ERIC KIM

ERIC KIM.

  • THE PHILOSOPHY OF RISK TAKING

    Greater fates, greater futures.

    Force finds a way. 

    Nietzsche once said; the secret to the greatest amount of happiness is living the life with the maximum amount of danger! I think this was from twilight of the idols, or maybe from the will to power at the end of the book.

    I think we live in an interesting time. I think currently the world has been hijacked by internet website advertising, mostly Google and Google Adsense to blame, as well as pernicious sneaky sponsored advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, Google Chrome etc. Same goes with YouTube.

    Also something I have learned from things; I think we are actually much more visually sensitive, image sensitive, sound sensitive then we think we are. Also, the mind is subtle; even if I accidentally see some sort of weird thumbnail image, in fact, it puts me in a bad mood for the rest of the day etc.

    I think the big problem here is that the news and information has become so hyper sensationalized. Why? Everyone is trying to maximize their income earning potential of the internet and media, assuming that whatever they are posting is on a website or blog or news agency leveraged by Google Adsense, the drive is to maximize eyeball viewing time, and click through rates, for the publisher to make money.

    “How much do you pay a month in rent?”

    Also, something that I have learned about solo entrepreneurs in the media space; everyone is trying to search and seek and strive for some sort of “legitimacy”, or, they’re just struggling to pay their rent.

    For example, let us say that I am some sort of internet personality, some sort of fitness influencer, even photographer. Perhaps the only way I could pay my rent is through some sort of sponsorship or brand deal, in which I am being paid maybe only $500-$1000 a month, and barely maintaining even my expenses.

    Also, even some inside intelligence on YouTube; the super facts is that even if my video gets 100 million views, assuming I had advertisements on it I might only make about $7000 to $8000 USD. That is actually not that much. You’re probably better off working as an Amazon prime delivery driver, or even Uber driver. And even the best creators, it is very rare that they make a video with so many views.

    As a consequence, there is this low-key bias or optimization towards creating videos or things which strive to hit that benchmark. Once again it is things that have to deal with more with the sensational, audacious, the bizarre, even the morose?

    Who to trust

    Truth be told, in today’s world especially with internet blogs, ChatGPT 4, the funny thing I learned:

    Even ChatGPT doesn’t know if ChatGPT wrote it or not!

    For example, instead of just googling myself, I have just been ChatGPT’ing myself. For example I have the paid premium version of ChatGPT, which gives me access to the new newest version of ChatGPT which is version 4, which I rate at least 1000 times better than the free ChatGPT 3.5.

    So for example I’ll do something like search “ERIC KIM FACTS“, and just see what ChatGPT tells me, and I will just copy and paste that into a new blog post on my own personal blog titled “ERIC KIM FACTS“, And within a week, ChatGPT indexes that and links back to that. It is almost like a snake eating its own tail, the ourubus.

    As a consequence, let us just think and consider; how today’s media landscape is created within the internet. Let us say that I am some sort of newsagency or publishers; I will hire writers, and a lot of these writers will use ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence editing and writing and text generation tools. It is impossible to ascertain how much of it was written by human or ChatGPT or whatever whatever; and even so… assuming that even if 100% of the information was hand typed by a human being, it almost doesn’t really matter because a lot of these writers tend to be dark morose and sick people.

    Currently speaking I live in Culver City Los Angeles California, where Jeff Bezos Amazon, Amazon prime, Amazon prime studios just leasing a huge lot of land, the Culver studios, owned by the developer Michael Hackman, apparently even Jeff Bezos bought out the movie theater, the culver theater next-door. Also slowly but surely Apple is getting in bed with Sony entertainment, producing movies like the new Napoleon movie as well as the new killers of the flower moon with Leonardo DiCaprio.

    During this whole period I saw a lot of people from the writer strike, and honestly… a lot of these people look very unwell. Most of them do not look very physically unfit, and you could just see; they don’t spend enough time outside, none of them look happy jubilant and gay, and just think simply; if the physiology and health of somebody is poor, what kind of artwork or ideas do you think they will produce?

    There is this weird bias that we think that somehow the mind is divorced from the body, but in fact, the mind is the body. That is if your body is sick, your mind is sick. However, if your body is strong robust and great, so will your ideas.

