Three things I read this week

Why you're powerless, cave diving, the perfect president

If you look forward to these unorthodox updates might I tempt you to elevate your experience? If pay for a year upfront it works out to just $3.333 a month, one digit of three supports every monthly distribution of readable threes. What sayeth thee?

Also, I have two notes about Claudine Gay below. The second note is now out of date? Because she just resigned. That’s the internet for you, if you don’t publish immediately you risk get sidetracked. Oh well.

She needed to go, obviously, but if I were king of the world I would have kept her on. Claudine was the perfect mascot, a living embodiment of the rot in our educational system. Every day that she was president, a few more people realized that the emperor is wearing no clothes.

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1 - My Favorite Investment Writing of 2023

Nick Maggiulli, the Chief Operating Officer for Ritholtz Wealth Management, shares the best investing/finance articles that he discovered in 2023.

2 - It’s not Hypocrisy, You’re Just Powerless

Class A loves it when you point out their hypocrisy — Of course Claudine Gay will remain the plagiarist anti-Semitic president of Harvard, why wouldn’t she? — because it proves their power. They set the rules, they can change the rules, what are you going to do about it you peasant scum?

You see, it’s possible you are under the misapprehension that you are not supposed to notice what you described as the “double-standard” in acceptable behavior between Team A and Team B. And that you think if you point out this double-standard, you are foiling the other team’s plot and holding them accountable.

It’s not Hypocrisy, You’re Just Powerless

This idea, continued 👇

3 - The perfect president

From the Free Press.

I still think Claudine Gay is too big to fail. She is a symbol. And the perfect one for a once-great American institution running on prestige fumes and foreign dollars. Of course her papers are flawed and plagiarized. Of course she isn’t up for the actual task of the job. It’s part of the point of Claudine Gay being president of Harvard. It’s part of the statement. And I don’t mean the crude take that she got the job simply based on her identity, since Claudine herself has played a major role in smearing several truly great black academics throughout her career.

No, the statement Claudine Gay as president of Harvard makes is that politics matter more than anything else. It’s actually better for the movement that her work is fake. Because it makes the message even clearer: mediocrity, so long as it’s wedded to ideology, is enough. We’ll even call mediocrity genius and give it the most prestigious academic job in the land, so long as you say just the right things about this list of issues. In conclusion, Claudine Gay is the perfect president of Harvard.

4 - Into the Planet

This book is exceptional, an easy 5/5.

Into the Planet is a book about cave diving, but Jill’s character development captured more of my attention than the silty water or nitrogen narcosis. Jill is a woman swimming her way through a male dominated sport, and at several intervals she’s served a laden dish of discrimination. Her male colleagues fail to recognize her accomplishments or to take her seriously, especially early in her career.

This sucks, these shitty men suck. However!!!

Jill’s response to adversity is so healthy and refreshing. She acknowledges the pain that the men have caused her, but vows to use it as motivation to perform at such a high level that nobody can dismiss what she’s done. Sexism is outside of Jill’s control, but she absolutely can control how she responds to it.

But lest you think this is a book about the message, it’s not. Although disrespectful men are a hiccup on the highway to greatness, the deadlier challenge is the cave. The unpredictable currents, blackout conditions, equipment failure, loss of colleagues and yes, even sabotage. Jill makes a name for herself (including being the first person to dive inside an iceberg) because she has a mind fortified against fear and an excellent philosophy of personal responsibility.

For some, a brush with death or fighting off a ruthless attacker might forever destroy their confidence. For me, there were weird gifts attached to my life’s most terrifying experiences. Fighting off a burglar in my home helped me emerge from my younger self. Enduring online critics when I was struck down with the bends helped me to accept rejection. I had slowly regained my mettle one dive at a time after the incident at the Pit.

I looked on failure as something I called “discovery learning.” Rejection from outsiders became affirmation that I was doing something unusual and even remarkable. I knew that boundaries placed in front of myself and other women only shielded the status quo. I looked at gatekeepers who stood in my way as people who lacked vision. I was determined to explore and experience the unimaginable because I was convinced that I was capable of more than I could imagine.

The most prominent criticism of this book is that it’s overly personal. If all you want is tech talk then Into the Planet is not the cave diving book for you. I concede that I would have liked to hear more about how divers mitigate the risks of getting stuck. When a diver pushes into an unknown cave, how do they deal with the risk that it narrows down on them so quickly that they can’t turn around? Or how about the technicalities of mixing their multi-gas rigs that they use for deep diving? I’d have preferred that to an explanation of why she loves her second husband so much.

Despite my nitpicking criticism, I’m giving Into the Planet a full strength recommendation. In particular, if I had a teenage daughter (or son) I would give this book to her as an example of how to handle the challenges that life chucks your way.

5 - The perfect sequel

This is the most refined satire you’ll find on YouTubs. I laughed to the point of breakdown, watching this epic takedown.

I wish the scriptwriter would start a Substack.

Since 2015, the world has been starving for a sequel to the Hunger Games.
Every man’s dream and every woman’s queen,
Katniss Everdeen,
disappeared from the screen.
If you ask, you shall receive, Lionsgate has delivered…
A feast of feisty femininity, toxic masculinity and brave diversity.