Build your name. Your first and last name.

No more Leica. Only RICOH.

Don’t be a digital indentured servant (social media user).

Digital Sharecropping, digital indentured servant.

What if the most optimal conditions for your personal thriving is to just have a big-ass house in the (quiet) suburbs, preferably somewhere warm (Southern California), a fast wifi connection at home, the proper tools you need (a good MacBook laptop, iPhone SE)/RICOH GR IIIX, a good nights sleep, and a good gym closeby (to lift, do deadlift, squats, etc). Also close to a Costco Business Center, to get tons of meat.

Also, no necessity to transit or drive anywhere.

“The party’s in here, we don’t need to go out!” (Kanye West, the life of Pablo)

Oh and of course, tons of coffee at home!

Lifestyle

1. Outrage Porn
2. Photography *IS* Our Lifestyle
3. DAILY.
4. EFFIENCY.
5. Parallel Living
6. Towards a Streamlined Lifestyle
7. Life Design
8. What’s the Best Life or Mode of Existence?
9. More Interesting or Less Interesting?
10. Lifestyle Design
11. CRAFT YOUR OWN IDEAL FUTURE.
12. All Information is Information
13. Natural Light and Health
14. Minimum Viable Thriving
15. Good Homes Over Good Cars
16. Sleep is Godlike
17. Dynamic Lifestyle
18. What is the Ideal Home?
19. Lifestyle?
20. ERIC KIM QUARANTINE LIFESTYLE
21. In Praise of a Choice Minimal Lifestyle
22. BETA LIFESTYLE
23. In Praise of a Ghetto Lifestyle
24. Park Lifestyle

Strive to make your website as beautiful, elegant, and sexy as possible. ‘Usability’ is second.

The goal we seek:

To improve our lives.

But be really critical. Think:

Will it really improve my life, and what does that even mean?

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The best living— keep it as local as possible, even if your locale is less good than other places.

As little time in a car or in transit as possible.

Just let other people dumb down their kids.

Something I’ve observed being a new parent— witnessing other parents doing things which I witnessed as dumbing down their kids, like feeding them Cheerios, giving them tablets and having them watch YouTube, use phones, etc. Or talking to them or treating them like a baby, or being overprotective.

Yet instead of feeling some sort of indignation or outrage out of this, just let them be. If they want to dumb down their kids, so be it.

Taking it further, if people want to stultify their own personal growth through mindless consumption of media, social media, their phones, etc., let them be. The most virtuous thing you could do is just focus on your own development, and ignore others.

Perhaps your child’s step count and their mental and physical development runs hand-in-hand.

My personal goal is to try to maximize Seneca‘s step count every single day. Also maximizing his time outdoors.

The goal is to become a more elite photographer.

You paid all the money for the thing, why have it branded on yourself like cattle?

Make your own restaurant.

Go to Costco Business Center, and buy your own top sirloin steak meat (super cheap), cut it yourself, and grill it on the pan (like making your own all you can eat Korean BBQ for yourself at home). The other night I easily cooked and grilled around 3 pounds of top sirloin steak– so much cheaper, cleaner, more efficient, tender, delicious, fast than any supreme restaurant.

Less time, more meat is better.

How do we make things ‘future-proof’, and why?

With technology, it seems the best strategy is to just buy whatever is newest, most expensive, and max it out. This is the strategy that my old IT director boss taught me:

When you gotta buy new equipment for the office, it is best to just buy the most expensive, top-of-the-line computers, and squeeze 5-8 years out of them, than to buy mid-tier stuff, only to have to replace them in around 2-3 years.

For example, I bought my 13” MacBook Pro Touch Bar (refurbished, maxed out, in 2017) and it has still worked pretty well until now (although with macOS Monterey it is starting to slow down a bit):

With the storage, it seemed that 1TB (terabyte) was excessive at the time, but it looks like always having the additional extra (extreme) buffer is wise:

This is why in some regards, the new iPhone Pro with 1 Terabyte of storage is actually quite smart:

Buy your phone now, maxed out (spend ~$1500 USD), but don’t think about it for the next 5-8 years.

