Samson

So, a little bit of a curveball: just recently, I wrote that I seem to keep reading personal finance books not to get any new ideas or to tweak my strategy, just to reaffirm my path and maybe gain a deeper understanding of why passive investing works so well. I was expecting something similar when I picked up the new 2023 edition of "The Four Pillars of Investing" by the brilliant William Bernstein. While it certainly overlaps with a lot of my beliefs, particularly the virtues of index funds and long-term investing, it's causing me to significantly rethink some aspects of my investment plan, particularly as it comes to retirement. I'm not going to make changes any time soon, but it feels a little refreshing to have something new and concrete to play around with.

I'm pretty sure I first learned about Bernstein through the Boglehead universe, but my previous exposure to him was through his books on economic history, The Birth of Plenty and A Splendid Exchange. I've been meaning to dip my toes into his personal finance books, and Four Pillars seems to be the most popular and recently updated. In an unusual move for me, I picked up the Kindle edition; I almost always prefer reading paper copies, but have had a hard time locating a recent print edition at my library, and am trying to limit my personal print library to a few specific authors. It's been a while since I read a Kindle book, and from a tech perspective I do like how they work: you can easily zoom in on graphs and tables, and there's a good system of highlighting passages that automatically bookmarks them for future reference. (Thus, it's easy for me to find and repeat here my favorite sentence in the book: "Since Morningstar is located in Chicago and staffed by Cubs fans, they have a special affinity for losers.") As with other Kindle books I've read, there is a little clunkiness to this book which makes me wonder if it was generated from a pre-copyediting draft, with some ideas seeming to repeat in nearby paragraphs and the odd typo here or there. On the whole the prose felt a bit less polished than the other Bernstein books I've read, while still being good and entertaining.

I came into the book with a small amount of skepticism just based on the title; The Birth of Plenty seemed to also be about "four pillars", with multiple concepts shoved into the fourth pillar, and I was prepared for something similar here. This book's thesis is pretty uncontestable, though. The title stems from the idea that, in order to be a successful investor (that is, to make rather than lose money at investing), you need to understand four things: The theory of investing, the history of investing, the psychology of investing, and the business of investing. That's all pretty compelling, and I think I agree with him. It's also encouraging: it suggests that, while there is definitely a high degree of uncertainty, investing is not just a matter of luck, nor of extraordinary ability, and that by learning and absorbing some specific knowledge you'll significantly increase your success.

I'll run quickly through the four pillars, then the aspects that interested me the most, and finally what thoughts it's sparked for my own portfolio and investment strategy.

Understanding the theory of investing includes topics like how businesses generate money (non-zero-sum), the tradeoff between risk and reward (investors will demand a greater return in exchange for greater uncertainty), and the differences between stocks (equity) and bonds (debt). This section overlaps with books like "A Random Walk Down Wall Street". I've said in the past that it isn't necessary to understand the theory behind investing to invest well, and while that's technically true, in practice I think it is important for verifying that a given portfolio or strategy is important for your situation and stage of life, and for understanding what's happening when you see major declines in your portfolio.

The history of investing means being aware of the major bubbles and crashes in the past. That includes recent events, like the 2008 great financial crash, 2000 dot-com bust, 1970s inflation and so on; but also ones further back, like the bond bear marked from the 1940s-1980s, the confiscation of assets during the Communist revolutions, bubbles at least as far back as the South Sea and Tulip Mania bubbles. Bernstein makes an interesting point that the importance of understanding a profession's history varies depending on the profession: you can be a very successful surgeon or engineer without knowing much about the history of surgery or engineering; but diplomats and lawyers need a very solid understanding of their fields' histories. Airline pilots benefit greatly from reading about crash reports; from learning about the mistakes other pilots made, they can avoid repeating them. Financial markets have existed for centuries, while our personal investing lives only last several decades. It's important to avoid "recency bias", where we assume that the last few years' trends will continue indefinitely; understanding the different ways markets have behaved in the more distant past enables us to better understand the possible risks that could occur and prepare for them. It's also helpful to understand that booms and busts are inevitable, and that you're always better served by being "fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful". If you encounter your first market crash, and all the financial news is talking about how everything is terrible, and you sell out of your depressed holdings, then you'll do permanent damage to your portfolio; but if you realize that these crashes happen roughly every decade and always recover, then you'll see this as a buying opportunity, and do permanent good for your portfolio. And if you're facing your first bubble, and everyone is talking about how "the rules have changed!" and justifying historically high P/E ratios, then you'll feel FOMO and jump on the bandwagon, setting yourself up for disappointment; but if you understand that there's always a return to the mean, you'll stick with a more sustainable asset mix and be much better positioned when the bubble inevitably pops (as it has many times before you were born and will many more times after you pass).

I think this may be the pillar where Bernstein raises the really helpful distinction between what he calls "shallow risk" and "deep risk". "Shallow risk" is part of the normal ups and downs we expect from investing in equities and can be endured simply by riding it out. In 2008 stocks fell by half, which felt terrible at the time, but they bounced back within two years, so everyone who stayed the course did well (and, if they continued buying during the dip, even came out ahead); this falls under "shallow risk". "Deep risks" are the less likely but more devastating possibilities that you can't just ride out and that can permanently damage your financial life. Bernstein identifies four of these: from most likely to least likely, they are inflation, confiscation, destruction, and deflation. Inflationary periods, like 1920s Germany, 1930s-1940s US and UK, or more recent episodes in Chile, can utterly devastate financial security. (As in previous works, Bernstein serves as a kind of mirror to Thomas Piketty in offering an opposite viewpoint of the same phenomenon: Piketty notes how these inflationary periods helped reduce inequality between the very rich and everyone else, and allowed governments to more easily retire their debts, while Bernstein focuses on the perspective of those who were fortunate enough to assemble small or large fortunes and then saw them decimated.) By "Confiscation", he means both the wholesale seizure of assets like happened in Russia and China after the Communist revolution, and various "land reform" actions in the developing world, but also extremely high taxation. (Again, a great mirror to Piketty here!) "Devastation" refers to the physical loss of value, usually through war or natural disaster; not so much your dollar bills burning up or gold melting, but more the loss of value in existing companies due to destruction of productive capacity or markets. Finally, deflation can also wreak havoc, not just on individual portfolios but on entire economies: fortunately, deflation is extremely unlikely to occur in our era of central banking and fiat currency, so it's the least of our concerns.

