vote by the House before the summer, leading to a trial in the Senate in the second half of the year.
The drama in Washington will have serious impacts to the economy in the United States starting with our capital markets.
Wilson predicted an interesting end game for the Trump Administration. Personally, I don’t think it’s very likely. First off, I don’t think the State crimes that I fear will be uncovered in the Mueller investigations are going to be negotiated away. Secondly, the belief that Mike Pence has not been privy to these crimes seems incredibly far-fetched. There’s just no way he’s clean as a whistle in any of this. Can you imagine a scenario where both Trump and Pence are arrested and indicted on Federal crimes and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi assumes the Presidency? It would be political chaos
Lastly and most importantly, Wilson predicts a Senate impeachment trial that will go badly for Trump. There is no evidence that it would. Until there are real cracks in the support of Trump by the Republican base, and I doubt we will see them, then an impeachment trial would be no more effective against Trump than it was against Bill Clinton in the 90s for potentially less criminal activity.
The only way Trump is removed from office is by voting. Democrats need to nominate a more charismatic, dynamic, and entertaining candidate than Trump. As of right now, I’m not sure who that is? Beto O’Roarke?
The Best Judge
I’m not sure why he hasn’t been asked yet, but Stevie Wonder would be the best judge on The Voice.
83 Things That Blew Our Minds in 2018
Here is a fun list of the most extreme, most sobering, and zaniest facts The Atlantic’s science, technology, and health reporters learned this year. Here are a couple of favorites:
Most “Himalayan” pink salt is from the Punjab area of Pakistan, not the actual Himalayas.
Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot is shrinking.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal caused 42 percent of Facebook users to change their behavior on the platform, according to a survey conducted by The Atlantic. Ten percent of those people deleted or deactivated their accounts.
The Wall
Matt Yglesias, writing for Vox, has an idea why the government shutdown is not likely to get resolved anytime soon.
You should read the whole thing, but basically his thesis is everyone on both sides of the aisle (except Trump) thinks the wall idea is stupid and expensive. Democrats might give Trump funding for something in return worth five billion dollars. DREAMers citizenship might be worth it. However, Republicans don’t want to give up something like that for something they don’t believe in. Hence, nothing getting done.
This might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back regarding Republicans supporting Trump. I mean, Democrats shouldn’t budge one inch unless they get something of equal value in return. Republicans should abandon the sinking ship that is the Trump Administration and start thinking about how they can cut him loose and not get cremated in 2020.
Digital Tickets
Kelsey McKinney, in Deadspin, writes an incredible screed about digital tickets. In short, she hates them. I love her reason why.
Deep Focusing
Matthew Lang is getting set for 2019.
I’m clearing the desk, sorting out notebooks, reviewing app subscriptions, getting a list of books to read and considering what to focus on for 2019. I’ve been all over the place the last few years, time for some deep focusing.
That’s my upcoming weekend.
Thank You Notes from Josh Whitman
With apologies to The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, University of Illinois Athletic Director Josh Whitman gives us a sneak peek of him catching up with his correspondence.
Survival Instinct
Will Cockrell and Peter Frick-Wright, at Outside Online, collect several harrowing stories of survival. They are short stories of incredible perseverance.
How Much of the Internet is Fake?
Apparently, you shouldn’t believe anything on the internet. Who knew? Max Read explains in NY Mag, there’s a good chance anything you encounter on the internet is fake, including the metrics, the people, the content, and the businesses. It isn’t going away anytime soon either.
Fixing that would require cultural and political reform in Silicon Valley and around the world, but it’s our only choice. Otherwise we’ll all end up on the bot internet of fake people, fake clicks, fake sites, and fake computers, where the only real thing is the ads.
The 10 Best Saturday Night Live Sketches of 2018
Matthew Love writing in Vulture outlines his picks for the ten best Saturday Night Live sketches of 2018. I watched nearly every episode this past season and he’s spot on with his list.
Home Alone Again
Macauley Culkin is certainly having some fun these days. Here he is as a grown up Kevin McCallister, but not quite alone anymore since Google Assistant is there.
Remove.bg
This is a pretty cool online tool I learned about on Laughing Squid.
Remove.bg is a free service that removes background images from photos in five seconds or less. The site employs a clever API that determines and separates foreground from the discarded background. The only caveat at this time is that it only works on photos with people or faces.
I’m sure there are plenty of examples how this could be useful.
What Does the 2018 Vote Say About 2020?
Kevin Drum was wondering what the 2018 vote totals might mean in 2020. Luckily, Nate Silver had a similar thought and created a pretty cool map of the 2018 Congressional Popular Vote by Party and Converted to Electoral Votes.
What caught my eye aside from Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin hopefully turning back blue, was what Drum said about this whole political landscape.
This is all part and parcel of my belief that Donald Trump was something of a fluke and Republicans know perfectly well that they’re demographically doomed. It’s true that a lot of people—including me—have been saying this for a long time, and it’s continued not to come true. So why should it come true now? That’s simple: the non-white share of the population really does keep going up and Trump has now irreparably identified Republicans as the party of white racism. It’s hard for me to see him winning in 2020, and it’s hard for me to see the Republican Party winning much of anything for the decade after that. Somehow they need to reinvent themselves as a conservative party sans racism, and that’s going to take a while.
I want to believe, but I just don’t know.
The Unseen and the Unspoken
“The unseen and the unspoken may be some of the most powerful forces in your life. See if you can sense them.”
– Michael Wade