    Therefore, a simple fitness idea; first, maximize your physical fitness and your physiological wellness, then, your artwork will naturally follow. 

    How we lose our backbone

    I don’t think it’s a modern day trend or shift; my thought is honestly all generations all histories people in the past, seems like everyone has always lacked a spine or a backbone.

    For example, even when Homer was writing the Iliad; Homer the writer was already critiquing people of his generation. Saying that the people of his generation were weak degenerate, no longer strong.

    I wrote a nice little piece back in Vietnam titled ADAMANTINE SPINE (Adamantine Mind); imagine yourself like wolverine; the best way to imagine things is that you are actually like wolverine, your body is made out of adamantine metal, and what happens is every time that somebody tries to destroy you, you regenerate and you re-heal, it will be at a very painful process, but you still do it. The reason why I like this idea is that perhaps every time we regenerate and re-heal we actually become stronger than we were before.

    Perhaps this is actually how weightlifting works, every time we lift weights, very very heavy close to our maximum, we actually micro destroy our bodies, and in the regeneration process, which takes time… and we eat meat, sleep, do other stuff, we actually become stronger than we were before.

    Recall the scene in which Deadpool was cut to shreds, very much like Dionysis; he is sitting on the couch, a little stub of a body, talking with the blind lady. The process of regeneration seem to take him several days close to a week before he was 100%. Maybe the same thing with weightlifting:

    Better to deadlift seven plates a single time, in a single week… than do some sort of hateful CrossFit exercising every single day. 

    The reason why I really love Ryan Reynolds and the Deadpool character is there is a little bit of fun dark humor here; I think when people take things to literally, too seriously, life loses its bigger it’s fun it’s jubilance. 

    However a bad example is when you turn the needle too much towards the comedic; for example there is this notion called “campy“, when things are almost too cheesy, and lame. For example all of the new Thor movies, as well as all the new Disney Marvel movies, they are insanely lame.

    What are good examples?

    All modern day media is bad. Only good ones I think are actually ancient Greek epics; the Iliad, after that the Odyssey. If you’re curious, I think that the Iliad is at least 100 or 200 times better more interesting and more fun than the odyssey. Whether or not both were written by Homer or not doesn’t really seem to matter; I think the overall storyline of the Iliad is much more exciting and intense whereas the odyssey is a bit boring.

    The Odyssey just drags on and on… Odysseus is a good character but not as grand as Achilles. 

    Greater risks, greater futures

    It seems that a lot of modern day humans want some sort of weird free lunch; somehow… we want to live a better more greater more grand life that is more exciting and fun, yet we seem to not desire taking any personal risks.

    For example let us think about video game culture. My simple heuristic is this; don’t play no video game in which you have actually not done the real thing yourself. For example, all these grown men playing video games in which they are shooting each other with guns, and they have actually never shot a real life gun seems little bit weird.

    The same thing goes with American football; don’t watch American football as a spectator if you have never played American football. Otherwise you are a coward.

    Easy to critique and criticize football players who fumble the ball, if you have never worn real life football equipment, a helmet, limited eyesight and mobility, and fight fatigue and fear.

    Also with basketball, instead of drinking beer and watching basketball and eating onion rings for an hour or two in the evening, why not just go to the local basketball court, bring a basketball and play some pick up basketball instead?

    Another fun thought; in the evening, instead of turning on Google incognito, private browsing, brave browser, brave browser in private browsing mode, turning on your VPN, hitting up pirate bay or whatever… why not just go to the local gym and talk to the pretty ladies instead? Or even get a CorePower membership and talk to the pretty ladies there?

    A funny thought I often have for men —

    A lot of these guys, after they’re done with work or whatever… And they go home, in privacy, and they turn on Google incognito… what do they really look at?

    Elementary school kids, middle schoolers, highschoolers

    Also I have a rule; video games should only be permitted for poor kids in the hood, we have nothing better else to do.

    Also a cutoff time; no adult over the age of 18 years old should play video games anymore. I think it is fine for highschoolers and middle schoolers video games, but not grown men.

    I ended up quit playing video games when I was around 18 or 19 years old, my freshman year of college. Why? I literally had no time! I had a part-time job, working around 20 hours a week as tech-support for the UCLA undergraduate admissions office, I was active in many clubs, having to study, and do other stuff.

