#nothing gets me more mad than people thinking their beliefs exist in a vacuum

[aprito]

(English is not my first language, so I apologize if what I say is not very understandable).

It left me thinking what you said about some people only being interested in your account to escape reality through fandom.

Have they even stopped to think that the canonical history of the fandom they follow is full of wars, and children used to kill?Aren't we all worshiping Sasori, who lost his parents in the war and then became an active participant himself, being just a child?

Are they so oblivious to the fact that these characters made us see the gray of a world full of death and violence, that they cannot realize that all these stories are a representation of the real behavior of our humanity?

Don't delete anything, please say everything you feel necessary to say. These people have me in shock.

Naruto's ""darker"" themes has always been an analysis of how inherently evil militarism, feudalism, hyper nationalism and exposing literal children to the horrors of war and death can be and how these systems enabling these horrors shouldn't exist. It's not black and white like you said, but there are beliefs that will always be red flags to me. Take the Uchiha massacre for example, which would be the closest comparison we can make to current events.

Unfortunately, partly due to Kishimoto's shitty centrist writing and due to how predispositioned and pre-propagandized the audience is, all of these conclusions can get glossed over and lost. How many in this fandom defended Konoha's violent pursuit of Sasuke for the longest time? Saying that he wasn't allowed to deal with Itachi, and then reprimanding him for turning his hatred towards the village? Worse, how many fawn over characters like Obito, Shisui, and especially Itachi - who had no qualms about endangering their clan and ultimatively agreeing that none of them deserved to oppose their oppressors and live? Konoha, not just Danzo, in turn had kept up a heavily propagandized image of the Uchiha due to their own personal hatred and beliefs. In Danzo's case, an excuse to get access to their organs for personal profit. Worse, they (Itachi, Shisui) didn't bother being honest with their own people, ultimatively not allowing them to escape or fight back. Contrast this against the hatred for Fugaku, who not once decided to act on his own and correctly pointed out that they have been ostracised and dehumanised for things they didn't do and feared it would get worse. Sound familiar? People are correct when they call the Uchiha massacre a genocide because that's what it was, but those are the people who actually drew from real life examples to criticially engage with the material.

Analysing real world struggle and applying that analysis to the narrative is the reason I continously empathize that Sasori's hatred for Suna shouldn't be glossed over for cushy high ranking positions because he just so happens to be talented. It's integral to his character and his actions, and it's a valid hatred to have. I honestly wish Kishimoto would have a fraction of enthusiasm for exposing the systems of oppressions as Oda has (a lot of conflicts in One Piece heavily, I mean HEAVILY, draw from the Cuban Revolution), because Naruto as a story would be far better off and probably would have more to say.

This also means, of course, that I recommend the audience to engage with this subject, and not fall for the propaganda of their oppressors <3 Palestine: A Socialist Introduction is currently free as an ebook for a start.

[charcubed]

the problem with that man is that he's obsessed with two things: not explaining and not spoiling. so he just answers everything with the most surface level shit cause he has this "think for yourself" attitude. which i would love. if the internet wasn't filled with people averse to thinking and who love not connecting the dots on purpose. like yeah i know that ox are the first earthly pleasure which were followed by others. 95% of the internet doesn't. ON PURPOSE.

[ben-affleck-smoking.jpeg]

Honestly anon, I tip my hat to you because this helps me a little bit. Just a little bit, to fathom what the fuck he's on about and what his potential reasoning is for it. I mean, I'm still frustrated beyond belief by his whole shtick and think it's unnecessary/irresponsible, but I do appreciate you giving me a somewhat plausible explanation so I can have a posited reason for his behavior to wrap my head around.

The thing is, like... People are stupid.

And/or: people are, historically, so determined to project what they want onto a piece of media (while being hellbent on arguing their right to do so while arguing their "interpretations" should remain unencumbered and unexamined) that they're not interested in seeing what it's theoretically or probably actually doing.

So there are 2 ways this shit is gonna go at this point in my opinion (and it's only been a month since season 2 came out so this shit can probably get even more stark before season 3! Yippee!):

Aziraphale and Crowley DON'T fuck on screen. Neil Gaiman is in fact addicted to the praise of very online ace people and so he has internalized that he can't "ruin their rep." Oh, you say you saw subtext in HIS season 2? Surely not. There was/is no erotic or sexual subtext in Ba Sing Se. To be clear, this would be the cowardly homophobic option whether people think it is or not, in part because of the thematic relevance and subtext now attached to them as of season 2 that begs follow-through (which exists despite his pedantic carefully-worded tumblr posts right now), and in part because if we had to see Newt and Anathema fuck then there is no legitimate reason that Aziraphale and Crowley should not get to do the same in light of the subtext. Period. And media doesn't exist in a vacuum. Sorry not sorry.

