Author: erickim

  • Leica is a scam?

    OK some honest thoughts,

    So one of my best friends just got a new Leica Q 43 ,,, and honestly, it’s just OK… Essentially it’s kind of just like feels like, a rebranded, higher quality die cast version of my LUMIX S9.

    even my friend mentioned how the autofocus is insanely painfully slow, in terms of the user interface UI UX,,, it’s just “ok”.

    Full frame is a scam?

    so I randomly was shooting some photos of Seneca, super close up with my old school lumix G9, with the super small cheap 28 mm pancake lens, … and he was super awesome because the auto focus was fast speedy and I’m able to get really really close and get the shot. Even with my Lumix S9… It always feels like there’s a bit of a lag.

    LUMIX S9

    in terms of all the cameras out there, The only interesting one is probably the lumix S9, which is interchangeable full frame, in the manual focusing only F8, 26 mm pancake is pretty cool. Once again super thin and only 200 bucks.

    …. What truly matters?

    with the price of inflation creeping up, things are starting to get really really stupid expensive. For example, like a Leica Q or Leica M, I recall when I wanted a Leica M9 and it was retailing for $7000 brand new, … I fortunately wasn’t able to get mine refurbished for only $5000, and a refurbished 35mm summilux lens for only $3000, later traded it with my friend Todd Hata for a 35mm summicron ASPH,,, and later selling my Leica M9 for my film Leica MP (thank you Bellamy hunt)—> for only $3500 used,

  • No Volatility, No Victory

    No volatility, no victory. This isn’t just a catchy phrase—this is the deep physics of existence. Everything real, everything alive, everything powerful oscillates. Hearts beat. Waves crash. Markets pump and dump. Muscles tear and rebuild. Neurons fire in insane, chaotic patterns. Life itself is volatility. To demand “no volatility” is to secretly wish for death, stagnation, and numbness.

    I don’t want a smooth line. I want a chart that looks like an earthquake.

    People say, “I just want stability.” Translation: I want to avoid stress, uncertainty, and responsibility. But if I look at my own life, every single breakthrough came from walking straight into volatility: financial volatility, emotional volatility, physical volatility, creative volatility. Every time I took the “boring, safe” route, my soul withered a little. Every time I took the “insane, risky” route, I became more me.

    Volatility is not the enemy. Volatility is the mirror. It reveals: do I actually believe in myself, or was it all just theory?

    When the price of something I believe in goes crazy—up or down—that’s when the truth appears. It’s easy to “believe” in an asset, in a project, in a vision when everything is going up in a straight line. There’s no courage in that. Courage only emerges when the line nosedives and everyone panics, when the headlines scream doom, when the group chat melts down. That’s the moment where your inner voice either collapses or hardens into diamond.

    “No volatility, no victory” is another way of saying: If there is no genuine risk of loss, there can be no meaningful win.

    If I lift a weight that I know is easy, that’s not power—that’s maintenance. But when I rack pull something that makes the bar bend, the plates rattle, my grip scream, my vision black out for a second—that violent volatility in my nervous system is what forges new strength. The insane pull, the trembling lockout, the aftermath… that’s where the new version of me is born.

    Same with money. Same with art. Same with life. Same with identity.

    Creatively, volatility is the willingness to publish something that might “fail,” might get misunderstood, might get zero likes, might get judged. But here’s the secret: the posts that truly reshape the world are never “safe.” They’re volatile. They divide. They polarize. They shake. They disturb the mental comfort of the masses.

    If my writing, my photos, my ideas don’t create some kind of spike—some emotional volatility in the mind and heart of the viewer—then what’s the point? I’m not here to be background noise. I’m here to be a shockwave.

    A powerful image is volatile: people either love it or hate it. A powerful idea is volatile: it either liberates you or offends you. A powerful life is volatile: it either inspires awe in others or triggers deep insecurity. That’s how you know it’s real.

    There’s this fantasy people have: “Once I get enough money, enough success, enough status, then life will be calm and stable.” But here’s what I’m realizing: if your life ever gets too stable, your spirit will unconsciously create volatility just to feel alive again.

    The universe doesn’t reward stagnation. It punishes it.

