Category: Reading

• “You don’t need to tear down the system. You become the system… and then the rules are there to project you.”

This is about the forming and running of Goldman Sachs.

• Goldman Sachs (GS) had a rough start then took off when the families stepped back
• Running small for so long let them learn what to do right
• Being small also let them pivot and experiment
• “Something well bought is half sold”
• “Doing thousands of little things, day after day, inching along as consistently as you can in the right direction as best as you can tell is ‘management’. And motivating or inspiring everyone to work together for long-term purposes is ‘leadership’.”
• We are “long-term” greedy
• “No great plans to change… just improve.”
• “Fix it, right away.”
• “Research is like a parking lot at a movie theater. You have to have it but it’s not the business you are in.”
• “The boss needs to lose [some] arguments.” (This is powerful to foster employee engagement.)
• “Would you put your mom’s money there?”
• Do they reward your integrity?
• “Everyone has two reasons for doing something: a ‘good’ reason and the real reason.” JP Morgan
• Liquidity evaporates as consensus is gained
• “The markets can take longer to become rational than you can remain solvent.” John Maynard Caines

• The question to ask is, “Why kids won’t can’t do what we want them to do?”
• Early childhood trauma mitigates future phobia
• Children need to experience moderate stress and then relief
• Yelling at a child is basically the same as hitting them (based on brain scans)
• Holding hands is really powerful
• Schizophrenic patients back home fare worse since schizophrenic patients living with strangers
• Expressed emotion
• No casual criticisms
• Executive function has little correlation with intelligence
• Demonstrating imperfection to your kids helps them by okay with their own imperfections
• Styles
  • Authoritarian (“the good old days”): Tells what to do
  • Authoritative (best): Explains why we are doing it; negotiates when reasonable alternatives are presented
    • Connection with children
    • Communication about problems
    • Building skills of children
  • Permissive (worst): Lets the kids do what they want
• Excessive time with pre-teens does little to support their growth
• Relationships and independence are the most important pieces of parenting
• Mistaken goals are when children try to belong through powerful, negative emotional engagement
• Negligence forces the brain to mature prematurely that results in over anxiety
• Read and discuss things
• Instead of praise, state what you are seeing
  • “I see Daniel has put his coat on the hanger”
  • Praising can make a praise addict where identification helps them feel seen
• Kids are predictable, plan ahead
• Do things with children, not to them
• Consequences need to be known ahead of time
• The goal is to show a behavior, not to “like” it

• “All thrive together”
• Human eye have a cone designed to pick up yellow and purple
• “Yahweh” is how you refer to living things, ironic that that is also the name of the Hebrew god
• Thinking about nature as a ‘Who’ better respects it
• Grammar is how we track relationships
• Successful ponds ensure eutrophic, a self-reinforcing nutrients cycle
• The muck compiles until it becomes a meadow
• Algae generally cycles every two weeks
• Prepare adventures in place of grieving
• Gifts and responsibility are one and the same
• “Perhaps the earth has domesticated us?”
• Beans house bacterium that injects nitrogen from the air into the dirt
• Monocultural gardens attract more pests that polyculture
• Harvesting trees is important to open forests
• “Never take the first plant you find” because it may be the last one
• Grasses carry their growing points must below the surface
• Grass grows faster after it is mowed down
• Cat tail leaves expand and contract with water, allowing breezes in the summer and waterproofing in the winter
• Ceremonies focus attention
• Language is where expressed ideas live
• Lichen are an amalgam of fungi and algae
  • The two only bond under stress
• Lichen is very sensitive to the air conditions
• Tabaco seeds germinate when they “smell” smoke
• We need to bring wisdom to science
• Newts are juvenile salamanders
• “You have to contribute”
• We can hunt down the Wendigo in the summer, the time of plenty, instead of times of scarcity
• Our entire economy is based on the notion of scarcity

• Tolerance of other parties is critical to balance
• Forbearance is needed for government to work
• Leverage existing institutions to ensure a democratic image
• Join forces with those you disagree with
• “Means testing” (“Do you make enough money to not need this service?”) stigmatizes social benefits where universal programs (“Anyone can use this, regardless of their means”) do not
• Democracies struggle to be both free and multiracial
  • (Humans like to be in tribes, and tribes loss cohesion when they get too big)