True but Forbidden #45: The Future’s Here and T Boone Pickens Is Moving On

“The future’s already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” ***

A final message from T. Boone Pickens shared before his passing on September 11, 2019   My wealth was built through some key principles, including:

• A good work ethic is critical.
• Don’t think competition is bad, but play by the rules. I loved to compete and win. I never wanted the other guy to do badly; I just wanted to do a little better than he did.
• Learn to analyze well. Assess the risks and the prospective rewards, and keep it simple.
• Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader: Avoid the “Ready-aim-aim-aim-aim” syndrome. You have to be willing to fire.
• Learn from mistakes. That’s not just a cliché. I sure made my share. Remember the doors that smashed your fingers the first time and be more careful the next trip through.
• Be humble. I always believed the higher a monkey climbs in the tree, the more people below can see his ass. You don’t have to be that monkey.
• Don’t look to government to solve problems — the strength of this country is in its people.
• Stay fit. You don’t want to get old and feel bad. You’ll also get a lot more accomplished and feel better about yourself if you stay fit. I didn’t make it to 91 by neglecting my health.
• Embrace change. Although older people are generally threatened by change, young people loved me because I embraced change rather than running from it. Change creates opportunity.
• Have faith, both in spiritual matters and in humanity, and in yourself. That faith will see you through the dark times we all navigate.
• Over the years, my staff got used to hearing me in a meeting or on the phone asking, “Whaddya got?” That’s probably what my Maker is asking me about now.

Here’s my best answer.

I left an undying love for America, and the hope it presents for all. I left a passion for entrepreneurship, and the promise it sustains. I left the belief that future generations can and will do better than my own.

Thank you. It’s time we all move on.

[HT: A Large Regular]

Then again, it turns out that easy money CAN buy happiness:   Lottery Wins and Satisfaction:  Paradoxically, the published literature on the psychological consequences of lottery wins has found almost no evidence that winners become happier. This famous puzzle was originally documented by the psychologist Philip Brickman and colleagues. Using new German panel data, we offer results that are more in accord with common sense and economic theory. We have been particularly influenced by the pioneering work of Richard Easterlin: in this paper we explicitly consider the idea of ‘domain’ satisfaction levels. First, our estimates show that lottery wins raise people’s satisfaction with their overall income. Second, lottery wins’ increase people’s satisfaction with life. The effects documented here are, as might be expected, especially pronounced for big wins.

Does it bother anyone else that our elected officials live in a panopticon run by our intelligence agencies?

— Naval (@naval) September 20, 2019

Abortion Advocates Attack Kavanaugh Because They’re Losing the Argument    After Illinois abortion practitioner Dr. Ulrich Klopfer died on September 3, authorities discovered a stockpile of frozen baby parts from 2,246 unborn babies. (Recall that Philadelphia police found preserved or frozen baby parts at Gosnell’s clinic, amid filthy and unsanitary conditions.) The maintenance of a trophy collection of baby parts at his home points to an unfathomable demonic madness one would normally expect to find in a prolific serial killer. Oh, wait . . . maybe that’s exactly why he kept those baby parts.

Wind Power: How the 19th-Century’s Greatest Shipbuilder Opened the Pacific   Over the next decade and a half, Turner followed opportunities wherever the schooners and brigantines under his command took him, from the Strait of Magellan to the Gulf of Alaska. With San Francisco, California, and Papeete, Tahiti, as his home bases, Turner’s life on the high seas was followed by a career of almost 40 years in California as the most prolific shipbuilder of his era. At the height of his shipbuilding career, in the 1880s, Matthew Turner was responsible for the design and construction of as many as a dozen schooners, sloops, brigantines, and steamers in a single year.

Ukraine. Biden. Trump. – The New Neo  The latest media-manufactured faux scandal is that Trump needs to be impeached because he a told a foreign leader to rein in corruption. Oh, and Joe Biden, who *bragged on camera* about bribing Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating his son’s company, should be president.

Shamelessness and Ignorance Unlimited   The CIA has used secrecy –”which is essential to competent intelligence– ”to hide how little it really knows beyond what is in the public realm as well as all it does to support its favorite people and policies, and to oppose the others.

Passing off its opinions as facts and refusing to support them by claiming to be constrained by security is its stock-in-trade. Junior persons in the media fall for that. But veterans at the Washington Post and the New York Times know the game and support it.

The deep state and the media are on the same side of a political scam. They worked together to limit Ronald Reagan and to scare George W. Bush. But their assault on Donald Trump waged from behind the pretense of security is little short of a coup d’état.

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