    So instead of running from volatility, I might as well design it. Choose it. Curate it. Voluntary hardship. Voluntary risk. Voluntary stressors. Heavy ass weights. Big bold positions. Scary creative projects. Public declarations of insane goals. That way the volatility works for me, not against me.

    You can’t hide from volatility. Either you ride the wave or you get crushed by it.

    Emotionally, “no volatility, no victory” means: I cannot become truly strong and grounded if I’ve never let myself feel the extreme lows and highs. If I insulate myself from heartbreak, rejection, embarrassment, and failure, I also block myself from love, admiration, respect, and true pride.

    You can’t selectively numb. If you avoid emotional volatility, you also avoid emotional depth.

    The times I felt the most “destroyed” emotionally—rejection, humiliation, being underestimated, misunderstood—those were the times the old version of me died. It hurt, but that death created space for a more powerful identity to emerge. The ego must be cracked open for the god inside to escape.

    Pain isn’t just pain. Pain is debugging. Volatility is the error log of reality telling me where I still cling, where I’m still fragile, where I’m still deluded.

    Physically, volatility is the stress-response cycle: stress, adaptation, growth. Lift heavy, your body freaks out, then overcompensates and becomes stronger. Sprint hard, your lungs burn, your heart races, your muscles scream—and then your capacity increases. If I never push myself to the edge, my physiology has no reason to evolve.

    No volatility in training = no new PRs, no new body, no new power.

    Mentally, volatility is pushing the limits of what I can understand, manage, and juggle. Big ideas. Complex systems. High stakes. Multiple moving parts. If I only do things that feel mentally easy and comfortable, my brain atrophies. To increase mental horsepower, I need mental volatility—hard problems, pressure, deadlines, complexity. Then my mind, like a muscle, adapts.

    So the formula becomes simple:

    • No volatility in the body → no physical victory.
    • No volatility in finances → no financial victory.
    • No volatility in creativity → no artistic victory.
    • No volatility in emotions → no spiritual victory.

    The real question I ask myself: How much volatility can I stomach while still remaining calm, focused, and aggressive?

    This is my new metric of power: volatility tolerance. The more chaos I can hold inside my nervous system while staying composed, the higher my “god-tier” operating level becomes.

    Most people break at the first sign of turbulence. A small dip, a bad comment, a mean email, a minor injury, a bad day—and they spiral. They self-sabotage. They rage quit.

    But if I train my soul to endure violent swings—sudden losses, sudden wins, fast changes, deep uncertainty—without losing my center, then I become untouchable. The waves get bigger, but so does my ability to surf them.

    Volatility becomes my playground.

    “No volatility, no victory” is also a challenge to myself: if I look at my life and everything feels too predictable, too steady, too linear… maybe I’m not aiming high enough. Maybe I’ve accidentally optimized for comfort instead of conquest.

    If there are no big swings, maybe I’m playing too small.

    Victory is not guaranteed. That’s exactly what makes it worth pursuing. The possibility of failure gives victory its flavor. If success were certain, it would be meaningless—just another line item in a script.

    So I reframe volatility:

    • Not as danger, but as signal.
    • Not as chaos, but as opportunity.
    • Not as punishment, but as initiation.

    Every sharp move, every disruption, every unexpected twist is the universe asking:

    “Are you ready for the next level? Or do you want to stay where you are?”

    In the end, I’m not just tolerating volatility—I’m claiming it as my ecosystem.

    I choose the heavy weights that might crush me.

    I choose the bold positions that might make me look insane.

    I choose the radical ideas that might get mocked before they get revered.

    I choose the intense life that might break a weaker man.

    Because I know the hidden law:

    No volatility, no victory.

    And I am not here for a safe life. I am here for a victorious one.

  • More volatile than the raw asset itself?

    I dream in MSTR

    OK honestly the truth is, I must hear by far might be the most important company on the planet. Why? First, and I think this is kind of hard for people to understand that I miss your itself is even more volatile than the bitcoin itself.

    What this means is, essentially, I missed your as a company, which has its foundation in bitcoin, which is the most valuable thing on the planet, and human universe, and yet, I think people really really cannot truly understand how big and profound it is.