Aziraphale and Crowley DO fuck on screen. All of the ace people who have read into Neil's several pedantic and carefully-worded posts and engagement for years then become loudly devastated and angry that "their rep" has been destroyed with "no warning." A new term of "acebaiting" probably enters the cultural lexicon. Extremely online carnage occurs, etc. And frankly? At this point I'd (already) be inclined to say Neil would not be entirely blameless for it because of the way he's now acting while needlessly engaging directly with some of the discourse. The majority of the onus would be on the people who assume that he is confirming or defending the unequivocal canonical validity of their ace readings, because he's technically done nothing of the sort. But while he looooves to post and engage in the manners of those technicalities, at this point he can't be oblivious to how legions of inane people end up being like "soooo true Mr. Gaiman, romance doesn't have to be sexual <3" and he just lets them think that constitutes a promise that these characters will never be openly sexual. So if they think that for years, and then the characters fuck (as they should)? Madness will descend, and part of it – not all of it by far, but part of it – will be on him. Because there's no point or purpose in him acting like this other than he gets a kick out of it. He is now openly playing stupid games post-season 2 and will win stupid prizes.

Secret third thing is that Aziraphale and Crowley ambiguously fuck – Schrödinger's fade-to-black potential sex that we just don't see, if you will – in an effort to satisfy all parties, but that is filed under a variation of version 1 in my opinion. It'll still be lowkey homophobic and purity-culture-coded at the end of the day if there's room for ambiguity and people can erase the fact that they fucked if they prefer to do so.

Anyway. The thing is that if he wants people to think for themselves and connect the dots on their own, then pretending as if the dots don't even exist by ignoring them through omission and acting deliberately obtuse with surface level responses does not inspire people to look for or continue to argue for those dots and their depth. But it sure as HELL inspires stupid people to make leaps of logic and say things like "ummm Neil Gaiman already said nothing is sexual about the ox scene soooo if you're arguing otherwise you're being aphobic." Which is exhausting and infuriating and, again, stupid lol.

And that's certainly not entirely Neil's fault! He's NOT responsible for people being stupid. But he is responsible for making things deliberately confusing because he feels clever and maybe wants to challenge everyone else to be clever without openly saying that in so many words – if that is indeed what he's doing.

And if he's not gonna explain anything sufficiently then he shouldn't be engaging with shit like this at all because people then take his deliberate selective lack of explanation as tacit evidence that there must be nothing to explain.

At the end of the day, I'm personally not interested in dissecting the tea leaves of his posts to guess at the fullness of what he truly thinks. I see the subtext and themes in his work, and either he placed them there and sees them too or he didn't/doesn't. If he sees them but doesn't want to talk about them on main for whatever reason then I have no qualms about saying that that's weird behavior. And I also have no qualms about saying that – based on season 2 – Aziraphale and Crowley should fuck in season 3. Ultimately, while his pedantic posts and the resulting discourse raise my blood pressure, I don't need his permission to know the truth of that.

[ohmylove--mydarling]

It’s true what they say about your early-to-mid 20s. This particular span of ten blissful, wanton years is the only time in your entire life where you will ever feel truly invincible. And yes, you absolutely better enjoy it while it lasts. Lithe-bodied, hopeful, capable of both pounding an entire handle of rail vodka all while making it to your 8 am sociology class the next day, they’re a little like your teen years, with one prized difference. Your early-to-mid 20s are blessed with the seemingly novel, universe-bending element of freedom.

And freedom doesn’t simply mean the ability to make stupid decisions without the fear of getting grounded. It also means the freedom to live in an idyllic sort of vacuum, where you’re surrounded by friends – if we’re being honest, the family you get to choose – and cradled in this serene philosophy, this security blanket of an idea that hangs in the air but is never outwardly or directly expressed, that this, all of this, will last forever. That these people will always be there, they will always be around, floating with you in this bubble, as free and easily accessible as a coatrack or your neighbor’s WiFi. Always holding your beer, always holding your hair back (while you puke, or maybe while you cry), always holding your hand. Always at the very least in the peripheral, if not the forefront, of your vision.

During these years you know everything, and yet somehow you know nothing at all.

***

Like most of the sorority sisters I grew close with – and as is probably true with anyone else who pledged a very tiny chapter at an equally tiny school – I don’t remember much about how I met Taylor beyond the first night she “rushed.” Rush is an interesting social phenomenon, for multiple reasons. Picture a gaggle of young college-aged women who typically spend every waking hour of their day primping and glossing and adjusting for the sole purpose of the male gaze. Except this time, their attention is entirely drawn to a smaller group of girls (not that much smaller of a group, if we’re lucky this semester) that they want to impress instead. A frenzy of compliments and genuine interest, a dormant volcano of estrogen and hot girl energy and reciprocation, madly overflowing in a span of two hours over something as innocuous as an ice cream social or tie-dying a pile of crewneck t-shirts (I think we did the “hippie” recruitment theme every other semester). It is one of the very best parts of what is an often problematic-at-best Greek culture, and this rush was no different.

I’m not sure what my first impression of Taylor was, other than that we obviously had the same first name, and oh yeah, she was beautiful– effortlessly pretty but not the least intimidating. I could approach her and talk to her and not feel like a complete toad. She was a little soft-spoken, incredibly polite. I think she wore navy blue. And an aura of genuine kindness seemed to radiate from her with the soft glow of candlelight.

After rush ended and Taylor chose to join our ranks, where she belonged, it felt like she had been in my life from the very beginning. And, though this idea was never spoken, it felt like she would never leave.