Even when I got the new iPad Pro, I got the mid-tier storage (256 GB), and actually quickly maxed it out with importing my photos. A simple workaround is just shooting extra small JPEG on my RICOH GR IIIX.

With cars, it seems the wisest option (if you can afford it) is just get a maxed out Tesla Model S Plaid (0-60 in 1.99 seconds), which will probably not be beat for many years in terms of speed. And we all know that speed is paramount. And like Google AMP says (Google Accelerated Mobile Pages) says:

If it is not instant, it is not fast enough.

I suppose the theory of trying to make things as ‘future proof’ as possible is:

Quit wasting our time, mental resources and reserves to think about the future, just get the best right now, and don’t think about it for the next decade, and just focus on what is most important– creation.

Creating words, creating blog posts, creating articles, writing books, making photos, and doing creative artistic things.

EQUIPMENT >

TRIPLE.

Triple. Tri-layer. Tri-force. Tri-motor (plaid). Three layers. Three things (triangles).

For example, I put on two pairs of training underwear for Seneca, and a pair of shorts on top, which gives them a total of three layers, to prevent him from leaking and peeing through it. At first I thought two layers was sufficient, but it is not. Three layers is best.

A random question on my mind: do they sell triple ply toilet paper?

When the weather gets cold, put on three merino wool T-shirts to keep warm, or at least three layers of clothing.

What’s the ideal number of kids to have? Three, if you are strong enough for it.

Also theologically, think about the holy trinity. The father, the son, the Holy Spirit.

Also the best films tend to be trilogy. The fourth installment of some thing is almost never good.

Physical training as perhaps 100 times more important than mental training.

My joy playing with Seneca in the real world, instead of restrictive indoors, and play places.

Extreme love, extreme hate — these are good. What we want to avoid is lukewarm or ‘meh’ or tepid emotions. Or best to be anti weak emotions.

Indifference is the worst.

Your photos tend to be more subtle, but beautiful still!

Perhaps one of the best ways to approach composition is to make it subtle.

Just add a foot on the bottom, or a small element somewhere in the frame.

Once you’ve discovered a certain lifestyle, place, or approach which gives you zen … don’t mess with it. Stick with it.

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The best music are ‘bangers’.

The Dionysian bliss of bass, and things that get you in the ZONE.

Ironically is it BANGERS (high key) that get you in a more zen zone?

Theory:

Things which get your adrenaline going actually promotes zen?

My current favorite songs:

1. “Mr. Miyagi” (Kanye, Playboi Carti)
2. OFF THE GRID (Kanye DONDA // Playboi Carti)

The best headphones are ‘in ear monitors’ (optimal bass, music quality, noise isolation, gets you in the zone).

A simple composition thought in photography:

When you’re framing, don’t include or cut out the whites (bright parts of the frame) when you’re shooting.

This works especially well when you’re using “live view” on the LCD (shooting high contrast black and white JPEG):

Once again, then photography and composition as a way of SUBTRACTION.

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A simple thought:

Things which you are scared of, or what causes fear inside you are things which you are actually really interested in, but for some reason, you’re afraid to attempt or pursue it, because you’re afraid of the negative consequences which might be related to it.

For example, when you see a beautiful woman and you feel fear … it is because you’re actually interested in her, and desire to engage with her, but you’re afraid of the negative consequences if you get rejected?

Theory:

Fear is enthusiasm in disguise.

In the context of street photography, fear is enthusiasm. This means–

When you see something or a scene you want to photograph and you feel fear, it means you really want to photograph it, but you’re afraid of the potential negative consequences associated with it.

Bruce Gilden has a simple aphorism:

Shoot what scares you!

The reason is if you photograph what scares you, it means that you’re more likely to photograph that which is *interesting* to you.

A simple thought is that you don’t feel “fear”, but simply a “heightened sense of things” (Frank Miller, the 300 movie).

