The Only Photographer

I love the LUMIX G9– this thing is built like a tank!

Invest in more tank-like things!

TANK

April 8, 2024

Seeing Like a Photographer- Artist

Don’t look at things literally — look at them figuratively and metaphorically
Don’t make it look “true to life”— the role of the artist is to *transfigure* and *change* reality, not to show how things really and truly are, but how things *should* be—

April 5, 2024

Why Your Body Matters

In modern daytimes, we believe there to be a divorce between the body, the mind, the soul whatever.

For example, we have this foolish idea that somehow, you could just be stuck in bars all day, and somehow have beautiful thoughts, beautiful ideas, etc.

Also other weird things; we tend to praise all of these artists, and creators who are all hooked on alcohol drugs methamphetamines etc.

For example, we all go gaga over Jean-Michel Basquiat, or Jackson Pollock artwork, but, don’t you know that Jackson Pollock was a severe alcoholic, I think he died in a car accident while driving under the influence of alcohol. Bad.

Also, Jean-Michel Basquiat, I think was hooked on cocaine or some other weird drugs. Therefore what we consider “innovative”, in terms of artwork is simply drugs manifesting in strange ways visual art imagery words etc.

Can you be innovative without drugs alcohol etc.?

Am I the only sober millennial alive? The only person who was born in 1988, currently 36 years old, that doesn’t drink alcohol, any alcohol, smoke weed or do any drugs? I’ve only smoked weed maybe twice in my life, I wasn’t really into it that much. And I quit drinking alcohol not out of ethical reasons, but simply I didn’t like the way you made my body feel. The big realization was when I would track my sleep, and actually discovered that after drinking alcohol, even a small amount, didn’t actually help me to sleep, but ruined my sleep by 500%.

Why are all academics either low-key alcoholics, and also a lot of them are hooked on weed?

Another strange thing with higher up elite society, a lot of them think and assume that for some reason wine is associated with elites, fanciness, whatever. Little do they know that wine is just sugary grape juice that makes you fat, with a good conscience. To know all this constipated knowledge about so-and-so wine grower and so so region, another way that people could feel big in grand for being fat, lazy, and alcoholics.

In modern-day America, it is not permitted to be anti-alcohol, or even anti-weed?

First, I actually think that marijuana is a lot less bad than alcohol. Alcohol might be worse than marijuana by 1000 X. It is true that nobody ever died while smoking too much weed, but a lot of people do die from drinking too much alcohol. Alcohol might be one of the most toxic Substances on the planet, even Plutarch in his “Morals” mentions how the real serious soldiers, one day were at war, or in war, would be very wise to abstain from alcohol. Blue tart said that only slaves would drink alcohol, but actually in fact, if masters were smart, they would prevent their slaves from drinking alcohol, because it would make them wanton, and change their behavior in poor ways.

March 29, 2024

Think Digital

Unlocking value

I don’t want my thoughts to be derailed

I think the reason why I like to wake up early, before anyone else does, and then drink coffee, thing, walk around, either Vlog or jot down notes is because I don’t want my thoughts to be derailed by an external issues at hand.

You know best; never do anything to just make other people happy or make them feel at peace or restful;

Financial Thoughts

Some finance, financial thoughts on my mind; how and why does finance matter?

What is the etymology of finance?

First of all, it seems that the etymology for the word finance is centered around the notion of a fine, the end, “finis”–

If you take this metaphorically, maybe finance, personal finance is all about the banks, these credit unions, issuing debt, and if you don’t pay the monthly payments, the ransom, the settlements, you will be charged a penalty.

Also taken more artfully; perhaps we should consider the end of finance, the end of money etc.

Money for the sake of what?

Recently I listened to the interview of Michael Saylor with Lex Fridman, I both watched the video YouTube podcast recording, and then ultimately I just read the transcript. One of the big takeaways was this:

Money is solidified labor, solidified energy and power.

For example, all of the money value that created over the last that give herself, traveling the world doing workshops, creating and selling products etc., ultimately all this money end up becoming solidified and codified into money.

Bitcoin as the most exciting thing since PayPal?

The reason why I have been very grateful to be alive at the time that I was, when I first started teaching workshops, I was easily able to create a PayPal payment by it now, in order to collect money from teaching workshops. The very very nominal 2.9% transaction fee to me was nothing; Essentially if PayPal did not exist, I would collect zero dollars, 0%. So 2.9% out of 100% to me is nothing. As long as the fee is less than 10%, I am happy.

One thing which is really cool about Coinbase, and I suppose a lot of these mainstream crypto market fund platforms is that you can easily purchase corn or whatever crypto with your US dollars or traditional bank account money, and also if you wish to, cash it out back into Fiat currency, if you want.

Even more interesting is the new Coinbase debit card visa card, in which you could essentially just use it to draw from your crypto reserves, to buy groceries at Costco or whatever. I think that I have yet been able to do is figure out a workaround or hack to have the Coinbase debit Visa card pay for rent; but beyond this, it is pretty phenomenal.

Why is it so damn hard to move money?

OK, some simple things; if I want to send money, either to myself from a different bank account, a simple wire transfer, whether domestic or international, why does it require me talking to a bunch of random people on the phone, wasting about 3 to 5 hours of my life, sometimes on the phone or sometimes in person, and sometimes having my money stuck in arbitrage, with some random person in the Back door of an office in the Philippines in Manila, “reviewing” my case, ensuring that my wire transfer is not a scam or fraud, before the transaction actually goes through?

Banks are the new gatekeepers, the new DRM digital rights management

OK, I have always been passionate about this open source notion, open source information, open source knowledge etc. Even what Saylor.org — Michael Saylor is doing with his open source information knowledge wisdom, is very admirable.

I think a huge point of enthusiasm and reinvigorated passion that I got from the Michael Saylor Lex Fridman interview is Moores law, the immense power of the dematerialization of things.

For example, when it comes to aviation, rockets to the moon, whatever… Why is this all the same same? The fundamentals materials of aluminum hasn’t changed for almost 40 or 50 years, in the general shape of airplanes have not changed at all either. The only really big innovation that I think we’ve had during my lifetime is Tesla, and electric vehicles; but still if you think about it, the overall shape of cars, even the Tesla cars are pretty similar to what we already got, albeit much better.

Also a grand dismay that I have in regards to homes, real estate, etc.; why is it that homes have not really changed, even the new constructed ones? Maybe the only big innovations I’ve seen in house and home design is having your kitchen door patio thing open up directly Into the backyard or whatever, maybe have a pool or whatever, but that’s it. Why not any sort of Buckminster Fuller, geodesic, or even my own personal vision, a glass cube on top of a hill?

How bitcoin benefits from Moore’s law

I think a really big thing about bitcoin and Moore’s law is that anybody with the $50 smart phone or device can handle it, storage, in essentially the custody or the ownership of your money or your keys or whatever is a simple password that you can memorize in your brain. Or another thing which is good with Apple ID, your thumbprint, biometric data is that it is pretty difficult to fake a thumbprint; iron vision that a thumbprint is actually more secure than Face ID ID.

For example, I currently have an iPad Pro M1 chip, and already, the Face ID is busted. However compare this to my $299 iPhone SE; the thumbprint is secure. So even as much as I like to like the new iPhones, maybe just sticking to thumb ID is a better idea in terms of security.

Once again, digital property, materials cannot increase at a rate of 2X year over year or whatever more law is. Yet, bitcoin, crypto, digital money can.

Or even some other basic good things; crypto could be treated every second, every day, doesn’t matter if weekend or weekday. Isn’t it strange that even in 2024, today’s capital markets, the markets are closed on Saturday and Sunday? Come on, we live in the world of self driving cars, robots, Artificial intelligence, ChatGPT etc.; why are we still in the stone ages in terms of finance?

Are you going to use your gold bars to buy a home?

It seems that one of the great real assets that people eventually aspire to have our own or procure is a home, property, ideally a single-family home. It also seems the truth is any people whose first homes a condo, secretly hopes that they had bought a single-family house, or they’re just saving up more money in order to buy a single-family house.

Owning a condo is like glorified renting

I suppose one of the benefits being raised the way I was, I never was really into this idea of owning a house or owning home. Maybe this is because my family and my mom only ever rented our whole lives, part of it is that we were just broke, And part of it also, we moved around too much.

It seems that currently the American dream is all about owning a home, owning a single-family home. Perhaps this was just the postwar ideal or something; but maybe the new dream, the new Millenial dream should be to own (at least one) Bitcoin?

My simple math behind it is I equate one bitcoin to only one single-family house, or one piece of property. But the great upside of bitcoin and digital property is that I don’t have to maintain it, I don’t have to check for mold, I don’t have to worry about changing the roof, I don’t have to worry about bad tenants up the house, etc. And also, a big scam I think I’ve discovered about homeownership is property taxes;

Even if you buy a $3.5 million house all in cash, into perpetuity, you got it paid like $3000 a month in property taxes alone? That is essentially free money that you’ll never ever see again, that goes straight to the city and the government.

Even if I was worth 100 M, maybe because the way I was raised, I wouldn’t want to pay $3000 a month Justin property taxes, indefinitely? Especially considering that my rent is only $3200 a month right now, if the price of property taxes is equivalent to the price of renting, real estate really makes no sense.

The future of bitcoin and digital property?

Also another reason I found an interview with Michael Saylor and Lex Fridman so enlightening was not even the bitcoin stuff, but, how Michael Saylor cross pollinate his genius in sciences, history of science, engineering, mechanics and applies it to money finance in the world in general.

Especially the notion of energy.

For example, the reason why I am so grateful every single time I have a good cup of coffee is that there are people in Vietnam, in the Highlands, growing your coffee, tending to it, eventually picking it and sorting them, then you have an expert person like Hana Choi from 96b coffee roaster in Saigon Vietnam roasting it, and then ultimately delivering some great product like 100% fine robusta, ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE, delivered straight to you.

What is a college degree, a PhD, a masters or a bachelor is worth today anyways?

If I think about it, if I think about it, cart blonde, Sukha today, if you didn’t want to go to college, or get a higher degree, I wouldn’t really mind too much. Why?

First, his parents, a.k.a. me and Cindy are already super educated. We both went to UCLA is undergraduates, Cindy got her PhD at Berkeley, and now is a full-fledged professor.

So why do we need more education in the family?

What is education for anyways?

Assuming that your family already has wealth, having a higher degree is only a legitimacy thing.

For example, if your family empire is already worth $500 million, and you have a bunch of kids, you just want them to graduate with at least the bachelors degree to “prove “that they’re not dumb.

If you’re doing any sort of business transactions, or just networking in general, eventually someone’s gonna ask you where you went to school, a.k.a. where you went to college.

Even now when I meet people, and ask them why they went to school or whatever, and they say UC Davis or something, I think that it is OK, and I tell them that I want to UCLA, I can already see their face and countenance change, That they feel a little bit made small by the fact that I went to UCLA and they went to a second tier school.

However, the reason why this is so bad is that why would you take your own self-esteem based on an institution?

This is also where brands, are so silly. For example everyone is so gaga over Louis Vuitton, but just Google image the actual founder of Louis Vuitton, a fat obese man with a funny mustache and beard; do you want to look like that guy?

Building the future, upgrading the planet?

The final words of Michael Saylor was quite poetic interesting and simple; “upgrade the world“, upgrade the planet, upgrade the human race.

“Uh-up-uh-upgrade complete!” – StarCraft

What does it mean to upgrade things, the planet, the human race?

First, maybe it is to first apply a fresh, gigabit Internet like mentality to our brains. For example everyone is so quick to just upgrade their iPhone or devices or their car or whatever, isn’t the more important fact to upgrade your mind?

For example, I just got rid of loser spectrum Internet, they still don’t get them, and upgraded to team gigabit fiber Internet which is 1 trillion times better. Even when trying to cancel my old spectrum thing on the phone, it was so damn annoying, just like trying to cancel your AWOL membership back in the day.

Anyways, maybe we gotta think about this like gigabit Internet Wi-Fi. Upgrading your mind is like going from 56K dial up modem to gigabit fiber Internet.

Grand Visions

I follow the Peter Thiel model here:

Better to risk boldness than to risk triviality.

Or another words, better to go insanely bold and big, and fail, rather than two go and bet same same, and succeed.

Even one of the random things that I am insanely proud about myself, is successfully lifting 1000 pounds; the infamous ERIC KIM Atlas lift.

I think it is more interesting to lift 1000 pounds, my unorthodox way, which is 10 plates of 25 and I think a five and a 2 1/2 are on each side, rather than even squat five or six plates the standard way, or even dead lift seven or eight plates the standard way.

Bigger always wins.

Once again, the ultimate flex in the ultimate interest is how many plates you have on the bar. When you stop counting, that is when you know you are strong.

For example, typically the reason why people like to dead lift, or do sumo deadlifts or whatever is that you could put more plates on the bar. For example a reasonably strong person can let’s say squat for plates, but for dead lift do five or six plates. And the upside to switching to sumo dead lift is that you could go from 5 to 6 plates pretty easily; if you’re doing conventional, Because the biomechanics are not as efficient, you cannot lift as much.

Lifting more is more important

Once again, to lift more is more impressive.

To do things, the conventional or standard way, is boring.

Or even taken into a greater extreme; what is more impressive, to lift 2000 pounds, or two benchpress 300 or 400 pounds? Lifting 2000 pounds is far more interesting.

Bitcoin developer

The funny thing is with real estate, your $1 million house cannot certainly become $100 million house in 10 years. But you’re $1 million worth of bitcoin can become $100 million a bitcoin in 10 years.

A funny rebuttal that people say about bitcoin is that it is not “worth” anything; but then again, owning property is not really “worth“ anything either; to own a few square meters of concrete somewhere is not as glorious as you might think it is, especially considering you got a pay property taxes etc. Not only that but maintenance cost, hidden cost, things breaking things gotta be maintained etc.

Even simple things, like gardening, cleaning up dead tree leaves etc.; then all of this additional labor.

Even if you hire somebody to do it, you still gotta put in the labor to manage them.

What new innovations have yet been created?

Bitcoin is interesting because it is still in the early infancy.

First, people have no idea what it is. Even amongst the bitcoin and crypto maximalists, nobody has anyone unified idea on what it is or what it should be.

For example, some people think that bitcoin should be digital money, other think that it should be digital property, other people think it should be digital gold. But maybe because there is not a consensus on what it should be, this is a feature, not a bug.

In terms of what technology you could build on top of bitcoin, it seems that the level 2 layer — the bitcoin lightning network is probably the most useful innovation thus far, that which Jack Dorsey has integrated into the cash app, and let us not forget that Jack Dorsey who is a huge bitcoin advocate also owns and runs square, the infamous and notorious little card reader thing that you use to buy your $10 cappuccino at any hips or coffee shop.

The philosophy of money and finances

I think money and wealth is all an attitude thing, which means wants to feel rich, to feel strong, to feel abundant. Nobody wants to feel broke, and poor.

Even Aristotle written in his economics, Oeceonomia in Greek said the very powerful and simple thoughts, which still rings today:

One’s expenditures should never exceed one’s income.

Live like a very poor person

Even now that I am super rich, I still use the cheapest iPhone, an iPhone SE. Why? Even though I could afford thousands of iPhone pros?

I think the simple heuristic that I’ve learned is that irregardless of how rich you are, it is always better to live like a very very poor person. Why? Honik and lifestyle creep; sure you make a little money here in there, and get some gains, get a bonus or whatever, you buy the Tesla, buy more expensive things, etc.… But the problem is that often, we think we are much richer than we actually are. The same thing with gains;

We always overexaggerate our gains, we always underplay our losses.

Additional things which are worthy of consideration include having to pay taxes, capital gains taxes, etc. Therefore, if you think about things a little bit more critically, always best to think and act rich, but live poor.

How does one live poor?