Inflation is the most likely "deep risk", and fortunately also the easiest to prepare for. For retirees, Social Security is indexed to inflation, so maximizing your Social Security benefit by delaying retiring until 70 is the best thing to do, even if it means selling some assets to delay the time until you start collecting. It's also easy to buy TIPS, Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, which are bonds that automatically rise in value based on inflation. You can have some minor protection against inflation by holding commodities (Bernstein likes commodity-producing stocks rather than futures), value stocks, and to a lesser extent real estate. (Interestingly, historically gold has not been a great hedge against inflation; there are exceptions like the 1970s, but it tends to not keep its value very well.) The worst possible thing would be to be locked into long-term nominal bonds, which was exactly the situation that wiped out so many fortunes in the early 1900s (and more recently brought down Silicon Valley Bank).

The other "deep risks" probably aren't worth preparing for; they're highly unlikely and harder to prevent, and if they do hit then protecting your portfolio will likely not be your top concern. Still, it is helpful to remember that most countries have faced these problems at some point in the past. You could protect against confiscation or destruction by holding a portion of your assets outside the country; but this does incur significant cost and government scrutiny, and would you really be willing to flee your country if it came down to it? In the rare event deflation occurs, holding a large amount of cash should see you through; Bernstein recommends doing this anyways for unrelated reasons (keeping "dry powder" to be able to buy on market dips).

Moving on to the third pillar: given that any investor's lifetime will have at least a few major up and down markets, it's really important to understand our own emotions and thought process. Bernstein doesn't present this as a moral judgment, more a description of the physical, biological, evolutionary reasons why we think and act the way that we do, and why that leads us into trouble. We adapted to make split-second decisions, to focus on danger, to listen to stories over data. All of those things helped our ancestors escape saber-toothed tigers, but those exact same instincts can cause people to make impulsive decisions that can set back their retirement by a decade or more. Much like with history, just understanding what's going on and how it works can help prepare us to act wisely in times of crisis.

The final pillar is the business of investing, understanding the various people you may encounter along your journey (stockbrokers, investment advisors), types of investments (mutual funds, ETFs), what incentives people have, what types of things to look for and avoid. This is the area that overlaps most strongly with the writings of John Bogle and the various Bogle-adjacent writers I tend to favor. For better or worse, you're best off ignoring the vast majority of "news" and services, and sticking with simple indexed funds and ETFs from low-cost brokerages.

I should note that, while Bernstein does emphasize "simple", he is definitely not as simple as the vast majority of Bogleheads that I am familiar with. As one extreme, the late John Bogle favored just holding two funds, the Total (US) Stock Market and the Total (US) Bond Market. Vanguard's core portfolio recommendation today has four parts (Total US Stock, Total US Bond, Total International Stock and a currency-hedged Total International Bond). I think Burton Malkiel recommended including an REIT fund as well. Anyways, Bernstein seems to believe that there's nothing wrong with a simple portfolio, but he does believe you can reasonably outperform with a much more granular approach. He gives several examples of increasing complexity, with the most complex including something like ten holdings, including funds tilted towards value stocks, towards small-caps, direct exposure to commodity producers, separate holdings for various international regions (Europe, Pacific, and emerging), real estate and more. He gives some solid justification for these, mostly building off the "history" pillar: going back for several centuries, value stocks have tended to outperform growth stocks; for the last 20+ years, growth have outperformed value stocks, and while we cannot predict the future and certainly can't anticipate when any shift would occur, previous experience strongly suggests that value stocks are overdue for a relative increase in valuation.

After the four pillars, Bernstein spends a chapter or two walking through specific advice he has. Open up an account at either Fidelity, Vanguard or Schwab. Take your time to think through your investment needs, develop a strategy, and then implement it. He repeatedly says that being able to stick with a sub-optimal strategy is significantly better than alternating between optimized strategies. If you're young, start with a lower equity allocation until you encounter your first real bear market and get a real-life sense for what your actual risk tolerance is: having years of lower gains at the start of your career is much better than getting spooked and withdrawing after a crash.

Doubling back to earlier in the book: One of my big take-aways is rethinking just what is meant when people talk about "risk". It's common for a questionnaire or survey to ask about your risk tolerance, which I tend to think of as a matter of emotion or courage: how badly would your stomach hurt if the market drop? As Bernstein looks at it, though, it's more of a mathematical description of the odds of achieving an outcome. If someone has an investment portfolio of $750k and wants real inflation-adjusted returns of $50k per year over the next 30 years, then that portfolio has moderate risk: it can probably provide the desired outcome, but if the market crashes in the early years and has a slow recovery, then it may fail. If someone else has a portfolio of $5m and also wants real returns of $50k per year over 30 years, then there is virtually no risk: no matter what the market does, you'll be able to achieve your goal. Looking at it this way, risk is more a matter of reality than of opinion, which I like.

While reading this book, I thought a lot about a great collection of videos I watched last year from the Bogleheads conference about retirement funding: This one from Dana Anspach:

And a round-table discussion on retirement:

As I mentioned in my writeup on "How to Make Your Money Last", this is actually an area I haven't thought much about: I've been focusing on accumulating and felt pretty good about my acumen, but realized I haven't given much thought at all to how the draw-down phase will go. I think these videos were the first time I started to think about the goal of retirement planning being to "minimize the odds of failure" versus "maximizing returns". Bernstein goes into this topic with even more depth, including some very helpful hypothetical situations and a look at historical results.

