How to Think Like a Roman Emperor
If you have anger issues, this one is a great tool (h/t mindyourbusiness)
This week’s book:
Discourses and Selected Writings
Disclaimer: I’m not your Supervisor. These are my opinions after reading through these books a few times.
Epictetus was born a slave around 50 ad. His owner was Epaphroditus, a rich freedman who was once a slave of Nero. Though he was a slave Epictetus was sent to study philosophy under Musonius Rufus.
Epictetus was lame and there are some stories it was caused by his master and others that it was caused by disease.
He was a freedman when all philosophers were banished from Rome in 89 by the Emperor Domitian. He then started his school in Greece, and had many students. He did not leave any writings from his lessons, but one of his students, Flavius Arrian, took notes and wrote the Discourses.
Epictetus did not marry, had no children, and lived to be around 80-85. In retirement, he adopted a child that would have been abandoned and raised him with a woman.
He died sometime around AD 135.
He is my favorite Stoic teacher. I love his bare bones and very straight forward approach.
Following is a paragraph-by-paragraph discussion of one of his lessons. Epictetus’s text appears italicized in bold, my replies are in normal text.
To those who are vexed at being pitied Part IV
Nay, but because I greatly concern myself with correct judgements, it is more reasonable for me to rule.—Yes, in what you greatly concern yourself with, that is, judgements; but in that with which other men have concerned themselves more greatly than you have, give place to them. It is as though, because you have correct judgements, you insisted that you ought in archery to hit the mark better than the archers, or to surpass the smiths at their trade. Drop, therefore, your earnestness about judgements, and concern yourself with the things which you wish to acquire, and then lament if you do not succeed, for you have a right to do that.
I can focus on what I do well and not worry about things I have not trained in or have no experience. Focusing on what I control instead of being distracted with worries about things I don’t control keeps me working on the things that do me the most good. I try not to waste my time with outside forces.
30But as it is, you claim to be intent upon other things, to care for other things, and there is wisdom in what common people say, “One serious business has no partnership with another.”[3] One man gets up at early dawn and looks for someone of the household of Caesar[† 1] to salute, someone to whom he may make a pleasant speech, to whom he may send a present, how he may please the dancer, how he may gratify one person by maliciously disparaging another. When he prays, he prays for these objects, when he sacrifices, he sacrifices for these objects. The word of Pythagoras,[4]
Also allow not sleep to draw nigh to your languorous eyelids,
he has wrested to apply here. “‘Where did I go wrong—’[5] in matters of flattery? ‘What did I do?’ Can it be that I acted as a free man, or as a man of noble character?” And if he find an instance of the sort, he censures and accuses himself: “Why, what business did you have to say that? For wasn’t it possible to lie? Even the philosophers say that there is nothing to hinder one’s telling a lie.”[6]
Working hard to impress others is a waste of time and energy. The approval of others is fickle and there is no guarantee I would be successful if that was a major goal of mine. Also worrying about that would lead to stress wanting that which I have no control over.
But if in all truth you have concerned yourself greatly with nothing but the proper use of sense-impressions, then as soon as you get up in the morning bethink you, “What do I yet lack in order to achieve tranquillity? What to achieve calm? What am I? I am not a paltry body, not property, not reputation, am I? None of these. Well, what am I? A rational creature.” 35What, then, are the demands upon you? Rehearse your actions. “‘Where did I go wrong?’ in matters conducive to serenity? ‘What did I do’ that was unfriendly, or unsocial, or unfeeling? ‘What to be done was left undone’ in regard to these matters?”
Instead of worrying about external circumstances, if I focus on my internal control , then any shortcomings are in my power to change and improve. If I do not improve things that are obvious shortcomings, I know who to blame, sometimes I have met the enemy and it is me. I am still very much a work in progress, but when I look back at how I used to feel about things and deal with anger, that feels like a different person.