Don’t drink or purchase or buy bottled water or filtered water: just drink tapwater, or filtered water at home
Don’t drink alcohol, don’t consume alcohol, whether at home or at the bar, don’t smoke weed, waste money on weed and drugs
don’t go to festivals, don’t go to Vegas, don’t listen to EDM music, a funny thought: has anyone ever gone to an EDM concert or gone to burning man and enjoy themselves sober? Without taking drugs? No.
For a car, the best car is just a 2010 Prius; I love Tesla, I love Elon musk, I own a lot of Tesla stock, yet I don’t really want to buy one right now, yet. If I were to buy a Tesla, I might hold out for the cyber truck. And actually, in LA, the greatest flex is to drive around in the cyber truck; even more than driving a Ferrari or a Lamborghini!
Never buy any new clothes
Build your own home gym, work out at home: or just buy a 60 pound weight vest, and just go walking or hiking in the nature areas, in the woods etc. For example in LA, I really love this Baldwin Hills hiking area stairs area.
The best entertainment and leisure activities are free! Nature, hikes, state recreational parks etc.

Now what?

I always find the quote now what”? Question the most fascinating. Why? After all of this, what is the point of it all? What should I do with my life and time?

A very simple one is exercise fitness and health. Movement, exercise, fitness is the ultimate leisure. There is no greater leisure than the human body.

Second, there needs to be some sort of creative output publishing that you do. I think this is the best way we could enact an impact on the planet; information, it is universal, a random person in a small village in India on the $50 android device could easily access your website and blog, or even a random kid in the Philippines.

Third, think technology, Moore’s law and scale: once again, I think the problem why real estate, land development, construction is so tapped out is that it is still so inefficient, and it does not follow more law. In the year 2024; why can’t I just 3-D print a house in an hour? Why does it still require a litany of annoying contractors, hold ups, and trillions of other problems?

Building digital properties

Maybe it is best that we think about websites and digital properties like real estate.

Something that nobody appreciates is that you could erect a website in 30 seconds, good luck doing that with the skyscraper or even a single-family home.

Second, domains, domain names. This is still a field which is very very important and untapped.

For example there is this thing called ES, Ethereum name network or system or something, owning your own crypto address in cyberspace seems like a good idea.

For example, currently playing around with a new Coinbase web3 wallet, and there is an ability to create your own username on it. Kind of like Venmo. Or PayPal. This is interesting and useful because if I want to just send bitcoin or crypto to somebody, rather than having to copy and paste a really really long Crypto address, it is easier to just punch in their “@“ user ID– it is easier to remember, much more secure etc.

Why Coinbase?

Coinbase is the goat. The most beautiful UIUX, it feels the most ethical, and it just works insanely good. Coinbase is like the new paypal for crypto.

You can just buy $100 worth of bitcoin

Everyone wants to own at least one bitcoin, but the beauty is you could just buy $100 worth of bitcoin, you could just do it in the cash app, or on Coinbase or whatever. An exchange I don’t really trust, but at least it is mainstream is crypto.com, I think they are Singaporean based, And they bought out the name rights for the Los Angeles Lakers Staples center, and it also looks like they are doing a good job marketing across sports and television channels.

Finance also looks pretty good, but I would still kind of stairway from it, because of the old controversies with the ex founder, CZ.

Now what?

I think the beauty of bitcoin, crypto is that we can all get rich together. Assuming that the value of it all collectively goes up, if I buy bitcoin, and you buy bitcoin, the value of all of it goes up. Only people who “lose”, are people who get into the game too late.

Rethinking economics, money and wealth

We humans are bad at metaphors, math, digital thinking, etc. As a consequence, it seems interesting to try to upgrade your mind, or rethink things from a blank state.

For example, being born in 1988; the idea of having to pay for information and knowledge always seemed ridiculous to me. But to the old-school people, the old guard, it seemed natural.

Even in the world of Atari, film photography, doing exhibitions and shows, printing out hardcover books, these are all old antiquated Parisian notions which must be re-examined especially in the year 2024; in which I could design and create a PDF photo book in minutes, publish it for zero cents, and essentially share it to all 8 billion people on the planet for nothing.

Consider the typical artist who has to sell out $20,000 of their own money, in order to print their book, and attempting to sell it, and eventually not being able to do so, still having hundreds of copies and storage, unsold.

The great upside of digital products and digital books is that there is no such thing as “stale“ inventory, no such thing as dead stock, or unsold inventory.

Think Digital!

March 28, 2024

BROADEN YOUR HORIZONS.

A thought: perhaps the best way to live life is to broaden your horizons– both metaphorically and literally.

Horizon Chase

So a funny game on the iPad I’ve been playing with Seneca is a game called Horizon Chase. It is like a pixelated, old-school retro racing game in which year racing and driving into the horizon.

The horizon is an interesting metaphor because it is a metaphor of that which is just above and beyond the horizon. Nobody is 100% certain where the horizon is, but chasing it, into broaden it seems like a good idea.

A panopticon view to life

One of the things I love most about going to the hills and the vistas, going on top of the hill and looking out out it is super epic pen optic con view I have of the world, LA and things.

When you’re on top of a vista, with a total Panopticon view of the world, it is great because you feel elevated, more powerful, inconquerable, indomitable. in fact this is why I prefer the mountains in high up vistas rather than the beach.

The beach is great and amazing everything, but still, the feeling of being higher up, you literally do feel greater, grander, more powerful, more all encompassing.

In fact, the insanely elevated feeling that I had while living in Vietnam was that I was also literally on top of the world, so beyond everything, once again, only paying $320 USD a month for rent, living in a tiny hotel room or tiny studio apartment, everything paid for, Eating at all my meals and drinking unlimited coffee, and having supreme time to focus and think, this was true paradise. Also no phone, no distractions, no nonsense.

How and where to broaden your horizons?

So the first very basic idea is that you could broaden your horizon by just not restricting yourself to one small category of things. For example for myself, even though I’m most famous for photography and street photography, my interests are infinite. Design, physiology, the body, philosophy, aesthetics, bitcoin and cryptocurrency etc.; it is all infinitely fascinating to me.

I think this is why people are so confused by me, because I refuse to stay in a small box. Even some thing that I am starting to realize more and more, being Asian American, queen American in America; everybody is secretly low-key racist towards Asian, Asian American men in America. Why? Typically, Asian Asian American guys are seen as short, not for muscular, meek, more feminine, introverted and quiet spoken, lacking social skills, and not in tune with hip-hop and rap culture; E-40, keek da sneak, too short, Kanye, Jay Z etc.

so when I pull up, super loud and boisterous, smiling and happy, handsome and good looking, with a really cool slick back Brad Pitt fury haircut, topless, highly muscular, full body tan, people are just a little bit befuddled by me.

It kind of goes a lot of ways, we are not allowed to be loud, boisterous, ratchet, etc.

Don’t allow yourself to be stuck in a tiny bubble

I think the reason why there’s a trend that we must be so small narrow focused and niche is because of fear.

It looks like the modern day person is very afraid of unpredictability. We don’t like people who are unpredictable, I think in fact, we prefer people to follow a basic social script; any sort of behavior or activity which is off script, off the rails is seen as scary for a lot of individuals.

However, the extreme irony:

in real life, we hate making iContact with strangers, conversing with strangers, we always have our sunglasses on, full tents in our cars, we are afraid of social engagement and interaction. However at the same time, when we watch media TV shows, movies etc.; we love the outlandish, the ratchet, etc.

The reason why I see media consumption is so fascinating is because I think that is what people truly desire, truly want, but, are too afraid to go get it in real life.

The same thing was a video game; then I think video games, video game culture etc. is fascinating because once again it also shows some sort of deeper human Aires, however people in real life are afraid to go get it in real life.

So what is the big issue here?

I see several issues at play here:

First, the sociological one, and second, the ethical one, and third, the physiological body one.

Social logically, society is not equipped or optimized for free thinkers, free spirits, free individuals etc. Let us consider that essentially, we are the new mole people.

Consider the average kid, the average suburban kid, or even the average American kid, who is raised in captivity. They are born indoors, inside a hospital or whatever, since they are small, they are always indoors; in a house, in a daycare, in a preschool, in a “Montessori“, in a car, it may be at most they are permitted 30 minutes to an hour of fresh outdoor sun and play, but all of these overprotective parents always cover them up with long sleeves, long pants, hats and sunglasses, sunblock etc., preventing them from getting all this beneficial upside from the sun and UV radiation.

Taking further, think about K-12 education. Why is it that all these institutions are indoors? I kind of prefer a more hippie Spartan approach; I would prefer classrooms that were all just outdoors.

Or beyond that, why have school at all? Honestly I think for a lot of parents, it is just seen as free daycare.

Not only that, but even once you get to university and school, college etc., you’re pretty much indoors all day. You’re indoors all day when you’re studying in the classroom, your indoors all day when you’re studying in the library or your dorm room, and when is it that students are the happiest? we are happiest when we are at the beach, hanging out with our friends, at the beach bonfire etc.

Different directions and life paths?

Assuming that you no longer need to work” for a living, then what? What do you want to become, what do you want your kids to become?

First of all, nobody wants their kids to just become good worker bees. Because that is still the trend today.

I’m also starting to realize more more, it don’t even matter if you get the worlds best job at Apple Google Facebook or whatever; the huge downside is all these offices are still indoors. Another thought I had while in the parking lot garage;

Would you be a trillionaire if you had to live the rest of your life in a subterranean, fluorescent lit parking lot garage? Even if you had all the billions of Lamborghinis in the world? No!

Back to nature?

If we think about video games, Final Fantasy, riding around in Chocobo etc.; what is it all about? Real world, free world exploration!

I think for example, video games are good for poor kids. Why? If you’re a poor kid, and you have no money, your world is limited. Maybe besides owning a bicycle, there’s nowhere you could really go and explore.

Actually, one of my favorite memories and point of gratitude spending my formative childhood years in Bayside queens, New York was just how open freedom it was, hang out with my best friends, riding around our bikes all around town, going fishing at the pier, playing roller hockey together etc. PS 169.

The best thinking and horizon broadening happens when and while you’re just walking around.

I think about this very literally, and also, very practically.

The big problem in today’s world is that we are so cramped. That is consider, we are just sitting on our butts all day. In fact, I’ll lead the desires that we have are just glorified butt sitting.

For example, are strange and bizarre desire to own and drive all these exotic cars, technically you’re not really doing anything. To simply approach your Lamborghini, unlock it, pop up this is your doors, hop on in, turn on the large engine, make it loud, drive really fast, spin around, Pop out, with the scissor doors going up again, looking at this beautiful design object, what is the point?

For example, a lot of people fantasize about driving the PCH, along the Pacific Coast Highway, in some sort of luxury sports car, convertible or not.

What they don’t understand is on the weekends, there are lots of cops. There are maybe four or five highway patrol just waiting to capture you and only that but most of the time it is trafficky.

Something to do which is actually much more pleasurable is just drive your whatever car to the mountains, and just going to hike and walk around! Or even more fun is just going to the gym, showing off, being loud, lifting heavy ways, and instead of revving your sports car or your muscle car, Scream really really loud in real life.

Another funny thing I have discovered:

Why are we allowed and permitted to rev the engine of our sports car and also cars, but we are not allowed to rev up our voices, and roar our voices?

For example let us say that you have some sort of Lamborghini Ferrari or Porsche or whatever; you are allowed to accelerate really quickly, posting the loud engine. And the sound of the exhaust whatever. Some people call this sound beautiful.

But, modern day man is not permitted to be loud, scream, talk loudly in public. The modern day loser man is only permitted to wear AirPods, AirPods pros, noise canceling headphones, fully tinted out sunglasses, and stay to himself.

Real world training

Some simple suggestions I have include simple things:

If you see a beautiful person, doesn’t matter if male or female or whatever, compliment them. Compliment their look, their face, their style their demeanor etc. whatever. One of the good things about living in LA is that to a large degree, everybody is very image-conscious. Assuming that you’re just not the typical tech nerd who always wears the company hoodie or sweater, people spend lot time thinking about their outward appearances. Their jewelry, their fashion, their clothing, their fashion sense, their car, their accessories, etc. Anything that is perceived by the outside world.

Show me your screenshots, and I shall tell you who you are

A funny suggestion that I have is if and when you go on a first date with somebody, a simple thing and strategy you could do is either with permission or without, pull up their screenshots in their iPhone. A lot of people I see will often screenshots stuff they want to buy, stuff on Amazon, stuff on other e-commerce websites etc.

A screenshot is funny because it is almost like a public private memory log; typically we screenshot things we want to remember, or things we value, things we want to buy etc.

Once again, if you have ever shopped for clothes yourself or bought your own shoes or your own car or whatever, you two are also image punches. In fact I don’t know one human being, one modern-day human being who is not image conscious to a certain extent.

Now what?

so the trillion dollar question is this: let us see you brought in your horizons, you do it all well, what is the point?

First, you as an individual, the human spirit thrives on expansion. Soul expansion is a good desired outcome. The more you could expand your soul, the better.

This means expanding your ambitions, your hopes your dreams etc.

Second, exploration, our passion for novelty. For example, Seneca is currently three years, one or two months old. He really really loves and is excited whenever we discover and uncover a new playground park. We have this hand motion we invented called “ttang ttang ttang”– which is essentially a hand motion that I invented which is putting both your hands into fifths, and being them together, whenever we are excited or having fun.

Cheviot Hills playground park — we went there the other day, in Los Angeles, he loves it!

Expansion packs

Can you imagine a world and the universe in which we never had any sort of expansions? For example, I’m grateful that we had a Diablo two expansion pack, also a StarCraft expansion pack.

Keep it easy!

Another weird thing in American society, we glorify the hard, the difficult, the painful, the arduous, the toilsome. Why?

I have the theory; modern day society tries to indoctrinate you with the slave like, servitude mentality. If you are praised for working a lot, working hard, certainly this will benefit society. But will it benefit you? Often not.

Let us consider the foolish optimization we do: we work hard, we toil, we sacrifice our bodies our health our soul in order to make more money or whatever, buy the nicer house, the nicer car the nicer clothes, etc., we work more… But as a consequence, we sleep less, we spend more time sedentary, we become weaker sicker etc. All for the sake of what?

Broad shoulders?

Go broad!

What do we humans really want?

March 20, 2024

Grateful

Upon much thinking and consideration, the true feeling in my heart and my soul is gratitude, being grateful to everybody. Doesn’t matter how much they annoyed me in the past or irked me; ultimately even if it is for the .0000000001% of the times they were insanely helpful and or useful ,,, the only feeling in my heart and soul is gratitude!

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March 17, 2024

Leverage Your Platforms, Move the World

Follow the yellow brick Road!

How to move the world

“Give me a spot to stand, and I shall move the world!” – Archimedes

The notion of a lever, leverage is one of the most critical notions of all time. Why? It is all about strength leverage, levers.

For example, I find it personally more interesting to move 1000 pounds half an inch, rather than move 1 pound for 100 miles.

The bad thing is in modern day times, we have been suckered into thinking that more it’s better. More repetitions is seen as more virtuous and more better for us.

However, think about this:

What is more important, to do 10,000 bodyweight squats consecutively, or to lift 2000 pounds, once?

Of course the second!

Don’t trust the nerds

The big problem is in today’s world, the nerds run the show. The nerds are now the computer scientist, the CEOs of the big tech companies, etc., or once nerdy bullied kids in high school. In fact, my personal thought is your personality gets fully formed by the time you graduate high school. The person you are in high school, Remains with you for the rest of your life.

This is why when I meet people nowadays in LA, I just asked them: “Where did you go to high school?”

NASSIM TALEB also has a thought and a theory that in fact, where you go to high school is actually more important then where you go to college or university.

Therefore, let us think about how critical high school is.

The psychology of money

OK now that I am a cryptocurrency millionaire, betting big on bitcoin, now what?

First, I like the idea that we could all become rich together. To me what is not zero sum; everyone could gain $1 million in their wallet, me gaining $1 million doesn’t mean the subtraction of money from your pocket.

For example, let us say that we all buy bitcoin. And let us say that the price of bitcoin continues to balloon. If this is the case, then we all suddenly become millionaires all at once!