My biggest new take-away from this book has to do with the transition from a volatile investment portfolio to a stable income portfolio. Throughout our working lives, we're ideally saving money for retirement. As we approach middle age, the size of our portfolio may be substantial, and will swell during boom times and crash during busts. Once we start seriously thinking of retirement, we can start putting specific numbers together: how much would we want to receive today to live how we want to live? We can guarantee an inflation-adjusted income in the future by buying TIPS today. If, say, you're planning to retire at 65, and delay Social Security until 70, want to plan for income until you're 95, need $50k to live comfortably this year, and expect to get $40k per year from Social Security, then you can buy $50k worth of TIPS that mature the years you turn 65-70, and $10k of TIPS that mature the years you turn 70-95. This is a "TIPS Ladder", kind of similar to a CD ladder or a bond ladder, but intended for consumption rather than rolling. (He also calls it a LMP, "Liability Matching Portfolio", which is a portfolio calibrated to precisely meet anticipated spending needs rather than to maximize returns. It's probably most accurate to say that it's a LMP that primarily relies on TIPS and Social Security.)

In Bernstein's view, once you get to a point where you can buy that ladder, you should do it, which will then lock in and guarantee the stability of your future retirement. If you delay, the risk is that a market crash (like 1987, 2000, 2008, 2020, etc.) may destroy the real value of your portfolio just as you need it.

This whole approach is very different from my working assumptions to date, which have more followed the idea of a "glide path" that gradually shifts from equities to fixed-income as you age. Bernstein's argument is powerful, though: from looking at specific years and sequences, there are many cohorts that COULD have retired at, say, age 55, but once they reached 56, they had to continue working until 68 to regain their position. His phrase is something like "once the market has given you what you need, you don't need to keep playing: you've won."

Importantly, this is not about market timing: you aren't trying to "get out at the peak" or predict when a crash is coming. It's all about the present value of your funds and your predetermined calculations for what you need. Maybe the market will double after you exit: that's okay! You've got what you need for retirement.

Once you do have this locked-in TIPS ladder, you can continue working and retire on schedule. If you have extra money beyond what you need, you can do what you want with it, which may be something like 100% invested in equities: since this isn't money you need, you're really investing for the benefit of your heirs, and can take advantage of their longer time horizon. He refers to this as an "RP", or "Risk Portfolio", which is a separate bucket from the LMP. (Of course, you could always sell equities to fund "wants", like first-class tickets or a fancy new car; if the market does poorly, maybe you fly coach and get a used Corolla. Again, it's fine, your needs are all covered by TIPS and Social Security.)

I've been aware of TIPS for as long as I've been investing, but have never bought any, and hadn't previously looked into how to buy them. From the book I found the fantastic website tipsladder.com; like many of the best sites it looks like it was designed in the 1990s. I've also started exploring purchase options on my brokerage, and learning a little about auctions.

There are still some fundamental questions I need to work through - most importantly, when would I want to retire? But by eliminating the major unknown variables of future inflation and future market returns, it becomes possible to run through some scenarios. It's super-encouraging to be able to see specific numbers, like "It would cost me $X to buy inflation-adjustment payments of $Y/year from age Z until I turn 70". I can compare $X to my current portfolio to see how much on track I am. I can also do some simple comparisons, like buying vs. renting or carrying a mortgage vs. paying off early: I can adjust the monthly costs that I'd need in retirement, and see if I'd still have the funds available to buy the ladder to fund it.

For comparison, what I've been vaguely considering up until now is basically saving as much as I can in a diversified portfolio (US and international stocks and bonds) and following the "4% rule" - withdrawing 4% of the principal value (including dividends) in my first year of retirement, then adjusting each following year based on inflation, probably adopting some bumpers to limit withdrawals in years with significant market declines and allow higher withdrawals after a hot streak. There are some major differences between these approaches. A big one is that, since a TIPS ladder is to fund spending, when it's done, you're just out of money; with a portfolio of stocks and bonds, the 4% rule supposedly covers the worst-case outcome, but in most cases you'd be left with significant assets after that time to leave to heirs. Another one is that the 4% rule was based on historical studies from the late 1800s through the 1990s, and there's no guarantee that the future will have the same kinds of returns, but it's much more likely that the US government will honor its obligations.

It is kind of gut-dropping to contemplate selling a massive chunk of the assets I've been assembling over my working life and drastically shifting from equities into TIPS. I'm not sure yet if I'll do it. If I do, it would probably be gradual - I might dollar-cost-average over a year, or make a longer-term plan to fill in a ladder through auctions.

But, if I am going to do it, I don't want to wait too long before pulling the trigger. Again, the goal isn't to time the market, but it does seem like mid-2024 is a relatively good time to dial down equities, capture the historic gains we've been seeing and lock in the relatively appealing interest rates.

Once again, though, this comes back to just when I think I might retire. I probably still have a couple of decades of gumption to keep working if I want to / need to, and with that kind of horizon, I probably am better off maximizing equities. BUT this is the sort of thing I should ideally be planning, say, a decade or so out, so I can make shifts when they make sense without being forced to make changes at the last minute with an unfavorable market. I dunno. Which probably means that inertia will keep me on my current course - not necessarily the worst thing!

It is kind of funny to think back to the very early investing posts I made on this blog. At that time I was buying CDs instead of bond funds exactly because of the low bond yield. After the 2008 crash I kept waiting for bond rates to rise, belatedly realized that they hadn't and might not for some time, and eventually switched over, mostly because owning an indexed bond fund is a lot easier to manage over the long term than maintaining a rolling CD ladder. Bernstein is actually pretty positive in this book about CDs, and I may be seriously looking at CDs for cases where TIPS don't work.

Okay, this has felt like even more of a shaggy dog story than most of my posts - for what it's worth, though, this is probably less than half of the thoughts I'd had about a TIPS ladder, let alone the follow-up research I've been doing. I may or may not post again when I come up with a clearer plan for how to proceed.

For now, I'll wrap up to say that the new edition of "The Four Pillars of Investing" is probably the most thought-provoking investing book I've read since "A Random Walk Down Wall Street". It's clear, cogent, actionable, occasionally daring. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to a new investor; it helps to already have a deep understanding of the conventional wisdom around passive investing to realize the significance of Bernstein's suggestions. It's probably best suited for "enthusiastic amateurs" like me: people who realize that their investments won't make them rich and aren't chasing for unrealistic returns, who enjoy understanding the dynamics of finance, and would consider putting in a lot more effort for a few basis points of results.

