Now Michael was emperor, and in need of someone loyal. Who could he better trust with the post of chamberlain and chief councillor than a young man who owed him everything?
They had met a few years before, when Michael had been visiting the stables just as a wild horse got loose. Basilius, a young groom from peasant Macedonian stock, had saved Michael's life. The groom's strength and courage had impressed Michael, who immediately raised Basilius from the obscurity of being a horse trainer to the position of head of the stables. He loaded his friend with gifts and favors and they became inseparable. Basilius was sent to the finest school in Byzantium, and the crude peasant became a cultured and sophisticated courtier.
Never Put Too Much Trust In Friends, Learn How To Use Enemies
Transgression Of The Law
In the mid-ninth century A.D., a young man named Michael III assumed the throne of the Byzantine Empire. His mother, the Empress Theodora, had been banished to a nunnery, and her lover, Theoctistus, had been murdered; at the head of the conspiracy to depose Theodora and enthrone Michael had been Michael's uncle, Bardas, a man of intelligence and ambition. Michael was now a young, inexperienced ruler, surrounded by intriguers, murderers, and profligates. In this time of peril he needed someone he could trust as his councillor, and his thoughts turned to Basilius, his best friend. Basilius had no experience whatsoever in government and politics in fact, he was the head of the royal stables but he had proven his love and gratitude time and again.
Reversal
You cannot worry about upsetting every person you come across, but you must be selectively cruel. If you superior is a falling star, there is nothing to fear from outshining him. Do not be merciful your master had no such scruples in his own cold-blooded climb to the top. Gauge his strength. If he is weak, discreetly hasten his downfall: Outdo, outcharm, outsmart him at key moments. If he is very weak and ready to fall, let nature take its course. Do not risk outshining a feeble superior it might appear cruel or spiteful. But if your master is firm in his position, yet you know yourself to be the more capable, bide your time and be patient. It is the natural course of things that power eventually fades and weakens. Your master will fall someday, and if you play it right, you will outlive and someday outshine him.
Authority: Avoid outshining the master. All superiority is odious, but the superiority of a subject over his prince is not only stupid, it is fatal. This is a lesson that the stars in the sky teach us they may be related to the sun, and just as brilliant, but they never appear in her company. (Baltasar Gracian, 1601-1658)
In the Learning section of "The Art of Impossible," Steven Kotler emphasizes that achieving peak performance and tackling impossible goals requires a commitment to continuous learning. Kotler explains how learning is a critical part of the process and outlines strategies for mastering new skills and knowledge that are essential for progress.
Summary of the Learning Section:
Learning is the engine of growth, allowing you to improve skills, gain knowledge, and innovate. Kotler stresses that learning is not just about absorbing information, but about actively engaging in deliberate practice—focused, goal-oriented practice that involves constant feedback and refinement. He also discusses how to accelerate learning through curiosity, the importance of focusing on incremental gains, and how to manage the inevitable mistakes and failures that come with trying new things.
Key Lessons from the Learning Section:
Embrace Deliberate Practice:
Lesson: Deliberate practice involves breaking down complex skills into smaller, manageable parts and focusing on those areas with precision. It’s not about mindlessly repeating tasks, but practicing with a clear purpose and immediate feedback.
Application: Break down your goals into specific skills or sub-tasks. Focus on mastering one small part at a time and seek feedback after each attempt to improve.
Leverage Curiosity:
Lesson: Curiosity is a key driver of learning. It leads you to explore new areas, push boundaries, and keep your mind open to new possibilities. Cultivating curiosity enhances your capacity to learn faster and deeper.
Application: Follow your natural interests. When learning becomes challenging, stay curious by asking questions and looking for connections between what you know and what you’re trying to learn.
Use the 4% Rule:
Lesson: Kotler advocates for the 4% rule in learning: push yourself just 4% beyond your current skill level. This incremental challenge ensures that the task is difficult enough to promote growth without being overwhelming.