***

In a sorority, there is sometimes a tendency, however unintentional, to categorize your sisters, and to turn to certain ones for different needs at different times. There’s the sister you study with, the sister you go on your morning run with, the sister(s) you are always down to party with. There’s the sister who makes amazing grilled cheese, the sister whose dorm is the only place you’ll binge-watch Supernatural. When you’re riding the waves of a breakup, you got mad options: There’s the sister who brushes your hair as you ugly-cry and choke on your own snot, the sister who pledges to hook you up with her brother’s hot friend the moment you’re ready for a rebound, the “dump him sis” sister who yanks your phone out of your hand in the middle of what is probably a very unwise text and threatens to stab him with her eyebrow razor if he so much as looks at you again, the sister who makes you forget the whole thing ever happened, that it ever even mattered.

There’s the maid of honor sister, the future fun wine-aunt sister, the sister you have on speed-dial even though speed-dial isn’t a thing anymore. There are the sisters who teach you how to do winged liner, how to hide a hickey with coral lipstick and concealer, how to chant, how to chug, how to memorize the Greek alphabet and the …numbers (at least for the ones who are most definitely going to ask). There are the sisters whose weddings you bawl at, whose babies you hold and immediately love as an extension of the incredible mother who brought them into this world.

And there are the sisters who teach you grace and humility, strength and resilience, kindness and self-love. The sisters who changed your life for the better the moment they put on your letters, the sisters who hand you the mirror and force you to see yourself just as they see you.

The thing about Taylor was that she was all of these. The whole package. Everything good, all in one.

***

Though our friendship was at its strongest during my college and immediate post-college years, Taylor remained a calming, grounding presence in my life. She married an incredible man who loved her for all the reasons we did and plenty more, and I went to her wedding and cried. She got a job as a nurse at the local hospice, a profession she seemed put on this earth to do. I could picture Taylor in her element there, literally surrounded by an entire ocean of grief, serving as an island of hope, a beacon of light and love for those who so desperately needed all those things, the things she provided us without question even when our lives were comfortable. Soon after – and this thought still makes something in my throat ache – she brought life into this world, a beautiful daughter with both her mother’s eyes and her genuine love and gratitude for life, a joyful curiosity coloring everything she did.

Taylor’s life, we knew, was finally the one she had always deserved.

***

I won’t, and can’t anyway, get into the details of Taylor’s passing. I can say that nothing about it was expected and literally every detail about it is horrific. Personally, it feels like a robbery, like something was taken from me; but on a grander scale, on a scale that actually matters, it is simply heartbreak. Riding the waves of grief not only for my own loss, but for a husband, a child, a family, a community whose lives were upended and whose hearts were crushed by something that simply should not have happened in a universe where they say justice and kindness exist.

Frankly, this grief is unlike any other I have experienced. It has a way of blanketing everything around me, like mosquito netting. It is as thick and choking as a cloud of black smoke, permeating my clothes, filling my lungs, making it impossible to see, so all I can do is desperately cling to whatever gives me the slightest amount of peace, no matter how fleeting. As someone who has always struggled with my faith (and moments like these certainly do not help), I try to remember Taylor’s. It brought her comfort and strength, the belief that God loves everyone so naturally she was going to love everyone, too. And all I can hope is that this belief of hers, this faith, manifested in her final moments. That there was a light, a voice, a presence, something there that reminded her that she was loved. That we knew she loved us, that her family will never be alone, that we will desperately miss her. That her legacy is as wide and expansive as all the oceans.

Her funeral is in a few days. Her funeral, a concept still as foreign as my own.

***

At this point it’s probably clear, but the things I want people to remember the most about Taylor are, quite simply, her kindness and her intrinsic ability to love. She was kind without questioning. She loved without strings or conditions, tirelessly and endlessly. At a time when an icy, impenetrable layer of cynicism seemed to blanket so many of our hearts – including my own – Taylor managed to crack it a little, to let just enough of her light and her warmth in to make a change.

I teased her often – probably too often –  for her unbreakable habit of bringing home literally any stray cat she ever found (and then naming it something either really cute or painfully dumb, like “Moe” or “Cheese”). But even as someone who unapologetically hates cats, and more honestly as someone who spent most of her 20s thinking that if I hardened my exterior and never let love in I was somehow protecting everything it surrounded, I viewed this habit through a secret lens of adoration. I adored Taylor’s heart. I hoped to absorb some of it, its ability to love everything, to find beauty in the darkest and loneliest spaces and to also force people to see it and feel it for themselves.

I felt Taylor was going to be around forever. It was a selfish thought. I hadn’t physically seen her in over a year (there was a pandemic and she was a nurse and I was subsumed by my own now meaningless world). I am filled with an omnipresent regret that I have no control over. I miss her so much my heart feels swollen and achy with a pining, a real grief.

There is no happy ending to this, no concise, comfortable, heartwarming way to wrap this all up in a pretty package, though Taylor was the type to want everything to have a good ending. So instead I cling to the memories, the photographs. Our banquets, homecoming, Lana del Rey, cherry blossoms. The way she rapped that entire A$AP Ferg verse one night. The way she looked in her wedding gown. The way she talked about charity and good deeds. The way she talked about God. Her love, no matter what transgression I made or no matter if I failed to give it back. I hope to love harder now, and if I can, it’s because Taylor taught me how.

