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Food for thought: Glenn Gould on why Beethoven is an admired composer.
Spoken notes before performing Piano Sonata 17 in D minor, op 31. The Tempest Sonata. Broadcast March 19, 1967
#Chess
Inspired while watching videos about AlphaZero.
As a thought experiment, imagine that each piece is an investment, with the potential of certain pieces to be multiple times their initial value. A knight or bishop, normally worth 3 points may in time become +9 points during a game, such as the famous ‘octopus knight’ in game 16 of the world chess championship, where Karpov was forced to exchange a knight with his queen.
The sacrifice of a low functioning material such as out of place pawn or rook, doesn’t mean much if the overall portfolio is valued at a greater level.
In this sense, clarification of the position, and purifying the value of the greatest returning pieces eventually becomes the objective of the game. All irrelevant pieces fall to the wayside during the closure of the middle game period.
This is of course a known element of the game, material vs dynamic/time compensation.
When viewing through the lens of finance, as a portfolio, it does become easier to sacrifice material in my opinion. Understanding that it is improving the value of the portfolio overall and that clarifying existing pieces can create multiples (as it does for investments).
Cheers
Not sure how I went so far without coming across this concept, it is an ancient one: Arete.
Having run across it – it really is my favorite word in the world.
Some things about it:
I simply love this word and what it represents. It is an aspiration and symbol for what is important in life (personally speaking).
Enjoy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arete
is a concept in ancient Greek thought that, in its most basic sense, refers to “excellence” of any kind.[1] The term may also mean “moral virtue”.[1] In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one’s full potential.
The term from Homeric times onwards isn’t gender specific. Homer applies the term to both the Greek and Trojan heroes as well as major female figures, such as Penelope, the wife of Greek hero Odysseus. In the Homeric poems, Arete is frequently associated with bravery, but more often with effectiveness. The person of Arete is of the highest effectiveness; they use all of their faculties—strength, bravery, and wit—to achieve real results. In the Homeric world, Arete involves all of the abilities and potentialities available to humans.
In some contexts, Arete is explicitly linked with human knowledge, where the expressions “virtue is knowledge” and “Arete is knowledge” are used interchangeably. The highest human potential is knowledge, and all other human abilities are derived from this central capacity. If Arete is knowledge and study, the highest human knowledge is knowledge about knowledge itself. In this light, the theoretical study of human knowledge, which Aristotle called “contemplation”, is the highest human ability and happiness.[2]
Bob Egan has written a nice post about the location of jazz clubs in NYC. I’m posting here in case his server quits for posterity. It is amazing how these clubs were really organically the first floors of homes, a few chairs, all beside one another. #history
https://www.popspotsnyc.com/jazz_clubs/
Locations of Jazz Clubs in New York City Greenwich Village
Locations of Jazz Clubs in New York City 52nd Street
Locations of Jazz Clubs in New York City Harlem
Locations of Jazz Clubs in New York City Greenwich Village
Had never realized this until thinking it through now, but the beautiful yield and inverted yield curve in finance that we all know and love can be considered the same as the forward contracts concept of contango and backwardation. A yield curve that is inverted is identical to an asset in backwardation – we just call them by different names.
…and feels like where we sat at the beginning of smart phone revolution when the iPhone 1-3 were released between 2007-2009. Just the start.
Extremely excited for VR, which I believe is the next logical ‘screen’ to arrive at after the supersized OLED phase we are in now.
WebXR (which streams immersive experiences) / 360 videos / and the social connections enabled by things such as the Echo Zero G app and others like it illustrate what a virtual environment is capable of doing, allowing multiple users to play and chat with one another in an immersive environment.
The most important thing in my opinion are:
I see most of these happening now with the Quest 2 release (appears the Quest 3 is under discussion for release this year) and am extremely enthusiastic about the platform.
Posting some of my other work / experiments in watch design… This is more of a study to learn about the curvature of lugs, bevels etc. Less a work than the learning the process right now.
If you were to study gravity, you’d want nearly a perfect Zero-G enviroment and then introduce 2 spheres. It would give the ideal experimental result by removing all other noisy variables that you’d find in the real world.
Enter the Lemon…
If one were to think about how multiple items are produced and purchased. I suggest that the 3 citrus fruits Oranges / Lemons / Limes offer a nearly perfect study.
Just a thought but wanted to suggest… Citrus fruits to study substitution effects for producers based on demand.
**it also appears that many other fruits can be grafted onto a tree (up to 40 types from some articles) so interesting to consider**
One concept that I’m pondering is the act of bringing people along… in the same referential frame. An unfinished idea currently..
In my mind’s eye, I see sort of a drivable bus on a rollercoaster type image.
On the bus, what the driver sees is for argument’s sake, exactly what the passenger can see. You are all aboard the same vessel, sharing the same frame of reference and there is no 3rd camera or drone to provide another reference point.
… In such a setting it is possible for someone, the artist let’s say, but not just exclusively artist-types, to drive the bus in such a path as to illuminate the nature of the greater system.
That lightbulbs will hopefully go off in people’s heads if the bus is driven in a certain pattern. That I see as something worth trying to do. There is a higher order message there.
Subversive fire lighting…