Temple Mountain

I'm a little surprised that I haven't read any Erik Larson yet. I've been hearing good things from friends and family members about "The Devil and the White City" for some time now, and I've enjoyed dipping into other works of novelistic histories (as opposed to historical novels). My friend Dan recently mentioned that his favorite book so far this year was "The Splendid and the Vile", which was enough of a recommendation for me to finally pick it up.

This is a very focused book that almost entirely limits itself to describing the first year of Winston Churchill's term as Prime Minister, which included the fall of France and evacuation from Dunkirk, the increasingly brutal attacks of the Luftwaffe as part of The Blitz, and his wooing of America to provide support through the Lend-Lease Act. While centered on Churchill, it also looks at the members of his circle, including family, employees, and key advisors, as well as occasional glimpses at ordinary English folk; across the Channel, we get periodic reports from Goring, Goebbels and Hess.

The book feels pretty evenly balanced between grand matters of strategy (particular in how Churchill processed decisions and enacted them) and slice-of-life vignettes that seek to convey what it felt like to live in England at this time. I was slightly surprised by just how much of the book is focused on the Blitz; there is some occasional mention of U-Boat combat in the Atlantic and codebreaking at Bletchley Park, but probably less than 1% as many words as that devoted to raids, defenses and counter-raids. On further reflection, though, that does make sense, since Churchill and the rest of his government personally experienced the bombings; naval warfare in the Atlantic was similarly important, but did not directly impact their lives.

While this isn't necessarily a topical book, I did find it particularly resonant while massive bombing campaigns against civilian infrastructure continue in Ukraine and Gaza. You get a strong sense for the fear of attacks, the horror of mangled bodies and demolished homes, as well as the stiffening resolve to carry on and the desire to hit back.

I think I was already familiar with a lot of the information from this book, but really enjoyed how it was presented. Churchill comes across as very eccentric: working for hours out of his bathtub, surrounded by secretaries and ministers; wandering down the halls in a one-piece romper suit; putting military marches on the record player and demonstrating rifle maneuvers to party guests at 2AM. We see how he tries out some of his famous oratory in personal conversations to see what kind of a response it gets before deploying those phrases in his famous speeches.

Of course, I learned a lot too. One major character is The Prof, another smart and eccentric person, a devoted vegetarian who helps explain complicated concepts in a simple manner. The Prof is a helpful resource, but also seems to send Churchill down wild goose chases, in particular some fanciful inventions like balloon-tethered aerial mines. Those ideas sound ridiculous; but at the time they probably seemed much less ridiculous than, say, the navigation beams Germany was deploying.

A few of the "side-stories" kind of plodded for me. In particular there's a long-running and kind of interminable "plot" for Colville, one of Churchill's secretaries. Colville has unrequited feelings for a woman, wants to join the RAF, and eventually does it after getting contact lenses. That's it; but more words are spent on that than the Battle of the Atlantic, North Africa, the Middle East, Yugoslavia and Greece combined. I'm sure some other people will enjoy that story, but personally I found it the least interesting and longest of the book.

Overall, I thought this was a good, fresh look at one of the most famous people in history. It definitely isn't a hagiography, but Larson clearly is entertained by Churchill and admires his courage and strength in the face of adversity. It's an interesting combination of humanizing someone while showing their larger-than-life, almost mythical qualities.

Catching Strays

I haven't backed a ton of crowd-funded games, but enough to have a surprisingly wide array of reactions to the completed product. For a few I've been very active during development, even trying out Early Access and giving feedback. Sometimes I jump on a game as soon as it's launched. Other times it hangs out in my Steam queue for a while before bubbling to the surface. And there are a few that I never do get around to playing. 

 

"Stray Gods" falls into the "bubble to the surface" category. I backed this game what feels like ages ago, in The Before Times. It came out last summer; I think that at the time I was deep into Elden Ring, then from there into Baldur's Gate 3, then back into Elden Ring again, and what with one thing and another it fell off my radar. But as I finally have some down-time I was able to pick it up. Fortunately it's one of my favorite things, a Not Too Long Game, and I was able to finish it over a course of several pleasant days of chill playing.

 

Stray Gods is the first game from Summerfall Studios. Despite being a brand-new (Australian!) operation, they're staffed with industry legends. The entire reason why I backed Stray Gods (which had some other title at the time that I can't currently recall) was due to the involvement of David Gaider, my all-time-favorite video-game writer. Gaider wrote huge portions of Baldur's Gate 2 (possibly still my favorite RPG of all time), and created the Dragon Age setting (possibly my favorite fantasy game setting of all time), and has consistently been insightful in his public postings and speeches. Gaider was a pioneer in video game romances, which are especially dear to my heart, and has been an outspoken champion for increased representation in games alongside other forms of media.

 

I remember seeing a talk a few years back where Gaider mused over how odd his career path has been. The stereotypical progression is that someone will work on a personal passion project to try and get noticed, then hopefully get to work for a small indie team to actually ship a title, then graduate to a major AAA studio to work on a big game that millions of people play. Gaider has spent years working in AAA games, and feels relief and delight at stepping "down" to a smaller, more personal studio.

 

Stray Gods has a great hook: a roleplaying musical. Inspired to some extent by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Once More, With Feeling", this is a game where encounters are resolved through powerful and emotional musical verses rather than through combat, stealth or spellcasting.

MINI SPOILERS

In the game, you play as "Grace", a young woman who becomes a mythological Muse. As a Muse, she has the power to inspire people, to stir them to action or draw out truth from them. Nearly all of the characters in the game are from Greek mythology: mostly gods and goddesses, with a few other beings mixed in. It's set in the modern world, and feels a little like American Gods in the way that these ancient beings brush up against contemporary society.