Since, therefore, there is so great a difference between the things which men desire, their deeds, and their prayers, do you still wish to be on an equal footing with them in matters to which you have not devoted yourself, but they have? And after all that, are you surprised if they pity you, and are you indignant? But they are not indignant if you pity them. And why? Because they are convinced that they are getting good things, while you are not so convinced in your own case. That is why you are not satisfied with what you have, but reach out for what they have. Because, if you had been truly convinced that, in the case of the things which are good, you are the one who is attaining them, while they have gone astray, you would not even have taken account of what they say about you.
I am pretty content with who I am and my general status in life. I am not jealous of others, although I do wish I had more money. That being said, compared to younger me, I am quite wealthy. I also keep in mind that this is not promised to me and know that I will be OK even if I did lose all.
Get elected to Congress.
I have too much self respect for that.
Even if you did you wouldn’t be out there greeding away. Neither would I. I just could not morally do that. There are times I want more money, but overall I am content. I did have a job offer come up, it would have been more prestige, more money, but a ton less time for myself and my family and for you guys.
So I passed on it. My satisfaction with life matters more than what other people think of my status.
In meatspace, other people don’t see me at all, let alone think of me.
Open a learing center.
I like money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZHCVyllnck
I was expecting
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxmCCsMoD0
If we’re referring to congress then this seems to fit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC1Pdsppch4&list=RDZC1Pdsppch4&start_radio=1
https://www.quiverquant.com/strategies/s/Congress%20Long-Short/
Roughly 2X the return of the SP500 over the past 5 years.
I’ve never been able to figure out how to get people to give me money for the purpose of bettering my bank account without exchanging labor.
It blows my mind how many people simply open their wallets when some slickster showed up in a suit.
Hey, it’s how I’ve made most of my career!
My wife thinks investing in trends she hears on Fox News is the way to go. And is still upset that I suggested Bogglehead three fund over stockpicking.
So, how do you get people to hand over money for nothing?
Tell her Cramer is where it’s at for retail dumb money!
https://www.cnbc.com/investingclub/
How’s he doing against the Inverse Cramer Index these days?
https://www.quiverquant.com/strategies/s/Inverse%20Cramer/
You’d be better off in the market.
Given the sp500 2 year a rising tide lift all boats.
And is still upset that I suggested Bogglehead three fund over stockpicking.
I’m doing a boglehead-ish index fund strategy. Fees are guaranteed, returns are not.
The fidelity zero fee funds have done me just fine.
I’ve been doing it with a portion of my 401k. Also not unhappy.
but in that with which other men have concerned themselves more greatly than you have, give place to them
Defer to the egghead consensus.
Nanny knows best.
Fuck that noise.
One can dedicate one’s life to being a priest of a false scientific dogma, that doesn’t make them a better authority on the matter.
While the original quote goes on to blather about matters of skill, my disputes are matters of thought.
My version: never defer to someone who has nothing to lose by being wrong.
It is a lesson some people refuse to learn.
So much this.
Get elected to Congress.
That’s not even necessary. Start a Political Action Committee and an activist nonprofit, and watch the money roll in.
Upon further reflection, this is what OMWC should do.
Committee on Deradicalizing Academa.
CoDA.
Pays for hitmen to eliminate deranged academians and the people who hire them.
I would like to hire you, er donate to your cause.
Do you have a newsletter?
Can’t sleep-
clownsAI will eat meLay out the timeline honestly, and it becomes terrifying. In 2026, AI replaces support roles. In 2027, it consumes administrative and clerical work. By 2028, it’s performing serious professional tasks at scale. By the early 2030s, much of white-collar America may no longer be necessary to the current economic structure.
——-
A society where tens of millions are unemployable is not a sign of free-market success but a powder keg. You can’t preach personal responsibility to a population for whom responsibility has been rendered economically irrelevant. You can’t defend social order while ignoring the conditions that make order possible.
Universal basic income, viewed through this lens, stops looking like a left-wing indulgence and starts looking like a stability mechanism.
UBI isn’t charity, it’s protection money.
We should probably divert most of that ethanol fuel production to Victory Gin, while we’re at it.