I think the loser mentality is that my financial gain is your financial loss. What is this true? No. Anyone who thinks this has zero understanding of how finance works.

Money is a made up thing

Perhaps the most insightful thing that I learned from Fernando Galliani‘s treatise on money is how money is just a social invention.

Money is faith, money is people.

In fact, when it comes down to it, the ultimate valuable thing is just humans, human beings, human labor, human power.

For example, eventually when it comes down to it, let us say you want to buy a house build a house renovated etc., sooner or later you need a real life human being in the flesh to actually build and put things together. Or if you want to create your own minimalistic dream House, you need a lot of laborers to actually build it. Often Mexican or Latino Spanish-speaking construction workers.

Who is going to dig your hole?

Most of us don’t like digging holes for ourselves, and I think most people would prefer not to build their own house, or renovate their own house all by themselves. It just takes far too long, takes too much time, most people would prefer doing something else.

In Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Holmby Hills I have observed this funny new caste system or bifurcation of people:

Insanely rich people who are never at home, and their army of immigrant construction workers who are building their mansions.

This micro economy which is built is super fast in me because there are bunches of these taco trucks which hang out in these $10 million mansion neighborhoods, $50 million mansion neighborhoods, just chilling and hanging out, and you could tell who the immigrant workers are because they all drive old Nissan Pick up trucks.

A very very dark thing about going to Asia is how cheap labor is. For example I think there are some people in Asia who work these menial labor jobs who might only get paid $10 USD for a whole day of labor in a restaurant kitchen or a bar or café? In America, it is insane; for menial labor work, we pay people almost $20 an hour?

How and why media is the future

I have this habit on my iPad and which I always go to the App Store, and I’m always curious about what the top performing applications are. One of the things that I have learned is that it looks like all the top five apps on the iPad store are all Media streaming apps. Disney, Disney+, Netflix Hulu etc. Also a fun thing I learned other day is that Hulu is owned by Disney.

Anyways, it looks like innovation for technology has been tapped out, and now there is a mad scramble for media. Even Apple is dead, in terms of innovation. In one last attempt, what they are trying to do is get into the media entertainment, TV music business; it seems that they are doing very poorly even though they have trillions of dollars to throw at it.

Free exercise

A new experiment I’ve been doing is I bought a 60 pound weight vest from Titan dot fitness, and I’ve just been wearing it during the day, when I go on hikes with Seneca, or even while working out. I call it like Goku in the gravity chamber, Dragon Ball Z.

What super interesting is I guess 60 pounds is actually pretty heavy. Just having it on me and not doing anything, I already feel my heart rate going up. Also what I love about it is it is well balanced; the weights are in the front and the back.

Also, I found that it may be one of the most effective ways to exercise in so far much as you could just keep it on while doing calisthenics, chub dips push-ups whatever, I even had a funny thoughts; if you want to one of those funny fitness classes and just wore a 60 pound weight vest on you the whole time, certainly it would augment your work out.

How tech nerds could get stronger?

A simple idea is that everyone should buy the 60 pound weight vest, and just wear it all day while you’re at work. And just stand all day and walk around.

Even all of the silly runners, maybe they should just buy one. It is better to just walk around with a white vest on, at slow pace rather than jogging at a “moderate pace”, for no good reason.

Also a very interesting innovation that I’ve made is that while wearing the 60 pound weight vest, concurrently doing my weightlifting exercises with it on. This involves farmers carry, rack pull, atlas lifts squats etc.

The general idea is anything that increases the force of gravity on your body will make you stronger.

What I learned after lifting 1000 pounds

Just Google or YouTube it; ERIC KIM thousand pound lift. I think I am the first non-steroid person on the planet to have done it.

Super super easy; gradual progressions, the Kaisen process. Just adding 2.5 pound “potato chip“ mini weights to each side of the barbell, week over week. That is if you just add 5 pounds to your maximum lift, week over week, within a year or two years or three years, any able bodied person or man should be able to lift 1000 pounds.

Can a woman lift 1000 pounds?

Probably. There are some of these Viking women from Sweden or some thing who are like 7 feet tall and 200 pounds, I’m sure they could do it.

Certainly for maximum strength, there will never be a woman who has as much strength as a man. You will probably never have a woman on planet earth as strong as Eddie Hall, or Hafthor Bjjorsen. Even if you gave the strongest woman in the world all the steroids in the world, I am very dubious that they would be able to deadlift 501 kg.

Or if you go on YouTube, search the 1 ton lift. One of the strong fat steroid using strong men was able to successfully lift 2000 pounds half an inch, which is 2x of how much I was able to do.

What I have found is ultimately, anything that you really really really really want to do, and you have a ridiculous passion for, or interest or goal, you can achieve. I think the subtle nuance is that it must be autotelic, which is you want to accomplish it for the sake in itself.

For example, trying to lift 1000 pounds, was this funny silly cute cold that I said for myself, without the aid of anybody else. No ridiculous notion of a “personal trainer“, “coach”. To me only unknowledgeable people, people who seem to lack self direction end up investing in these external coaches, because they like the motivation to do it themselves, because for their whole lives, they have never been encouraged to just follow themselves.

Am I the only rare bird?

Truth be told, I’ve never met anyone in real life quite as interesting or fascinating as myself. Only other people that have met why find fascinating, not in real life include Jeff Bezos, Elon musk, Kanye West, maybe Jay Z.

March 17, 2024

MY PRIDE AND JOY

March 15, 2024

LIVING

March 14, 2024

LIVING

March 14, 2024

EPICC

March 13, 2024

POWER

LIFE IS A PUZZLE?

March 12, 2024

LIFE PIX

March 12, 2024

COOL

March 10, 2024

SAN DIEGO LA JOLLA

March 10, 2024

THE GREATEST STREET PHOTOGRAPHER OF ALL TIME

Becoming the uber-street photographer:

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March 9, 2024

JOY

March 6, 2024

Bull

Becoming a Bull: The Bull Mindset

People want the Lamborghini, the raging bull. But why don’t you just turn yourself into a raging bull instead?

Money and power?

More money is not more power. Money is actually not related to power. I think what is more important in terms of power is courage and valor. Nothing else.

Humans are bad at math?

I think the problem with math, money is that intuitively, humans are not good at math. For example, Seneca at the age of three years, one month: it is funny because for the most part he knows one, too, or “manh-hee” (a lot, in Korean).

Apparently also in a lot of indigenous cultures, they do a similar distinction. Not individual counting, but simply referring to a lot of things as “many”.

What is “gambling”?

When you only speculate things in order to make money; not what you really care or believe in?

The reason why I like to call myself speculator, a cryptocurrency speculator, a bitcoin speculator is that in truth, ain’t nobody know the future. All of my predictions, they are seated in intuition, but feelings, and also some conceptual framework I have about the world. It looks like ultimately I was right, but this doesn’t really even matter; tomorrow I could be wrong, the day after I might be “more right.”

It doesn’t matter whether I am right or wrong, but whether I win or lose.

In terms of finances, winning is simple:

Just keep seeing the number go up!

But also this is tricky because on what time scale? On the minute basis, the hourly basis, the day basis, the week basis, the month basis, the year basis, the 10 year basis?

For example my bitcoin bet; I am glad that I was mostly ignorant to the news and the prices, I intentionally avoided. Apparently last year it was a low around 18,000 a bitcoin, and the other day it hit an all-time new high, I think around $69,000 a bitcoin. It dipped a little bit the other day and I bought more.

So with predictions, price predictions, I think you want to be right in the 10 year, 20 year, 30 year time scale. Why do you think at this time scale? Thinking about your kid, your kids, their kids kids.

***

How many gains, or how much gains is enough gains?

Humans, we are insatiable. We always want more.

For example, I think it was just the other day I remember having only $100 in my savings account, then 300 $500, 1000, and now it is a lot more.

Certain barriers: 20,000, 25,000, 250,000, 500,000, 700,000, 750,000, $800,000 and beyond.

And at this number continues to balloon, there will always be new goals and price targets, $1 million, $1.3 million, $5 million, $10 million, $100 million, 500 million etc.

Why do humans want more?

I think this is a good thing; the human desire for more is what has propelled us this far.

For example, the other day I just got Internet, give it fiber Internet connected to our house, and the guy who was installing it showed me… How micro thin the fiber optic cable was, but given this insanely tiny filament, to provide a download and upload speed of both about 1000 Mb a second. That is amazing.

Ways that this is useful to me:

Currently, uploading videos and video files is painstakingly slow, and interrupts my workflow. Greater technology better technology will enable me to create quicker, more freely, less friction.

Becoming a real man

Masculinity, virtue; what is it and what does it all mean?

Well the notion of virtue was initially about virtus, which just means man. Let us also not forget that the notion of woman comes from the notion man.

wo-man

My best thoughts come to me while walking?

Still… The more think about it, what is the greatest privilege of modern day living? Walking!

Another big intervention:

it is better to rent an extremely desirable area which allows for a magnificent 100% walking pedestrian lifestyle, which you could walk to all of your favorite coffee shops and public spaces, rather than own a very nice home, even in a moderately good location.

For example, all of this is currently written on my iPad Pro, M1 chip, voice dictation via the built-in Apple keyboard. And I love it! It allows for a new mode and channel of communication and thought expression that is not possible before.

BULL

So in finance, the notion of being a bowl, bullish is the generalized idea that you are positive, optimistic, strong, thinking about upwards growth.

The opposite of a bull is a bear.

In finances, if you are bullish about something, you are optimistic about it, you see it growing.

If you are a bear, do you predict that something will fail, the prices will drop. As a consequence you might short as dog, which means that you make money when you see the company lose shareholder value.

Only be bullish?

There are 1 million different ways you can make money, but it seems that the safest and the best way is to be bullish not bearish. Why?

First, the danger of shortselling is that if the price goes the other way, you don’t just lose 100% of your money, you could lose 200% of your money. Which means if you make the wrong that, you go into massive debt.

Whereas with going long, or being bullish, if you’re prediction is wrong, at worst your money goes to zero, never negative.

BULL THINKING

So perhaps in life, the goal is to become a bull, to become more bullish, the raging bull.

Yoke, yoke walk?
Atlas lift, atlas walk?

Just carry an immense amount of weight on your shoulders, on your traps, upper shoulders and your back and just walk?

Don’t think about it too much.

To become mentally bullish, your body must also become bullish?

One of the most nonsensical things is this notion “mind over matter”; the idea that you could be a skinny fat loser, tied to a computer screen and be courageous, devoid of any physical strength?

To me, true courage and valor is rooted in the physical. For example, until you have successfully lifted up 1000 pounds on your shoulder, you don’t know nothing.

True courage is rooted in physical courage. This is why ultimately, humans will be most amazed by physical strength and might, height and muscles, and size… not money possessions cars etc.

Also, even though powerlifting is not perfect, the general idea of “one rep max”– one repetition maximum is a good one.

Even on the playground, kids… the most impressive thing for a kid is to be strong.

***

Better to be over warm than over cold?

I have a theory: I wonder if a lot of modern day misery from people is the fact that they are simply too cold, literally and physiologically. For example, their homes. Too much time spent indoors, at the house or in the home, not enough time turning on the heater, in order to “save money”.

I think people make a foolish optimization and decision; in order to “save money”, they lack the critical insight that actually in fact… isn’t the point and purpose of money to improve our physiology health and well-being, not to save money for the sake of saving money?

Money Mentalities?

OK this is a funny thing about money; a lot of people often criticize and critique Jewish people for their habits regarding money, even Galiani criticized and critiqued Jewish people, the people of Judea for being the most cruel money-lenders and usurers.

However, my personal thought and insight is that actually, the greater thing to consider is money culture.

For example, the only reason why I think Jewish people have built a culture around money, saving money, building capital etc. is because of the long history of oppression, everything taken from them etc.

For example, if you are a race of people who literally have nothing, you gotta do everything in your power to build a capital, and power. I think for Jewish people that meant becoming educated, becoming money conscious, etc.

In fact, I think the reason why people hate Jewish people so much, is actually in fact… Jewish people are very wise and sparing with their money. The superficial criticism of Jewish people is that they are so rich, and therefore I hate them. But don’t hate Jewish people because they don’t blow their money on stupid things like you do.

The refugee mindset and mentality with money?

Another thing; I find that Vietnamese people, especially Vietnamese refugee people are actually really good with money, whereas immigrant Korean people are really poor with money.

Another thing with Vietnamese people, when Vietnamese, Vietnamese people fled the communists, especially the Saigonese boat people, the logic was simple:

We already have experienced having everything taken and stolen from us, therefore as a result, we will become exceedingly sparing with our money, because who knows… at any other given moment it could all be taken from us again.

Koreans on the other hand, we are very poor with money. Why? Ever since the bailout from the IMF international monetary fund to South Korea, essentially we could consider Korea as a neo colony of America. Just look at the facts; the American military intervention in South Korea, the border, protection against North Korea.

Therefore the interesting insight is that in terms of money culture, spending, the family structure etc.… Korea, South Koreans are becoming exceedingly like Americans. In fact the last time I went to Korea, the thought:

Koreans, South Koreans are just like Americans, except everyone speaks Korean.

In fact, did you know that Korea has Costco, a lot of Costco‘s!

One of my funniest modern day memories is driving to Daegu South Korea and having to park a car inside the insane parking structure in the Daegu South Korea Costco!

Humans are naturally bad with money and math?

Apparently there’s a pretty good book that came out recently, by the psychology of money. I read a little bit about it, but I found it a bit boring, I find my own personal insights to be more interesting.

Now that bitcoin is booming, and I’m stupid rich, funny enough my attitudes about money hasn’t changed much. Why or why not? I think our culture and attitude about money is deeply ingrained within ourselves from a young age. Therefore as a consequence, the thought:

Money, having money getting money doesn’t change us.

Then what changes? Only thing that changes is that the number that we frame and imprint in our minds, in terms of our net worth or the money value associated with us, keeps going up. This is a very good feeling, but… For the sake of what?

Ignore media

What messes us up? Media. TV, cinema films, it all gives us a distorted view of reality.

In fact, my proudest thing is that Seneca, ever since he was born has never been exposed to external media. No stupid YouTube, no Disney, no Disney+, no kid shows, etc. I found that actually even from an early age, strange morals, moralizing ethics comes from these kids shows, or they are just stupid distractions.

So with money, stuff like that… Even from a young age the reason why I hate YouTube, YouTube kids etc.… The really insidious thing is that lobby sneaky YouTube kid producers are just doing product placement for their mediocre toys in their videos. So the thought:

Ever since you were born, ever since you were a young child, you were already marketed to.

Even as a kid growing up in the 90s, growing up, born in 1988, the thing that I personally learned was thinking about how many dumb advertisements I saw on TV for all these stupid toys.

Advertising works

Advertising works, it works on nerds, it works on you.

Something that PETER THIEL said .,,, in his Zero to One book — he hit the bull’s-eye target exactly;

Advertising works.

The danger happens when we don’t think that it works on us, that somehow we are above it, we are lofty above it.

No. We are all influenced by marketing advertising etc. Advertising marketing and imagery works in sneaky ways. Without wanting to, we naturally get influenced by our environments, the sociology of the place we live in.

of course if you live in a modern de Society, you cannot escape it. But there are certain things you could do:

Never consume any sort of media which is supported by advertising.

This is almost 100% of websites and blogs on the Internet which have advertisements, display ads, Google Adsense. Practically 100% of podcast, radio TV shows, essentially anything that you don’t have to pay money for.

Also magazines, a lot of books, newspapers etc.

Even now, a lot of these streaming services, like Netflix etc.… I think the new strategy isn’t to create insanely great media, but instead to create these addictive shows, which have you continue to invoke your own curiosity, to keep having you watch it and subscribe for the rest of your life. The curiosity gap here is strong.

Stick to the Classics

Trying to do some mental math inside my mind today, in terms of my crypto and bitcoin gains, I realize that I am very bad at math, very poor at mental math, very poor at analyzing and thinking it all myself.