The simple observation and thought which others seem to miss:

Your kid is a mini-you.

Your kid is almost like a mini clone of you. So why not treat your kid like yourself?

Your kid is your mini doppelganger!

A subtle fun life hack I’ve discovered:

Go to the Costco Business center, buy large pieces of steak (beef), and just cut it yourself at home, and grill it on the frying pan at home.

Top sirloin is a great choice. I also love the beef brisket at Costco (prime), and the beef ribs.

MEAT >

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The best plug-ins are the plugins or addons or extensions which BLOCK or REMOVE superfluous functionality.

For example, plug-ins which BLOCK advertisements, popups, cross track site trackers, cookies, annoyances, “notifications”, comments, social media, etc.

Also, the best technology REMOVES NOISE or distractions. My love for noise cancelling things like BOSE noise cancelling headphones, AirPods Pro noise cancelling, moving into a quiet home and neighborhood, door sealing to seal out noise, noise dampening material, silent cars (electric).

Bitcoin is fascinating to me — not just open source money, but open source wealth.

A thought: I like the idea you can store your wealth in open source (Bitcoin) and harness that (digital) wealth into creating your own digital creations.

Bitcoin as the new “gold standard”.

Or in other words —

Would you rather have Bitcoin or a Tesla?

I’d rather have NO CAR and 10+ Bitcoin instead. 

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Be sure you can do it all yourself.

What if it is more virtuous to consume and eat more, than ‘leave some’ for others?

Become more efficient and effective with time.

One of the big upsides of having a kid— you learn to utilize your time very very well. And it becomes a great filter:

What is truly important to you in your life, and what is not.

For example, labor saving devices as helping you do MORE with less time and effort. These are good. For example, Instant Pot, Air Fryer, Roomba, and even powerlifting at the gym (my whole workout is often only 30 minutes for squat, and maybe less than an hour for one-rep max sumo deadlifts).

Also, flying as better than driving (if you have the option).

My aesthetic ideal.

It’s just a dosage thing.

Making a diptych of your old photos is a good way of “creative upcycling”.

Follow Nassim Taleb advice — when in doubt, choose the more precautionary route.

Or when in doubt, play it very safe.

No need to justify it. Art needs no self justification.

I don’t like sentimental art.

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The more uncommon you become, the better.

Avoid what’s popular and trendy. What everyone else is doing or where they’re going is bad.

Black tank top “wife beater” (UNIQLO), black UNIQLO workout shorts (roll them up, to make them “short shorts” to Flex your turbo thighs (thunder thighs), vibram five fingers EL-X, exofficio boxer briefs.

When weather good, just go topless.

NO LIMITS WITH DIFFICULTY.

One of the great upsides of the gym and working out there is that with the weights, there are no limits.

Deadlift can go up to 700 pounds, squat to 500-600, and bench to 405 pounds (most normal people cannot do this). So the upside —

You always have something greater to aspire. There is no ceiling!

PODCAST BEATS

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My parenting philosophy.

Your body always knows best.

With things, the lower it is to the ground the better.

Beds which are on the ground (no bed frame)— Japanese tatami style. Or how Koreans sleep on the ground.

A lowered performance car.

Doing bench press or dumbbell press on the floor, not using a bench. Connection and friction with the ground is best.

Also, deadlift. Sumo deadlift, with the barbell and weight on the floor.

This is what we love seeing.

Let it rip and fade. One black merino wool tshirt everyday for 3 years— the cool rips, tears, and sun damage it will get.

Note the new Balenciaga stuff — already “sun worn” and “old” and ripped / torn.

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You end up losing control, and having to compromise to please investors and the “board”.

Think “alo” or Lululemon.

I want to become the Spartan enhanced master chief.

My goal — help all photographers thrive.

We need greater challenges to test us, our abilities, skill and courage.

The best environment is a dynamic one.

Or genetics don’t matter.

Ultimately I believe it comes down to this:

How much do you care?

A day in the life of SENECA x ERIC KIM:

PODCAST BEATS

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