Is that timeline dreamed up by AI too?
Oh….it is coming. No one is certain about the timeline but it is coming.
I heard one of the AI experts recently when asked he replied “We have stopped making predictions more than two weeks out.”
Yes, protection money. Outside of UBI I cant think of anything else. Very few people are going to pursue something worthwhile simply to better themselves but we cant just let everyone else starve. Of course that assumes that people will spend their income on food and not dope and 55gal drums of lube.
Some very smart and accomplished people have come out in favor of UBIs. That’s part of the problem. Smart and accomplished people, thanks to class-association problems, don’t generally understand that there’s a large underclass that will readily spend their UBI payments on fast food, cannabis, and Playstation games.
The other part of the problem is that a UBI will act as an income floor for setting prices, therby making everything more expensive.
I had a ranting to the choir bit scrolling through my head.
But you guys already know everything I’d point to on the topic.
I’m down for the paperwork drones picking up a shovel for the first time in their lives.
To what end? We already have unmanned robot tractors rilling hundreds of thousands of acres for ag.
Have these clowns looked at the work output of “AI”? Or the fact that it has pretty much never provided value for cost?
The best thing it has done is provide cover for people to start shedding dead weight. Most companies have a lot of people who are not producing value or actively impeding value. “Sorry, computer is doing your job, good luck elsewhere.”
AILLMs can barely summarize some items correctly now. They’re all losing money hand over fist, hoping to be the one who cracks AI. I’m on the side that thinks while LLMs are neat, they are not the appropriate path to actual AI. I’m waiting for that bubble to pop.It’s a sophisticated prediction algorithm. It’s no more likely to lead to AI than a million monkeys with a million typewriters.
It’s more like a million monkeys typing on iPhones with autocorrect on.
Universal basic income
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
If the Navy had shitcanned Sherrill and the rest of the lying midshipmen, NJ wouldn’t be afflicted by her now.
Her and that chick in Virginia are going for broke while they can.
It makes me wonder what horrible authoritarian they have in mind to primary Kathy Hochul later this year.
We can only dream.
speaking of money….everyone wants lots of it but very few people know what to do with it outside of satisfying self-indulgent whims.
What would you do with unlimited resources? I may be too old to embark on such a thing but I would build a library/museum dedicated to the triumphs of mankind and start a university along the lines of Hillsdale college but with a strong STEM curriculum. I might even try to partner with them.
As long as I am at it with unlimited resources I would buy the entire drainage basin where we already have land and restore the original natural forest. Hmmm….and locate said university in the. middle of it.
You say that like its a bad thing.
Pride
Sloth
Envy
Gluttony
Greed
Wrath
Lust
They left out Obliviousness, Irresponsibility, and Incompetence.
The Seven Deadly Sins have a theme of excess. In moderation, some aspect of each is present in a healthy soul.
Also aren’t two of those just Sloth?
Obliviousness, Irresponsibility, and Incompetence will henceforth be referred to as “Waltzing.”
No, I don’t think so. Irresponsibility might be close, but I really meant the refusal to take responsibility for one’s own actions, which ain’t quite the same as Sloth.
Don’t think I could remain stoic in the UK
Oxford is now limiting how often you get to drive your own car. Saw this guy talking about on X and didn’t believe it could be real.
https://x.com/i/status/2017019086837064167
It is real.
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/2162240/labour-council-perverse-15-minute-driving-rules-roll-out-across-uk-oxford
Oxford Council found hanging from broken CCTV poles when?
Oi! U have a loicense for that rope?
Normally I’d say ‘never’, coming from the Island of Submission and all. But the recent Amelia-mania has given me some weird hope.
I am gonna venture to say that shit wont fly here.
The UK is well on its way to Nork territory.
It is is a brave new world. What kind of evil fucks think this shit up?
Waste-of-skin bureaucrat to Wyoming resident: “you are only allowed to drive for fifteen minutes per day.”
