> The most trifling Actions that affect a Man’s Credit, are to be regarded. The Sound of your Hammer at Five in the Morning or Nine at Night, heard by a Creditor, makes him easy Six Months longer.
> never keep borrow’d Money an Hour beyond the Time you promis’d, lest a Disappointment shuts up your Friends Purse forever.
> the good Paymaster is Lord of another Man’s Purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the Time he promises, may at any Time, and on any Occasion, raise all the Money his Friends can spare.
> Creditors are a kind of People, that have the sharpest Eyes and Ears, as well as the best Memories of any in the World.
Credit scores have replaced reputation and credit has become very impersonal. Interestingly, most of this seems more applicable than ever... with the exception of banging your hammer at 5 am.
The above is a debt investment, whereas VCs are generally looking at equity investments. These are fairly different in principle and strategy, and both have history dating back many hundreds of years.
Fantastic point. Credit scores allow for greater “efficiency”, but don’t necessarily capture all the relevant information.
There is a common problem of seeing quantitative measurements as “more objective” than qualitative evaluations, but this is oftentimes naive. Notice that many of the best VC’s focus on the individuals and group dynamics of the founding team, something that can’t be captured quantitatively.
“Giving someone no map is much, much better than giving him a wrong map.” — Nassim Taleb
"Live within your means" is basically don't overextend yourself to live a life you can't actually afford
"Pay what you owe when you owe it" means that if you said you'd pay somebody, make sure to do so on time. It's entirely possible to be living within your means but still have a bad habit of paying your bills weeks late.
> In short, the Way to Wealth, if you desire it, [...] depends chiefly on two Words, Industry and Frugality; i.e. Waste neither Time nor Money, but make the best Use of both.
It's oft repeated, to the tune of new wisdom being discovered and brought to the masses, and nary a single thought given to whence it originally came nor whether it is, indeed, new.
I don't think it ever fell out of use, it just isn't written.
I'm from the US south, I use both "them" and "'em" in everyday speech depending on context, but I never write "'em", even where I would use it in speech. This is partially because "'em" in written form ends up conveying a slightly different tone or meaning than I might intend. "Them" is just a word; "'em" has more nuance and is more easily misunderstood.
There was a push in American education against using contractions in writing sometime in the earlier 20th century (perhaps earlier). The APA style guide says to avoid contractions in all official writing. People probably continued to write as they were taught in grammar school.
If it were to make a comeback today, it would probably be in the form of "m". Like, "ru goin w/m?"; or "m ain't spiders. mr2 spiders."
I grepped a bunch of source code I have lying around, and I found it used in OpenSSL (3 times), the Postgres C driver, and the Snappy compressor -- the latter because it includes a complete copy of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND!
Verily I say unto you, if your left had should prevent your right hand from clinking on this headline, then you should cut off your left hand, and cast it away..."
> never keep borrow’d Money an Hour beyond the Time you promis’d, lest a Disappointment shuts up your Friends Purse forever.
> the good Paymaster is Lord of another Man’s Purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the Time he promises, may at any Time, and on any Occasion, raise all the Money his Friends can spare.
> Creditors are a kind of People, that have the sharpest Eyes and Ears, as well as the best Memories of any in the World.
Credit scores have replaced reputation and credit has become very impersonal. Interestingly, most of this seems more applicable than ever... with the exception of banging your hammer at 5 am.