    I actually think that some weird ways, video games are like pornography for the mind-body and soul. The generalized thought is that in video games, everyone wants to be a hero, take risks, go on quests, obtain some booty whatever. Yet, embodied reality real life doesn’t seem to allow any outlets for this. Therefore, people escape into video games.

    My simple intervention:

    How can we inject desires of video game stuff into real life, real embodied reality?

    Simple suggestions:

    1. Walking 50 miles a day
    2. Lifting insanely heavy weights, screaming loudly, slapping yourself in the face hypelifting etc. 
    3. Striving to make your body look like a demigod, instead of playing a video game in which your character looks like a demigod. 

    How video games are bad.

    The big issue with video games is that ultimately, you are a slave to the platform, the closed loop system, the video game producer and publisher etc.

    For example, already… It seems that the video game Fortnite which was insanely grand is already being forgotten. Let us say you are a person who devoted 10,000 hours to playing the Fortnite game, but now no longer anybody plays it. All of your time has been wasted.

    Even StarCraft, StarCraft professional players; nobody really plays it anymore, let us say that you’re a professional gamer sponsorships making money playing StarCraft tournaments, now you no longer have any sponsors. All of your time was for naught. 

    More thoughts

    A critical thing I believe for men, us men, is that we require some sort of physical risk, physical challenge, some sort of physical risk taking.

    For example, in my mind the only type of weightlifting which is interesting includes some sort of “risk”; for example, when I would atlas lift seven plates, eight plates, nine plates, 10 plates, max out the bar, and then clip on an additional 25 pounder in between and on top of the 10 plates, the jaws of others would drop; and then a few people would actually have the chutzpah to tell me:

    “… be careful.”

    My thought;

    People actually want to see me get hurt, or “fail”. When I succeeded, I have somehow dismantled their narrow worldview.

    Is ERIC KIM on drugs? 

    Another funny bias; when I was doing so much crazy turbo thoughtting while in Vietnam (I was off the grid, got rid of my phone, didn’t communicate for about two years, no email no communication no social media no nothing… People would ask…)

    Is ERIC KIM okay?

    Or,

    Is ERIC KIM on drugs?

    Or–

    What happened to ERIC KIM?

    Simple; when you are disconnected from the BS of traditional American media thinking… you think different. Also, not having a phone, I think this is the 10,000X secret cheat code to life. Assuming that you were a crypto trillionaire, and you no longer needed other people, “opportunities“, or you didn’t really desire to get paid money from other people or corporations… what real use do you have of email anyways?

    When people say “opportunities”, I think it is a weird carrot and stick; part of it is chasing some sort of legitimacy, part of it is chasing some sort of financial opportunities, brand sponsorships etc.

    Something I have personally discovered is this:

    Brand sponsorships are a trap. 

    Example, if you are sponsored by any sort of company or corporation or whatever… you are not really going to 100% say what is really on your mind. This is the same thing that goes with “brand ambassadors”– I find the whole thing a bit base; Why? He or she who focuses too much on getting some sort of “ambassadorship” is a signal that they are just chasing clout in some sort of mean way.

    Once again, if you already have $200 million worth of cryptocurrency bitcoin or chainlink or whatever – why do you need to get some sort of brand “ambassadorship” from anybody? Why do you want free equipment gear or stuff? Why not just buy it yourself?

    This is actually something I have discovered with a lot of guys in the photography space; they are already independently wealthy from some sort of other ventures, whether it be business etc. And then they go seek to try to become some sort of “ambassador“, for Leica camera whatever.

    That is not forget that Leica camera, the modern day rendition is essentially the brainchild of Dr. Andreas Kaufman– who I discovered is not a “real“ doctor; he got his PhD in philosophy, which I think is a good idea but I think when people talk about him they assume that he has some sort of medical doctor or something.

    Would actually find very bizarre about Andrea Kaufman is that there is almost little to no information about him on the internet. Who is he really?

    Apparently his family made its fortune and I think the paper business. Therefore, maybe his like some sort of really rich kid, and Leica camera is essentially his passion project, his toy?

