1️⃣ David Shor’s Unified Theory of American Politics (NY Mag, 2020)
“So there’s a big constellation of issues. The single biggest way that highly educated people who follow politics closely are different from everyone else is that we have much more ideological coherence in our views.
If you decided to create a survey scorecard, where on every single issue — choice, guns, unions, health care, etc. — you gave people one point for choosing the more liberal of two policy options, and then had 1,000 Americans fill it out, you would find that Democratic elected officials are to the left of 90 to 95 percent of people.”
Chili's Meeting - The Office US
2️⃣ Behind the Scenes With Buffett’s Biographer (Seeking Alpha, 2010)
“While I was an analyst, he would always say, “Call me anytime,” but I rarely did. I had this false notion that he was busy all day and it would be an imposition to call him. Later I learned some of his closest friends feel the same way, and meanwhile Warren is sitting there in Omaha wishing more people would call him.
Only certain people, though, that should be stressed. Essentially, only people who he is certain have no expectations of talking to him get to talk to him.”
Chinggis khaanii Magtaal - Batzorig Vaanchig
3️⃣ Is Amazon Unstoppable? (New Yorker, 2019)
“Executives at other companies tended to lay out definitive plans. But Bezos urged his people to be adaptable. “People who are right a lot change their mind,” he once said. “They have the same data set that they had at the beginning, but they wake up, and they re-analyze things all the time, and they come to a new conclusion, and then they change their mind.”
How I restored a classic Range Rover and saved it from the junkyard
4️⃣ Q&A: Ira Glass (Columbia Journalism Review, 2017)
“Ira: The thing that happens to me is that if it’s going well, and the person is really talking from the heart about a thing that means something to them. And I’m talking back to them, and we’re understanding each other, and like I start to feel really close to them. I know that as like a professional journalist, it’s not like the right thing to say, to say this, but I start to really love them. Like it has the intimacy of any like actual intimate conversation with somebody who I feel super close to. And it’s exciting because we’re strangers, and so it’s like a very first date-y kind of conversation.
I know this all sounds awful the way I’m saying it. But like just to say to have somebody who you don’t know, and then suddenly you’re talking in a very real way about something very big that happened to them. Very emotional. They really share their emotions, and then I react with my real feelings about what happened to them. And we’re talking back and forth and back and forth, and we feel like we’re understanding each other, and like we’re sharing a thing that’s real.”
The Audacity of Kobe Bryant
5️⃣ The 10 Secrets of Success by Bob Bowman (American Swimming Coaches Association, 2008)
“You have everything that you need right here. I think that you are in charge of your attitude, which is the most important thing that you will ever have. I hope that as you leave here tonight and you start this Clinic (which I think is always a great time to try some new ideas and get excited about what is coming up in this upcoming season)… I hope that you will take this with you: You can achieve anything you want to achieve, if you are willing to learn, and learn to work with people, and if you are willing to communicate effectively. I hope that this Clinic will be the start of something special for all of you. Thank you very much. it has been a pleasure.”
Oasis - '(What's The Story) Morning Glory?' Track by Track with Noel Gallagher
6️⃣ Laurie Matheson, our man in Moscow (The Monthly, 2018)
“Matheson was, in the words of one of those journalists, David Marr, “the uncertain sum of a few fascinating details”. An adept – some said brilliant – linguist, Matheson was a former navy diver who had gone into trade and made a fortune negotiating sales of Australian mutton, butter and wheat to the Soviet Union. Now the secretive “Kremlin-made millionaire” had become the key to Australia’s biggest spying scandal since the Petrov affair 30 years before.”
The transformative power of classical music | Benjamin Zander
7️⃣ The Schopenhauer Method (NY Times Magazine, 2000)
“Love's capacity to make us happy is rivaled only by its capacity to make us miserable. Indeed, lovesickness has given rise to one of the modern age's most dynamic industries: self-help for the brokenhearted. The rejected lover now has an infinite array of options to soothe the heart -- videos, seminars, men on Mars, Laura Schlessinger, chocolate with pecans and pine nuts.
Yet there is one solution that has been sadly overlooked by the self-help industry. It rests, remarkably, in the works of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), relatively unknown today as a guru on love, but in his dark analyses at once highly thought-provoking and oddly cheering. And so, to the heartsick on the eve of what is inevitably the year's most painful holiday (Valentine's Day), let us turn our attention to a man whose advice on love remains a source of wisdom and consolation.”