It's too hectic in Chi-Chi-Chi Le-Le-Le to write anything of length myself, so I will instead pass on the following paragraphs which have recently caught my eye.
Ryan Holiday comments on the importance of doing rather than over reflecting and advising:
What caught my attention about your post – and let’s face it, I get hung up on things most people don’t – was you that you were reflecting on a process that you’d only just begun. More honestly, you were giving advice to other people because it’s easier than focusing on yourself. It’s easier than quietly setting out to do your work, creating a position of credibility and then speaking from it.
This is a nasty distraction and habit that the internet completely enables. Think about a comedian in your position 20 years ago – who would he have published those pieces to? He couldn’t have, at least until he was much further down the road. In a way he’d be lucky because he wouldn’t have this gratifying avenue to publicly “reflect” on the process. He’d be more likely to spend that time actually engaging in that process. His sense of self and confidence would be built through the result of that labor, not from the false image he’d crafted in front of a different audience. In some cases, the most honest thing to do is to say nothing at all.
Robin Hanson a few years back on innovations and economic growth:
The truth is that the artistic creations or intellectual insights we most admire for their striking “creativity” matter little for economic growth. Instead, most of the innovations that matter are the tiny changes we constantly make to the millions of procedures and methods we use. And changing these procedures does not require free-spirited self-expression. Instead, it is quite natural for people to constantly think about tiny changes to their procedures as they follow those procedures. In fact, we imagine far more such changes than we can afford to pursue.
Christopher Hitchens being interviewed about his memoir:
There are still people who want to criminalize homosexuality one way or another, and I thought it might be useful if more heterosexual men admitted that they are a little bit gay, as is everyone, and that homosexuality is a form of love and not just sex.
The close of a piece on how the Thailand riots have affected the country's notorious sex trade:
At about midnight, an adorable little girl who looks like she might be about 6 years old comes into the bar selling flowers. "Where else in the world," says Terry, "could I give that girl 1,000 baht, take her outside and do whatever I wanted to her?"
On the authenticity of Ron Artest:
We love Ron Artest because he's real. Not just as a hip-hop cliche—unapologetic, unflinching loyalty to his roots—but as an authentic, honest-to-God example of human complexity. Against a backdrop of cardboard cutouts in jerseys and shorts, Artest gives us three dimensions.
I would love to add one paragraph from Colin Marshall:
You learn by doing, so get doing. Hit rock bottom as soon as possible, then figure out how to get out of it. No other challenge will seem unconquerable after that. Advice from others means absolutely nothing; fucking up is what teaches you something. Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t. Realize that most people older than you really don’t know any better. Figure out what your fears are and take steps to get over them. Now is your time to fail and fail spectacularly. If you don’t fail, you’re not taking enough risks. You are more likely to get a stunning career with one or two enormous, audacious failures under your belt than with a by-the-book, up-from-the-bottom “normal” approach. Everybody fucks up; it’s how you deal with fucking up that matters. Nothing in the world can take place of persistence. Learn to laugh at yourself, and do it a lot. No matter what you do, someone will have an opinion about it.