    Let us not forget that essentially Leica camera went bankrupt, and I think what Dr. Andrea Kaufman did was purchased the naming rights of it, and then revived the brand. Similar thing that BMW did with Rolls-Royce; Rolls-Royce went bankrupt, switched hands a few times, and then I think the last 7 to 8 years, the new Rolls-Royce brand is essentially an expensive Lexus version of a BMW; even look at any BMW X7 compared with the Rolls-Royce Cullinan; the BMW X7 looks the same. Even the BMW 7 series, with the star light stitching in the headliner of the car– same thing as the Rolls-Royce. A Rolls-Royce ghost or phantom or whatever is just an expensive re-badged BMW 7 series.

    Also some more super facts:

    The Volkswagen group owns Porsche, Audi, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Ducati etc. A Lamborghini is just an expensive Audi, Audi is just an expensive Volkswagen,  and a Porsche 911 GT three GT3RS is just like a Volkswagen beetle turbo on steroids. 

    Also, the dirty secret that Leica camera doesn’t want you to know is that the Leica Q camera is essentially a really expensive Panasonic Lumix camera; I think it uses the same sensor from Panasonic Lumix. Therefore if you just want good quality images, just get a Panasonic Lumix camera instead.

    For example with the Leica Q camera, you could use Panasonic Lumix batteries in it! 

    Even when Leica camera was first developing its digital Leica M rangefinder camera, the Leica M8, M9 etc.… I am pretty certain they did some sort of co-collaboration co-sponsorship deal with Panasonic Lumix to develop the digital sensors for it. Therefore that is why Leica has borrowed its namesake for some of the Panasonic Lumix lenses saying that it is a “Leica” lens, when it was actually produced in Japan.

    Or let us think about the compact Panasonic LumixLX 100 cameras, Leica has a re-badged version of the “LEICA D-Lux” cameras. 

    What is the point of taking risk?

    My personal thought is that in life, risk makes life more fun! Life without risk is like a life without salt. Life has no vigor, no flavor, no interest.

    So how can I incorporate real risktaking into my real life? 

    Simple ideas:

    1. Extreme speculation with 10% percent of your life savings: perhaps the best thing I have learned from NASSIM Taleb which has probably saved me millions of dollars is simple; never put more than 10% of your life savings into anyone speculative bet or “investment”, no matter what they say about “risk” and it being “safe”. The best strategy is simple: take 10% of your life savings, and put it into some extremely maximally speculative thing, which you believe has 1000X upside potential. For example, let us say that you have $100,000 of life savings, take only 10% of that, $10,000, and put it into a speculative cryptocurrency which you think could go up by at least 1000 times. This is far more effective than the boring, put 100% of your money into some sort of boring mutual fund, etc.
    2. For weightlifting very simple; the only type of weightlifting which is actually worth it is any sort of weightlifting in which the chance of failure is high. That means, always striving to increase your one repetition maximum lift; only single repetitions here. No stupid sets no stupid repetitions; one repetition or nothing. This means just start off with a dynamic warm-up, and then slowly add weights, gradually, until you can no longer budge the barbell. Simple exercises include doing an elevated deadlift, put your barbell on top of cinderblocks or the power rack, and when you are doing a “rack pull“, you lift with your thighs your legs, and you max out. Or the ERIC KIM ATLAS LIFT — just Google or YouTube it.
    3. Social risks: Better to be annoying, rub somebody the wrong way, and be insanely friendly rather than being the typical antisocial loser with headphones on, sunglasses on, facial hair, a hat or a beanie etc. Better to be a gay monster than a sentimental bore.

    Now what?

    Some assignments:

    1. Smile and wave and say hi to everybody you meet for a whole day.
    2. Take a photo of somebody without their permission, and if they make eye contact with you smile and wave. Street Photo 101
    3. Open up a Coinbase cryptocurrency account, and invest 10% of your life savings in some sort of cryptocurrency or technology which interests you. For myself currently I put 90% of my crypto into chainlink and 10% as bitcoin. My personal thought is don’t dabble “alt coins“, and also one scamming cryptocurrency I think is Ada Cardono– Ethereum is interesting, but also, I don’t really trust it. Why? If Ethereum is creating its own private enterprise thing, not a good sign for a platform.
    4. Opinion risktaking: Stop censoring yourself and stop speaking politically correct. Speak your true mind, 100% unfiltered, rub feathers the wrong way whatever. Better to be an asshole and happy, than to be politically correct and passive.