I love you, Taylor. DZLAM.

[sunshineweb]

Safal Niveshak Stream – The Powerful Effect of Compounding Goodwill

Some nice stuff I am reading, watching, and observing at the start of this weekend…

Of Greater Fools and Bubbles

How many greater fools does it take to make a bubble? An old but highly relevant post from Jason Zweig…

Economists have struggled and failed to explain why markets turn into manias. Some have denied bubbles exist; others have argued bubbles must somehow be “rational.” Often, the argument is that bubbles are caused by “uninformed” traders, or “dumb money,” while the “smart money” sits on the sidelines.

The latest findings suggest, however, that bubbles might be caused not by traders who lack information but by those who have too much.

Pessimism is Seductive

Morgan Housel of Collaborative Fund hits it again with his post on how pessimism is intellectually seductive in a way optimism only wishes it could be…

Tell someone that everything will be great and they’re likely to either shrug you off or offer a skeptical eye. Tell someone they’re in danger and you have their undivided attention.

Hearing that the world is going to hell is more interesting than forecasting that things will gradually get better over time, even if the latter is accurate for most people most of the time. Pessimism can be hard to distinguish from critical thinking and is often taken more seriously than optimism, which can be hard to distinguish from salesmanship and aloofness.

…On one hand it makes sense. Daniel Kahneman once wrote: “Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce.”

But on the other hand, it’s crazy. We don’t just respond faster to pessimism. We coddle it for longer than is necessary. Optimism demands facts and is ditched at the first sign of trouble. Pessimism can be grown from a crazy thought and clutched indefinitely.

How to Fill Your Years with Life

If you haven’t picked Ryan wonderful book – Ego is the Enemy – do that now. In this book, he shows how ego – irrational or delusional self-belief – has long been linked with success and striving for goals yet this same drive has a dark side. Anyways, Ryan just wrote a wonderful post on things to do to live a full life and leave nothing on the table by 30. Among others, here are two of my favourites from his list…

7. Keep a Journal — Not for looking backward, but to force you to think about what you’re doing now. I should have done this earlier.

10. The Quiet Moments Are The Best — There is a line from Lao Tzu. “Peace is in the emptiness. Emptiness is in the fast of the mind.” It’s in the quiet, still moments that we feel what matters in life. Standing on the shore of a lake. Looking out over a canyon. Resting your head against someone else’s. It’s a shortage of these moments that give rise to the feeling that we haven’t lived enough, that we have to keep going. Seeking them out, encouraging them is what makes you feel like you’ve done plenty.

Ryan ends his post with a paragraph from Mozart, who lived to be 35 but filled those years with many, many decades of life and work…

I have now made a habit of being prepared in all affairs of life for the worst. As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me but is indeed very soothing and consoling, and I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. I never lie down at night without reflecting that—young as I am—I may not live to see another day. Yet not one of all my acquaintances could say that in my company I am morose or disgruntled. For this blessing, I daily thank my creator.

Howard Marks on Market Excesses

Like Warren Buffett’s shareholder letters, Howard Marks’ memos are a must-read. In one he wrote in 2005, Marks discussed market trends being taken to excess – and the painful consequences that become clear in hindsight. Here’s an excerpt from that memo of Marks, which is highly relevant in today’s today environment…

I often cite John Kenneth Galbraith’s observation that one of the outstanding hallmarks of the financial world is “the extreme brevity of the financial memory.” Investors lose money over and over because they simply forget that cycles are inevitable and there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Now I’ve found a great quotation from Churchill, also reminding us that foresight comes largely from awareness of history.

Along similar lines, I’m struck by the extent to which a related factor, inadequate skepticism, also contributes to investment losses. Getting the most out of a book, play or movie usually requires “willing suspension of disbelief.” We’re glad to overlook the occasional plot glitch, historical inaccuracy or physical impossibility because it increases our enjoyment. When we watch Peter Pan, we don’t want to hear the person sitting next to us say, “I can see the wires” (even though we know they’re there). While we know boys can’t fly, we don’t care; we’re just there for fun.

But our purpose in investing is serious, not fun, and we must constantly be on the lookout for things that can’t work in real life. In short, the process of investing requires a strong dose of disbelief. Time and time again, the post-mortems of financial debacles include two classic phrases: “It was too good to be true” and “What were they thinking?” I’m writing to explore why these observations are so often invoked in the past tense.

How Big Oil Will Die

Electric cars with lives 3x longer than those run on the internal combustion engine are being bought in droves in the Western world. But this is just one of the factor that may spell doom for oil and the businesses that survive by producing and selling it…

Big Oil is perhaps the most feared and respected industry in history. Oil is warming the planet — cars and trucks contribute about 15% of global fossil fuels emissions — yet this fact barely dents its use. Oil fuels the most politically volatile regions in the world, yet we’ve decided to send military aid to unstable and untrustworthy dictators because their oil is critical to our own security. For the last century, oil has dominated our economics and our politics. Oil is power.

Yet I argue here that technology is about to undo a century of political and economic dominance by oil. Big Oil will be cut down in the next decade by a combination of smartphone apps, long-life batteries, and simpler gearing. And as is always the case with new technology, the undoing will occur far faster than anyone thought possible.