Application: Set learning goals that are just slightly beyond your current ability. If you're learning to code, tackle projects that are a bit more challenging than your current skill set, but not so hard that they feel impossible.
Adopt a Growth Mindset:
Lesson: A growth mindset—the belief that skills and abilities can be developed through effort—is crucial for sustained learning. It allows you to view mistakes and failures as opportunities to learn and improve.
Application: When you encounter setbacks, remind yourself that this is part of the learning process. Instead of seeing failure as a personal flaw, view it as valuable feedback that will help you grow.
Commit to Lifelong Learning:
Lesson: Learning should not be a one-time effort; it’s a lifelong pursuit. Continual learning helps you adapt to changing circumstances and equips you to tackle new challenges as they arise.
Application: Make learning a regular part of your routine. Dedicate time each day to study new material, practice skills, or explore topics that interest you.
Seek Feedback and Apply It:
Lesson: Feedback is essential to learning. Without it, you can’t gauge your progress or identify areas that need improvement. Kotler stresses the importance of incorporating feedback loops into your practice to refine your skills.
Application: Regularly seek feedback from mentors, coaches, peers, or even self-assessment. Use this feedback to adjust your approach and make continual improvements.
Focus on Incremental Gains:
Lesson: Achieving mastery takes time, and the path to improvement often consists of small, incremental steps. Kotler emphasizes the importance of focusing on steady progress rather than instant results.
Application: Set small, achievable goals for your learning journey. Celebrate each small victory, as these incremental improvements compound over time and lead to significant growth.
Learn Through Failure:
Lesson: Failure is an inevitable part of learning, especially when you’re pushing boundaries. Kotler encourages embracing failure as a valuable teacher, rather than something to be feared or avoided.
Application: When you fail, reflect on what went wrong and what you can learn from the experience. Use failure as an opportunity to refine your approach and try again with a better strategy.
Maintain Focus and Minimize Distractions:
Lesson: Deep learning requires focus and attention. Kotler suggests minimizing distractions and creating environments conducive to learning to maximize efficiency and retention.
Application: Design your environment to support learning by removing distractions and allocating time for focused practice. Engage in deep work where you can immerse yourself fully in the learning process.
Read and Consume Information Actively:
Lesson: Kotler encourages active learning through reading, listening, and absorbing information from various sources. Reading broadly across disciplines can fuel creativity and enhance understanding.
Application: Read both deeply within your area of expertise and widely in unrelated fields to generate new insights. Take notes, ask questions, and engage actively with the material.
Conclusion:
The Learning section of "The Art of Impossible" emphasizes that continuous, focused learning is essential for achieving high performance and tackling big goals. Kotler introduces key strategies like deliberate practice, incremental progress, feedback loops, and the 4% rule to help accelerate the learning process. Through curiosity, persistence, and a growth mindset, you can develop the skills needed to achieve your seemingly impossible goals.
Image: The Stars in the Sky. There can be only one sun at a time. Never obscure the sunlight, or rival the sun's brilliance; rather, fade into the sky and find ways to heighten the master star's intensity.
In all of these cases it is not a weakness to disguise your strengths if in the end they lead to power. By letting others outshine you, you remain in control, instead of being a victim of their insecurity. This will all come in handy the day you decide to rise above your inferior status. If, like Galileo, you can make your master shine even more in the eyes of others, then you are a godsend and you will be instantly promoted.
If you surpass your master in wit, it is okay to play the role of the court jester, but do not make him appear cold and surly by comparison. Tone down your humor if necessary, and find ways to make him seem the dispenser of amusement and good cheer. If you are naturally more sociable and generous than your master, be careful not to be the cloud that blocks his radiance from others. He must appear as the sun around which everyone revolves, radiating power and brilliance, the center of attention. If you are thrust into the position of entertaining him, a display of your limited means may win you his sympathy. Any attempt to impress him with your grace and generosity can prove fatal: Learn from Fouquet or pay the price.