 

I think it's helpful to come to this game understanding "roleplaying" as meaning "playing a role" and not so much as denoting traditional RPG elements. The actual gameplay is pretty light, even more so than something like Pentiment; if you imagine a visual novel you're most of the way there. You can shape Grace's character to a limited extent, in particular by giving her one of three personal strengths. Throughout the game, "Red" options denote ones that are forceful (brash, aggressive, in-your-face); "Green" options are empathetic ones (being friendly, making people like you); and "Blue" options are questioning ones (investigating, curiosity, digging deeper). Certain dialogue options will be blocked off based on what trait(s) you chose, but for the most part you can respond as you like, picking options that match your perception of Grace or that feel most appropriate to the situation.

 

The game is fully voice-acted with amazing voice actors. Dialogue plays out similarly to BioWare games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age: you listen to conversations, with occasional automatic speech from Grace, and eventually come to a dialogue wheel type of thing where you can select a question or response. I've only played through the game once, but it seems that at least some choices are highly reactive; asking questions seems to mostly just give more lore and flavor but probably doesn't change the story as much.

 

They main "gameplay" unfolds during songs, which are key set-pieces. Usually something dramatic is happening here: Grace is trying to avoid some harm or convince someone to do something for her or to discover something. Unlike regular dialogue, there's a timer that appears during a prompt, and you'll have a limited amount of time to make a selection. (What happens if you fail to make a choice? I don't know! I was too scared to let it happen!) Your choice here seems to feed into the music - "Red" aggressive responses will modulate to a more intense sound, while "Green" friendly responses will generally be more peaceful - as well as changing the dialogue and what happens next. That said, I'm pretty sure that story-wise the last choice you make in a song decides what will happen next in the story.

 

A little bit of gameplay unfolds when navigating around a city map - this actually reminded me a lot of the recent Vampire: The Masquerade visual novels from Draw Distance. And there are a few scenes where you pick from various items or people in a room to interact with. In both cases, you usually end up needing to exhaust every option, or at least do a few until a new choice to proceed opens up.

 

I haven't read anything about the game, and will probably research at least a little after publishing this post, but I get the strong impression that it's impossible to "lose" at Stray Gods. Your choices have consequences and things can turn out in different ways, so you may end up more or less satisfied with how things play out, but I don't think you'd ever, like, run out of HP and view a "Game Over" screen.

 

There are technically "romance options" in the game, but at least in my playthrough, it's a bit lower-key than what you would expect in a 100+-hour RPG. Romance choices seem to mostly be about expressing how your character feels about someone else, not necessarily leading to reciprocation. More on this below in mega-spoilerville.

 

Heading into a bit more detail (but still no major spoilers yet):

As mentioned above, most of the characters here are from Greek mythology. I've recently been thinking about the phenomenal game Hades, and it was interesting to see so many of the same classic characters appearing in both games. In most cases, their presentation in Stray Gods is significantly different, both from their Hades depiction and their traditional portrayals (with the necessary caveat that these characters have had a lot of different portrayals over the millennia, or even among the ancient Greeks). I'd say that, in general, Hades tended to portray exaggerated versions of the pantheon's stereotypes, while Stray Gods tends to subvert those stereotypes. (Or, maybe it's more accurate to say that Hades exaggerates the Olympians and subverts / reinvents the Chthonic gods.) Some specific characters like Persephone are almost polar opposites, others like Hermes go in very different directions.

 

One minor complaint: Some of the songs have awkward scansion, with what feel like too many or too few syllables in a line, forcing the singer to speed up or draw out different parts. The singers themselves are fantastic and handle this well, and maybe it would seem better without the (default) subtitles. I noticed this more often in the earlier songs. I may have gotten used to it, or maybe it was intentional and shows how Grace and the people around her are getting better at singing and songcrafting as her powers grow?

MEGA SPOILERS

I'm honestly not sure if I'll replay this, but I am curious just how much changes based on your decisions. It feels like there are some major differences based on early decisions you have on favoring one character over another: in particular, there's one conflict between Freddie and Pen, and another between Persephone and Apollo. I went with Freddie and Persephone and spent a lot more time with both of them than the other two, so I suspect that if I went the other way, Pan would be following me around on stakeouts and Apollo/Oracle would be giving me directions.

 

It looks like those four (Freddie, Pan, Persephone and Apollo) are the romanceable options, at least based on who has heart options pop up for them. I always chose the heart for Freddie and didn't pick it for any of the others, though if I had it to do over again I'd be curious how Persephone responds, now that I know more about her history with Calliope and seen how she acts away from Apollo. Something Terrible happened to Freddie late in my game, and I'm super-curious if that's a canon outcome, or if it was because I had indicated that she was the most important person to me. (What kind of a monster would design a game like that?!?!)

 

 

The primary plot is pretty interesting, with a good pace of discoveries and a few twists, but I found myself even more interested in the background plot, basically everything that has happened between Ancient Greece times and the present. One item is a big time gap, a period of about a thousand years after Zeus summoned the gods for a war; we know that the gods existed during this time and were doing stuff, but nobody remembers what happened during that time. I'm a little curious whether this points to a Neil Gaiman / Terry Pratchett-esque system where deities' existence and power is contingent upon the belief of their followers, and so during the Dark Ages when the ancient texts were "lost", the gods fell into darkness as well; and after being rediscovered in the Renaissance, they became relevant once again, but diminished due to their smaller presence in the popular imagination.

 

Another major plot point concerns the physical relocation of the gods from the Old World to the New World. The game is vague about exactly where it's set, but based on some context cues it seems to be America, and I imagine more specifically Manhattan; but from the gods' perspective any country other than Greece would probably qualify as a New World. Anyways, while the dialogue avoids explicitly stating some of these details, it sounds to me like what happened was: Ares felt annoyed at missing out on all the warfare of World War 1, so he revealed himself to the Axis and supported them in militarizing and rushing towards World War 2. With the gods revealed, they became vulnerable; in particular, Aphrodite was captured by the Axis. Her (unappreciated) husband Hephaestus then approaches the Allies and offers to help them construct the nuclear bomb; in return, the Allies help free Aphrodite and grant all of the "Idols" safe passage to the New World. Anyways, with all of these intriguing backstories I feel like Summerfall is in a pretty good place to set up a potential sequel or prequel to explore this world and these times in more depth.

