In Search of the Perfect Investment

I feel great. I like this book which I’m reading:

It begins:

Over the last twenty years, the cost of launching a new business has come down by a factor of nearly 100, due largely to the proliferation of open source tools and the Internet’s many applications to allow entrepreneurs to start some businesses today for as little as $5,000.

The New York Times wrote a review of two books: “The right side of history” by Ben Shapiro and “Clear and present safety“, by Michael Cohen and Micah Zenko:

Theclosest thing America has to a national ideology today may be neurotic safetyism, the doctrine that the country’s children and college students and homeland are fragile and besieged by danger. … “The American public is being fed, by politicians and pundits alike, a steady diet of threat inflation that has made them deeply fearful of the world outside their borders,” they write. Fearmongering builds power for politicians and pundits, profits for media companies and defense contractors and publicity for social activists and reformers. The harms include swollen defense budgets, counterproductive military interventions, wasted resources (think: border wall) and demagoguery’s toll on democracy itself.

… Cohen and Zenko march through the evidence … their case has never been more apt and important than it is right now, when a professional fearmonger leads the country. Recall President Trump’s Inaugural Address, with its theme of “American carnage.” Or his first speech to a joint session of Congress, when he lied point-blank about immigrant terrorism. Or any of a thousand other examples.

Next time you hear the words “existential threat” from a politician, hide the silver.

The greater threat to American safety is demagogic safetyism, or, as another American president said in much harder times, fear itself.

Useful stuff

+ Don’t wear your Apple AirPods in the gym. They’re not water or sweat-proof.

+ The smartphone cameras have become an amazing tools for design, insurance, checking, buying, confirming, etc. Susan and I document everything with photos.

+ Please don’t confuse “it’s” and “its” in your investor presentations. It makes you look illiterate and your shiny new company loses appeal.

+ Everything is easier IF you don’t postpone doing it.

Mercedes did a bang-up job

Herb Chambers of Boston sold us Susan’s new Mercedes wagon. The differential had a leak, but they took the car in and replaced basically everything. Now it works like a charm. Thank you Mercedes and thank you Chip McCarty, master salesman, who took really good care of us.

Hoisted on their own petard

Bastet, a vegan and LGBT-friendly cafe, is open on Saturdays during the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest. Each week, a group of ultra-Orthodox men walk by, condemning the decision to open on Saturdays by chanting “Shabbos!” the Yiddish word for the Sabbath.

The wait staff decided to fight back. They lifted their shirts. The men left at the sight of the staff’s bras> Looking upon them would violate Orthodox Judaism’s strict modesty rules.

A similar incident occurred in Jerusalem during the Eurovision Song Contest last month. Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews clashed with police while protesting the decision to hold the final on the Sabbath. A small group of women counter-protested by taking off their shirts. The men took off right away.

I’m a connoisseur of epithets

They’re pitching me on investing. Do these words make you uncomfortable? Or the fact that the last startup of the “acclaimed serial entrepreneur” went belly up?

An amazing bird

Belated bad Fathers Day jokes

Harry Newton, who is waxing philosophical about his six hours on the court on the weekend.

Tennis is a very frustrating game. We miss easy shots. We make hard ones. There’s no consistency. A few shots — some good, most lucky — make the difference between wining and losing.

I no longer notice the pain the body gives from the pounding, the running and the frustration. There’s no answer. We are programmed for masochism. It feels so good.