A Dozen Ideas from Charlie Munger

Tren Griffin of 25iq has done another wonderful post, this time on compiling a dozen thoughts from Charlie Munger from the 2017 Berkshire AGM, including this one…

“A life properly lived is just learn, learn, learn all the time.” “If we had stopped learning, you [Berkshire shareholders] wouldn’t be here – you’d be alive, probably, but you wouldn’t be here.” “There’s nothing like a personal, painful experience if we want to learn, and we certainly have had our share of it.” “There’s nothing like the pain of getting into a lousy business to find a good one.” “We were young and ignorant then; Now we’re old and ignorant.” “Experience is like eating cockleburs – it really gets your attention.” “It is a good idea to not play where the other people are better.”

Genius of Jeff Bezos

Sean Iddings has written a nice post tracking the genius of Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos…

Jeff Bezos was able to see differently than nearly everybody else in the early 2000’s, and continues today, largely in part to his fanatical preparation.

In Jeff Bezos’ biography The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, childhood friend Joshua Weinstein recalled, “He was excruciatingly focused. Not like mad-scientist focused, but he was capable of really focusing, in a crazy way, on certain things. He was extremely disciplined, which is how he is able to do all these things.” Part of that focus and discipline was vacuuming up details from history. This vast storehouse of details has given Bezos the ability to frame his present situation with the best historical examples. In other words, by looking at the past he has been able to throw out all of the useless noise and draw accurate conclusions to how the future might unfold based on the past.

This phenomenon is perfectly observed in 2003 and is repeating again today.

Keep in Touch with People

Be the butterfly whose wings can create a positive hurricane in someone’s life. A lovely post from my friend Vishal Kataria…

Don’t just keep in touch with people who matter because they can give something. Keep in touch because sometimes, you will give something… something that nobody else can offer. Be there for them. Your friends will thank life for sending a friend like you. Your butterfly wings can create a positive hurricane in their lives.

I’m guilty of not keeping in touch with people who care. Just because. It took a memory to make me realize how selfish I am. It’s not always about me. In fact, it almost never should be about me. I will step out of my comfort zone. I will keep in touch. I will ask people if I can do something for them. Will you?

Compounding Goodwill

Einstein said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder.” If you understand the basics of compounding, you would tend to agree with Einstein’s statement. There is immense power in compounding. A small amount of money left for compounding for a very long time, even at a modest rate, can turn into a staggering sum.

But what most people miss is that the real beauty of compounding lies not in wealth creation, but in another, more important, area of life too. It’s called goodwill that you create in this world.

In his book, Education of a Value Investor, Guy Spier writes about Mohnish Pabrai …

…over the past ten years, I’ve repeatedly observed how he looks to see what he can do for others, not the other way round…By acting this way, I could see that Mohnish created an incredible network of people who wish him well and would love to find ways to help him and thank him for his kindness. This is the extraordinarily powerful effect of compounding goodwill by being a giver, not a taker. And as he has taught me, the paradox is that you end up receiving infinitely more in life by giving than by taking.

True gifts bring people closer together. An unconditional gift, one given with nothing expected in return, can change everything. It creates conversations and spread ideas. It opens doors and creates forward motion.

So, what value are you adding to the world? What is it that you’re giving out without any expectation of returns?

As with all matters of compounding, the sooner you start the longer runway you’ll get.

Start today!

The post Safal Niveshak Stream – The Powerful Effect of Compounding Goodwill appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

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[heliosfinance]

Safal Niveshak Stream – The Powerful Effect of Compounding Goodwill

Some nice stuff I am reading, watching, and observing at the start of this weekend…

Of Greater Fools and Bubbles

How many greater fools does it take to make a bubble? An old but highly relevant post from Jason Zweig…

Economists have struggled and failed to explain why markets turn into manias. Some have denied bubbles exist; others have argued bubbles must somehow be “rational.” Often, the argument is that bubbles are caused by “uninformed” traders, or “dumb money,” while the “smart money” sits on the sidelines.

The latest findings suggest, however, that bubbles might be caused not by traders who lack information but by those who have too much.

Pessimism is Seductive

Morgan Housel of Collaborative Fund hits it again with his post on how pessimism is intellectually seductive in a way optimism only wishes it could be…

Tell someone that everything will be great and they’re likely to either shrug you off or offer a skeptical eye. Tell someone they’re in danger and you have their undivided attention.

Hearing that the world is going to hell is more interesting than forecasting that things will gradually get better over time, even if the latter is accurate for most people most of the time. Pessimism can be hard to distinguish from critical thinking and is often taken more seriously than optimism, which can be hard to distinguish from salesmanship and aloofness.

…On one hand it makes sense. Daniel Kahneman once wrote: “Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce.”

But on the other hand, it’s crazy. We don’t just respond faster to pessimism. We coddle it for longer than is necessary. Optimism demands facts and is ditched at the first sign of trouble. Pessimism can be grown from a crazy thought and clutched indefinitely.

