Another big idea on my mind; the idea of evolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, the question is\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Do you want to remain a Charmander, or level one forever, or do you want to become the Charizard, get the Firestone, and level up to 99, level 255 and beyond?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So back in the days of Pok\u00c3\u00a9mon, the original red and blue, I never owned a game boy in my life but I had an emulator on my computer. I was able to play Pok\u00c3\u00a9mon red, 10 X speed, which is very useful in emulator because you could just run around a lot faster, save, and also advance through the levels much more quickly. \u00ef\u00bf\u00bc\u00ef\u00bf\u00bc<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One big thing is in the game\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 There was some sort of glitch or a bug where you could jump on your whale, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this one hidden island in which if you just kept going up and down it\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 You would meet a glitch in the game which was called the missing number (missing no), and if you fought it, with a certain Pok\u00c3\u00a9mon like a Snorlax\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Essentially you could capture and level up a Snorlax, to be beyond the typical hard cap of 99.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the world of Pok\u00c3\u00a9mon, essentially all Pok\u00c3\u00a9mon start off at level 1 or something, and you could advance it through training to level 99. But the hard cap was level 99. No matter how many more battles you did or experience points you gained, you could not go beyond level 99. \u00ef\u00bf\u00bc<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And this is where the missing no hack was so mind blowing at the time; through a simple glitch in the game, unbeknownst to its programmers, you could actually level up a Pok\u00c3\u00a9mon beyond level 99, when we all thought the hard cap was level 99, no, you could become a level 120, 200, maybe even 300?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another paradigm shift; do you remember when we were kids we were used to watch the who wants to be a millionaire, and the goal was to become a millionaire. But now if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a millionaire, you might be able to buy half of a decent condo somewhere in LA. Even nowadays, it is not uncommon to see single-family homes in Culver City sell for $3.2 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And also I was shocked; I think Elon Musk is currently worth $270 billion? Even a decade ago, the idea that somebody could become a billionaire seems impossible, but now\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 A centi billionaire? I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be shocked if in a decade he becomes a trillionaire. \u00ef\u00bf\u00bc<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I recall when I was in Vietnam, around 2017\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 I started to first track bitcoin, windows around $300 a bitcoin. At the time, maybe the reason I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t buy it or invest in it because I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really have a good reason to. I had already achieved my financial independence, And retired at the ripe age of 28 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, she found that when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m talking to people in LA, the greatest sign of success actually is just half jokingly tell people that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been retired since I was 20 years old? And that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m 36 years old right now and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still retired?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think typically, maybe the general idea of being retired is the point in which you no longer concern yourself with money, and that making money is an optional thing, maybe like a pastime game a hobby\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 But not an imperative; which means you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to work in order to pay the rent or the bills or the mortgage<\/strong>. \u00ef\u00bf\u00bc<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyways, now that bitcoin is trading at around $66,000 a bitcoin, even when I first got into the game in around 2018 at around six to $7000 a bitcoin, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve already gone through them multiple roller coaster the emotional roller coaster many times over. And as a consequence, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not really concerned about prices anymore. Why? Because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m playing the long game; 10 20, 30 years from now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A new random life trajectory and goal; maybe wanting to have my mom live until my son Seneca gets married, and has a kid of his own?<\/p>\n\n\n\n That would be wild, my mom is currently around 70, and assuming that even on the aggressive case, he might have a kid at the age of 33\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 My mom has to live at least another 30 years, ideally healthy and full of physical figure and mental consciousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Than 30 years from now, I will be 66 years old\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Still in my prime period and Seneca will be 33 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe this becomes interesting to me because a generation is 30 years. Cindy and I got married on paper when we were 24\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 And now that this upcoming December I guess we are celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary! Pretty wild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyways, then thinking about your kid and their future becomes quite easy and straightforward. I think maybe a lot of the modern day malaise that people suffer is that they have nothing to live for; because they are not married, they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have kids, nor do they intend<\/em> to have kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I get it, some people never find the right partner, some people with good hearts end up going through bad marriages and getting divorced two or three times, some people might physiologically be too old to bear children. But assuming that you are a healthy able bodied person, I almost feel like there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no reason to not have a kid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think the big secret is raising a kid is actually honestly not that hard. Certainly in the early years, the first six months, is very physical psychologically painful, but then again, I would imagine that navy seal training might be 100 times harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And for everyone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s concerned that their kid is going to end up being screwed up or whatever\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 No. Why? Because you yourself are well adjusted, you yourself have good morals and ethics, which means that your kid will be fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Maybe something I need to rally against is this alarmism, like the world is going to melt or whatever. A decade ago they called this global warming, and now they call climate change or now they talk about the carbon footprint or something? The verbiage in the lingo always changes, but the general idea of the world going to overpopulate and exploit has been going on for millennia; The Malthus fallacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think what a lot of these fools and goody two shoers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand is that technology, human ingenuity is not linear or scalar<\/strong>, which means, the planet is not zero sum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, people talk about the carbon footprint blah blah blah but they never actually critically give it any thought. Now that we have ChatGPT at our hands and we can search this information in real time, what I discovered is the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s atmosphere is currently\u00ef\u00bf\u00bc .0421%, in 30 years ago in 1993 it was approximately .0357%,,, which means that the percentage point increase of carbon dioxide levels in the last 30 year was was only .0064% percentage points? \u00ef\u00bf\u00bc\u00ef\u00bf\u00bc<\/p>\n\n\n\n The current concentration of carbon dioxide (CO\u00e2\u201a\u201a) in Earth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s atmosphere is 0.0421%, and 30 years ago, in 1993, it was approximately 0.0357%. This represents a 0.0064 percentage point increase in CO\u00e2\u201a\u201a levels over the past 30 years<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Honestly, all of this hysteria about the carbon footprint, I think it is just another way for these vegan solar power plant corporations to make a quick buck. \u00ef\u00bf\u00bc or even worse, politicians to sign certain things to enrich in themselves and their buddies, behind back doors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, if I could tell you with 100% certainty that 5000 years from now, the planet will be fine, it might be 20% worse than it is right now, 20% better, or about the same as it is in the year 2024\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Would that change how you live your life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think the first thing to consider is things like climate change or plan change or whatever is certainly not really in our locus of control. Certainly things you could do \u00ef\u00bf\u00bc\u00ef\u00bf\u00bc is like thinking about tailpipe mission; if you have ever smelled a car without a catalytic converter attached, you know how toxic it is. Or the secondhand cigarette smell smoke, also very toxic. Or secondhand marijuana smoke, which I also hate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyways, I think the big idea here is try to just focus on things which you could control, where you could actually make a meaningful impact, rather than trying to save the whole \u00e2\u20ac\u0153planet\u00e2\u20ac\u0153? Which seems to be kind of a ridiculous goal? \u00ef\u00bf\u00bc\u00ef\u00bf\u00bc<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another big idea on my mind; the idea of evolution. So, the question is\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Do you want to remain a Charmander, or level one forever, or do you want to become the Charizard, get\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-642695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642697,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642695\/revisions\/642697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Seeing my mom become a great grandmother?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
30 year cycles?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
what is in our control, what is not in our control?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"