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It turns out that having the discipline to live frugally, to invest rather than spend, to mend and make do, and to be able to live for longer and longer periods of time without having to work, are true measures of wealth.


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Here is what a ‘true and lucid consciousness of the situation’ of fatherhood might resemble: you watch wide-eyed as your beloved pushes a stranger out of a bodily orifice that seems altogether too small for the labour; when the gore is cleaned up, the stranger becomes your most intimate companion and life-long dependent; existence, from that day forward, is structured around this dependency; and then, if everything goes well, the child will grow up to no longer need you. At the end of the existential day, your tenure as a father will end in one of two ways: either your child will die or you will. As Kierkegaard writes in Either/Or (1843): ‘You will regret both.’


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Pisan ima dramu u kojoj kaže oduzmi običnom čoveku životnu laž i oduzeo si mu životnu sreću.


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The best teachers I remember from school had three things in common:

  1. They had high standards. Like three year olds testing their parents, students will test teachers to see if they can get away with low-quality work or bad behavior. They won’t respect the teachers who don’t call them on it.
  2. They liked us. Like dogs, kids can tell very accurately whether or not someone wishes them well. I think a lot of our teachers either never liked kids much, or got burned out and started not to like them. It’s hard to be a good teacher once that happens. I can’t think of one teacher in all the schools I went to who managed to be good despite disliking students.
  3. They were interested in the subject. Most of the public school teachers I had weren’t really interested in what they taught. Enthusiasm is contagious, and so is boredom.

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Maxims of George Washington

  • It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
  • The most liberal professions of good will are very far from being the surest marks of it.
  • Good company will always be found less expensive than bad.
  • By acting reciprocally, heroes have made poets and poets heroes.
  • When there is no reason for expressing an opinion, it is best to be silent.
  • It is easy to make acquaintances but very difficult to shake them off.
  • Too much zeal creates suspicion.
  • Ridicule begets enmity not easy to be forgotten but easily avoided.
  • Do not conceive that fine clothes make fine men any more than fine feathers make fine birds.
  • Nothing is more useful for the formation of correct habits than the turning of our comments upon others, back upon ourselves.

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The best advice I ever got was Jim Watson, who co-discovered DNA. Jim is brilliant, and as many brilliant people are a little bit crazy, and Jim has this admonishment which is double meaning, three words: ‘Avoid boring people.’ I love it, because what he’s saying is, ‘Stay away from people who are not interesting,’ avoid boring people, and, ‘Avoid boring people. Don’t be boring to people. Be interesting.’”


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Conway's Law:

Organizations which design systems […] are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.


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Technically, they're doing documentaries, but technically, so is Dog The Bounty Hunter.

I haven't watched all VICE episodes, but from what I've seen, their guidelines seem to be:

  • Sensationalism before accuracy.
  • Aim for “WTF” rather than “aha”.
  • Be awesome…as in use cool sayings for no reason and have radical opinions.
  • Don't take anything seriously while you're filming.
  • Actively encourage the people in front of the camera to do crazy shit.
  • Take pride in all of the above.

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Bio sam mlad i glup, nisam shvatao očito: da državna i nacionalna nezavisnost ne znači i tvoju nezavisnost. Fukara će bit’ fukara, nezavisno od nezavisnosti. Djeca tvojih gospodara biće gospodari tvoje djece, i nema tog referenduma koji će vas od toga izbaviti.