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another election, another astounding victory for the prediction market sharps. how did they do it? here's how! i wrote this:
nytimes.com/2026/05/26/magaz…
watch or listen to this
The master biographer reflects at 91. The Robert Caro interview.
0:00:00 – How Caro gets people to talk
0:05:03 – Does America need a little more Moses today?
0:12:42 – Moses the young idealist
0:17:57 – Watching Moses lose power
0:24:01 – Did Moses realize he was changing?
0:27:53 – Building during the Great Depression
0:32:51 – The threats and promises of Lyndon Johnson
0:36:08 – Could Kennedy have passed Johnson’s laws?
0:41:00 – Getting a book down to one sentence
0:46:21 – All the material that never made it into the books
0:52:59 – Loneliness
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come to this. it will be good. i promise.
buy your tickets: festival.newyorker.com
i read this on Yom Kippur and it helped a lot
I. ON SAVING TIME
Greetings from Seneca to his friend Lucilius:
1. Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius—set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands. Make yourself believe the truth of my words,—that certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed, and that others glide beyond our reach. The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness. Furthermore, if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose. 2. What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years lie behind us are in death’s hands.
Therefore, Lucilius, do as you write me that you are doing: hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by. 3. Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession. What fools these mortals be! They allow the cheapest and most useless things, which can easily be replaced, to be charged in the reckoning, after they have acquired them; but they never regard themselves as in debt when they have received some of that precious commodity,—time! And yet time is the one loan which even a grateful recipient cannot repay.
4. You may desire to know how I, who preach to you so freely, am practising. I confess frankly: my expense account balances, as you would expect from one who is free-handed but careful. I cannot boast that I waste nothing, but I can at least tell you what I am wasting, and the cause and manner of the loss; I can give you the reasons why I am a poor man. My situation, however, is the same as that of many who are reduced to slender means through no fault of their own: every one forgives them, but no one comes to their rescue.
5. What is the state of things, then? It is this: I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him. I advise you, however, to keep what is really yours; and you cannot begin too early. For, as our ancestors believed, it is too late to spare when you reach the dregs of the cask.[1] Of that which remains at the bottom, the amount is slight, and the quality is vile. Farewell.
—Seneca, translated by Richard Mott Gummere
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I. ON SAVING TIME
Greetings from Seneca to his friend Lucilius:
1. Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius—set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands. Make yourself believe the truth of my words,—that certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed, and that others glide beyond our reach. The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness. Furthermore, if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose. 2. What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years lie behind us are in death’s hands.
Therefore, Lucilius, do as you write me that you are doing: hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by. 3. Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession. What fools these mortals be! They allow the cheapest and most useless things, which can easily be replaced, to be charged in the reckoning, after they have acquired them; but they never regard themselves as in debt when they have received some of that precious commodity,—time! And yet time is the one loan which even a grateful recipient cannot repay.
4. You may desire to know how I, who preach to you so freely, am practising. I confess frankly: my expense account balances, as you would expect from one who is free-handed but careful. I cannot boast that I waste nothing, but I can at least tell you what I am wasting, and the cause and manner of the loss; I can give you the reasons why I am a poor man. My situation, however, is the same as that of many who are reduced to slender means through no fault of their own: every one forgives them, but no one comes to their rescue.
5. What is the state of things, then? It is this: I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him. I advise you, however, to keep what is really yours; and you cannot begin too early. For, as our ancestors believed, it is too late to spare when you reach the dregs of the cask.[1] Of that which remains at the bottom, the amount is slight, and the quality is vile. Farewell.
—Seneca, translated by Richard Mott Gummere
excited to read all these! highly recommend ted kooser’s splitting an order! beautiful, ordinary poems for a complicated time
everyone’s book picks, btw:
@iscoe, splitting an order by ted kooser
@ettinger, confessions of an advertising man by david ogilvy
@anuatluru, animal farm by george orwell
@arakharazian, john & paul by ian leslie
@kneelingbus, understanding media by marshall mcluhan
@freialobo, close to the machine by ellen ullman
@left_pad, tools for conviviality by ivan illich
@jackiehluo, games: agency as art by c. thi nguyen
@jacksondahl, seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees by lawrence weschler
@Jhovde2121, dataclysm by christian rudder
@barsisyphus, seeing like a state by james scott
@kasrak, creativity, inc. by ed catmull
@katiewav, seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees by lawrence weschler (2x!)
@thesephist, diaspora by greg egan
@m1shti, the journalist and the murderer by janet malcolm
@sebkrier, a canticle for leibowitz by walter miller
@kickingkeys, spacesuit: fashioning apollo by nicholas de monchaux
we had a lot of fun with this one, excited for the next
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