If your ideas are more creative than your master's ascribe them to him, in as public a manner as possible. Make it clear that your advice is merely an echo of his advice.
Knowing the dangers of outshining your master, you can turn this Law to your advantage. First you must flatter and puff up your master. Overt flattery can be effective but has its limits; it is too direct and obvious, and looks bad to other courtiers. Discreet flattery is much more powerful. If you are more intelligent than your master, for example, seem the opposite: Make him appear more intelligent than you. Act naive. Make it seem that you need his expertise. Commit harmless mistakes that will not hurt you in the long run but will give you the chance to ask for his help. Masters adore such requests. A master who cannot bestow on you the gifts of his experience may direct rancor and ill will at you instead.
Second, never imagine that because the master loves you, you can do anything you want. Entire books could be written about favorites who fell out of favor by taking their status for granted, for daring to outshine. In late-sixteenth-century Japan, the favorite of Emperor Hideyoshi was a man called Sen no Rikyu. The premier artist of the tea ceremony, which had become an obsession with the nobility, he was one of Hideyoshi's most trusted advisers, had his own apartment in the palace, and was honored throughout Japan. Yet in 1591, Hideyoshi had him arrested and sentenced to death. Rikyu took his own life, instead. The cause for his sudden change of fortune was discovered later: It seems that Rikyu, former peasant and later court favorite, had had a wooden statue made of himself wearing sandals ( a sign of nobility) and posing loftily. He had had this statue placed in the most important temple inside the palace gates, in clear sight of the royalty who often would pass by. To Hideyoshi this signified that Rikyu had no sense of limits. Presuming that he had the same rights as those of the highest nobility, he had forgotten that his position depended on the emperor, and had come to believe that he had earned it on his own. This was an unforgivable miscalculation of his own importance and he paid for it with his life. Remember the following: Never take your position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your head.
A few weeks later, though, soldiers hauled Astorre Manfredi away to a Roman prison. A year after that, his body was fished out of the River Tiber, a stone tied around his neck. Borgia justified the horrible deed with some sort of trumped-up charge of treason and conspiracy, but the real problem was that he was notoriously vain and insecure. The young man was outshining him without even trying. Given Manfredi's natural talents, the prince's mere presence made Borgia seem less attractive and charismatic. The lesson is simple: If you cannot help being charming and superior, you must learn to avoid such monsters of vanity. Either that, or find a way to mute your good qualities when in the company of a Cesare Borgia.
In the year 1500, Cesare Borgia laid siege to Faenza. When the city surrendered, the citizens expected the worst from the cruel Borgia, who, however, decided to spare the town: He simply occupied its fortress, executed none of its citizens, and allowed Prince Manfredi, eighteen at the time, to remain with his court, in complete freedom.
In the early days of Ink, the most interesting thing Ink programs could do was take some textual input, and output some text back to the terminal. While that was useful for testing the language, it was far from interesting. So once the basics of the language were up and running, I wanted a way to render images from Ink programs. After some research, I settled on BMP as my file format of choice, and wrote bmp.ink, a tiny BMP image encoder in about ~100 lines of Ink code.
Armed with this new library, Ink could do so many more cool, creatively interesting things, like generate graphs, render charts, and compute a Mandelbrot set into a beautiful graphic (like the one above), all without depending on other external tools. This is the story of why I chose BMP as my file format, how bmp.ink came to be, and why this vintage file format is a diamond in the rough for small toy programming projects.
Like any topic in computing, designing an image file format is a game of tradeoffs. The most popular file formats, like JPG and PNG, optimize for image fidelity, speed, and file size. Other formats, like SVG, specialize for certain kinds of images like vector graphics. Formats for professional graphics workflows sometimes sacrifice everything else at the cost of image quality and cross-compatibility with other software.
