Author: erickim

SEEING LIKE A PHOTOGRAPHER-ARTIST

  1. Don’t look at things literally — look at them figuratively and metaphorically
  2. 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—

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. 

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?

  1. Don’t drink or purchase or buy bottled water or filtered water: just drink tapwater, or filtered water at home
  2. 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
  3. 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.
  4. 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!
  5. Never buy any new clothes
  6. 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.
  7. 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!

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? 

The Sun?

The sun fixes (almost) everything?

Theories —

  1. Being in the direct sun — not this fake UV lights or whatever boosts testosterone, all of these positive hormones for both men *and* women?
  2. A funny strange thought — has your private region whether man or woman ever been in the direct sun? Maybe there’s some benefits to getting direct sun exposure on your genitals? You don’t need to go to the nude beach or whatever — just do it private at home next to a direct sunlight window?