Never apologize, never explain.

Those who care don’t matter,

Those who matter don’t care.

I thought I saw this mashup of two sayings in a Neil Gaiman book (American Gods?), but for the life of me I can’t find it phrased quite like that anywhere online. Did I imagine it?

Want to read: On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt 📚

Planning to re-read in light of the impending AI-driven explosion of BS, or AIDEBS. Certain areas of human activity have always more prone to BS generation, but it has slowly seeped everywhere. Time to fight it.

Finished reading: The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy by Michael Lewis 📚

Anecdotes about federal employee life which don’t amount to much data, but do paint a bleak picture of figthing the buearacracy within and the doubters without for little to no recognition.

Fooled by randomness, tornado edition (from The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis) 📚

Finished reading: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow 📚

Three remarkable achievements here: Hamilton’s for having lived the life he did, Chernow’s for assembling his remarkable tale, and Miranda’s for distilling and rearranging it into a Shakespearean work of art. Will read again.

In the late 1700s, America’s founding fathers had a fight over the best treatment for yellow fever, then sweeping though Philadelphia. Republicans preferred bloodletting and purges; Federalists took a more conservative approach.

If it’s any consolation, the country survived.

I love Hamilton the musical, but the opening 5 minutes didn’t quite capture the absolute horror of his tween years. Yikes.

Pre-weekend reading: How to nurture a personal library. Just lovely.

📚From The Complacent Class by Tyler Cowen, February 2017.

📚 The last paragraph of the last chapter of Fooled by Randomness, and I can’t read it without thinking about Norm Macdonald.