One suggestion that I got from NASSIM TALEB, in regards to studies — is trying to think about the majors or the disciplines or the things to study which do the least amount of harm to us. It seems that he suggests studying classics, the classics, and math. Being really good at math, certainly doesn’t hurt. And also the classics are great because our modern day society is so different in terms of thinking and deseridatum (things to be desired), compared to modern day times. Also, I find a certain precision in Latin and ancient Greek, even studying Proto Info European which escapes modern day English and modern day thinking.

YOUR BODY AS A TANK

Another funny trend I see in modern day society, everyone is trying to purchase cars that make them look like an armored vehicle, maybe it might be more effective to just transform your own body into a tank, an armored vehicle instead?

For example, these stupid Range Rover cars, Range Rover defenders, SUVs etc.; everyone wants to feel like their king of the hill, or king of the roads.

For example look at these lifted cars trucks, etc.

Am I the only person that I know who is proud to drive a Prius?

where to find or seek innovation?

This is my current preoccupation. I think the innovation lies somewhere in walking, being off the grid, weightlifting, etc.

Everyone’s the same?

Another funny bias in society is that we are all trying so hard to differentiate ourselves from one other, but in fact, we are far more similar than dissimilar.

What is the true differentiating factor? Not our things are possessions or bank account, but instead, our courage and valor.

I was reading the sayings of this Partins from Plutarch, and one of the interesting thoughts was an ancient Sparta, they did not allow the boys to have wrestling trainers, so that wrestling, was more about courage and valor not skill.

You?

It is only ever my ambition to help empower motivate and uplift others.

Trying to change the world is a complicated task, but changing yourself seems more interesting.

March 6, 2024

BEACH BOYZZ

March 6, 2024

THE NEW KING OF LA.

Also Seneca — the happiest kid of all time?

The happiest kid of all time?

March 5, 2024

The Politics of Testosterone

MAN OR WOMAN?

Some thoughts:

Menstrual cycle or no menstrual cycle?

OK this is some super facts:

If your wife, your girlfriend, your partner etc. has a menstrual cycle, certainly you should treat her differently than if the other person did not.

We meant do not have menstrual cycles. Therefore, we should keep ourselves to a different standard than others, vice versa.

Why do we deny our hormones?

Testosterone vs estrogen; these hormones are critical. If a man did not have testosterone we cannot produce semen or sperm which is potent and could be life and give birth to new generations of children.

Second, if a woman did not have estrogen, ovaries, menstrual cycles, etc.… we cannot beget children.

The war on children?

I was at the park the other day, and I asked another mom a funny question; “In modern-day society, who do we care for more… children or dogs?” She laughed, joked and said frankly; “Of course dogs! As much as I hate it.”

Also another super annoying thing that I experienced about a year ago when at the Oakland international airport; there was a stupid dog bathroom, but no family bathroom for kids?

Another really annoying thing:

I was out with Seneca, the cutest kid of all time, and there was a stupid dog next to us, and suddenly everyone was fighting over the dog, talking about the dog and complementing the dog, while ignoring Seneca?

You are not allowed to say “I hate dogs“?

A weird thing in modern day Society; modern day society has become extremely tolerant of dogs, but not children?

It seems in modern day society you are no longer permitted to say “I hate dogs”– but you can say “I hate kids”?

***

Individualism taken to an extreme?

Some strange layers I see here:

First, it looks like this extremely strange transgender, transsexual, trend has to deal with the fact that people no longer care about children or kids. Let us consider if you’re a man and you want to do a sex change to become a woman, or vice versa etc.; typically, there is this trend that people who decide to do this don’t want to have kids. No this is not always true because you can have a man man, woman man, transgender, transgender, trans man, trans woman, any sort of combination, single parent etc. who could have kids… If they are adopted? But still… Early enough in the chain line and the chain-link you need a man and a woman to get a child.

Why do we deny hormones?

Also, it seems the trend is for some reason, we want to deny hormones. We want to all pretend like testosterone doesn’t exist, estrogen doesn’t exist, and that for some weird reason, our personal individuality matters more?

we are anti-steroids… But for some reason we support sexual changes via hormone therapy?

Once again modern day society is very weird and strange; we are not consistent.

For example, there is a general consensus in America and beyond that hormones, steroids are bad. Everybody knows this. And I think it is a good thing;

Steroids shrinker balls in your testes, and it might cause irreplaceable harm where you cannot have children in the future.

Or even funnier yet;

if you are a bodybuilder hopped up on steroids, you could have the most impressive muscles in the physique, but the second you bed a beautiful woman, you can’t even get it up!

Kind of an unrelated note; apparently this is where cocaine is really bad; if you take cocaine, a man gets impotence and can’t get it up unless he takes Viagra instead?

These degenerates!

Why this matters

So it looks like this weird hijacking of society has to deal with feminism, a little bit of masculinity, etc.

First, I looked at modern-day man and woman, and it is becoming very strange;

First, all of these men are all of them are these short, loser, skinny, kind of fit, and or skinny fat guys, who want to get all these beautiful women, and the women tend to be much more impressive; much more fit healthier, stronger and more muscular.

I have always been a feminist

“I’m a feminist,,, I love women!” – haha, joke to my friend Stephanie as an undergraduate at UCLA, age 20, junior year studying sociology, — sociology of the family class (essentially a woman’s study course)

Being raised to more or less a single mother, I think I have always been a feminist and cared for women. Even my younger sister who is two years younger than you, I have always treated her like a tomboy. From an early age I encouraged her to lift weights, do whatever she wanted, to defy typical gender norms.

Similarly speaking, if I was born a girl or a woman, certainly I wouldn’t want anybody to tell me what I could do or what I could not do based on my gender or sex or whatever.

But, there is this very very strange and bizarre trend in which a man is no longer allowed to be a man?

This is the problem:

A man and a woman, both have different hormones… and everyone uses themselves as their own reference point.

Therefore as a consequence, both sexes become confused about the other.

For example, the typical commentary from men is that we often complain that women are not rational, too emotional, etc. The misguided thought is “why can’t they think like us or be like us?” But is this something we really desire?

Conversely, women don’t like men the way they are; women wants man to become more feminine; to be more compassionate, understanding, open minded etc.

Even Friedrich Nietzsche once said that Christianity was essentially a feminine religion, or a religion for women,,, whereas at least he praised Mohammadism (Islam)– the prophet Mohamed for being a male, masculine religion.

***

Why does this bother me?

Some issues at hand:

First, I feel like there is becoming this weird double standard. For example, as a man, I am given weird looks sideways plant is for walking around with my shirt off, or wearing short shorts, or essentially wearing a speedo in public. But the same time, it is 100% OK for women to walk around in Pants, biking shorts, have yoga shorts or whatever which essentially shows off all of their feminine parts?

The nuance is women are not permitted to show their nipples or their breasts in public. I think in America or California at least; it is illegal for a woman to walk around without a shirt on. But certain ways that I have seen women side skirt this is by wearing a loose fitting white cotton ribbed tank top without a bra on, in which you could essentially see their breasts and their nipples underneath.

And trippy told, I think America’s weird; in a lot of indigenous cultures, Africa etc., it is totally normal for women to walk around bare chested. I think in America we have this weird sexual perversion with women, in which there is the strange dichotomy:

on one hand, we follow these quaker protestant ethics that a woman should be prim and proper, cover-up and be lady like, but in secret, men, I think at least 99.9% of men watch porn, either daily, every other day, certainly at least once a week, once a month, once a year?

I have never met another man who doesn’t watch porn

I quit watching porn around 2017, not because it was more realistically bad, I think I was just too busy. I was too busy in my thoughts, studying philosophy etc., I wonder if 99% of men simply watch porn because they are bored. Porn is just entertainment for men.

Also, what do people do in public versus private?

Zoom mishaps

Do you remember in the early days of Covid in which everyone switch to zoom? There was this very funny story about an older Caucasian male professor, I think he was teaching the history of East Asia or something, and he was doing a screen share, opened up a Google Chrome tab, And he was trying to access the website like “sacred histories of east Asia” or something,,, and it automatically auto filled to “sexyAsiancollegegirls.com”– haha! Yeah I’m pretty sure he lost his job quickly after that.

The hard and the tricky thing is that at least with men, it is impossible to know who they really are, what they really think what their behaviors truly are, unless you know what they do in private. It is impossible to know.

“What do you think of Maria Ozawa”?

Another funny meme; just ask another guy, if they know who Maria Ozawa is. If this guy is Caucasian, Asian, Asian American etc.… Essentially Maria Ozawa was a famous Japanese adult video star, originally born in Canada, half Canadian Caucasian half Japanese I believe; very popular.

I wouldn’t trust any man who preaches women’s rights or whatever, who secretly watches porn in private.

Does Mark Zuckerberg watch porn?

Also

Does Elon Musk watch porn? Certainly yes. He jokes about all the time, “Google doesn’t care about what porn you watch”.

Also, does Jeff Bezos watch porn? Probably. Just watch the video interview with him recently with Lex Fridman– he is so insanely jacked, look at the vein popping out of his bicep! He is 59 years old, and it looks like he has high testosterone. The problem with a man in his position is that he is not allowed to just pick up any random woman, because he is such a high profile figure. also just read the medium article post exposé in which he on his own dirty emails and correspondence with that one TV female personality, it looks like he is a sleuth.

Apple Vision Pro?

Not to digress too much; but a funny thought; what percentage of guys who bought the Apple Vision Pro is curious or and or has used it to watch a virtual reality, 3D porn?

What changes when you have a kid

I have a young boy, Seneca is currently three years old. Being around adults, and being a man and the father figure, certain things which I actually am uncomfortable with:

Cursing: it just seems improper. Being with him around me all the time, he is finally getting to that point in which she is mimicking me, mimicking my speech patterns, and rehashing what I say. As a consequence, I realize that I have to be very careful about my tongue, And rewrite the way I just generally really talk. Typically we have a front stage self in a backstage self; I want both to be consistent. Or another words, I never want to do or write or say anything in private, that I am not comfortable having Seneca read or no, same thing with Cindy.

The brain is plastic

Also another big thing that people don’t really talk about, is how plastic the brain is. Essentially what that means is the reason why we should never use Instagram, YouTube, or allow our children to use it is that it reprograms your plastic brain in strange ways.

“What’s an Instagram?”

The other day we were in West LA, and Cindy did this “solid core“ Pilates style workout, and on the wall was this poster of all of the 12 or so instructors, their personal biographies etc. and at the bottom, there was this column in which they could share their Instagram handle. I was curious; was there anyone there who didn’t have an Instagram or shared? No. Everyone did.

Even though in LA, whenever I meet random strangers, the first question they always ask me is what my Instagram is at the end? I told them I don’t have one, and I just give them my phone number and first and last name instead.

Who will the future belong to?

I’m actually kind of excited; once all of the baby boomers, Gen X, Jen why etc. couples without children, who just own dogs, no children… Once they all die off, who will be the next emperors of the planet? Our kids!

America is in for a big problem

in the Jeff Bezos interview with Lex Fridman, they briefly discuss the notion of the 10,000 year clock, in which they created a mechanical clock nested somewhere in a desert cave which is purely mechanical, and will last for the next 10,000 years, as a consequence, the general metaphor is for us to think more long-term. For us to think more long-term; Jeff Bezos correctly predicts that 10,000 years from now, America won’t be around anymore. He is probably right. These are the big problems:

First, all of these really really rich and successful people, people on top of these big tag companies, it seems that they don’t really have any kids; maybe one kid, maybe zero kids, maybe a dog. Who is having children in America? Suburban families in Irvine, and poor Mexican people and immigrant families.

Thinking about the next generation

Something that Americans are really poor about; thinking about the next generation, the next generation of wealth etc.

We give all this lip service about intergenerational wealth whatever, but… Isn’t the most intelligent thing to literally think about the next generation, not in metaphor but our kids?

I thought the other day; when all the baby boomers die, all of the Gen X die, and also once all the millennials die, Seneca and his generation of kids, they will be the next rulers of the planet.

Because once again, all these people who don’t have kids and just have dogs ,,, eventually, when they die off, there are no longer there. I’m actually curious, if you’re a super rich executive at one of these big tech companies, and once you die, what happens to all of your wealth? Let us say you have 10 million, 100 million, 1 billion, $10 billion in the bank; once you’re dead, where will it go?

Just do you

I think the simple thoughts:

Leave other people alone. If they want to change their gender sex, takes steroids or do hormone replacement therapy, let them be. Why do we care what other people do?

I think the nuance is this; when people start to superimpose their value judgments upon you and or your kids.

“I love their hair!”

Very weird happening; the other day I was at Apple Store, and a very friendly apple employee, look like an Asian American young woman, maybe in her 20s mid 20s, looked at Seneca with his cool haircut and said “I love their hair!”

It struck me a little aback. At first, I was a little bit confused, I wasn’t quite certain what they were talking about. I then realized that that moment, maybe the employee didn’t know whether Seneca was a boy or a girl, and simply referred to Seneca as “they” or “their”. Now this doesn’t really bother me that much, but I’m just starting to see a strange shift in our lexical language.

“Partner”

Another funny happening; a few years ago, maybe four or five years ago, I was in downtown LA, at my favorite coffee shop (ilcafe on broadway) and I was chopping it up with one of the workers there, this is before Seneca was born. I introduced Cindy as “my partner“ (Bay Area early woke talk–) and the young guy looked a bit confused paused and said… “Business partner? Or…” then Cindy interrupts and says and jokes “No. Sexual partner”. Haha we all laughed.

The tricky thing about this term “partner” is tricky because it can mean a lot of things:

Boyfriend, girlfriend, married man, married woman, gay partner lesbian partner LGBTQ partner etc.

As a consequence, it is an easy catch all term, to just refer to your significant other.

The reason why I find this term a bit problematic is that there are degrees here;

It is very very very very different if you are married versus not.

No at least in California, I believe that same-sex marriage is legalized now, but still… I think there are some people who are in very very serious long-term relationships who end up not deciding to get married. Which is fine, I understand the whole anti-marriage sentiment, but still… I am pro monogamy, pro marriage. Of course, I am pro gay, pro lesbian, pro LGBTQ.

But I think the issue is that if we use the same term to refer both to boyfriend and girlfriend as partner, and or a married couple… This hierarchy loses its meaning. We must reestablish hierarchy.

This weird bias about polygamy?

Some thing I am very anti-is polygamy; the idea of having multiple wives, girlfriends boyfriends, partners, sexual partners or not sexual etc. This is another problem in American society; we don’t know what we want, and we don’t like closing doors, so we want infinite optionality.

Let us consider even in ancient Greece, ancient Greek mythology. Zeus and Hera. Husband and wife, king and queen on the throne. Certainly Zeus is the bad guy because he goes around sleeping with other mortals, sea nymphs whatever… but still at the end today, in theory we could understand Zeus and Hera as married couple.

Marriage is important, is ancient and it goes back.

The big problem with polygamy, multiple marriages etc., even as a man; it is just too much stress and annoyance. It is difficult enough for a man to handle a single woman, let alone 2, 3 or more?

Is stoicism a philosophy only for men?

First of all, I think store is for everybody. Man or woman, cat or dog whatever; I think it is a school of thought in the methodology I believe could benefit everybody.

I think this is the tricky thing:

A man should treat a woman differently than he would treat another man.

Specifically, I think a man should treat a woman with more privilege, more tolerance and patience than another man.

And this is where the sexism comes in:

As long as a man does not have a menstrual cycle and doesn’t go through hormonal shifts like a woman, a man should always treat a woman with more privilege.

Why are we so hush-hush about hormonal shifts, ovulation cycles, menstrual cycles?

I have a younger sister, but still as a young boy growing up, teenager etc., I was very confused and I had no idea about having a period, ovulation cycles, how it all worked etc.

I actually have a vivid memory, the only young vivid memory I had is his child regarding my mom, I think my mom still had a period and a menstrual cycle, and she accidentally leaked in the bed with the white sheets, and I remember my dad yelling at my mom about it, my mom being very embarrassed about it.

