Alan Turing showed that a machine can do arithmetic without understanding what it is doing. Most competence does not depend on comprehension. Consciousness as a user-illusion, as an app. A decision is an illusion too. The yes/no dichotomy masks the conscious and subconscious thoughts that precipitate into action when a decision is made. The timing of a decision is more telling than the decision itself. Successful deal makers delay a decision until an optimal moment. They do not let events run them into a decision. It’s like Buffett famously says: investing is like baseball except I don’t have to take a swing unless I want to. You can wait for the pitch you want. The train is refreshingly empty. The temperature is perfect; a slight breeze. Across the aisle a man browses his Facebook feed taking time to investigate some of the pictures from the feed in detail. Feed is the right word, it looks like a drip-feed of inanities. The visions of David Foster Wallace are becoming true. The phone is our entertainment cartridge. …

Schumpeter saw capitalism as a “process of industrial mutation… that incessantly revolutionises the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” In Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital Carlota Perez writes that Schumpeter “remained attached to market equilibrium forces…”And why not? Everyone needs a reference point. If the premise is that everything is unstable, how would you be able to define terms and think clearly? This carriage in the 365506 smells of washing detergent. Two rows in front of me a man’s hair looks wet, his hair oozes with gel. Bunches of hair are stuck together. It looks like an experiment gone awry. The shiny black shoes belong to a man wearing a waistcoat. Small unrimmed glasses, his head resting on a stiff collar, sleeping. Very poor air quality. A sudden smell of food, someone’s lunchbox? It’s a nauseating ride this morning. A lot of coughing. Tempted to open the window, but I’d have to reach over. I’m sure some people find this moist, rotten atmosphere homely. Fresh air would disrupt …

Work is what you do for others, art is what you do for yourself. Sondheim finds a way of connecting Seurat’s approach to painting with the experience of a modern artist: Seurat paints point by point and the picture only comes together in the visual cortex (?) of the viewer, where the points merge into a greater whole. Similarly, the modern artist must pool followers and financial support drop by drop, but how does it come together in the end? Who has the patience to keep looking? Sunday in the Park with George, Stanwix Theatre Full moon, drifting dark clouds like ink in water. A perfect orb, itself flecked with dark marks, like smaller versions of the clouds that mask it from the viewer on earth. Lantern festival, 15 days into the new lunar month. Traditionally this was the one day in the year when young women could go out on a date without fear for their reputation. You can imagine the scenes: lanterns of all shapes and sizes, mechanical contraptions, the bustling street, throbbing …