How to Fill Your Years with Life

If you haven’t picked Ryan wonderful book – Ego is the Enemy – do that now. In this book, he shows how ego – irrational or delusional self-belief – has long been linked with success and striving for goals yet this same drive has a dark side. Anyways, Ryan just wrote a wonderful post on things to do to live a full life and leave nothing on the table by 30. Among others, here are two of my favourites from his list…

7. Keep a Journal — Not for looking backward, but to force you to think about what you’re doing now. I should have done this earlier.

10. The Quiet Moments Are The Best — There is a line from Lao Tzu. “Peace is in the emptiness. Emptiness is in the fast of the mind.” It’s in the quiet, still moments that we feel what matters in life. Standing on the shore of a lake. Looking out over a canyon. Resting your head against someone else’s. It’s a shortage of these moments that give rise to the feeling that we haven’t lived enough, that we have to keep going. Seeking them out, encouraging them is what makes you feel like you’ve done plenty.

Ryan ends his post with a paragraph from Mozart, who lived to be 35 but filled those years with many, many decades of life and work…

I have now made a habit of being prepared in all affairs of life for the worst. As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me but is indeed very soothing and consoling, and I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. I never lie down at night without reflecting that—young as I am—I may not live to see another day. Yet not one of all my acquaintances could say that in my company I am morose or disgruntled. For this blessing, I daily thank my creator.

Howard Marks on Market Excesses

Like Warren Buffett’s shareholder letters, Howard Marks’ memos are a must-read. In one he wrote in 2005, Marks discussed market trends being taken to excess – and the painful consequences that become clear in hindsight. Here’s an excerpt from that memo of Marks, which is highly relevant in today’s today environment…

I often cite John Kenneth Galbraith’s observation that one of the outstanding hallmarks of the financial world is “the extreme brevity of the financial memory.” Investors lose money over and over because they simply forget that cycles are inevitable and there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Now I’ve found a great quotation from Churchill, also reminding us that foresight comes largely from awareness of history.

Along similar lines, I’m struck by the extent to which a related factor, inadequate skepticism, also contributes to investment losses. Getting the most out of a book, play or movie usually requires “willing suspension of disbelief.” We’re glad to overlook the occasional plot glitch, historical inaccuracy or physical impossibility because it increases our enjoyment. When we watch Peter Pan, we don’t want to hear the person sitting next to us say, “I can see the wires” (even though we know they’re there). While we know boys can’t fly, we don’t care; we’re just there for fun.

But our purpose in investing is serious, not fun, and we must constantly be on the lookout for things that can’t work in real life. In short, the process of investing requires a strong dose of disbelief. Time and time again, the post-mortems of financial debacles include two classic phrases: “It was too good to be true” and “What were they thinking?” I’m writing to explore why these observations are so often invoked in the past tense.

How Big Oil Will Die

Electric cars with lives 3x longer than those run on the internal combustion engine are being bought in droves in the Western world. But this is just one of the factor that may spell doom for oil and the businesses that survive by producing and selling it…

Big Oil is perhaps the most feared and respected industry in history. Oil is warming the planet — cars and trucks contribute about 15% of global fossil fuels emissions — yet this fact barely dents its use. Oil fuels the most politically volatile regions in the world, yet we’ve decided to send military aid to unstable and untrustworthy dictators because their oil is critical to our own security. For the last century, oil has dominated our economics and our politics. Oil is power.

Yet I argue here that technology is about to undo a century of political and economic dominance by oil. Big Oil will be cut down in the next decade by a combination of smartphone apps, long-life batteries, and simpler gearing. And as is always the case with new technology, the undoing will occur far faster than anyone thought possible.

A Dozen Ideas from Charlie Munger

Tren Griffin of 25iq has done another wonderful post, this time on compiling a dozen thoughts from Charlie Munger from the 2017 Berkshire AGM, including this one…

“A life properly lived is just learn, learn, learn all the time.” “If we had stopped learning, you [Berkshire shareholders] wouldn’t be here – you’d be alive, probably, but you wouldn’t be here.” “There’s nothing like a personal, painful experience if we want to learn, and we certainly have had our share of it.” “There’s nothing like the pain of getting into a lousy business to find a good one.” “We were young and ignorant then; Now we’re old and ignorant.” “Experience is like eating cockleburs – it really gets your attention.” “It is a good idea to not play where the other people are better.”

Genius of Jeff Bezos

Sean Iddings has written a nice post tracking the genius of Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos…

Jeff Bezos was able to see differently than nearly everybody else in the early 2000’s, and continues today, largely in part to his fanatical preparation.

In Jeff Bezos’ biography The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, childhood friend Joshua Weinstein recalled, “He was excruciatingly focused. Not like mad-scientist focused, but he was capable of really focusing, in a crazy way, on certain things. He was extremely disciplined, which is how he is able to do all these things.” Part of that focus and discipline was vacuuming up details from history. This vast storehouse of details has given Bezos the ability to frame his present situation with the best historical examples. In other words, by looking at the past he has been able to throw out all of the useless noise and draw accurate conclusions to how the future might unfold based on the past.

This phenomenon is perfectly observed in 2003 and is repeating again today.

Keep in Touch with People

Be the butterfly whose wings can create a positive hurricane in someone’s life. A lovely post from my friend Vishal Kataria…

Don’t just keep in touch with people who matter because they can give something. Keep in touch because sometimes, you will give something… something that nobody else can offer. Be there for them. Your friends will thank life for sending a friend like you. Your butterfly wings can create a positive hurricane in their lives.