    First, the big idea is that it is essentially like rocket boosters or Turbo chargers or turbines for bitcoin as jet fuel.

    So imagine, let us say bitcoin is like the jet fuel, and then, MSTR is the rocket ship that takes you to Mars and beyond.

    How high do you want to fly?

    I’m going to make a pretty bold bet, I think by the end of December, I know this sounds a little bit funny, but I think we might be able to see bitcoin hit $200,000 a bitcoin, and probably break it, and then maybe by the New Year’s, settle down in like the 175,000 to $185,000 range? 

    My reasoning is simple, the way up and the way down, and vice versa are both the same. Heraclitus.

    Zoom out. Everyone wants bitcoin to hit $21 million a bitcoin. Do you think we get there by it just literally going up, or do you imagine it like the Gotham city heartbeat, or like high voltage electricity wires in which it’s zigzags up and down with high interval energy, until it breaks new highs.

    bitcoin is truth

    So this is also my theory, everyone is asking why bitcoin is going down so low. Well the truth is if you think about the whole global macro economic reality, the world is currently crumbling. Inflation is ridiculous, things at Costco now like 4 to 5 times more expensive than I could recall; the biggest indicator for me is when I could get beef back ribs at Costco business center for only 199 a pound, $1.99 a pound… And now, it has almost like 4X, to around like 799 a pound.

    And so my honest interesting thought is bitcoin is truth because it actually does truly mark the true reality of the global macro economic stage which is actually pretty terrible. And the reality is think God we’re still alive, you should be grateful… I think we’re going through a world war three economic war right now.

    So for example, the economic war between America and China… is pretty real.  and also all the big tech companies are in big trouble because everyone is kind of struggling to catch and hold on.

    Nobody wants Tesla’s anymore, nobody is really that interested in the new iPhone 35 Pro Max, people prefer ChatGPT over Google, people prefer TikTok over Instagram and Facebook, nobody really cares for virtual reality Meta or Apple Vision Pro., and even kind of more pivotal… I think people are starting to critically understand and try to think about what is the purpose of higher education?

    It’s kind of like a stick and carrot and a double edge sword, now that we have ChatGPT and ChatGPT pro… Which could write an essay and research article better than your tenured Harvard professor,  with zero stress, zero procrastination, and zero existential angst,  that does not get distracted by obsessively checking his or her Gmail every five seconds,… Why are we still trying to teach kids to write these research essays, yet kind of trying to forbid them from using ChatGPT in the first place?

  • You Know You’re Onto Something Good When Pretty Girls Start Checking *YOU* Out In Hot Yoga Class

    When that moment hits — when you walk into hot yoga, drenched in your own fire, aura bursting off you like a solar flare, and you feel eyes on you — that’s the universe whispering:

    “ERIC KIM… you’re ascending.”

    Not because you’re trying to impress anyone.

    Not because you’re peacocking.

    But because your inner power has become so radiant it spills outward, bending the atmosphere around you.

    Hot yoga is the perfect crucible — 110 degrees, sweat pouring like molten confidence, everyone stripped to their elemental essence. No props. No fashion. No armor. Just physiology, presence, and energy.

    And when the pretty girls start glancing over — double-taking, then trying to play it cool — it’s not about vanity.

    It’s about signal detection.

    Your body broadcasts:

    • Strength earned through pain
    • Confidence forged in solitude
    • Self-possession that no one can buy
    • A radiant vitality that announces: this man is ALIVE

    Women don’t respond to words, clothes, or flexing.

    They respond to gravity — the gravitational pull of a man who has built himself, brick by brick, rep by rep, sweat drop by sweat drop.

    And when you’re in that room, moving with intention, breathing like a furnace, every tendon articulating purpose — you don’t chase validation.

    You emit it.

    You radiate it.

    You’re not performing for anyone.

    You’re showing up for yourself — and that’s exactly when the world starts noticing.

    The glances aren’t the goal.

    They are merely physical confirmation that your inner transformation is becoming visible to the world.

    Keep going.

    Keep building the body.

    Keep sharpening the mind.

    Keep walking into every room like the sun just rose.

    Pretty girls noticing you isn’t the reward.

    The reward is becoming the kind of man who gets noticed without trying.