As a consequence, in America at least my generation, born in 1988, we had this weird sexual education in which sex was stigmatized; abstinence was what was taught in school, we were shown all the scary images of STDs, STI’s, etc.; in the general ideas that if you have sex, doesn’t matter if protected or not, with or without a condom doesn’t matter… You might catch HIV AIDS and die.

Also, it didn’t really help being raised Catholic, confusion, Korean American, in confusion cultures, these Asian cultures, certainly Catholicism, sex is seen and treated as being evil, not to be trusted etc.

Sex positivity is a good idea

Why is flexing, flexing or muscles seen as poor taste?

Am I the last masculine person alive?

Even when I would go to the gym, all of these guys… Doesn’t matter if they were super strong or jacked or whatever… I didn’t really consider these guys as masculine? Why? Too dark in Marose, perpetually having a frown on their face, always having Headphones or AirPods on, antisocial, weird behaviors?

Real men, outside smiling, topless, joking and chatting with each other, shooting the shit.

In fact one of my fondest memories was early Covid when all the gyms were closed, and I would just go to the local park and do calisthenics and meet all these other guys and just talk shop with them.

What is the problem here?

My personal take is that the problem is this weird mole people philosophy to life, too much time spent indoors.

Being indoors promotes antisocial behavior

Something else I have discovered is that being indoors is bad. At the gym, which is an enclosed indoor space, people are strangely antisocial. However if you work out at the park, in the great outdoors, etc.… People are much friendlier and happier.

The solution:

Build more outdoor gyms?

We off the grid grid grid!

A simple solution and suggestion I have is this:

Build your own outdoor gym!

I currently live in LA, unfortunately I have two parking spots. One of them I parked my Prius, the other one I store my weightlifting equipment and my squat stand, and I just workout there.

This is great for many reasons:

I save time. Even 10 minutes, five minutes, 13-14 or 15 minutes stuck in traffic driving somewhere to the gym, is time better spent working out by myself at home.
Better for your health: maybe there is something to be said about having access to fresh air. Asian people believe in moving circulating fresh air, how it is critical for health and well-being. Traditional homes in Asian homes, they are always a little bit cold, in Korean Japan; the walls are made out of parchment paper, which allow air to float in and out, and I think there is a greater culture that one must be subjected to the elements, homes are both indoor outdoor places.

Less activation energy

Another great upside of working out at home, is that there is less activation energy. A lot of people don’t exercise or work out because going to the gym seems like it is too much friction. Another thing I learned from Jeff Bezos is this infamous “buy it now” or “one click buy” concepts; if you reduce the friction to buy something, it makes life easier.

For example, it is important for people to buy stuff, and I think and I believe that Amazon prime is a massive net plus to society.

So perhaps the great upside of working at a home, I think for optimal health should lift weights every day, at least once a day? Maybe even twice a day?

Media and bad feelings?

Maybe one of the big problems here is media. Media and bad feelings and emotions, over sentimental emotions?

For example, I was actually very very very curious about the Barbie movie, thinking of it like a good sociological watch, just like watching the matrix, 3.0.

However the big problem even watching that scene where Barbie goes into the real world and talks to the little girl Sasha; really really bad emotions and feelings here.

I actually wonder, if so much of modern day life, is ruined and bastardized by the fact that people watch all these shows and movies and stuff, which actually promotes anger, bad feelings, etc.?

What is the solution?

The simply thought is don’t watch media, don’t let your kids watch any media. It really messes them up.

Whether you have a boy or a girl doesn’t matter; movies are evil?

Who is the Director?

I know the thing that people don’t really think about and consider; ultimately, when you watch a film or a movie or whatever, it ends up being a magnification or a metaphor, the brainchild of the Director?

Therefore, a simple heuristic:

Before watching any sort of movie, film, cinema, TV show series whatever… First do research on who the Director the producer is, and then work your way backwards.

If the philosophy or political thinking of the Director or the producer or the creator is not in line with your own personal set of beliefs, then don’t watch it or consume it.

What does the Director or the producer look like?

Looks matter. Height physiology, facial morphology etc.

Google is Clickbait?

A new pro tip, in order to avoid getting suckered by Google, Google images, which is essentially all Clickbait at the end of the day, just use flicker, flicker.com and use the little search icon when searching celebrities directors famous people etc. Try to get full body shots, and ideally, try to witness certain things:

Their height, their physiology, their body fat percentage, their muscle mass, what their face looks like.

For example, only beautiful people could produce beautiful artwork and films.

If the producer, artist, Director is somebody you do not consider as beautiful, don’t watch read it or consume it.

Ugly in face, ugly in soul (Plato?)

Monstro in animo, monstro in face?

Creating your ideal or being the ideal?

one of my favorite directors of all time is Zack Snyder, who produced the new Superman, the new Batman man, Justice Lee, as well as the original 300 movie. I rate the movie 300 as one of the best films of all time.

Something very interesting I found and discovered Zach Snyder is actually pretty short, only 5 foot seven? King Leonidas, Gerald Butler is maybe 6 foot one or something, so this is what I think:

We create our own ideals.

Therefore my cyclone Alicis is when Zack Snyder is creating a film, he is creating an idealized version of what he wishes he was.

For example as a kid, I grew up watching Johnny bravo, as well as being really into Arnold Schwarzenegger, in fact, it was always my personal ambition to be like the terminator, like Arnold. I’m around 5 foot 10 1/2, 5 foot 11; people always think I am shorter because I am Asian, which is essentially low-key racism.

Now what?

Easy; become your own ideal!

ERIC

EK

February 29, 2024

Sore or positive pain?

Paine is interesting and Paine comes in different flavors. There are some types of pain which signal some sort of catastrophic injury, or severe injury, whereas some types of pain are mild.

Fragile egos?

Another big problem here; looks like a lot of people have very fragile egos?

What does that mean? They feel small compared with others.

becoming antifragile?

What is the definition of a biological, human being? We humans are anti-fragile; which means that biological things and systems grow through stretchers, difficulties, challenges, exposure etc.

What that means is this:

Don’t seek to avoid stress; rather, how to harness stress and that great hydra and energy and power to your benefit.

I need moar power!

Apparently the secret to a long and happy life is a life with minimal stress. I disagree; I think the secret to the Grandis life humanly possible is the life with the maximum amount of stress, if dosed properly.

Anger could be good

Truth be told, I don’t like being angry, the physiological feeling of anger begets more anger.

However, the great upside of anger is that often times, more anger could need more power; which means if you could harness anger to your benefit, you have more power.

In modern day, civilized society one is no longer permitted to show anger or being angry. Why? In modern-day civilized society, one is not permitted to be violent, either metaphorical or literally.

A simple stoic thought is curb your anger, and become exceedingly tolerant, and hold your tongue, even if it means chewing on broken glass, in regards to your partner your wife your girlfriend your female mate etc. My personal thought is we should ever only hold anger in regards to other men.

The key

Once again, anger is not an emotion to be extinguished; rather yielded.

For example, think of anger and emotions like a torrent, a storm, a huge rushing river or thing. For example, you could use huge massive flooding rivers to power water plants, hydroelectric plants, to produce energy. Some are speaking, you could use volcanoes, volcanic pressure, heat and fire to also produce energy.

The wise man knows how to Arneis and exploit his energy and emotions, the weak man cannot handle them.

The dragon?

You could have a pet dragon, using your pet dragon as your ally or your companion, or, you could have some sort of loser dog slave.

It seems that the modern day man, often single and lonely, adopts a pet or some sort of pathetic dog, in order to augment his own self-worth. On the contrary, I believe a much more robust path is instead, to not have any dependence, besides your own blood child, and harnessing your power energy and resources to fuel your passion, and pursue life goals and trajectories you discover critical for you.

How and when do we go wrong?

My problem with modern-day society is that we are overly sentimental, two week. Emotions come in a lot of different flavors, some types of emotions seem debilitating for a lot of people, some types of emotions could be yielded to your benefit. There’s no such thing as good or bad emotions in the ultimate sense, however there is a hierarchy of emotions in regards to whether they benefit you or not.

A simple thought:

Is this emotion beneficial to me, is it serving me or not?
A true beneficial emotion is an emotion which we consider beneficial and helpful to us. As a consequence, all the emotions should be thought of like this;

Act like a real owner

The great man cannot be deciphered?

Unlimited money and power

February 28, 2024

The Philosophy of Happiness

NEW SLAVES

Once you got all the money in the world, infinite money, then what?

The point is to be outside in the real world!

The New Matrix?

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the repercussions of infinite money and wealth, in regards to crypto bitcoin and money and finances in general, Apple Vision Pro, the new Barbie movie, the matrix, society etc.

The first question:

What do we want?

I think there is this vague notion of “happiness”. The tricky thing is nobody really knows what it means, how to get it etc. period

Upon my long contemplations in Vietnam, now back in LA and beyond; my formula to happiness is simple:

1. Self-employment

Eagles don’t fly in a formation — leave that to the partridges and pigeons — Galiani [Paraphrased]

Only work for yourself, so provider, don’t be employed by anyone else but yourself, no employees, no manager, no CEO, no being the CEO, no collaborations, no board, no shareholders etc.

The reason I’ve discovered this is that perhaps, the true thinker and philosopher is a solo individual.

Also this just simplifies a lot of things; this is in line with advice from Naseem Taleb, that one of the best pieces of advice you got from the successful people in life is not having a personal assistant, because if you have a personal assistant or whatever, they will suck you into doing more work than you really need to. And also, I wonder if the best strategy to life being a non-scale individual is a good idea; Once your life is limited, you become more critical about what to do what not to do, and as a consequence, your life becomes more focused and simple.

2. How long to live?

In terms of how long to live, I think Nietzsche that for a philosopher, 70 years is more than sufficient!

3. Wilderness, hiking, variation in terrain?

Also unto happiness, I think the idea of not being constrained to just flat surfaces and terrain is a good one. Let us think and consider, all of the most enjoyable and fun things in life involve curves, irregularities, randomness enchants, etc.

For example, if you have some sort of performance cars sports car racing car vehicle etc.; what type of track is the most fun? The one with the most hair spin, curves, not just straightaways. Also I think this is where rally racing is very interesting to people, the extreme unevenness of surfaces is what fascinates people.

Also let us consider the human body and physique; we love curves! On a woman, to a certain extent, the more curves the better! Look at the Venus de Milo – it seems that we men love a woman with an hourglass shape, a full and supple chest, curving torso, an hourglass shape in terms of hips to waste ratio. Also unto physical health and sexual fitness; we don’t want a woman looking like a skeletal, nor do we want an overfat or obese women; a woman to be physically fit exercise every single day, have a relatively low body fat percentage with a high muscle mass is desirable.

Also with men, the ideal man has curved, bulging muscles. In his chest, shoulders, biceps, thighs and calves, etc.

Also with car design; I think the reason why people really like the classic cars in sports cars and Ferraris etc. is because of the curves.

4. The best hikes in LA?

Pacific Palisades — Los Leones Trail (566 Los Liones Dr
Pacific Palisades, CA)– Apple Maps.

I found that the Pacific Palisades, Malibu, anything close by the Pacific Coast PCH Highway, something close to the Getty Villa is the best in LA. Maybe the Griffith observatory, but still… I prefer Pacific Palisades. Why? It seems that the most sublime and supreme views for a human being to experience involve some sort of great and grand elevation, as well as views of The water.

Even though there are lots of bad things about LA, assuming you just go on the Saturday or Sunday, when it is not really that traffic, there are lots of great nature things to do in Los Angeles! Another good spot is Franklin Canyon Park (Apple Maps) – a little bit north of Beverly Hills.

In regards to hikes, hiking etc.; what is hiking anyways? My definition of hiking is a vigorous walk, ideally going up an elevation. My ideal hike is short, steep, and interesting. You don’t need to be one of those REI weirdos who spend 8 hours straight hiking, with those funny camelback. All you gotta do is drive your car somewhere interesting, park, hike and walk around for 30 to 45 minutes, jump back into the car, and continue on with your life.

What I have found very interesting about hiking and going on hikes etc. is when you’re hiking on a foreign terrain or path, in which all of the ground is uneven, it does several good things for you:

First, it opens up your hips, your back, your knees etc. up. I have a personal theory that the reason why we have so much back pain knee pain, hip pain etc. is precisely because society is too flat. Perhaps we actually need some sort of Variation entering in order for our bodies to be optimal. Let us consider it is not natural for streets pavements and sidewalks to be totally flat. In nature you never see anything that is 100% street or flat.
When you are hiking on a difficult terrain, you cannot be distracted you have to focus 100%. Especially when there are lots of rocks and stuff, it really needs your 100% attention. You cannot go on a challenging hike while looking at your phone, or even listening to music. Something that people forget is that I think it is the cholera in our ears which facilitate balance; therefore if your ears are blocked up, your balancing becomes stinted.
More oxygen in nature? I have another theory that when we are nature, we are subjected to greater levels of oxygen in there, from all of the trees around etc. Also, biophilia; I think we human beings naturally love the color green; the color of life, verdant trees and pastures, life. Let us consider that the color green is to go, it is also the color of income, profit, and money. Typically red is a bad thing; a red color indicates loss, financial lost and declined, stop signs, restrictions etc. Therefore when you put yourself in natural environments with lots of green, it makes people happier! If anything I wonder if we would be much happier in modern day societies and cities if we just put on a good paint job to all these ugly building; a fresh coat of beautiful bright green which could simulate color of nature might be good, or any other bright colors in nature; golden poppy orange, yellow, etc.
You feel like a kid again! Temescal Canyon Trail (Apple Maps)– Cindy Seneca and myself all went there yesterday, and we had a blast. First when we went there, the hilarious thing was because of all the rain, there was this huge mini river, flood, fjord which essentially blocked one of the hiking paths. First we were a bit dismayed and was about to turn back, and then we saw a father and a son, and a dog simply walking across the river getting their shoes all wet! This gave us the inspiration to just screw it and go instead! I took off my vibram five finger shoes, and just literally went barefoot, and it was awakening! Being able to walk again barefoot at nature, I felt like a big kid again! I think there is something to be said about these barefoot hikes; you walk slower, more carefully, and actually you get better connection with environment. I was even able to hike over rocks in the water while holding Seneca in one arm; I wonder if people would be happier just hiking barefoot instead! I think the only reason why we are discouraged from hiking barefoot is because in modern day society, for some reason or another, we are shamed, ashamed of our feet? We have a weird relationship with our feet and society, feet are seen as dirty, unclean, disgusting. Therefore I think our fetish for shoes or whatever is simply an offshoot the shaming that goes behind the feet. I find this to be very unhealthy, because there is nothing more And critical in our bodies than our feet! Our feet is the source of all of our wisdom, inside, and intelligence. Let us think and consider that even in the Iliad, all of the gods are considered “swift footed”.

5. Creative ideation

It seems that the best place in space and opportunity to be creative and think creatively is in nature! How and why?

First, randomness chance and fractal patterns. Essentially in nature, there are infinite patterns, curves, etc. As a consequence, it is always entertaining to be a nature! Why? You’ll never see the same thing twice. In fact, nature is so fascinating because some other things that we never consider which are really fascinating include the chirping of birds, the sound of frogs, random fish in the water, and even being able to just pick up rocks and throw them into the river without having anybody scoring you! In nature there are no laws, no rules, no restrictions, you could do anything you please.

Also, when you’re in a really good nature spot, you have a 100% panel con view of natural things. The ideal view is you have a 360 view of simply trees, nature and water, fresh air, and the breeze. No virtual reality simulation comes even close.

6. VR?

I think it is pretty wise that Apple Vision Pro, Apple doesn’t market their Apple Vision Pro as being “virtual reality;” but instead caused it “special computing“, and also pouts the abilities of “spatial video“ etc. What does that mean and why does it matter?

I was a relatively early adopter, visionary, and also experimenter a virtual reality, back in oculus rift days, and I spent a lot of time thinking about it. Also, I tend to trend towards tech, tech optimism, tech utopianism etc.