    VIBE WITH EK

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    The best camera equipment on the planet >

    Open Source

    Start here, books, downloads.

    Now what?

    The number one advice I have for any photographer entrepreneur etc. is simple: start your own blog. Self hosted with wordpress.org and a platform like Ionos.com or bluehost.com

    Also, delete your Instagram. My creativity productivity happiness and innovation has increased by 1 million fold after deleting my Instagram in 2017 with about 60,000 followers.

    Also, the best way to stay connected with your audience and fans is through a simple email newsletter, I use sendy.co — which is insanely cheap, hosted by Amazon simple email service. At least 1000X cheaper than mailchimp.com

    No more WordPress.com?

    Automaticc… WordPress.com … you guys done messed up. I think one of my random wordpress.com websites “violated some sort of content policy“, and as a consequence, the whole blog was wiped. 

    I no longer recommend anybody to use wordpress.com. No way Jose.

    The only legitimate path is a self hosted website which is censor proof and tamperproof. That is, the service provider cannot just switch a button and delete or turn off your website or thing.

    For example I personally predict that sooner or later, Google is going to shut down my YouTube account. Therefore, it is best to just think and consider that sooner or later you’re going to violate some sort of content policy and they’re going to delete your platform.

    What cannot be deleted? Your own hosted website, even building a website on Amazon web services seems like a good idea.

    Think open source, PDF, JPEG, zip files, decentralized systems and mirrors 

    I’ve been in the game long enough that sooner or later, stuff breaks. Hyperlinks no longer work, images no longer work or load, etc. Ever since I was 18 years old, now until the age of 35… I have seen information come and go, platforms rise and fall. Even within my short tenure I’ve seen companies come and go like xanga.com, liveJournal, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.

    It seems the only real way to deal with issue here is think about the Hydra approach; propagate, duplicate, create more hydra heads. That is if somebody tries to cut off one of your heads, two grow in place. 

    The ERIC KIM HYDRA approach: 

    1. erickimphilosophy.com
    2. erickim.com
      3.erickimthoughts.wordpress.com
    3. erickimfitness.com
    4. erickimcrypto.com
    5. EricKim.ai

    Just think of yourself like the Pirate Bay; nobody could shut down pirate Bay because there are 1 trillion mirrors. The decentralized notion and idea of Pirate Bay and torrents and mirrors and magnets are fascinating to me; it is bad, it does seem like real freedom.

    My very very simple suggestion for media corporations is… Don’t put too much care or concerns about pirating. It ain’t a really big deal. At worst, one percent of your fanbase is going to use it, pirating and torrenting is far too complicated for the average human being. Just ignore it.

    Other experiments

    1. Upload your favorite photos to arsbeta.com 
    2. It looks like ChatGPT premium paid model is closed. Maybe it is time for me to start creating some sort of open source solution.
    3. Create your own blog
    4. Order some weightlifting equipment on titan.fitness or roguefitness.com
    5. Get a gym membership, whether it be LA fitness, crunch fitness, golds gym, hot yoga membership. Corepower is fine. 
    6. Take more insanely hot baths or showers at home, and alternate with extremely icy cold water. The undulation between both extremes of hot and cold is a good stimulus to our metabolism. What I have been doing during this winter months is starting off with a very very cold shower, and then filling up the bathtub with boiling hot water, and taking an insanely hot bath, and then, ending with a cold shower. If you don’t have access to a bathtub, just start off with an icy cold shower, make it insanely boiling hot, and then finish off cold.
    7. It does seem that the best place to buy meat is Costco. Or the local Mexican meat market. Try to get some beef liver or kidney or Oregon meats or heart at the local Halal market, or Mexican market, if you go to Costco… Get the 100% grass fed ground beef, or the new Wagyu ground beef which I like. Also I really like the Lamb leg roast at Costco.

    So how can I be happy? 