I’m guilty of not keeping in touch with people who care. Just because. It took a memory to make me realize how selfish I am. It’s not always about me. In fact, it almost never should be about me. I will step out of my comfort zone. I will keep in touch. I will ask people if I can do something for them. Will you?

Compounding Goodwill

Einstein said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder.” If you understand the basics of compounding, you would tend to agree with Einstein’s statement. There is immense power in compounding. A small amount of money left for compounding for a very long time, even at a modest rate, can turn into a staggering sum.

But what most people miss is that the real beauty of compounding lies not in wealth creation, but in another, more important, area of life too. It’s called goodwill that you create in this world.

In his book, Education of a Value Investor, Guy Spier writes about Mohnish Pabrai …

…over the past ten years, I’ve repeatedly observed how he looks to see what he can do for others, not the other way round…By acting this way, I could see that Mohnish created an incredible network of people who wish him well and would love to find ways to help him and thank him for his kindness. This is the extraordinarily powerful effect of compounding goodwill by being a giver, not a taker. And as he has taught me, the paradox is that you end up receiving infinitely more in life by giving than by taking.

True gifts bring people closer together. An unconditional gift, one given with nothing expected in return, can change everything. It creates conversations and spread ideas. It opens doors and creates forward motion.

So, what value are you adding to the world? What is it that you’re giving out without any expectation of returns?

As with all matters of compounding, the sooner you start the longer runway you’ll get.

Start today!

The post Safal Niveshak Stream – The Powerful Effect of Compounding Goodwill appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Safal Niveshak Stream – The Powerful Effect of Compounding Goodwill published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

[sunshineweb]

Safal Niveshak Stream – The Powerful Effect of Compounding Goodwill

Some nice stuff I am reading, watching, and observing at the start of this weekend…

Of Greater Fools and Bubbles

How many greater fools does it take to make a bubble? An old but highly relevant post from Jason Zweig…

Economists have struggled and failed to explain why markets turn into manias. Some have denied bubbles exist; others have argued bubbles must somehow be “rational.” Often, the argument is that bubbles are caused by “uninformed” traders, or “dumb money,” while the “smart money” sits on the sidelines.

The latest findings suggest, however, that bubbles might be caused not by traders who lack information but by those who have too much.

Pessimism is Seductive

Morgan Housel of Collaborative Fund hits it again with his post on how pessimism is intellectually seductive in a way optimism only wishes it could be…

Tell someone that everything will be great and they’re likely to either shrug you off or offer a skeptical eye. Tell someone they’re in danger and you have their undivided attention.

Hearing that the world is going to hell is more interesting than forecasting that things will gradually get better over time, even if the latter is accurate for most people most of the time. Pessimism can be hard to distinguish from critical thinking and is often taken more seriously than optimism, which can be hard to distinguish from salesmanship and aloofness.

…On one hand it makes sense. Daniel Kahneman once wrote: “Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce.”

But on the other hand, it’s crazy. We don’t just respond faster to pessimism. We coddle it for longer than is necessary. Optimism demands facts and is ditched at the first sign of trouble. Pessimism can be grown from a crazy thought and clutched indefinitely.

How to Fill Your Years with Life

If you haven’t picked Ryan wonderful book – Ego is the Enemy – do that now. In this book, he shows how ego – irrational or delusional self-belief – has long been linked with success and striving for goals yet this same drive has a dark side. Anyways, Ryan just wrote a wonderful post on things to do to live a full life and leave nothing on the table by 30. Among others, here are two of my favourites from his list…

7. Keep a Journal — Not for looking backward, but to force you to think about what you’re doing now. I should have done this earlier.

10. The Quiet Moments Are The Best — There is a line from Lao Tzu. “Peace is in the emptiness. Emptiness is in the fast of the mind.” It’s in the quiet, still moments that we feel what matters in life. Standing on the shore of a lake. Looking out over a canyon. Resting your head against someone else’s. It’s a shortage of these moments that give rise to the feeling that we haven’t lived enough, that we have to keep going. Seeking them out, encouraging them is what makes you feel like you’ve done plenty.

Ryan ends his post with a paragraph from Mozart, who lived to be 35 but filled those years with many, many decades of life and work…

I have now made a habit of being prepared in all affairs of life for the worst. As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me but is indeed very soothing and consoling, and I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. I never lie down at night without reflecting that—young as I am—I may not live to see another day. Yet not one of all my acquaintances could say that in my company I am morose or disgruntled. For this blessing, I daily thank my creator.

Howard Marks on Market Excesses

Like Warren Buffett’s shareholder letters, Howard Marks’ memos are a must-read. In one he wrote in 2005, Marks discussed market trends being taken to excess – and the painful consequences that become clear in hindsight. Here’s an excerpt from that memo of Marks, which is highly relevant in today’s today environment…

I often cite John Kenneth Galbraith’s observation that one of the outstanding hallmarks of the financial world is “the extreme brevity of the financial memory.” Investors lose money over and over because they simply forget that cycles are inevitable and there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Now I’ve found a great quotation from Churchill, also reminding us that foresight comes largely from awareness of history.

