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Cocaine Blunts: Best Rap, 2010

~ Mark

This is the Best Rap list. There is no Drake. Other notable omissions include, but are not limited to: aging New Yorkers who have had more major deals than major hits; teenagers from Dallas or LA who keep giving different names to the same goddamn dances and won’t get off my lawn; autistic youtube sensations; dead men whose voices live on in the name of dollars; white people who aren’t wolves or bugs; bloggers turned rappers; child actors turned rappers; children of rappers turned rappers; 40 year old rappers who talk about Gucci; children who act like 40 year old rappers who talk about Gucci; 40 year old rappers who hate both children and Gucci; children who act like 40 year old rappers who hate children and Gucci; Juggalos; Canadians; South Africans and J. Cole.

Adding to my “to listen” list. (via putthison)

Cocaine Blunts: Best Rap, 2010

Business clichés: The subtleties of corporate English | The Economist

~ Mark

“It’s terribly important, at least in American business meetings, to be constantly acknowledging the contributions other people have made”. (via) A further rhapsody on “deep dive”:

There’s something athletic, soulful even, about the thought of physically diving into a spreadsheet, kicking around in its dusky deep columns, paddling lazily through the surf of numbers, digging for hidden gems among its pivot tables, and coming up for air gasping but ecstatic, with the decimal points cascading down your forehead.

Business clichés: The subtleties of corporate English | The Economist

SPIEGEL Interview with Umberto Eco

~ Mark

We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That’s why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It’s a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don’t want to die.

And also:

I was fascinated with Stendhal at 13 and with Thomas Mann at 15 and, at 16, I loved Chopin. Then I spent my life getting to know the rest. Right now, Chopin is at the very top once again. If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you’re an idiot.

SPIEGEL Interview with Umberto Eco

What economic laws have worked best for Berkshire?

~ Mark

It is all a matter of trying to find businesses with wide moats protecting a large castle occupied by an honest lord. Moats might be a natural franchise, brand loyalty, or being a low-cost producer. In a capitalistic society, all moats are subject to attack: if you have a good castle, others will want it. What we want to figure out is what keeps the castle standing and how smart is the lord. [Charlie Munger: We also like to look for low agency costs on that lord, economies of scale and “economies of intelligence.”]

Buffett elaborated on the “economies of intelligence”: the idea is to find businesses where you have to be smart only once instead of being smart forever. Retailing is a business where you have to be smart forever: your competitors will always copy your innovations. Buying a network TV station in the early days of television required you to be smart only once. In that kind of business, a terrible manager can still make a fortune. Given the choice between the two (a business where you have to be smart forever or one where you have to be smart once), Buffett advised, pick the great business–be smart once.

Be smart once!

What economic laws have worked best for Berkshire?

Wehr in the World: The importance of family and such

~ Mark

Family first? This is one of the best things I’ve read recently.

I can think of a few questions to gauge what is important to someone:

If you could only achieve one thing in your life, what would it be?
If you could only spend your life doing one thing, what would it be?
If you could only know one person in your life, who would it be?
How do you want to be remembered?
How do you want to be perceived right now?
Whose respect do you most hope to earn?
Whose admiration do you most hope to earn?
Whose love do you most hope to earn?
What ideas/principles are you willing to die for?
Who are you willing to die for?
What is the most meaningful thing you can do with your life?
What is the best way you can spend your time?
What is the best way you spent your time today?
If you knew you had only weeks to live, how would you spend your time?
If you knew you had only hours to live, how would you spend your time?
If you knew you had only minutes to live, how would you spend your time?
Of all the things in your life, which would you be the most sorry to lose irrevocably?
What would you most like to gain in your life?

Solid gold. By all means, read the whole thing.

Wehr in the World: The importance of family and such

Poignance Measured in Digits – New York Times

~ Mark

July 16, 1989 article by Hans Fantel. He writes about a CD his father gave him, a Vienna Philharmonic performance of Mahler’s 9th–the very show that they’d attended together 50 years earlier, which also happened to be the last the Vienna Philharmonic would give before Hitler rolled in.

But it wasn’t the music alone that cast a spell over me as I listened to the new CD. Nor was it the memory of the time when the recording was made. It took me a while to discover what so moved me. Finally, I knew what it was: This disk held fast an event I had shared with my father: 71 minutes out of the 16 years we had together. Soon after, as an “enemy of Reich and Fuhrer,” my father also disappeared into Hitler’s abyss.

That’s what made me realize something about the nature of phonographs: they admit no ending. They imply perpetuity.

All this seems far from our usual concerns with the hardware of sound reproduction. But then again, speculating on endlessness may be getting at the purposive essence of all this electronic gadetry – its “telos,” as the Greeks would say. In the perennial rebirth of music through recordings, something of life itself steps over the normal limits of time.

(via Alex Ross’ new book)
Poignance Measured in Digits – New York Times

The Searchers: Radiohead’s unquiet revolution – The New Yorker

~ Mark

Alex Ross on tour with Radiohead. I like this bit from Nigel Godrich on Radiohead’s ongoing effort to figure out their sound and musical directions. At one point,

People stopped talking to one another. ‘Insanity’ is the word. In the end, I think the debate was redundant, because the band ultimately kept doing what it has always done—zigzagging between extremes. Whenever we really did try to impose an aesthetic from the outside—the aesthetic being, say, electronic—it would fail. All the drama was just a form of procrastination.

The Searchers: Radiohead’s unquiet revolution – The New Yorker