    1. Move out of the bay area, San Francisco, the East Bay, the south Bay, San Jose whatever. Come to Culver City Los Angeles California, my new paradise. I specifically like the arts district. Also, get out of Brooklyn; Brooklyn is for losers. Either live on the main island, or get out. 
    2. Perhaps the ideal strategy in life is to not buy a home, but instead… better to live in an insanely great apartment, in an insanely great location than to buy and own a home in a good location. It’s insane, the difference of 100,000, 200,000, 300,000, 400,000, 500,000, $600,000… Better to just buy a Tesla model S plaid instead. 
    3. Delete email Gmail or whatever from your phone. If you got to do it for a living just do it on your desktop or laptop and also delete the YouTube app from your phone. Also delete Spotify podcasts or whatever. When you drive, drive silent, and let yourself think.
    4. Publish your thoughts photos videos audio to your own blog.
    5. Lift weights, do hot yoga, or go on a hike at least twice a day.

    More thoughts — EK BLOG

    Forward the fire!

    Feeling a little bit of wings in your feet? Feel free to forward this to a friend!

    ERIC KIM NEWS

    Increase your danger, increase your happiness.

    

  • The Philosophy of Risk Taking 

    Greater fates, greater futures.

    Force finds a way. 

    Nietzsche once said; the secret to the greatest amount of happiness is living the life with the maximum amount of danger! I think this was from twilight of the idols, or maybe from the will to power at the end. 

    I think we live in an interesting time. I think currently the world has been hijacked by Internet website advertising, mostly Google and Google ads to blame, as well as pernicious sneaky sponsored advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, Google Chrome etc. Same goes with YouTube.

    Also something I have learned from things; I think we are actually much more visually sensitive, image sensitive, sound sensitive then we think we are. Also, the mind is subtle; even if I accidentally see some sort of weird thumbnail image, in fact, it puts me in a bad mood for the rest of the day etc.

    I think the big problem here is that the news and information has become so hyper sensationalized. Why? Everyone is trying to maximize their income earning potential of the Internet and media, assuming that whatever they are posting is on a website or blog or news agency leveraged by Google sense, the drive is to maximize eyeball viewing time, and Click through rates, for the publisher to make money.

    Also, something that I have learned about solo entrepreneurs in the media space; everyone is trying to search and seek and strive for some sort of “legitimacy”, or, they’re just struggling to pay their rent.

    For example, let us say that I am some sort of Internet personality, some sort of fitness influencer, even Fraher. Perhaps the only way I could pay my rent is through some sort of sponsorship or brand deal, in which I am being paid maybe only $500-$1000 a month, and barely maintaining even my expenses.

    Also, even some inside intelligence on YouTube; the super fax is that even if my video gets 100 million views, assuming I had advertisements on it I might only make about seven to $8000 USD. That is actually not that much. You’re probably better off Working as an Amazon prime delivery driver, or even Uber driver. And even the best craters, it is very rare that they make a video with so many views.

    As a consequence, there is this low-key bias or optimization towards creating videos or things which strive to hit that benchmark. Once again it is things that have to deal with more with the sensational, audacious, the bizarre, even the morose?

    Who to trust

    Truth be told, in today’s world especially with internet blogs, ChatGPT 4, the funny thing I learned:

    Even ChatGPT doesn’t know if ChatGPT wrote it or not!

    For example, instead of just googling myself, I have just been ChatGPT’ing myself. For example I have the paid premium version of ChatGPT, which gives me access to the new newest version of ChatGPT which is version 4, which I rate at least 1000 times better than the free ChatGPT 3.5.

    So for example I’ll do something like search “ERIC KIM“, and just see what ChatGPT tells me, and I will just copy and paste that into a new blog post on my own personal blog titled “ERIC KIM“, And within a week, ChatGPT indexes that and links back to that. It is almost like a snake eating its own tail, the ourubus. 

    As a consequence, let us just think and consider; how today’s media landscape is created within the Internet. Let us say that I am some sort of newsagency or publishers; I will hire writers, and a lot of these writers will use ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence editing and writing and text generation tools. It is impossible to ascertain how much of it was written by human or ChatGPT or whatever whatever; and even so… Assuming that even if 100% of the information was hand typed by human being, it almost doesn’t really matter because a lot of these writers tend to be dark morose and sick people.

    Currently speaking I live in Culver City Los Angeles California, where Jeff Bezos Amazon, Amazon prime, Amazon prime studios just least a huge lot of land, the Culver studios, owned by the developer Michael Heckman, apparently even  Jeff Bezos spot out the movie theater, the culvert theater next-door. Also slowly but surely apple is getting in bed with Sony entertainment, producing movies like the new Napoleon movie as well as the new killers of the flower moon with Leonardo DiCaprio.