When I set out to write an image encoder in Ink, I knew from the start that the most common formats like JPG and PNG wouldn’t be ideal. Both are excellent file formats with decades of research behind them, but encoding JPG and PNG images aren’t trivial – they depend on some clever math like discrete cosine transforms and Huffman coding to trade off file format complexity for file size. But for me, the #1 priority was implementation simplicity. I wanted to build an encoder quickly, so I could get on with building things that used the library to generate interesting images. This meant I needed a format that did as little as possible to compress or transform the original image data, given as a grid of RGB pixel values.
On the other end of the convenience-practicality spectrum are image formats based on text files, like the PPM image formats. PPM images were designed so they could be shared as plain text files – PPM images store color values in the file for each pixel as strings of numbers. This makes PPM files easy to work with in any language that supports robust string manipulation, but because PPM is a more obscure format that never saw widespread general use, not all operating systems and image viewer software supports it. For example, on the Macbook I was working with, the native Preview app couldn’t open PPM files. I could have used another library or piece of software to translate PPM files to a more popular format like PNG, but that felt unsatisfying, like I was only solving a part of the problem at hand.
Searching for a format that fit the balance I needed between simplicity and compatibility, I found the BMP file format. BMP is a raster image file format, which means it stores color data for individual pixels. What sets BMP apart from other more common formats is that BMP is not a compressed image format – each RGB pixel is stored exactly as a 3-byte chunk of data in the file, and all the pixels of an image are stored sequentially in the file, usually in rows starting from the bottom left of the image. An entire, real-world BMP file is just a big array of pixel data stored this way, prefixed with a small header with some metadata about the image like dimensions and file type.
This format is much simpler than JPG or PNG! It’s quite possible for any programmer to sit down and write an encoder that translates a list of RGB values into a BMP file format, because the format is such a straightforward transformation on the raw bitmap data of the image. As a bonus, because BMP images were quite common once, most operating systems and image viewers natively display BMP files (the last image on this post is a BMP file, displayed by your browser).
In the early days of Ink, the most interesting thing Ink programs could do was take some textual input, and output some text back to the terminal. While that was useful for testing the language, it was far from interesting. So once the basics of the language were up and running, I wanted a way to render images from Ink programs. After some research, I settled on BMP as my file format of choice, and wrote bmp.ink, a tiny BMP image encoder in about ~100 lines of Ink code.
Armed with this new library, Ink could do so many more cool, creatively interesting things, like generate graphs, render charts, and compute a Mandelbrot set into a beautiful graphic (like the one above), all without depending on other external tools. This is the story of why I chose BMP as my file format, how bmp.ink came to be, and why this vintage file format is a diamond in the rough for small toy programming projects.
Like any topic in computing, designing an image file format is a game of tradeoffs. The most popular file formats, like JPG and PNG, optimize for image fidelity, speed, and file size. Other formats, like SVG, specialize for certain kinds of images like vector graphics. Formats for professional graphics workflows sometimes sacrifice everything else at the cost of image quality and cross-compatibility with other software.
When I set out to write an image encoder in Ink, I knew from the start that the most common formats like JPG and PNG wouldn’t be ideal. Both are excellent file formats with decades of research behind them, but encoding JPG and PNG images aren’t trivial – they depend on some clever math like discrete cosine transforms and Huffman coding to trade off file format complexity for file size. But for me, the #1 priority was implementation simplicity. I wanted to build an encoder quickly, so I could get on with building things that used the library to generate interesting images. This meant I needed a format that did as little as possible to compress or transform the original image data, given as a grid of RGB pixel values.
On the other end of the convenience-practicality spectrum are image formats based on text files, like the PPM image formats. PPM images were designed so they could be shared as plain text files – PPM images store color values in the file for each pixel as strings of numbers. This makes PPM files easy to work with in any language that supports robust string manipulation, but because PPM is a more obscure format that never saw widespread general use, not all operating systems and image viewer software supports it. For example, on the Macbook I was working with, the native Preview app couldn’t open PPM files. I could have used another library or piece of software to translate PPM files to a more popular format like PNG, but that felt unsatisfying, like I was only solving a part of the problem at hand.