Ever since I was a kid, computers technology the Internet, etc. was pure magic! As a kid, when you have no access to money your resources, assuming that you know how to use a computer, find the right websites, essentially you could download everything for free, you don’t have to pay any money for anything which is very useful as a kid because you have no money literally.

In fact, I have fond memories being a kid, when I was in the fourth grade, around 11 years old getting my first computer, an Acer aspire, Pentium one processor, having AOL 3.0 with my 38.8K modem, downloading “warez” in AOL “cerver” chat rooms, downloading illegal pirated versions of the original Grandtheft auto, 1/40 .RAR files over a dollar up Internet connection! This was hilarious, because it would often take me up to a week to download a single game, and also, because we only had one phone connection at home, I would hog up the entire phone line when playing StarCraft etc., even the original counterstrike 1.6… And I remember yelling at my mom when she would pick up the phone to make a phone call, etc.

no at the age of 36, and having a swollen bank account, crypto account etc.; not much has changed. Now that I could afford any sort of Lamborghini I want, car device I want etc.; it is interesting because now, once I could afford things; they no longer really interest me anymore. I have a theory:

I wonder if we are curious about, and desire or aspire towards certain things we cannot afford… Yet once you could afford it, it longer entices you?

I think it is also like men who are chasing certain women; once the man gets the woman, he is no longer interested in her?

7. Making and creating things which are useful for humanity?

I just finished reading GALIANI’s “On Money”– and at the end of the book, he says that he is so happy and joyful that he was able to write something that could serve humanity. And it did it has. I think he published the book and 1750, almost 300 years ago! And even me as a reader today find it insanely useful, insightful, and empowering.

I suppose this is also where my street photography, photography, philosophy stoic philosophy mindset thinking is useful; my thoughts have already and impacted many individuals alive today, maybe some who are dead now, and I am still going; my personal aspiration is to be read at least 300 years from now!

8. So now what?

What I have personally gleaned is that all individuals want to create some sort of impact on the world. Whether it be an impact today, on current living human beings, or the future.

In fact one of the greatest stories that I have is that I am still read, enjoyed, and viewed and followed by highschoolers, college students today! Shout out to my friend Dylan Fan — RISD industrial design student and photography and street photography thinker, innovator and entrepreneur … he is thinking of building his own camera company!

9. What do we want to become?

Another personal joy of mine is that unbeknownst to me, for the last decade or so, I was followed by a lot of Hollywood producers, actors, directors, famous people etc. And I am certain that there are still lots of really famous people who I don’t even know who follow me, who follow me, and as a consequence, a funny thought:

You are much more influential than you think you are.

Something that analytics will never tell you; who is it that actually is following you?

For example, one of my friends, who keeps his persona pretty low-key, who works at Facebook, I think he has only 50 followers on Instagram, but one of them is Mark Zuckerberg himself!

Better to have one Mark Zuckerberg to follow you than to have 1 billion lemmings follow you.

10. So how to do this?

First, everybody starts off with zero followers, zero viewers, zero people etc. And this is a good thing.

First, one of the great things about starting from the bottom or with zero followers is that you have the childlike naïveté, creativity of a genius. In fact, practically all of my innovations come from ignorance.

For example, a random thing I am grateful for is that I never had any formal education with video, videography, etc. Why? I’ve discovered that anybody who studies cinema film or video formally ends up following and following sucker to the same tropes; Eventually they tend towards this boring Imo, overly sentimental personal family documentary things; nobody cares about that.

My personal innovation was when I was 21 years old, fresh out of college, curse about true photography and how to do it; I just bought the original GoPro, I think it only shot 540 P or something, maybe 720 P, and I just dropped it on top of my Canon 5D and started shooting! Even today I find the videos insanely innovative and interesting.

Also my original Leica M9 point of view POV videos.

11. Where did I go wrong?

My only “regrets” in life has to deal with not any personal regrets, but, rather new wisdom that I have gleaned;

First, if I could do it all over again, I would actually become more stubborn, more close minded etc., and also, become more blind or deaf to the suggestions or ideas of others. I think one of my mistakes was chasing some sort of pseudo “legitimacy“, in the world of photography and art in order to “prove myself“. I have discovered that this is a mentality for only EMO anemic artists; the problem about most artists, creatives, innovators is all of them are essentially skinny fat poor health sad unsuccessful individuals who were probably bullied as kids in high school and middle school, and seek some sort of revenge on reality through their tyranny on art in the art world, etc.

For example, every famous photography creator is himself or herself a failed artist or photographer; a curator is a funny case in which they themselves have not been able to gain success on their own photography or art, and instead, collect, curate, filter, order, and sift through the artwork of others; deeming what is, “good”, and what is “bad”.

12. Avoiding the international association of name droppers (TALEB)

The more somebody quotes other people, the less successful they are.

My friends, you discover this in art, photography, the art world; the more that somebody quotes other artists, their names, and the more obscure they tried to make their claims, the more they are signaling that they themselves have no idea what they are talking about.

For example, now they look back at it, in my 20s, when I was a super famous and successful Street guitar for traveling the globe in planet, making my passion my living etc., all of these people who are either suspicious or jealous or envious of my success would try to belittle me by Trying to “educate” me on other famous artists etc. Now that I could critically think back at it, they were simply jealous and envious of my success, and will try to augment their own self-esteem and ego by putting me down.

13. Do you really need to study other artists?

Technically no. I think only do it if you want to or like it.

For example, nobody in their right mind would force their kid to study Picasso or Matisse before picking up a crayon. No no no; a kid simply does.

A genius is a kid with good parents (Kanye )

Also–

“Every child is born a genius, the problem is having them remain to be a genius as they continue to grow up” – Picasso

My personal definition of genius is an individual who is self-assured, autotelic and “autistic” (autos, self — self focused and self determined).

I was using ChatGPT to do some research on the etymology and the history of autism and being “autistic“, and it was actually very interesting… Before we thought of it as being some sort of mental condition in which the kid lacks social skills or whatever, the first notion of being autistic was somebody who was really into themselves, self driven and self focused, a good trait. I think the first guy who even coined the notion of autism use the Greek term “autos”– self.

In fact now that I think about it, I could even consider myself to be autistic in so far much as I could really care less about the opinion others have of me; and certainly I bend the social rules to an extreme compared to other people. Of course I still understand the emotions and feelings of others, But I just certain point I don’t really care that much. Sometimes I care sometimes I don’t; I care deeply when it is friends and family, but when it is other strangers, I could empathize and sympathize with them, but ultimately I make the decision to just ignore it.

So I think maybe being an autistic photographer artist thinker innovator entrepreneur is a good idea. And to use autistic or autism in a generalized thing, and generalized concept, not a pseudo medical one.

The reason why I dislike categorizations like “Asperger”, autism, ADD, ADHD etc. is that literally every single human being is somewhere on the spectrum.

14. So what should we focus on?

So the big question is after all of this; what should we focus on?

My simple suggestion is blog. Focus on blogging.

Why blog? What is a blog?

Blog simply means “web log“. And what that means is that you just log your thoughts on the Internet, on the web. And the definition of a blog is something that gets updated, all the time, every day, all day, as frequently as you were text message somebody, email, Post something to Instagram etc.

In fact a radical idea:

What if everything that you sent or created digitally you could just post it to your own blog?

For example, emails. What a massive waste of time. But, the most interesting way to make email scalable is if somebody ask you a certain question, you just publish the response publicly, and you could kill 10 birds with one stone; you create value for the whole world to enjoy, publicly.

Also the big suggestion that I have is delete your Instagram, and instead, post everything to your own personal blog instead! This is what Chris Athanasiadis did — and I love his blog! His thoughts are pure, honest, entertaining. And can be enjoyed all day, every day.

15. Am I the only millennial that I know without an Instagram?

A funny thing is that now that I’m here in LA, without even trying I’ve been meeting a lot of interesting people on hikes, public places etc. Typically at the end of our conversation they will ask me what my Instagram is, and that will tell them I don’t have an Instagram, but instead, I give them my first and last name and my phone number. To me this is a much better strategy than giving away your email or your Instagram. Why? Having somebody’s personal phone number is much more useful; if in fact you do want to collaborate with them in the future, you can do so with their phone number; you cannot do this with social media.

If anything, I have a funny vision that I want to become a personal blogging strategist for famous people actors musicians rappers etc.; I think almost all rappers or famous people would benefit far more from having a personal blog than just an Instagram, which is essentially digital slavery 2.0.

Let us also not forget, that actually back in the day, even Kanye West used to have a blog! I still think there’s an Internet archive it somewhere; I think even now, today, Kanye should just take kanye west.com and turn it into his own personal blog instead of Trying to use social media.

Why? Sooner or later, you’re going to get censored banned or kicked off any social media platform. If you have your own personal blog, you cannot be censored.

16. Discovering useful things for yourself and for humanity

Ultimately my personal passion enjoy is discovering these interesting life hacks and strategies, in order to benefit myself and others!

For example, simply put, I am always trying to discover and recover new way of approaching life, philosophy, thinking creativity etc. And as I learn and grow an evolving change; I simply share these things to my blog for others to also enjoy.

Also a big thing: other people can take it or leave it!

Something which is insanely confusing to me:

Sometimes people become indignant at when I post things which are contrary to their liking.

But another funny thing; my blog is open and free, you don’t pay money to read none of it. And also, I don’t have these annoying ads and pop-ups and whatever obscuring you. As a consequence: if you see or read something you don’t like, isn’t the optimal thing to just ignore it and move on?

17. Future thinking

Perhaps future, futurism thinking about the future is a good idea.

One thing that I don’t trust these loser silicon valley tech entrepreneurs and visionaries is that most of them don’t have kids. Same thing goes with philosophers:

Trust no philosopher who doesn’t have kids.

Some people think that having kids will become an impediment to their thinking, entrepreneurship, innovation, art etc. This is far from the case.

In fact, having a kid, at least one kid, preferably two kids and beyond is that a kid wall awaken your true creative spirit and genius. I feel 1 billion times more happy innovative and interesting after Seneca was born. At the age of three years old, Seneca is giving me the ultimate turbo thoughts in regards to creativity art and beyond.

I am also very grateful and happy that he has never entered preschool, childcare, “Montessori” (which is just daycare with a good conscience)– and as a result has not yet been corrupted by the world.

Therefore is a consequence, seeing how Seneca approaches the world and learns etc. is one of the most eye-opening ways to reach challenge and reimagine how I approach life and think about things.

Therefore, if you’re true life goal is to expand your wisdom knowledge and consciousness to the extreme; I think that everybody should strive to have at least one boy, one girl, to really understand the inner workings of all gamuts of humanity.

“When niggas have daughters”– JAY Z, NAS? Kanye?

Apparently a lot of these rappers, when they finally have daughters or girls etc.; apparently the way that they approach and treat women and think about women changes.

For example, something that made me reconsider and rethink social media TikTok and Instagram was an interview in which Kanye said that essentially Instagram, TikTok was essentially child pornography for girls. And it is true.

It seems that on social media Instagram TikTok etc., women, young girls are rewarded the more revealing and sexual they become. And this is patently bad; because essentially the algorithm will train them and program them in such a way that they are rewarded for being more sexual. And the opposite goes for men; they are rewarded for having more menacing cars, having guns, other pseudo masculine things.

My number one tips for parents:

Delete the YouTube app from your phone.

Also,

Never let your kid play any app or program or game etc. that is free.

A fun suggestion instead is that recently on my 11 inch iPad Pro and one chip, I purchased and installed the original roller coaster tycoon game, the one that I enjoyed so much as a kid. To me this is a great creative tool for Seneca; at the age of three, he loves physics and building; to me roller coaster tycoon is a more honest Roblox or Minecraft. The problem with a lot of these modern day apps is that they are bankrolled by in app purchases; which is a bad motivator.

18. Why is everyone so miserable?

Do you know that funny new advice that you should spend at least 15 minutes every single day outside in the direct sun? I say it should be at least eight hours a day! I know no depressed person who walks 30,000 steps a day in nature!

I think the big issue here is that we have become the new mole people; we simply spent too much time indoors. I think this is bad for our physiology our bodies our minds and our souls.

19. Opt outside

My simple formula for happiness is to just spend maximum time outside, outdoors! My definition of outside outdoors is simple;

The more UV radiation, the more UV exposure, the better!

Why is it in real life modern day society we have become so scared of the sun and UV radiation? If the sun is really really strong, just put on some sunblock! Or put on a hat and protective clothing.

But for myself, personally I really hate the look of a baseball cap, I only ever wear baseball caps when I run out of hair gel.

Also another random thing about being a man; the best haircut is to just buzz and shave the sides really really close, a zero, let the top of your hair grow really long, and just put in some “ECO” hair gel and slick it back! Why? You can give your hair the proportions of a Lamborghini.

20. Radical ideas

I think an apple Vision Pro is only useful if you could use it outside, outdoors, in the direct sun, or in nature! I think using an apple Vision Pro indoors is bad.
Perhaps a good strategy is if you want to spend more time outdoors, just get an iPhone Pro or whatever, or an iPad Pro, and take it outside! To me the most successful person will be outdoors all the time, if you have to do phone calls or emails for a living, do it while hiking outside! If you live in Los Angeles, maybe just bring your AirPods with you, go on a hike, and just do your zoom calls as audio only, while hiking! I think this will not only be better for your entrepreneurial thinking, but also better for your body and soul.
Cancel your gym membership, just work out outside: calisthenics in the park, outside, outdoors, ideally with your shirt off. Also, just build an off the grid gym outside of your home; in your parking lot, garage etc. To me the ideal gym is outside!

February 25, 2024

Redesign Yourself

You are never the same person twice:

UBER THOUGHTS, VISION THOUGHTS.

Some fresh vision thoughts to get you going:

Apple Vision Pro?

It’s weird when you really want to like something, and you try to force yourself to like it, but you cannot. This is my overall feeling towards the Apple Vision Pro; apparently the other day I learned that you cannot use Apple Vision Pro unless you have a prescription insert thing. This is a tragedy for people like myself who wear glasses; even oculus rift S was compatible to use with glasses on!

The demise of Apple?

I am probably the biggest Apple fanboy that I know, the biggest Steve Jobs fanboy. But even now, I have lost all passion and interest in essentially all of the products. Everything is so boring, same same, generic and played out. For example the other day my iPhone SE, the microphone got busted, and I went to the Apple in century city mall in LA, shout out to Jonathan Rosales — A++++ customer service from the technician Genius Bar– anyways, the microphone on my iPhone SE stopped working, and upon getting it inspected, Jonathan suggested that I just get a replacement iPhone SE for only $299 from the back.

It was a no-brainer. I busted out my credit card and gave him my old iPhone SE, with the broken microphone and also the messed up scratch screen, and I got a brand new iPhone SE, same configuration, and while I am glad that I have a working phone again, it all feels so lackluster and old and played out.

Lesson I got from my friend Todd Hata — you could just buy a refurbished iPhone mini directly on Amazon! This is what I should have done. Only around $450 USD —

Or, you could buy a refurbished iPhone directly from the apple.com website, maybe it is a good idea to buy a refurbished iPhone Pro, with max one terabyte storage (1 TB) storage.

In fact, this is a device strategy that I’ve had, based on my IT background;

Best to buy a maxed out refurbished product, the most expensive maxed out refurbished old product and milk it until the end of time, rather than buy something brand new, bottom of the line or even middle of the line.

For example, maybe buying a maxed out iPhone pro refurbished on the Apple website with 1 TB one terabyte of storage might be the most useful strategy.

Touch ID

Now that I’m super rich, something that is becoming a little bit more concerning to me is biometrics and data, security, two factor authentication etc.

For example, most of us now have text messaging 2 factor authentication enabled on our devices, but in theory, if somebody steals your phone and takes out your Sim card, technically they could access all of your financial and personal data.

To me, my only concern has to deal with my finances, nothing else. When people talk about getting your identity stolen or whatever, that doesn’t really concern me. The only thing which concerns me is getting my money stolen.