 

Oh yeah, quick sidebar (which could have been in Mini Spoilers...) - even within the game, they aren't super clear on why the present-day mythological beings are known as "Idols". To me it seems like a corruption of "Eidolon", which is the enduring aspect of a being that passes from host to host when the previous one dies. Of course, "Idols" in the 21st century tend to conjure images of big, showy singers, which is very appropriate for the game. 

 

Anyways, since the relocation the Idols have been "safe" but have not been thriving at all. They've been shocked to discover that they can now be slain. Their powers are diminishing, and so on. This seems to be the animating force behind Athena, who takes desperate measures to try and reverse the decline.

 

I really really really really liked how Athena was the antagonist of this game but not a full-on villain: there are reasons why she acts the way that she does, and you can eventually show her the error of her ways and redeem her, without needing to physically destroy her (though I did also appreciate that there is an option to punch her in the face!). I love this style of story, in all mediums, and want to see more alternatives to "the game ends when you murder the bad guy."

There were a few minor plot things that I was left curious about at the end; I strongly suspect that these aren't "plot holes" so much as things that could have been explained if I had ventured down different conversation paths than I took. First, I'm not sure why Hecate was wrong about the future; multiple times she was surprised by things that happened when she shouldn't have been. Maybe Athena used her access to the Reliquary to rewrite some of her books? Possible, but also odd; I don't know why Athena would add a detail like Grace becoming Calliope seven months in the future instead of, say, writing that Grace murdered Calliope and will be put to death in a day. There are some references to Fates, so maybe Athena was able to change the future and Heccate's books just haven't been updated? That seems implausible, but I'm not very clear on the rules of this world. Or maybe Grace herself has some ability to change her own fate? That feels a bit more likely to me, in particular in the context of us playing this video game.

 

I'm also not sure how Athena got the ability to summon the Furies. I think that classically, the Furies only got involved for kin-murder, which doesn't seem to be the case here; again, the game doesn't need to adhere to classical tradition. I think someone makes a comment about how Zeus would have been able to summon the Furies, and I wonder if Athena was able to take some of these types of powers (without the other Idols knowing) in Zeus's absence. I get the strong feeling that there's an answer to this somewhere in the trial scene song.

 

Random note: Early on I had Athena pegged as the most likely killer, and was mildly pleased to be right. I definitely didn't have the whole plot figured out, but given who was in the cast and who seemed able to be eliminated and generally intuiting how these things go served me well.

Other random reactions:

My favorite song was Aphrodite's.

My favorite character was Freddie.

 

My favorite Idol was Asterion.

 

My favorite location was Underworld.

 

My favorite voice actor/actress was Grace.

END SPOILERS

All in all, Stray Gods was a delight. It's a perfect palette cleanser between some huge chunky RPGs I have played and will play, but it's very carefully crafted and lovingly made. The quality of the performances and attention to detail are much higher than you would expect from a game at this price point. It's also pretty nice to have an "RPG" that's ALL story, which is the part that I usually like best anyways.

Dawn

I feel like I've been flying through books lately! The latest to fall within my maw is The Bright Ages, a fresh look at the Middle Ages. This has been on my list for some time, and has coincidentally arrived soon after the early-medieval novel Menewood and the post-medieval video game Pentiment. The Bright Ages covers roughly the span between them.

 

The two authors are professors of history, but the book is definitely written for a popular audience: to some extent they're arguing against pre-existing notions of the medieval era, but for the most part those are widely known views, not obscure inter-academy debates. Their title gives away the thesis: our common perception of these years is as "The Dark Ages", when civilization collapsed after the fall of the Roman Empire, continental Europe slid into barbarism and lost a thousand years of development before recovering during the Renaissance. The authors combat this with what they call "The Bright Ages": an idea that the light of progress never went out, and that people during this period continually sought good things: often in religion, but also through classical philosophy, art, trade, and much more frequent contact with non-European peoples than we tend to imagine.

The overall thesis is truthful but also seems so broad that it's hard to get excited about: basically, "People were complex, a lot of different people were doing different things for different reasons at different times and places, and any attempt to summarize this reality will inevitably omit or misrepresent a lot that was going on." Which, okay, I buy that, but also it feels less satisfying than a straightforward "X caused Y" analysis. This is kind of how I feel about Capital & Ideology, too: brilliant book, and very effective at exposing incorrect ideas, but harder to wrap your head around and draw concrete lessons from.

Given that, the authors come up with a great structure to make this comprehensible and interesting. Each chapter progresses slightly forward in time and relocates to another location on the European continent. We're essentially going on a tour through time and space, witnessing what was happening at certain given moments. One thing I love about this is it doesn't pretend to be a comprehensive catalog of everything that happened during a thousand years: we've specifically just dropping in on particular moments. But we can see common themes between those moments, as well as critical variations, and so pull together a rough framework for understanding this era.

I won't recap everything in the book, but will comment on a few things that struck me. An early, provocative assertion is that Rome didn't fall. Not really. Yes, the city was conquered - multiple times! - but, it had been conquered multiple times in the past as well. Their conquerors often stayed, and remade themselves as Romans, and ruled and defended the city, including the Romans inside who had previously conquered it and made themselves Roman. And while the western Rome lost effective control of her empire, there was also an eastern Rome in Constantinople which continued to exert power and wealth through much of the Mediterranean for most of the Middle Ages - in that sense, Rome just moved.

The biggest player throughout the book is Christianity and the church. It is bookended with Christian art, first with a beautiful Byzantine-style chapel constructed in Ravenna, and ultimately with Dante writing the Divine Comedy. In between we see the evolving power of the church. Early on, the Bishop of Rome seems to be a small, fragile position; by the end, the Pope plays a dominant role across the continent and beyond. We see the development of monasteries (including a fun shout-out to Saint Hilda of Whitby!), the tug of war between center and periphery, monks and clergy, ecumenism and orthodoxy. The attitude of the (Catholic) Church shifts over generations, but overall, most of the major religious intolerance we tend to associate with the Middle Ages came late in the era. For the most part, the church saw themselves as supporters: supporters of stability, of security, of comfort and salvation. Religion was, and didn't merely represent, real power: having someone pray for you was seen as effective, not just upholding a tradition or expressing a hope.

