My prime curiosity: what are the physical limits of a single human body?

The only proper training for a child — the physical.

$77,000 for a Plaid .. how so cheap? Only 2 years old, 18,000 miles on the dash?

Plaid is the best car! Vlog.

Besides my beloved 2010 Prius, in white, the only other car I would even consider getting is the Tesla model S Plaid?

But the funny question: why would somebody trade it in at a Toyota dealership?

For example, my infamous thousand pound atlas lift. Currently doing some atlas lifts in my ghetto off the grid parking lot spot garage gym, and I know I could just buy more weights, and keep doing my atlas lift, 1001 pounds, 1200 pounds and beyond… Yet, maybe I am hungry for a new type of innovation?

1,000 pound atlas lift video

“White people make money don’t spend it, I’d rather buy 80 gold chains and go ignant (ignorant)”. – Kanye

Thinking about money:

Why does this matter?

Money is the thing that sets the whole world in motion, Publius Syrus

Do you know when people say that money makes the world go round? This is true.

So what is money anyways?

First, money is Fiat, faith-based. Fiat currency.

Currency is an interesting word and term because it evokes the feeling of water, movement, river streams and tide pools.

 so first of all, let us consider the notion of “income streams“. There’s this notion of “passive income”, I think first popularized or maybe coined by Tim Ferris, in his four hour work week. But I believe there to be a myth of passive income which means, income is and must be active. You cannot just sit on your butt and collect rent.

Also with rent, rent money is funny because even if you’re collecting rent, there’s a lot of work management you gotta do. For example, you have to fix and maintain your properties, make sure that your tenants pay their rent money, do background checks, deal with vacancies etc. It is one of those things that we as renters feel that the landlords have all the power, but in fact, assuming that you’re already wealthy, you actually might have more power as a renter than a landlord. Why? If you have a very good apartment and it is rent controlled, technically according to NASSIM TALEB you have greater optionality.

What that means is that you have a privilege to live somewhere, not an obligation. In theory you can leave whenever you want, and you’re not be held in to the property.

What would Aristotle, the ancient Greeks think?

In regards to the ancient Greeks, I think they may be the best model because starting from Roman times, their society already started to seep into degeneration, degeneracy. Even during Homer’s time, Homer was already saying that the ancient Greeks were falling into degeneracy, even when he was writing the Iliad. 

I am currently reading politics by Aristotle, and I find it to be a really fascinating read. Essentially what he says about household economics etc., as well as his thoughts on substantive versus speculative finance, real versus fake finance. He essentially says that real finance has to deal with animals and fruits of the earth, everything else is just imaginary.

Also, his thoughts on slavery. Essentially in ancient Greek times, ultimate goal was to have the laborers, slaves, craftsman, mechanics do all the dirty work, and the true Noble man and Freeman would just use all of his time and leisure for building virtue, philosophical thinking, and participating in politics, the politics of the local city state, the polis.

In modern day times we always think about politics like it pertains to international politics whatever. But the original term politics referred to the police, the immediate state. It was not focused on foreign affairs.

What is the ideal city state?

 What do you like about Aristotle and his writings is that he’s always talking about the ideal, and talks a lot about studying from the best of the past and the current, in order to formulate his thoughts. Also his writing is thread simple and clear, and very authoritative. For example, he quotes Plato and his Republic, and straight up says: “Plato is wrong.” Almost as hilarious and ballsy as when Nietzsche said: “Plato is boring.”

True financial freedom

Two things: pay rent money, pay for food and groceries, and basic utilities, like your Wi-Fi, gas and electric, gas for your car etc. Beyond that, what else do you really need? 

Occur fun experiment I’m doing is just paying for rent money by using the profit on my cryptocurrency speculations, simply using Coinbase, and profits from chain-link. For personal reference, I am currently 90% invested in chain-link, 10% in bitcoin. I believe this to be an interesting parallel for a risky yet “safe” Investments speculation, I’m thinking the next 30 or 40 years.