One of the good things about having an older iPhone with the thumbprint scanner is that I think it is actually more secure than Apple Face ID. There are funny stories that people 3-D printing out facial masks, and hacking into peoples phones, or even the joke is having somebody Apple face scan while they are sleeping or taking a nap or something.

Maybe for now, a thumbprint is the most secure thing. Even though the iPhone SE is not perfect, currently it may be the least bad iPhone out there. Either that or iPhone Mini.

Thumbprints, iPhone SE’s are the future.

90% Bitcoin, 10% Chainlink

Currently bitcoin is booming, it recently broke the 50,000, $51,000 a bitcoin barrier, which is always good news. Why? People get emotional about round numbers; this is why Apple prices the iPhone Pro at $999, rather than $1000 flat. It seems that we don’t like round numbers, we like it a little bit under or a little bit over.

For example, prices are significant one day go over the big hump.

Now that bitcoin is over 50,000, $51,000, it won’t be long until it goes back to $55,000 a bitcoin, $57,000 a bitcoin, $59,000 a bitcoin, $60,000 a bitcoin, and will soon and eventually break the $65,000 a bitcoin high watermark. Once it breaks that again, and it finally hit $70,000 a bitcoin, it is all just uphill from there. Then I don’t think we will balk any more at bitcoin being $100,000 a bitcoin, $150,000 a bitcoin, $200,000 a bitcoin, $300,000 a bitcoin, 400,000, 500,000, 1 million, 1.5 million, 3 million, 5 million, $10 million a bitcoin and beyond.

It was just yesterday I bought Bitcoin at $6,000 USD a Bitcoin and even then,,, I regretted NOT buying it at $300 a Bitcoin .. when I first started eyeing it.

The 90/10 power law

Therefore my simple strategy as of now is putting 90% of your crypto speculations into bitcoin, and other 10% into chainlink. Why chainlink? In the whole entire world of crypto, I think it might actually be the only interesting crypto technology platform or innovation there is. Everyone else is trying to become the next bitcoin, which seems like a poor strategy because honestly, there will never be another bitcoin.

The only issue with bitcoin is that it is too slow to transfer things. However a great innovation is the bitcoin lightning network, endorsed by Jack Dorsey and block.xyz. this is also the same company that owns the square platform, cash app, and I suppose now tidal.

A just government and Republic?

A republic is just a chimera — Galiani on Money

I feel that the most interesting book I’ve read of all time in anything regards to money or economics is Galiani ON MONEY. One of the takeaway points is that at the end of the day, the most prosperous nation is the nation with the most just government and liberty — currently on the planet that is America, the United States of America.

Also, Galiani, I think he wrote this book 400 years ago, talks a little bit about America, the Americans, the Quakers Boston and Pennsylvania how they only used paper money because America only traded with Britain at the time. Galiani said this was good because Quakers are trustworthy and kept their word.

Studying the history and philosophy and theory of money — super critical to any economic theorizing.

Fitness and beyond

Titan.fitness — it is pretty amazing that you could buy a squat rack, which is good up to 2000 pounds, for only about $350 on the Titan.fitness website.

I think 99% the difficulty that people have about getting fit is that going to the gym is too much of a hassle. For example, having to drive there, be stuck in traffic, stuck in a car, having to find parking, having to enter, worry about people stealing your stuff, or having to wait for your favorite squat rack. The best strategy is to just build your own home gym; you could just leave it inside your house or apartment, keep it in your front lawn or back lawn, or even your parking spot.

For example, a great innovation I’ve discovered is this Titan.fitness “independent squat stand” which I could just move around as I please. This is very useful because I have two parking spots, one is where I park my Prius, the other is where I leave my squat rack. But if for some reason somebody wants to spend the night or keep their car parked in my second parking spot, I could just easily move the squat stand!

Buy more bone marrow, not devices.

So the Apple Vision Pro is $3499 — the new high water mark. To me it ain’t that expensive–

We can all afford it,, the better question is “do I really want it or not?”

For me,,,, I can afford a thousand Vision Pros but it just doesn’t interest me,,, no matter how hard I try.

A better thought:

Go to your local grocery market butcher and ask for bone marrow (Gelson’s in LA and the century city mall does it)

Bone marrow as the ultimate demigod food;; good enough for Achilles as a child! Bone marrow may actually be SUPERIOR to beef liver? My new thought.

Buy $3,499 worth of bone marrow,,, and your life and soul and destiny shall be transformed.

We humans don’t like having stuff on our head

A big big big big big note for VR — Meta, meta quest, Apple etc:

Nobody likes to put shit on their head —

Even Seneca age 3 hates putting on a baseball cap!

As a consequence — suggestion for Apple:

Make the iPhone, iPad insanely great again.

Personally I’m waiting for the iPad Pro M3 chip to come out before I upgrade — everything else seems lame.

Photo thoughts

New Fujfilm X100 is out which is good news — but why is the design the same? Boooooeing!

Fujifilm should have made a brand new all white color, or even a new matte black color,,, or even a matte pink or matte or shiny gold color.

Nobody cares for the internals,,, we buy it for the new design.

Heads up to Leica, Fujifilm, Sony, Apple Tesla etc:

Always be updating the new design.

For example the new Model 3 insanely great redesign — they’re selling like hotcakes! Also Cybertruck sales are off the roof!

Redesign Yourself

Perhaps a good idea —

Always redesign, and be redesigning yourself.

Prince, David Bowie Michael Jackson etc — Kanye, Jay Z, etc.

Better than redesigning your house home car etc … redesign yourself!

Also redesign your website, platform etc– a good approach.

Redesign your photography, art and creativity

No limits >

EK PHOTO SUPPLY

ALL HAPTIC STRAPS — new update… no more sales tax! Yippie!

Swim in the HAPTIC STREAM >

That new new shit

Open AI SORA — mind officially blown.
New lululemon license to Train 5’’ shorts in all black are the perfect shorts. Also don’t buy the tenthousand.cc shorts — they suck. Buy without the liner.

Solo thinking

One man, one barbell (Texas power squat bar, monster squat bar)
One man, one camera, one lens. Currently LUMIX G9, LUMIX pancake 14mm f2.5 lens

Chris Athanasiadis

ERIC KIM IS A TRIP.

Chris Athanasiadis– great blog.

He also got the new Nikon zf and loves it!

Check out Chris — the last interesting street photographer blogger alive?

New?

Also saw the new Winogrand Color book … insanely great!

Who else, what else?

Speculate in you!

ERIC

EK NEWS

Movies to watch?

Barbie: The New Matrix?
New Napoleon Ridley Scott film
Dune 2– incoming.

CINEMA BY KIM >

You are never the same person twice.

EK BLOG

PHILOSOPHY BY KIM

February 23, 2024

UBER THOUGHTS.

Some fresh thoughts to get you going:

Apple Vision Pro?

It’s weird when you really want to like something, and you try to force yourself to like it, but you cannot. This is my overall feeling towards the Apple Vision Pro; apparently the other day I learned that you cannot use Apple Vision Pro unless you have a prescription insert thing. This is a tragedy for people like myself who wear glasses; even oculus rift S was compatible to use with glasses on!

The demise of Apple?

I am probably the biggest Apple fanboy that I know, the biggest Steve Jobs fanboy. But even now, I have lost all passion and interest in essentially all of the products. Everything is so boring, same same, generic and played out. For example the other day my iPhone SE, the microphone got busted, and I went to the Apple in century city mall in LA, shout out to Jonathan Rosales — A++++ customer service from the technician Genius Bar– anyways, the microphone on my iPhone SE stopped working, and upon getting it inspected, Jonathan suggested that I just get a replacement iPhone SE for only $299 from the back.

It was a no-brainer. I busted out my credit card and gave him my old iPhone SE, with the broken microphone and also the messed up scratch screen, and I got a brand new iPhone SE, same configuration, and while I am glad that I have a working phone again, it all feels so lackluster and old and played out.

Lesson I got from my friend Todd Hata — you could just buy a refurbished iPhone mini directly on Amazon! This is what I should have done.

Or, you could buy a refurbished iPhone directly from the apple.com website, maybe it is a good idea to buy a refurbished iPhone Pro, with max one terabyte storage (1 TB) storage.

In fact, this is a device strategy that I’ve had, based on my IT background;

Best to buy a maxed out refurbished product, the most expensive maxed out refurbished old product and milk it until the end of time, rather than buy something brand new, bottom of the line or even middle of the line.

For example, maybe buying a maxed out iPhone pro refurbished on the Apple website with one terabyte of storage might be the most useful strategy.

Touch ID

Now that I’m super rich, something that is becoming a little bit more concerning to me is biometrics and data, security, two factor authentication etc.

For example, most of us now have text messaging to factor authentication enabled on our devices, but in theory, if somebody steals your phone and takes out your Sim card, technically they could access all of your financial and personal data.

To me, my only concern has to deal with my finances, nothing else. When people talk about getting your identity stolen or whatever, that doesn’t really concern me. The only thing which concerns me is getting my money stolen.

One of the good things about having an older iPhone with the thumbprint scanner is that I think it is actually more secure than Apple Face ID. There are funny stories that people 3-D printing out facial masks, and hacking into peoples phones, or even the joke is having somebody Apple face scan while they are sleeping or taking a nap or something.

Maybe for now, a thumbprint is the most secure thing. Even though the iPhone SE is not perfect, currently it may be the least bad iPhone out there. Either that or iPhone Mini.

90% Bitcoin, 10% Chainlink

Currently bitcoin is booming, it recently broke the 50,000, $51,000 a bitcoin barrier, which is always good news. Why? People get emotional about round numbers; this is why Apple prices the iPhone Pro at $999, rather than $1000 flat. it seems that we don’t like round numbers, we like it a little bit under or a little bit over.

For example, prices are significant one day go over the big hump.

Now that bitcoin is over 50,000, $51,000, it won’t be long until it goes back to $55,000 of bitcoin, $57,000 a bitcoin, $59,000 a bitcoin, $60,000 a bitcoin, and will soon and eventually break the $65,000 a bitcoin high watermark. Once it breaks that again, and it finally hit $70,000 a bitcoin, it is all just a pill from them. Then I don’t think we will balk any more at bitcoin being $100,000 a bitcoin, $150,000 a bitcoin, $200,000 a bitcoin, $300,000 a bitcoin, 400,000, 500,000, 1 million, 1.5 million, 3 million, 5 million, $10 million a bitcoin and beyond.

Therefore my simple strategy as of now is putting 90% of your crypto speculations into bitcoin, and other 10% into chainlink. Why chainlink? In the whole entire world of crypto, I think it might actually be the only interesting crypto technology platform or innovation there is. Everyone else is trying to become the next bitcoin, which seems like a poor strategy because honestly, there will never be another bitcoin.

The only issue with bitcoin is that it is too slow to transfer things. However a great innovation is the bitcoin lightning network, endorsed by Jack Dorsey and block.xyz. this is also the same company that owns the square platform, cash app, and I suppose now tidal.

A just government and Republic?

A republic is just a chimera — Galiani on Money

I feel that the most interesting book I’ve read of all time in anything regards to money or economics is Galiani ON MONEY. One of the Takeaway points is that at the end of the day, the most prosperous nation is the nation with the most just government and liberty — currently on the planet that is America, the United States of America.

Also, Galiani, I think you wrote this book 400 years ago, talk a little bit about America, the Americans, the Quakers Boston and Pennsylvania how they only used paper money because America only traded with Britain at the time. Galiani said this was good because Quakers are trustworthy and kept their word.

Fitness and beyond

Titan.fitness — it is pretty amazing that you could buy a squat rack, which is good up to 2000 pounds, for only about $350 on the Titan.fitness website.

I think 99% the difficulty that people have about getting fit is that going to the gym is too much of a hassle. For example, having to drive there, be stuck in traffic, stuck in a car, having to find parking, having to enter, Worry about people stealing your stuff, or having to wait for your favorite squat rack. The best strategy is to just build your own home gym; you could just leave it inside your house or apartment, keep it in your front lawn or back lawn, or even your parking spot.

For example, a great innovation I’ve discovered is this Titan.fitness “independent squat stand” which I could just move around as I please. This is very useful because I have two parking spots, one is where I park my Prius, the other is where I leave my squat rack. But if for some reason somebody wants to spend the night or keep their car parked in my second parking spot, I could just easily move the squat stand!

Buy more bone marrow, not devices.

February 23, 2024

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February 21, 2024

PIX

February 20, 2024

Back in Strength!

Insanely happy that about a month after, a month later… I caught Covid about a month ago, and now I feel good.

Weird?

So a weird thing; about a month, two months ago… For some reason maybe out of unusually abundant strength, I started randomly waking up insanely early in the morning, around 3:30 AM, 3:45 AM, 4 AM, 4:15 AM, 4:30 AM — etc.

one of the annoying things was I don’t really know how to operate why I didn’t really know how to operate when waking up that early. Difficult to figure out what to wear in the morning when I would go on a walk because I wasn’t quite sure how cold it would be outside, what to do in the morning etc.

However eventually I fell into a certain rhythm where I would wake up super early, have a bunch of coffee at the house, think a little bit, publish some thoughts on my blog from my iPad at home, and then go on a long walk, in Culver City, from the arts District to the downtown area, and know what either voice dictate my thoughts into my iPad Pro in iA Writer, like I am doing right now, or I would just do Vlogs on my Lumix Jin camera, streaming any random thoughts on my mind.

Then about a month ago, I caught Covid from Cindy, and for about a month, I would sleep in really long periods of time, until around 8 AM, 8:30 AM etc.… It was first good because I’d like to get the extra sleep but also bad and so far much as I no longer had the solo mornings to myself to walk think etc.

What does Covid do to you?

No no no, Covid wasn’t some elaborate hoax by Bill Gates to put 5G in your brain, or some sort of weird government conspiracy theory about putting fluoride in the water to control your mind.

Now that we got out of the way, certainly Covid does something weird to your body and your physiology, for me, in manifested as tiredness, having less vigor, changing my sleep and wake up patterns?

Before I cut Covid during that period of time, I would naturally fall asleep early around 8 PM, 9 PM latest. But then after catching Covid I would want to sleep a little bit later like 8:30 PM, 9:30 PM, 10:30 PM?

Anyways, not sure if there is some weird fake pattern seeking here, but long story short I feel pretty good, ready to conquer the Internet again.

Reset?

The other day we were able to get Cindy‘s mom to come in, babysit in for a little bit and Cindy and I went on a lovely couples massage for 90 minutes. Maybe this was a good hard reset to help me sleep better, and now, today I woke up a bit earlier again, naturally around 5:45 AM, feeling like my old self.

Money Thinking

So something on my mind, something insanely fucking annoying.

So JP Morgan Chase seems like a bunch of gangsters; they held my money hostage, when I was trying to transfer a nominal amount, to my Coinbase crypto account, there was this bullshit fraud detection team on the back end, which is essentially a bunch of outsourced remote labor in the Philippines, who held my money hostage for almost 2 weeks, trying to “approve” it, even though I verbally and in person and in on the phone and at the bank location verified that indeed it was me, not a scammer who was trying to wire money into my Coinbase Crypto account.

I understand that it is kind of a good idea to try to prevent people from getting scammed from these crypto scams, but, I verified my goddamn Social Security number on the phone in person and online, did all the paperwork and the signing etc., and as a consequence, I missed a good market opportunity, buying bitcoin when I was only $38,000 a bitcoin, and two weeks later I had to buy it at $47,000 of bitcoin.

I’m still happy that I’m in the green, but still… It made me fucking angry because that was a lost opportunity market cost, something that probably cost me potentially at least 100,000 or $150,000 in profits.

Something that I learned about money:

it ain’t about how much money you make, or how much money you earned, or whether you take a profit or a loss… Rather, it is about how much money you think you should have made.

Why this matters

So some thoughts:

First, growing up poor, now being rich, something that was always very confusing to me was how rich people would be so foolish when he came to money, in terms of gains. I wasn’t quite certain about this question:

If you already have $100 million, what does it matter if that $100 million becomes $200 million, $500 million, $1.5 billion, $3 billion, $5 billion, $10 billion etc.?