A lot of religious and military activities were driven by apocalyptic mindsets. There was a dominant thinking (then as now!) that the world was heading towards the "end times", with very limited opportunity left for conversion before Christ returned to separate the wheat from the chaff. The authors note, though, that while we tend to think of the word "apocalypse" as meaning an ending, the word actually means a revelation, and can better be thought of as a transformation. Not so much the ending of one thing, more about evolving into the next thing. With this definition, "apocalypse" is actually a really great way to frame and consider The Bright Ages: as with all of history, it is eternally revealing and transforming itself into what will come next.

Later in the book, the authors mention that in many ways, the Middle Ages were one of the more egalitarian times in history. Yes, life sucked; but for the average person it didn't suck much more than in the classical period, and may have been better during this period than it would become in the Renaissance. Some periods like the 12th century have been described by historians as "mini-Renaissances" where the times improved; but the lives of women worsened during those periods. As always, it matters who tells the story.

Throughout the book, we see many examples of people from various faiths and racial backgrounds living in and traveling between European lands. Even in the far-away island of England, there have always been North Africans on the shore. (I was separately struck by this in a recent visit to an exhibit at the de Young Museum, which included some very striking Tudor court portraits of Islamic and African emissaries). A major motivation for writing this book seems to have been to directly challenge some of the mythologized ideas of a "pure" "western" "white" land, which is an animating drive behind a lot of white supremacists. This isn't just bad ideology, it's incorrect history. The authors directly address this, which I liked, even as it for better or worse makes the book feel less academic. In my opinion, everything is political, and everyone has their bias: choosing to support the status quo is itself a bias. It's good to know where people stand and that they care about their subject. (Of course, it helps that I agree with the authors' politics!)

A lot of these ideas and observations are familiar to me, most recently as a result of reading "A Splendid Exchange". In particular, Bernstein spent a lot of time pointing out how familiar Europeans were with the rest of the world: even after the fall of Rome, they knew that silk came from the east, and they frequently interacted with Arabs, Africans, Persians and others during all this time.

There's a really interesting theme at the end about the conflict between medieval perspectives and "humanist" perspectives. The very phrase "dark ages" and our understanding of it comes from Petrarch, an early Renaissance Italian, and it's helpful to think of the term "dark ages" as serving his agenda rather than an empirical truth. The Renaissance thinkers and artists were propping up their own project by denigrating what had come before, making their own contributions seem better by making past creations seem worse. (Of course, the Bright Ages' authors don't think that medieval history was "good" and Renaissance history "bad", but each had their own ups and downs, their own bright and dark moments.)

The book focuses on a particular debate held in Spain over the relationship the European world should have with the New World. Interestingly, the "humanist" side of nascent Renaissance thinkers tended to favor imperialism, domination and chattel slavery, while the "medieval" side of traditional Catholic monks favored equality, humility, tolerance and integration. (Not to say that that attitude was always the case - this book also highlights plenty of times where medieval people favored the idea of conquering and ruling foreigners.)

I've been meaning for ages to write a blog post about this topic, and maybe one day I will, but I'm increasingly struck by how often (at least in my personal experience), people with genuine religious belief tend to practice humanist ideals like compassion and egalitarianism, while non-religious people are more likely to express openly misogynistic, transphobic, or racist views. This seems like the opposite of what you would expect (and what's commonly portrayed in media), with "narrow-minded" religion versus "open-minded" secularism. I'm still trying to work through my thoughts, but I think that this chapter in The Bright Ages is getting at one part of it: a certain type of genuine religious belief imbues all of humanity with value and sees each individual as equally important. That isn't to say that morality requires religion - of course it doesn't! - nor that religion inevitably produces morality - obviously it doesn't! But supposed rationalists can easily self-rationalize how they're superior to others, which leads the way to all sort of terrible events in the modern era.

As I mentioned before, it's hard to draw a simple, clear lesson or theme from the book. The authors are trying to express the complexity, multiplicity and contradictions of the medieval era, refusing to fit it into a box or try to invent a new box to contain it. I think that is helpful: because it is more true, because it de-mythologizes some of the historical fantasies that still drive reactionary politics, because it opens up curiosity for learning more rather than drawing a cloak over it. It also is a fresh reminder to me personally that, while I tend to think of certain historical periods as being "exciting" and other ones as "boring", it's all part of one big story, and the closer you examine any given time the more intriguing things you'll discover.

Looney Orgcharts

Well! It's been a long time coming, but I've finally finished reading "Loonshots" by Safi Bahcall. My youngest brother recommended this book to me years ago after encountering it in a class. It gradually worked its way through my "to read" list, and I actually picked it up last year, but Life Stuff intervened and I had to return it to the library before finishing. I picked it back up again, refreshed some earlier chapters and rounded it off.

 

This is a pretty business-y book, which touches on a lot of different areas (history, military, politics, etc.) but primarily with an eye to succeeding in a business context. It reminds me a little of something like "Made to Stick": an interesting book that looks at history but with a primary focus on practical application. Sometimes these books feel like they're bending evidence to fit their theory, but they're pretty compelling in the arguments they make.

The "Loonshot" of the title refers to a left-field idea that is widely dismissed but that ultimately leads to transformational change. You can think of ideas like germ theory, airplanes, and the Internet: they were roundly mocked when first introduced, but ended up taking over the world. In the context of business, loonshots can open up lucrative new markets or cause revolutionary changes in existing markets. You can ride a loonshot into a new business, and if you have an existing successful business, you want to get the next loonshot before a competitor crushes you with it. But existing power structures will be very resistant to new ideas: they challenge existing business and seem to contradict the wisdom that has led to success in the past. The overall goal of this book is showing how to nurture loonshots in your business (or industry, government, or other group) to survive the changing of epochs, adapting and thriving over multiple generations of change.