Also, in terms of our cryptocurrency assets, we don’t have more than 10% of our whole life savings tied into cryptocurrency. Therefore if it all goes to zero in theory, not really a big deal.

Decimation

A very interesting thing that I learned from NASSIM TALEB, maybe it was written in his book antifragile, is this notion of decimation. The basic idea is that in ancient Roman times the army, if cowardice was suspected, at random, 10% of the army would be put to death, it was a good way to prevent cowardice, especially one facing an impressive enemy. 

10% is interesting because in theory, if you lose 10% of your army, it is not enough to significantly lose your forces. A 10% loss is more than acceptable. For example let us say that you’re playing StarCraft, and you got an army of Zealots, all upgraded with dash and full armor upgrades, if you lose 10% of them, you could still kill the army of Zerg maybe if you do good enough micro management of the units. 

Finances is also similar — best to have 90% of your money in insanely secure bonds, CDs or stuff that might be inflation, even a simple savings account at 5%. Then put 10% of your money in extremely speculative cryptocurrency speculations, rather than putting 100% of your money and boring “medium risk” funds.

“Never trust a risk number even if it is right.”- TALEB 

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Why we should not trust economists

First and foremost, economics, being an economist, is a new Hocus Pocus of modern day times. The reason why economist are so highly regarded is that currently speaking the new global religion is capital and capitalism.

Therefore as a consequence, the new modern-day priests are economist, and these fake Talking Heads on the TV screen.

The reason why we should trust no economist, is that the use fake numbers statistics and fake math to justify their thoughts and positions. Even needs silver, who everyone thinks is some sort of genius, miss predicted Trump getting elected into office. Why? Even if you’re a statistician with 99% accuracy, the one percent of the time you’re wrong, it could cost billions of dollars.

The reason why we should also not trust a con is that most of them are protected from the real world. Their opinions reports and thought pieces have no connection to reality. A lot of them are getting a fat salary and study paycheck from their tenure professor positions at Harvard Yale Princeton or whatever, and therefore the predictions thoughts they have, have no bearing on their own personal finances.

Two instead of trust individual individuals who actually have skin in the game, or money in the game. That is that your opinion is tied to your own personal bank account, if your opinion is right, you make the big bucks, but if you’re wrong, you lose your shirt.

Where I am coming from

What are the best things about growing up poor and when they seen your mom go through bankruptcy twice is that it’s some funny ways, it makes you more brazen, less fearful. Witnessing my mom go bankrupt, because my dad gambled away the rent money and we couldn’t pay rent, and she would just rack up credit card bills just to pay basic expenses, What I learned is at the end it’s not that bad. My mom got family support, community support, church support, and ultimately she was OK and the very end.

So for myself, the reason why I have such a high tolerance for risk is essentially nowadays, I live like a poor person. My New Year’s resolution is to buy nothing; or close to nothing, or just to not buy stuff that I consider silly or superfluous. Even acquiring free stuff; to me that is just more clutter in my mind in my life and my home; we new elite is about minimalism, even to a fault. 

Also, the American entrepreneurial spirits. Even my dad when he first came to the states, was extremely entrepreneurial. He started his own business when I was very very young, I think selling audio equipment. As he had a passion for music movies and film in cinema. I actually think his great ambition of life wants to become a great film Director. Even at a young age, I recall him watching Alfred Hitchcock the birds, Schindler’s list, and all these other great avant- Garde films.

So now, raising Seneca, he is currently two years, around 11 months old… His training is very simple; simple, osteria, Spartan. 99% of the day we are just at the local nature center, hiking on dirt paths, walking around, Doing gymnastics at the playground, even now, I bought some wooden gymnast rings which I just hang from my parking spot in the back of my apartment, and he could swing around it, and hang around it! It is pretty amazing.

Another thing I learned from Aristotle politics is that with children and child rearing, the logical order is first physical training and gymnastics, second is nutrition and feeding, third is the intellect. It seems some modern day tides we do the total opposite; we don’t really focus on physical exercise for kids, we just try to make them look smart. But book Smart is bad smart; real smart comes from the real world.