Searching for a format that fit the balance I needed between simplicity and compatibility, I found the BMP file format. BMP is a raster image file format, which means it stores color data for individual pixels. What sets BMP apart from other more common formats is that BMP is not a compressed image format – each RGB pixel is stored exactly as a 3-byte chunk of data in the file, and all the pixels of an image are stored sequentially in the file, usually in rows starting from the bottom left of the image. An entire, real-world BMP file is just a big array of pixel data stored this way, prefixed with a small header with some metadata about the image like dimensions and file type.
This format is much simpler than JPG or PNG! It’s quite possible for any programmer to sit down and write an encoder that translates a list of RGB values into a BMP file format, because the format is such a straightforward transformation on the raw bitmap data of the image. As a bonus, because BMP images were quite common once, most operating systems and image viewers natively display BMP files (the last image on this post is a BMP file, displayed by your browser).
In the early days of Ink, the most interesting thing Ink programs could do was take some textual input, and output some text back to the terminal. While that was useful for testing the language, it was far from interesting. So once the basics of the language were up and running, I wanted a way to render images from Ink programs. After some research, I settled on BMP as my file format of choice, and wrote bmp.ink, a tiny BMP image encoder in about ~100 lines of Ink code.
Armed with this new library, Ink could do so many more cool, creatively interesting things, like generate graphs, render charts, and compute a Mandelbrot set into a beautiful graphic (like the one above), all without depending on other external tools. This is the story of why I chose BMP as my file format, how bmp.ink came to be, and why this vintage file format is a diamond in the rough for small toy programming projects.
Like any topic in computing, designing an image file format is a game of tradeoffs. The most popular file formats, like JPG and PNG, optimize for image fidelity, speed, and file size. Other formats, like SVG, specialize for certain kinds of images like vector graphics. Formats for professional graphics workflows sometimes sacrifice everything else at the cost of image quality and cross-compatibility with other software.
When I set out to write an image encoder in Ink, I knew from the start that the most common formats like JPG and PNG wouldn’t be ideal. Both are excellent file formats with decades of research behind them, but encoding JPG and PNG images aren’t trivial – they depend on some clever math like discrete cosine transforms and Huffman coding to trade off file format complexity for file size. But for me, the #1 priority was implementation simplicity. I wanted to build an encoder quickly, so I could get on with building things that used the library to generate interesting images. This meant I needed a format that did as little as possible to compress or transform the original image data, given as a grid of RGB pixel values.
On the other end of the convenience-practicality spectrum are image formats based on text files, like the PPM image formats. PPM images were designed so they could be shared as plain text files – PPM images store color values in the file for each pixel as strings of numbers. This makes PPM files easy to work with in any language that supports robust string manipulation, but because PPM is a more obscure format that never saw widespread general use, not all operating systems and image viewer software supports it. For example, on the Macbook I was working with, the native Preview app couldn’t open PPM files. I could have used another library or piece of software to translate PPM files to a more popular format like PNG, but that felt unsatisfying, like I was only solving a part of the problem at hand.
Searching for a format that fit the balance I needed between simplicity and compatibility, I found the BMP file format. BMP is a raster image file format, which means it stores color data for individual pixels. What sets BMP apart from other more common formats is that BMP is not a compressed image format – each RGB pixel is stored exactly as a 3-byte chunk of data in the file, and all the pixels of an image are stored sequentially in the file, usually in rows starting from the bottom left of the image. An entire, real-world BMP file is just a big array of pixel data stored this way, prefixed with a small header with some metadata about the image like dimensions and file type.