Opposing Loonshots are "Franchises", established product lines that drive the day-to-day profitability of a business, the victories of a military branch, and so on. Franchises have been proven by their past successes and are easy to quantify, verify and support. Your business today depends on the efficient running of franchises, but that franchise could become obsolete from an upcoming loonshot. The loonshot of today becomes the franchise of tomorrow.

This book is filled with examples. Bahcall is most impressed with Vannvar Bush's Office of Scientific Research and Development, the transformational WW2-era program that shook the US military out of its stagnant complacency and enabled it to meet and eventually surpass Germany's military/industrial/scientific base. He also admires Theodore Vail's Bell Labs, which had a remarkable decades-long run of successful innovations that translated into business success. Bahcall has a background in biomedical research, and draws a lot of examples from innovative drugs and therapies as well.

Even more than these successes, the book shows numerous cautionary tales. Pan Am is a particularly striking one: they were a market-leading innovator for decades before getting crushed. Kodak is another interesting example; Kodak was eventually outdone by digital photography, even though digital photography was first invented at Kodak. And Steve Jobs makes multiple appearances, across both his tenures at Apple and his leadership at Pixar, and you can see how his past experiences caused him to change and become more successful over time.

Fortunately, this book isn't just a parade of anecdotes, and Bahcall presents some concrete models for success. He sees two important factors. First, you need to foster innovation, encouraging and rewarding out-of-the-box thinking. Without this commitment to research and experimentation your business will become stagnant. However, just pushing for innovation doesn't necessarily lead to success: it can produce chaos, as franchises are under-invested in, or turf battles break out between loonshots and franchises.

The second critical component is "phase separation": you want distinct groups, each with their own separate managers and incentives. "Soldiers" support franchises, while "Artists" support loonshots. Each role should be valued and respected, as soldiers allow you to survive in the present and artists allow you to survive in the future. Eventually, a successful loonshot (and not all loonshots are successful! most fail!) will need to become a franchise. This requires a "phase transfer", which is tricky to pull off: soldiers instinctively resist changes. So it's important that soldiers have buy-in and ownership of the new innovation, rather than giving them the power to kill it or forcing it down their throats. Bahcall recommends appointing project champions, who focus on the process of the transfer rather than the transfer itself, to increase the odds of successfully implementing the new idea.

A counter-example here is Xerox PARC, which came up with a ton of hugely innovative ideas, but never capitalized on any of them. Why? The old-school business units in Texas and the owners in New York thought those new ideas threatened their old business: if your bonus depends on selling a certain number of copiers, you won't want to build machines that make copiers obsolete. In the short term, killing the PARC ideas was perfectly logical. Over the long term, though, those cuts to copier sales would have happened anyways, and the bigger question should have been whether those dollars would move to other new divisions in Xerox or to their competitors. So in this case, Xerox came up with a great process for producing loonshots (fostering innovation and ensuring phase separation by setting up a separate high-quality R&D department), but still failed to reap the benefits due to their inability to ingest the new ideas.

Another partial failure is what Bahcall dubs the "Moses Trap." Many successful new companies became successful thanks to the brilliant ideas of their founders. A string of successes convince the founder, the employees and investors that they have a magic touch. But nobody has a perfect track record, and eventually that founder will bet the company on a dumb idea (or an idea that's before its time or otherwise not ready for success), or will fail to see the significance of a new innovation. In these cases, the soldiers will get their marching orders to go all-in on the new loonshot, and will follow their leader off a cliff. The early Steve Jobs is a great example here, as is Pan Am (pushing for bigger planes than the market wanted), Kodak (pushing for expensive single-use home film recorders), and many tech startups.

Bahcall also looks at two different types of Loonshots, which he confusingly calls "P type" and "S type". "P type" are product innovations, which are what we tend to think of when we imagine disruptive changes: the steam engine, the jumbo jet, or the World Wide Web. "S type" are what he calls "system innovations", but I'd call them "process innovations": more efficient or clever ways of doing existing things. These have more to do with organization, management and workflows than scientific or technological breakthroughs. System innovations include things like kaizen manufacturing, just-in-time supply chains, multi-line discounts, and pre-flight checklists.

System innovations are less exciting and less talked-about, but they tend to win out over product innovations. Pan Am was great at P-type innovations, but American Airlines crushed them with S-type innovations. This kind of makes sense; once you see a new product, and it's out of patent, you can just start making that product; but people may not notice when a new process is being adopted somewhere else, and it can be a lot harder to retrain an existing workforce to do things in a new way than it is to start making a new type of widget.

A couple of the examples he gives kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I first started reading this book around the same time as The House of Morgan, and noted the very different treatments they give of Charles Lindbergh. Bahcall tends to be very black-or-white in his writing, with people either heroic innovators or doomed losers (with only a handful of exceptions like Steve Jobs with both positive and negative traits highlighted). He wants Lindbergh to be a Good Innovator, and implies that he was unfairly smeared as a Nazi sympathizer when, uh, there are very good reasons he had that reputation! I was also a bit put out by the medical examples, which Bahcall seems to value in terms of the amount of sales produced rather than the harm reduced. Very expensive drugs are the problem, not the solution.

For the most part, though, his anecdotes ring true and are good, memorable, entertaining illustrations of the points he's making. I think that's just how this genre tends to work, with pithy examples lending legitimacy to ideas and not getting lost in the weeds of messy, actual reality.

All in all, this was a really good book that gives a very useful framework for thinking about structure and organization. Unlike most books I read, there's a good chance I'll be able to put some of these ideas to work in my own life, which is pretty cool. And it gives a useful lens for analyzing events in other industries - for example, I can't help but think of the Moses Trap now when I see Elon Musk's increasingly unhinged and desperate antics, or witness Google as a place where the ad-selling franchise has murdered the once world-leading loonshot factory for search; it's even interesting to think of, say, The Squad as a phase-separated loonshot factory, and the Democratic Party as a broader organization trying to evolve and compete. These tools are useful, but they're also kind of fun to play around with and use to make sense of the world.