Napoleon was, by any reasonable accounting, a genius – a military mind who rewrote the rules of European warfare, a political operator who fought his way up from being a minor league Corsican nobility to the Emperor of France and ruler of most of modern Europe before he turned 35, and a reformer whose ideas around the judicial system and the liberal order still echo today.
But none of that stopped him from making one of the dumbest decisions any leader has ever made, because he was arrogant, because he’d gotten away with so much for so long that he confused his luck for a system, and because (with the exception of Talleyrand) most of the people around him had simply stopped telling him no.
Format: Quote
Dread Bait
Muted a whole bunch of political / upsetting terms. Unfollowed people posting non-stop dread bait. This was crucial to regaining an even keel.
The whole article is worth reading. Lots of good advice for keeping sane during <gestures around> all this. But I especially like the term “dread bait”. It definitely captures the spirit of a certain kind of poster who shares every horror and atrocity seemingly in the hopes that “someone” will Do Something, or rather maybe just engage with their post and make them feel like they’ve Done Something.
Bounded by a Shell of Fire
“Every point in space is the center of its own sphere of ever deepening time, bounded by a shell of fire.”
This is from early in Katie Mack’s The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), which I’m very much enjoying reading. I posted it to Mastodon earlier, but I have that account set to automatically expire old posts and I want to remember this one, so here we are.
On establishing boundaries
“‘What’s mine is yours’ doesn’t extend to my Star Trek coffee mug.”
– me to my wife, as it is important to set boundaries in any relationship.