This format is much simpler than JPG or PNG! It’s quite possible for any programmer to sit down and write an encoder that translates a list of RGB values into a BMP file format, because the format is such a straightforward transformation on the raw bitmap data of the image. As a bonus, because BMP images were quite common once, most operating systems and image viewers natively display BMP files (the last image on this post is a BMP file, displayed by your browser).
In the early days of Ink, the most interesting thing Ink programs could do was take some textual input, and output some text back to the terminal. While that was useful for testing the language, it was far from interesting. So once the basics of the language were up and running, I wanted a way to render images from Ink programs. After some research, I settled on BMP as my file format of choice, and wrote bmp.ink, a tiny BMP image encoder in about ~100 lines of Ink code.
Armed with this new library, Ink could do so many more cool, creatively interesting things, like generate graphs, render charts, and compute a Mandelbrot set into a beautiful graphic (like the one above), all without depending on other external tools. This is the story of why I chose BMP as my file format, how bmp.ink came to be, and why this vintage file format is a diamond in the rough for small toy programming projects.
Like any topic in computing, designing an image file format is a game of tradeoffs. The most popular file formats, like JPG and PNG, optimize for image fidelity, speed, and file size. Other formats, like SVG, specialize for certain kinds of images like vector graphics. Formats for professional graphics workflows sometimes sacrifice everything else at the cost of image quality and cross-compatibility with other software.
When I set out to write an image encoder in Ink, I knew from the start that the most common formats like JPG and PNG wouldn’t be ideal. Both are excellent file formats with decades of research behind them, but encoding JPG and PNG images aren’t trivial – they depend on some clever math like discrete cosine transforms and Huffman coding to trade off file format complexity for file size. But for me, the #1 priority was implementation simplicity. I wanted to build an encoder quickly, so I could get on with building things that used the library to generate interesting images. This meant I needed a format that did as little as possible to compress or transform the original image data, given as a grid of RGB pixel values.
On the other end of the convenience-practicality spectrum are image formats based on text files, like the PPM image formats. PPM images were designed so they could be shared as plain text files – PPM images store color values in the file for each pixel as strings of numbers. This makes PPM files easy to work with in any language that supports robust string manipulation, but because PPM is a more obscure format that never saw widespread general use, not all operating systems and image viewer software supports it. For example, on the Macbook I was working with, the native Preview app couldn’t open PPM files. I could have used another library or piece of software to translate PPM files to a more popular format like PNG, but that felt unsatisfying, like I was only solving a part of the problem at hand.
Searching for a format that fit the balance I needed between simplicity and compatibility, I found the BMP file format. BMP is a raster image file format, which means it stores color data for individual pixels. What sets BMP apart from other more common formats is that BMP is not a compressed image format – each RGB pixel is stored exactly as a 3-byte chunk of data in the file, and all the pixels of an image are stored sequentially in the file, usually in rows starting from the bottom left of the image. An entire, real-world BMP file is just a big array of pixel data stored this way, prefixed with a small header with some metadata about the image like dimensions and file type.
This format is much simpler than JPG or PNG! It’s quite possible for any programmer to sit down and write an encoder that translates a list of RGB values into a BMP file format, because the format is such a straightforward transformation on the raw bitmap data of the image. As a bonus, because BMP images were quite common once, most operating systems and image viewers natively display BMP files (the last image on this post is a BMP file, displayed by your browser).
En Excel, usa =si(A2>1000, "Excedido", "Dentro del límite") para verificar umbrales. Calcula el promedio con =promedio(B2:B10), y suma con =suma(C2:C10). Aplica formato de moneda con Ctrl + Shift + $ y porcentaje con Ctrl + Shift + %. Utiliza =buscarv("Código", D2:D100, 2, FALSO) para buscar datos. Redondea con =redondear(E2, 2). Para formato condicional, usa =condicional(F2>1000, "Alto", "Bajo"), y para interés compuesto, =C2*(1+Tasa/100)^Años.
The Korean language. Sejong in 1443, Korea and North Korea. 14 and 10 shapes.