Along similar lines, I’m struck by the extent to which a related factor, inadequate skepticism, also contributes to investment losses. Getting the most out of a book, play or movie usually requires “willing suspension of disbelief.” We’re glad to overlook the occasional plot glitch, historical inaccuracy or physical impossibility because it increases our enjoyment. When we watch Peter Pan, we don’t want to hear the person sitting next to us say, “I can see the wires” (even though we know they’re there). While we know boys can’t fly, we don’t care; we’re just there for fun.

But our purpose in investing is serious, not fun, and we must constantly be on the lookout for things that can’t work in real life. In short, the process of investing requires a strong dose of disbelief. Time and time again, the post-mortems of financial debacles include two classic phrases: “It was too good to be true” and “What were they thinking?” I’m writing to explore why these observations are so often invoked in the past tense.

How Big Oil Will Die

Electric cars with lives 3x longer than those run on the internal combustion engine are being bought in droves in the Western world. But this is just one of the factor that may spell doom for oil and the businesses that survive by producing and selling it…

Big Oil is perhaps the most feared and respected industry in history. Oil is warming the planet — cars and trucks contribute about 15% of global fossil fuels emissions — yet this fact barely dents its use. Oil fuels the most politically volatile regions in the world, yet we’ve decided to send military aid to unstable and untrustworthy dictators because their oil is critical to our own security. For the last century, oil has dominated our economics and our politics. Oil is power.

Yet I argue here that technology is about to undo a century of political and economic dominance by oil. Big Oil will be cut down in the next decade by a combination of smartphone apps, long-life batteries, and simpler gearing. And as is always the case with new technology, the undoing will occur far faster than anyone thought possible.

A Dozen Ideas from Charlie Munger

Tren Griffin of 25iq has done another wonderful post, this time on compiling a dozen thoughts from Charlie Munger from the 2017 Berkshire AGM, including this one…

“A life properly lived is just learn, learn, learn all the time.” “If we had stopped learning, you [Berkshire shareholders] wouldn’t be here – you’d be alive, probably, but you wouldn’t be here.” “There’s nothing like a personal, painful experience if we want to learn, and we certainly have had our share of it.” “There’s nothing like the pain of getting into a lousy business to find a good one.” “We were young and ignorant then; Now we’re old and ignorant.” “Experience is like eating cockleburs – it really gets your attention.” “It is a good idea to not play where the other people are better.”

Genius of Jeff Bezos

Sean Iddings has written a nice post tracking the genius of Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos…

Jeff Bezos was able to see differently than nearly everybody else in the early 2000’s, and continues today, largely in part to his fanatical preparation.

In Jeff Bezos’ biography The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, childhood friend Joshua Weinstein recalled, “He was excruciatingly focused. Not like mad-scientist focused, but he was capable of really focusing, in a crazy way, on certain things. He was extremely disciplined, which is how he is able to do all these things.” Part of that focus and discipline was vacuuming up details from history. This vast storehouse of details has given Bezos the ability to frame his present situation with the best historical examples. In other words, by looking at the past he has been able to throw out all of the useless noise and draw accurate conclusions to how the future might unfold based on the past.

This phenomenon is perfectly observed in 2003 and is repeating again today.

Keep in Touch with People

Be the butterfly whose wings can create a positive hurricane in someone’s life. A lovely post from my friend Vishal Kataria…

Don’t just keep in touch with people who matter because they can give something. Keep in touch because sometimes, you will give something… something that nobody else can offer. Be there for them. Your friends will thank life for sending a friend like you. Your butterfly wings can create a positive hurricane in their lives.

I’m guilty of not keeping in touch with people who care. Just because. It took a memory to make me realize how selfish I am. It’s not always about me. In fact, it almost never should be about me. I will step out of my comfort zone. I will keep in touch. I will ask people if I can do something for them. Will you?

Compounding Goodwill

Einstein said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder.” If you understand the basics of compounding, you would tend to agree with Einstein’s statement. There is immense power in compounding. A small amount of money left for compounding for a very long time, even at a modest rate, can turn into a staggering sum.

But what most people miss is that the real beauty of compounding lies not in wealth creation, but in another, more important, area of life too. It’s called goodwill that you create in this world.

In his book, Education of a Value Investor, Guy Spier writes about Mohnish Pabrai …

…over the past ten years, I’ve repeatedly observed how he looks to see what he can do for others, not the other way round…By acting this way, I could see that Mohnish created an incredible network of people who wish him well and would love to find ways to help him and thank him for his kindness. This is the extraordinarily powerful effect of compounding goodwill by being a giver, not a taker. And as he has taught me, the paradox is that you end up receiving infinitely more in life by giving than by taking.

True gifts bring people closer together. An unconditional gift, one given with nothing expected in return, can change everything. It creates conversations and spread ideas. It opens doors and creates forward motion.

So, what value are you adding to the world? What is it that you’re giving out without any expectation of returns?

As with all matters of compounding, the sooner you start the longer runway you’ll get.

Start today!

The post Safal Niveshak Stream – The Powerful Effect of Compounding Goodwill appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Safal Niveshak Stream – The Powerful Effect of Compounding Goodwill published first on http://ift.tt/2sCRXMW