Wyoming resident to Waste-of-skin bureaucrat: “It takes me that long to get to the end of my driveway.” *grabs rifle, heads out to legislature meeting*
Those traffic cameras would be used for target practice. 🎯
Fuck off, commies.
Madness.
A. Freaking. Lol.
So the new CW-Trek has a gay Klingon (of course!) and like all Klingons since Micael Dorn, they’re played by Black actors. But gay isn’t woke enough, so he’s got throuple parents with two dads.
Both dads abandoned him and his mom.
Tell me one of the throuple is non-binary.
Haven’t seen it. Relying on reports.
In many ways Obama was a cookie cutter prog in that everything he touched turned to shit, which of course his intent.
What are we gonna do with these fuckers?
Mummify them and ship them to Richard to burn as firewood?
The weirdest thing I’ve ever burned was a portable DVD player. The thing was so INFURITATING! (much like the WordPress block editor) I tossed it into the hot coals of the wood stove. It made for some pretty color flames.
My mom threw a broken wicker trash basket into the wood burning stove.
It went WOOSH!
We were outside working and saw a flame erupt from the chimney.
Went to check and the 2nd floor walls were warm, step dad called the fire department, turns out she almost burnt the house down, if he hadn’t checked, we would not have found it until it was too late.
He had always made fun of the volunteer firemen, but not anymore after that day.
Reply to ron73440:
My friend with the wood burning addiction once asked what I did with creosote. He cleaned his stovepipe and had several five gallon buckets of it. I told him I don’t have creosote. My chimney is a straight shot up from the top of the wood stove to above the ridge line of my single floor cabin. His is a mess of twists and turns through three floors. I have a chimney pipe thermometer and keep my fires in the safe non-creosote forming/non-chimney fire range. Both of his woods stoves are the opposite of airtight. If he ever got them burning the way they were supposed to the adjacent walls would catch fire and burn the building down before the creosote caught fire and burned the building down.
I don’t remember if ours twisted, but it was an old farmhouse built in 1802, and it had never been cleaned that I know of.
I forget what medieval Europe based novel I read where kids’ chores included dropping chickens down chimneys (while not is use) to clean out the soot.
Of course they abandoned such a source of dishonor and shame.
Who’s going to take one for the team and watch that garbage?
I assume it’s on a pay-stream I’m not paying for so I’ll pass.
The pilot was given away for free. No one watched it anyway.
EvilSheldon:
I saw it reported that someone (I believe it was RedLetterMedia) was doing a live retrospective on DS9 at the same time as the Starfleet Academy premier, and had two orders of magnitude more live viewers. That’s got to hurt.
I already suffered through Discovery, I’m not subjecting myself to another show that makes Voyager in the top half of Star Trek shows. Fucking VOYAGER!
Voyager had Jeri Ryan. If you watched the show with the sound turned off, some of it was quite lovely.
I’ve heard this referred to as the ‘Left-Spinning Death Roll.’ When a showrunner realizes that he’s run a particular franchise into the ground and is about to be investigating the job market, he goes full-retard-woke with whatever time he has left, in the hopes of signalling to Hollywood that he’s still One of the Worthy and can be safely considered for a new position.
That show looks and sounds awful.
Like a CW network version of Star Trek.
Technically, since UPN merged with WB to form CW, Voyager was a CW Trek series before there was a CW.
Wasn’t Enterprise on CW?
🤷♂️
I walked away before the end of the first season of Voyager.
OMG I found this at IMDb:
“Stephen Colbert: Starfleet Academy’s Digital Dean of Students”
JFC kill me
Az of HeelvsBabyface’s review of episode four is titled “Luxury Gay Space Communists!”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG4e4kuOLoM
The first comment is:
“Put a Klingon in it and make it gay and lame.”
This is your North Nowhere Vermont situation report, whether you want it or not.
-7.4F this morning but it’s warmed up to a balmy +4F. Today is Laundry Day and although the sun is shining intermittently I’m going to have to start the little generator to run the little washing machine.