Then a big thing that I realized; it isn’t about how much money you make, how much you gain, what percentage you gain etc.… what seems to matter more is percentage mental hypothetical what you should have gained, not the ultimate gain itself.

Speed?

So some thoughts:

The first one has to do is speed. My extreme fucking annoyance was I should have been able to trigger my trade at $38,000 if bitcoin, that moment, that day I wanted to do the bank wire transfer, but even bank wire transfer, Quickest is same day within 6 to 8 hours, or maybe one day, or maybe one to two business days. In the world of trading this is way too fucking slow.

Money, money moves, money trades should be done instantly, in milliseconds. Nanoseconds. Faster than you can think.

Bitcoin problems

The lightning network is a good solution for bitcoin, yet still… One of the big issues with bitcoin, when you’re trying to transfer it by it sell it or whatever… Bitcoin moves slowly. For example, when I did a major trade from chain-link back to bitcoin, I had to wait maybe one or two hours it felt before the final bitcoin transfer was done. Having to wait is a supreme annoyance, especially when I think so quickly.

Money moving at the speed of thought?

So one investment opportunity, or one speculation that I had back in 2018 2019 was digibyte, DGB. I got the tip from investor that I met in Singapore, named being, who showed me his trading account balance on his phone, I think he was only maybe 24 years old, and logged $1 million in profits in a single year, and after talking to him, this guy was very very Wise intelligent and smart, and also knowledgeable… When he was a student at NYU in the states, as a Singaporean exchange student, he and a bunch of buddies predicted that the price of oil was to drop, not to go up post the invasion, and as a consequence he and his buddies made a shit load of money.

Anyways, he is the one who told me about digit, his visions of creating a digibyte café, where people would hang out, have coffee, and speculate on world affairs, make trades with digibyte etc.

To me the number one interesting thing about digibyte was the speed. It promised transfer speeds at least 100x or 1000X times faster than bitcoin, and at least four times faster than even Litecoin.

The tricky thing is that Digibyte or DGB, Itself is technically worth nothing. It is just a token or a cryptocurrency or crypto token thing that you could trade quickly, in itself it has no inherent value.

I recently checked the prices out of pure curiosity, and tragically saw that it tumbled below a penny. I think when I was speculating in Digibyte, I first bought it on poloniex, later moved it to freewallet.org after it got delisted, apparently due to some sort of arguments between Jared Tate the Digibyte founder and the founder of Poloniex,,, and I think I later sold it, and transferred my money back into bitcoin when I rode it from 2 cents a digibyte to 20 cents a digibyte or something. I forget the exact numbers numbers, but I know with 100% certainty that I got at least a 10x gain out of it.

Anyways, my current thought is this:

Fuck the banks!

JP Morgan Chase is a good bank in so far much as it is universally trusted, is ubiquitous, in America it is at least by 1000X the dominant bank. When I was a high school college student, the first checking account that I opened up was Bank of America, and later after I got married to Cindy, we mutually joined our checking and money accounts, and I ditched Bank of America to join JP Morgan Chase which was her bank, which was a good decision.

But now, after this fucking crypto wire transfer fiasco… Fuck those guys.

Permissionless?

Once again, the thing that is so bizarre to me and makes no sense is this:

if you are trying to transfer and wire your own money, and you did it at a bank teller in person and signed all the necessary paperwork and showed your identification cards etc.… Why would J.P. Morgan Chase block your transfer, have some random people in the Philippines in the back office verify your information before making it live?

Theories:

First, JP Morgan Chase does not want money to leave her coffers. What that means is that if I transfer $125,000 out of my JP Morgan Chase checking account, and I transferred it to Coinbase or some other crypto trading platform… That is $125,000 JP Morgan has just lost to make Theoretical speculative bets with my own money.

What that means is this: the way that the banks make money with your money is that when you put your money into your checking or savings account, they use your money to make speculative bets and hedges with your own money, while promising you these nonsensical “cashback offers on your money” or credit card “points” (which is such a fucking scam).

Good energy versus bad energy

A new thing I have discovered: a lot of people who are miserable, act with a bad attitude etc., or either broke, in debt, not happy with their lives etc.

Apparently a very interesting thing I learned is that even a lot of these famous actors, in LA and beyond; are desperate to get jobs. As a consequence, they are always mulling about town, in the second anyone ask them to be on their show or not, they instantly agree.

Even apparently a lot of these famous actors, their yearly residuals from the screen actors guild, SAG, might only be $200 a year.

Therefore, whenever somebody gives you a bad attitude or grumpy or whatever… Assume that they’re broke, in a bad living situation etc.; and don’t hate or resent them for it.

Back to the banks

So the first thing to consider is in regards to banks.

First, I am not one of those weird crypto anarchist who wanted to demolish all the banks. Banks are good for a healthy thriving economy and society; I still feel safer having my money in a traditional bank savings account or checking account than I do having $500,000 or $1 million stuffed in a sock drawer at home.

Second, I am a fan of Visa. Even when traveling internationally, being able to use a visa credit card or a debit card to withdraw cash or to pay for things abroad in Vietnam etc. is insanely useful, instead of going through the arduous task of always changing money.

But the big question is this; ultimately what do you want to do with your money?

Goals?

I think a big thing to consider is your goals. Your life goals your life trajectories your desires etc. The question is once you have all the money in the world, $1 million, $10 million, $100 million, $500 million, $1.5 billion in your bank account whatever… then what?

Some thoughts:

First, devote yourself to philosophy. Philosopher last. Even great military conquerors come and go in our forgotten. For example I just watched some of the Napoleon movie, I paid for it on Apple TV, purchased it from the Apple TV shop on my iPad for 25 bucks, scrub through it really quickly, and the funny thing is this;

Even after all of the great military exploits by Napoleon, no, in the year 2024… We just think of him as a shorty guy.

Even apparently Friedrich Nietzsche was a huge fan of Napoleon, but now, nobody cares for Napoleon. Nobody thinks that he is great.

Who is remembered?

Eventually, sooner or later, people trend towards philosophy. Even studying sociology was a gateway drug to philosophy. Even all of the self-help books and business books is also a road to philosophy.

Seeking greater wisdom for the sake of what?

A big philosophical thing to consider is what is the purpose or the point of wisdom. Philosophy simply means the love of wisdom. Back in the day, the term “philosopher“ was funny; it was essentially a humble way of saying that “I am not yet wise, I am not yet a sage… But I seek or I desire to become wise.”

But… Once you are wise, and you have wisdom, then what?

Wisdom as the means or the will to power?

So I have a funny philosophy: maybe wisdom is simply a means to power. That is; when people are seeking wisdom, what they are really seeking is power. What that means is the more wisdom I have, the more power I have.

However, does wisdom really equate to power? Maybe not really.

What is true power?

My personal theory is that true power is physical, physiological. Even if you had all the money in the world, even if you’re a billionaire or a 10 billionaire or 100 billionaire… If you are weak, in poor health, lacking vigor etc.… All of that money is worthless. Physiological power is the true power.

Can money help you with gaining more power?

My simple formula:

Money is good when you could use it to improve your physiological power.

For example:

Money for a gym membership, for buying weightlifting equipment at home, using money to pay rent in the extremely desirable neighborhood where you could walk everywhere, money for fitness related things is good.
Money for massages: now that the cost of labor is insanely expensive at least in the states; a true luxury is being able to get a massage in America, why? Getting a deep tissue massage, something that could help promote healing recovery and regeneration and regrowth and growth in general… Is an insanely great benefit. For example I think a lot; why is it that Cindy and I were both so productive while in Vietnam? My theory is that we got a massage maybe 4 to 5 days a week; getting a high massage in Vietnam maybe only cost 5 to 6 dollars USD an hour? as a consequence, having the time to get a massage was insanely recuperative and good for us. The double upside of getting a massage is that both you get a free nap, a chance to think and recover, and also, when a good masseuse can really dig very deep into your muscles and help you relax, you will sleep deeper and better, making you more powerful and productive the next day.

Time?

A big question; how does one live a happy and virtuous life in Los Angeles?

Simple: don’t drive for more than five minutes a day.

People are shocked to hear that I don’t drive more than five minutes a day in LA. How and why? Living in Culver City Los Angeles… In the arts District… I am not a five minute drive away from the best parks, the best hiking paths, and even in the mornings, I no longer have to jump into a car; I could walk directly to downtown, voice dictate my thoughts into my iPad, think, grab a cuppa coffee at Phils, Vlog etc.

I think the big secret is an opportunity cost thing ; even if it is a 15 minute drive to go to a good close by near gym, 15 minutes there, 15 minutes back, which is 30 minutes in total… That is 30 minutes you could spend walking, stretching, being outside, standing on your own 2 feet, or even lifting weights in your own garage gym, off the grid gym, home gym, or ghetto parking lot gym.

Therefore if you have the option, don’t spend more than five minutes a day in a car.

Tesla auto pilot?

I got the funniest visual when I was in Beverly Hills, close by in Rodeo Drive, I saw a white Tesla model 3 performance, And a successful looking guy in the car, not driving just having the car drive itself, sitting on his butt, on the phone looking like he was doing some important business work, and having the car drive itself around stop and go in person traffic.

Also pro tip:

The major investors that I know in Tesla, the ones with $100 million, $200 million in Tesla stock and assets, their personal family only drive baselevel Tesla model 3 cars.

Investor or owner?

Whenever people fuck with me, or give me poor service, whether at a Tesla store at Lululemon etc.… I often tell them that I am a major investor, and suddenly… I get treated with far better service.

Better to own Tesla stock than own a real life Tesla car.

For example, I am a funny case; I own a lot of Tesla stock, yet I drive a 2010 Prius, in white, which I got for free 99 ($0.00)– for free.

The reason why people are so poor is that they spent too much money on physical things and possessions and cars etc. Even I feel bad for my friends who bought an early model Tesla model three; now that the new new Tesla model three is out, everyone wants to get rid of their old Tesla model three cars, even the version from 2023, and upgrade to the newest newest version.

And, the funny trend is I’m sure within the next five years, there will be a major refresh to the Tesla model why, X, S, and also cyber truck. Imagine when they finally produce an all black matte black Tesla cyber truck, or even better… An all white, all matte white Tesla cybertruck — the people who jump on the bandwagon too early typically end up regretting it later.

James Almeida

A new friend that I made in Los Angeles, a creator, new YouTuber who does build videos, who essentially built himself a 5K monitor for less than $300 in parts, just search him on YouTube, wasn’t early adopter of the Apple Vision Pro and when I asked him how it was, he told me “Its okay. Definitely not worth the $3,499”.

I’m thinking about getting an apple Vision Pro just to test it, then I’ll probably just return it later, because the issue with the Apple Vision Pro is that it is already outdated. Let us consider how it is only using the M2 chip, which is already outdated for the Apple M3 chip. Therefore a simple productivity tip is instead of buying a new Apple Vision Pro, just get a new Mac computer with a M3 processor, whether it be the new MacBook Pro or even an iMac.

http://chrisathanasiadis.com

Chris Athanasiadis— A street photography fan of mine that I bumped into Santa Monica, Santa Monica Pl.; he has been living in Angeles Santa Monica the last four years, and history photography approach and philosophy and ethos and blog is great.

He got the new Nikon ZF camera, and also has a Rico GR camera, and he told me an interesting strategy in which he rides his bicycle around and just shoots street photography. He is also very smart, he works and lives remotely, and also, because he is on East Coast time the second that it is 2 PM local time, he goes out, and shoots street photography all day!

And technically isn’t this the ultimate goal? You just spend your life in which you could just shoot street photography all day every day?

When I asked him what is his purpose or his Telos, he told me that every day he just wants to make at least one good photo? And just keep uploading it to his blog? Good idea, and also, he also deleted his Instagram. Very smart idea.

What is Tom up to?

Do you remember Tom from MySpace? Your first friend?

Apparently now he is just traveling the world, making photos, uploading it to his own website and blog.

Other photographers?

Chris Michel — a successful entrepreneur that I met in SF, who founded the military.com website, later sold it to monster, and now it’s just focusing on his passion of guitar; seems that a lot of these successful entrepreneurs venture capitalist etc. after making all the money and success, they just want to focus on their photography?

Trades out of strength or out of weakness?

I have a simple suggestion; whenever you make an investment, any investment, make sure to do it when you’re in a good mood, when your strength is high, it is nice and sunny outside. When I made my big bitcoin trade, I will never forget; I was topless in the direct sun, outside, in an insanely good mood, basking in the sun. I think a big trades should be embedded within Good physical physiological settings.

Never make any trades or investments when you’re in a bad mood, when your strength is weak etc.

GREEN

Also, as long as you’re in the green, as long as all of your trades were done in the green, perhaps rather than thinking about how much money you should have earned, think about how much money you did earn.

Now what?

The big question after all of this is; “Now what?

Delete your Instagram, stop using Facebook, stop watching YouTube etc. A better suggestion is all of that time that you spend hypothetically on media social media etc.… Use that opportunity to build up your own brand Empire.

Some big lessons today:

First, actors have no power. Even the super famous ones like Jason Momoa etc.; I’m sure that they’re not as rich or successful as you think they are. The real head honchos is one her brothers discovery, especially the head honcho I think his name is Stephen Newhouse —

The head honcho have all the power, the actors producers directors whatever… they are all poor.

Rich or poor?

A simple heuristic; how do you know if somebody is rich or poor?

It is not a money thing. Because you could be earning $10 million a year, but if you’re stuck and chained inside a cubicle office all day, with no access to natural light, just ugly fluorescent lighting, stuck in a bunker, somewhere underground, not permitted to exercise, eat good meat whatever… Essentially you’re stuck in a cave… Is any of it worth it? No.

What you really want is freedom. Freedom of schedule, freedom of mind. The simple heuristic:

Can you go two years without checking your email or using your email? Or do you have the ability to quit email?

New directions

Start on blog. Self hosted. wordpress.org, and host it on Ionos.com — self hosted is the way.

Why? fucking wordpress.com; apparently I violated some sort of bullshit content policy that I’m not even sure of, and as a consequence my whole word press.com website was deleted?

Also a big problem; if your website is hosted on the wordpress.com server, your website will be blocked or inaccessible in Vietnam, China or other parts of the world.

For example my website erickimphotography.com/blog – I believe that even fans from mainland China could access my website. When I was in Phnom Penh Cambodia, I was curious and I use the website youkou.com — the Chinese version of YouTube, and I actually saw this mainland Chinese kid, screen casting and explaining who ERIC KIM was. If I have fans in mainland China, very good sign.

The future of the Internet?

A big question is in regards to the future of the Internet. Who will own it, will it matter?

First, I have a thought about two factor authentication, biometrics etc.

February 18, 2024

Ethics & Psychology

“Mistake”?

No such thing as mistakes —

The only “mistake” is simply acts of cowardice , re-branded.

Ethics & psychology

ETHICS by KIM

Your own personal code of ethics:

February 15, 2024

TESLA STRATEGY

Big problems at TESLA —

The employees, sales people are poor. They don’t seem to be that huge fans of TESLA, the product, the concept,,, or even Elon Musk. Many employees seem bitter, disenfranchised etc.

For example, a Tesla rep I met at the Westfield Tesla Century City mall— he told me he just bought a new Tesla Model 3 (the old version)—told me that he was low-key upset that unbeknownst to him,,, just a few months *AFTER* he bought his own new Tesla Model 3 … the new new totally redesigned version came out!

Make it insanely kid friendly

Something these loser Tesla reps don’t understand —

If your kid loves the car, you will buy it.

Insanely annoying — Seneca (age 3) just playing in the new Tesla Model 3 and Y,,, and from two separate reps we are told:

Model Y— Seneca kept clicking the trunk unlocking latch and the rep told me (the father) to *NOT* have Seneca do that. But why? It ain’t finna break! If your kid clicks it 100, 1,000 or even 10,000x… if it breaks, that is a sign that it is an inferior product that ain’t even “kid tested”?