My Ledger

Ground floor of a house fire.

Sana is on the phone with her mother and I am putting the plaque in a drawer.

The Medici bill of exchange: the ninety-day gap between Florence and London that let interest exist without being called interest.

In February 1994, a Texas publisher named John Quarterman printed a chart in a monthly newsletter called Matrix News.

Naval Ravikant did not write The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.

The first time I learned this lesson, it was month-end close, late at night because I cannot finish the closing on time.

Somewhere today a person is filling in a form with a pen.

Pharaoh dreamed of seven fat cattle grazing by the Nile and seven lean ones that rose out of the water and ate them.

Peck is out in his yard repairing a lawn mower when a neighbour stops to watch and says: “I’ve never been able to fix those kind of things”.

In 1943, the first American jet fighter took shape under a rented circus tent.

Spain says its border with Portugal runs 987 kilometers.

In 1968, the board of the Penn Central railroad represented the apex of corporate prestige.

A man sits with his back to a billiard table.

At Cajamarca, in November 1532, one hundred sixty-eight Spanish soldiers captured the emperor of the Inca.

Before dawn, Steven Pressfield climbs into a car he does not want to be in and drives to a gym he does not want to enter.

John Jantsch had a forty-minute interview he needed transcribed.

In Mayan mythology the universe was destroyed four times, and each time the survivors prepared for the wrong disaster.

On October 12, 1307, Jacques de Molay walked at the head of a funeral procession in Paris.

Dalio’s 1982 bet against the economy that nearly destroyed Bridgewater.

The arithmetic behind the title: a human lifespan of eighty years is roughly four thousand weeks.

Christopher Latham Sholes spent the early 1870s solving a problem that no longer exists.

Joshua Bell stood in a Washington D.C. subway station and played the violin for forty-five minutes.

Dick Stack closes his second store, refuses to declare bankruptcy, and sells his house and car to pay his creditors.

Nikolaos Passaris sent me the title and I almost dismissed it on sight.

There is a screenshot on my phone of a crypto position from late 2021.

The screenshots come in throughout the day.

Towards the end of the day, I have a habit I do not feel especially good about.

During a difficult period, my mom told me a story of a king who asks his advisors for a ring that will make a happy man sad and a sad man happy.

I struggle with the corporate obsession with “value.”

The library at Alexandria didn’t die in a single fire.

There is a line often attributed to Lenin: sometimes decades pass and nothing happens, and sometimes weeks pass and decades happen.

In the summer of 1720, an English citizen holding government debt could walk into the offices of the South Sea Company and execute a simple exchange.

There are two ways to lose money in the stock market.

Somewhere in the opening pages of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a starship called the Heart of Gold is hurtling through space.

On a recent flight back to my home city, I played Battleship with Hamza.

Jay Gatsby stood at the edge of his dock, staring across the water at a green light.

The myth of Procrustes is a story about the arrogance of the host.

Imagine a chief in the Pacific Northwest; let’s call him the Big Man.

In 1636, a merchant in Amsterdam traded twelve acres of land for a single Semper Augustus tulip bulb.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope is trapped.

In 1998, the stock market was in a state of euphoria.

I first noticed crypto the way most people do.

In retail, shrink is treated as a fact of life.

Most people have been inside a house they don’t own but know intimately.

“A forest fire doesn’t start because lightning exists.

Imagine you’re standing on a watchtower overlooking a vast, wintry landscape.

In 2005, Amazon puzzled most investors.

I recently turned 40, and when my wife asked what I wanted for my birthday, I answered without hesitation: “A home library.”

20 April 2020, my Facebook and Twitter feeds lit up with screenshots and hot takes: oil had “gone below zero.”

Hibbing is cold and far.