The National Weather Service forecast suggests the unseasonably cold weather will continue through Thursday at least. However it’ll also be sunny for the first time since October. That will be spirit lifting.
A $100 Geiger counter was delivered yesterday. The background radiation levels in my cabin and office are normal. When I perch the counter on top of the Vaseline (uranium) glass top hat I use as a toothpick holder the count goes to just over 100cpm which is borderline concern level. When I put the counter adjacent to the top hat the level is normal. I don’t think I’m going to gain superpowers from exposure to the top hat.
Another of today’s projects is to bring in firewood from the remains of what I’ve got in the woodshed. Because my driveway in the Winter is impossible last month I had two cords delivered to a friend’s house with the understanding he could burn some of it while I transferred the rest to my cabin with my ATV. The Winter has been so cold, and I admit I could have been more diligent in my transferal duties, that I had only gotten a face cord, about 1/3 of a cord, before it was all gone. Since then my friend ordered another cord but then has been unusually distant. I know he doesn’t want me to ask if I could take some of it because he can’t say no. Another friend has agreed to let me have cord delivered to his driveway so I’ll still survive the Winter in style.
I want to add my voice to the chorus of praise for WebDom for her efforts to make this refuge a better place.
Also, SP would have been 63 this year? I’m 63. I always thought SP was 20 years younger then me.
I got a Geiger counter for free. It goes quite nuts with some radium dialed watches I have.
Generally speaking the back of the watch will protect your wrist from the radium’s emissions.
Just don’t eat the dial.
Yes. These are old gold filled cases. Most of the blocking is done by the top and bottom plates of the movement.
I wouldn’t wear one 7 days 16 hours, but for occasional use I don’t worry.
A uranium top hat? Man, I thought I was glib with my mirrorshade monocle, but that takes the cake.
(Thanks Jesse for introducing me to https://www.nearsights.com/ !)
Kevin’s mom died.
RIP Kevin’s mom.
Our TOK?
No, Catherine O’Hara, you know. Moira Rose.
I’m guessing the woman who played Kevin’s mom in that one TV show.
No, Kevin McAllister’s mom. She had one hell of a career, spanning multiple decades. Younger folks would know her from Schitt’s Creek. And as far as I can remember, I’ve never seen her spouting political bullshit.
Thank you for the clarification.
That’s a big difference.
For me especially.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never watched Home Alone in its entirety. I remember her more from the original Beetlejuice and A Mighty Wind (parody of one of those PBS pledge week folk music extravaganzas, IIRC.) Quite an amazing career.
😱
Both 1 and 2 are great holiday viewing.
Dammit. Kevin’s an orphan now.
“Jeffrey Epstein says Bill Gates caught sexually transmitted disease from ‘Russian girls’… then suggested secretly slipping Melinda antibiotics, new emails in DOJ release claim”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15513445/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates-melinda-antibiotics.html
Heh, not exactly of earth shattering importance but kinda funny unless you’re Melinda Gates. And to think I used to believe that Steve Jobs was the greater of the assholes amongst the two Kings of Computer Nerdism.
I’d still vote Jobs.
And Melinda is spending as much of her post divorce billions as possible to make the world a worse place.
The other day I went to youtube to watch the speech at Davos by that Carney guy from Canada to see what all of the accolades were about. Now my youtube algorithm thinks I’m a hardcore leftist.
Remove it from your watch history.
Congratulations on getting off a list!
Were you impressed by his eloquence?
Politician speeches remind me of a shirt my dad used to have that my mom hated:
If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.
Comment *I think it was this one.
In my memory, I could have sworn it said bullshit, but I guess I lied to myself.
He cited the Vaclav Havel greengrocer thing, which was nice. Much of the rest of it was about what his country is doing to protect itself from the
He cited the Vaclav Havel greengrocer thing, which was nice. Much of the rest of it was about what his country is doing to protect itself in the face of Trump suggesting the U.S. doesn’t owe the world a living.
I have no idea how that middle posting happened.
Wouldn’t it be delightful if Don Lemon were to somehow wind up in Gitmo?