“the rise of leadership as an object of our collective fascination has coincided precisely with the decline of leadership in our collective estimation.” — Hard Times: Leadership in America by Barbara Kellerman

“Where the ancient historian has to reconstruct a whole epoch from a single papyrus, the contemporary historian has a roomful of sources for a single day. It is the ratio of quantity to quality that has changed for the worse.” — History of Europe in the 1990s Timothy Garton Ash

Bar crawling with little brother Rusty

instagram.com/reel/DMsa_cIuz…

“The overriding goal is to make the internal operations of Congress more transparent.” — The Whips: Building Party Coalitions in Congress (Legislative Politics And Policy Making) by C. Lawrence Evans

Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm instagram.com/reel/DNJ6srEqy…

2. Absolutism and the State youtu.be/zeGaZf3vAM0?si… via YouTube Something to think about

the distinction between the akousmatikoi ("those who listen"), who is conventionally regarded as more concerned with religious, and ritual elements, and associated with the oral tradition, and the mathematikoi ("those who learn") existed

“Laurent Fabius urged Macron to “calm the anger, repair the wounds, alleviate the doubts, show the road forward and embody the hopes” of all French people.” — The Last President of Europe: Emmanuel Macron's Race to Revive France and Save the World by William Drozdiak

“…laughter is of man the very marrow.–Rabelais, Gargantua, ‘To the Reader’” — The Cambridge Introduction to French Literature (Cambridge Introductions to Literature) by Brian Nelson a.co/3fboFcY

“One cannot know something without experiencing it.” — The Golden Thread: The Ageless Wisdom of the Western Mystery Traditions by Joscelyn Godwin

“Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the powerful bestseller Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852, while living in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband, Calvin, was teaching theology at Bowdoin College.” — Mainers in the Civil War by Harry Gratwick

“Peter Drucker put it well: ‘The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it is selling.’” — Tarzan Economics: Eight Principles for Pivoting Through Disruption a.co/cB3oWDD

van Gogh shares many things in common with IT professionals -hard work, self-critical, and taciturn. — Vincent Van Gogh: A Life by Philip Callow

Pittsburgh Review of Books Hits the Shelves pittsburghmagazine.com/pittsburgh-rev…

Pablo Torres likens Trump’s leadership style to “political fellatio”

“two basic philosophical questions, namely: what should we do? and, what is there? And there’s a third basic question: how do we know, or if we don’t know how should we set about finding out—” — Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Edward Craig

“how people think alters things, and that how lots of people think alters things for nearly everyone, is undeniable.” — Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Edward Craig

“know that A happens because B happened may improve your control over things: in some cases B will be something that you can bring about, or prevent—which will be very useful if A is something you want, or want to avoid.” — Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

Consensus Building is going to be tough in 2026