    During this whole period I saw a lot of people from the writer strike, and honestly… A lot of these people look very unwell. Most of them do not look very physically fit, and you could just see; they don’t spend enough time outside, none of them look happy jubilant and gay, and just think simply; if the physiology and health of somebody is poor, what kind of artwork or ideas do you think they will produce? There is this weird bias that we think that somehow the mind is divorced from the body, but in fact, the mind is the body. That is if your body is sick, your mind is sick. However, if your body is strong robust and great, so will your ideas.

    How we lose our backbone

    I don’t think it’s a modern day trend or shift; my thought is honestly all generations all histories people in the past, seems like everyone has always left a spine or a backbone. I wrote a nice little piece back in Vietnam titled Adamantine Spine;  imagine yourself like wolverine; the best way to imagine things is that you are actually like wolverine, your body is made out of adamantine metal, and what happens is every time that somebody tries to destroy you, you regenerate and you re-heal, I’ll be at a very painful process, you still do it. 

    Kind of like Deadpool; the reason why I really love Ryan Reynolds and the Deadpool character is there is a little bit of fun dark humor here; I think when people take things to literally, too seriously, life loses its bigger it’s fun it’s jubilance. 

    However a bad example is when you turn the needle too much towards the comedic; for example there is this notion called “Campi“, when things are almost too cheesy, and lame. For example all of the new Thor movies, as well as all the new Disney Marvel movies, they are insanely lame.

    What are good examples?

    All modern day media is bad. Only good ones I think are actually ancient Greek epics; the Iliad, after that the Odyssey. If you’re curious, I think that the Iliad is at least 100 or 200 times better more interesting and more fun than the odyssey. Whether or not both were written by Homer or not doesn’t really seem to matter; I think the overall storyline of the Iliad is much more exciting and intense whereas the odyssey is a bit boring.

    The Odyssey just drags on and on… Odysseus is a good character but not as grand as Achilles. 

    Greater risks, greater futures

    It seems that a lot of modern day humans want some sort of weird free lunch; somehow… We want to live a better more greater more grand life that is more exciting and fun, yet we seem to not desire taking any personal risks.

    For example let us think about video game culture. My simple heuristic is this; don’t play no video game in which you have actually not done the real thing yourself. For example, all these grown men playing video games in which they are shooting each other with guns, and they have actually never shot a real life gun seems little bit weird.

    Also I have a rule; video games should only be permitted for poor kids in the hood, we have nothing better else to do.

    Also a cut off time; no adult over the age of 18 years old should play video games anymore. I think it is fine for highschoolers and middle schoolers video games, but not grown men.

    I ended up quit playing video games when I was around 18 or 19 years old, my freshman year of college. Why? I literally had no time! I had a part-time job, working around 20 hours a week as tech-support for the UCLA undergraduate admissions office, I was active in many clubs, having to study, and do other stuff.

    I actually think that some weird ways, if you do games are like pornography for the mind-body and soul. The generalize just a most video games is everyone wants to be a hero, take risks, go on quest, obtain some booty whatever. Yet, embodied reality real life doesn’t seem to allow any outlets for this. Therefore, people escape into video games. 

    How video games are bad.

    The big issue with video games is that ultimately, you are a slave to the platform, the close loop system, the video game producer and publisher etc.

    For example, already… It seems that the video game Fortnite which was insanely grand is already being forgotten. Let us say you are a person who devoted 10,000 hours to playing the Fortnite game, but now no longer anybody plays it. All of your time has been wasted.

    Even StarCraft, StarCraft professional players; nobody really plays it anymore, let us say that you’re a professional gamer sponsorships making money playing StarCraft tournaments, now you no longer have any sponsors. All of your time was for naught. 

    More thoughts

    A critical thing I believe for men, us men, is that we require some sort of physical risk, physical challenge, some sort of physical risk taking.

    For example, in my mind the only type of weightlifting which is interesting includes some sort of “risk”; for example, when I would atlas lift seven plates, eight plates, nine plates, 10 plates, max out the bar, and then clip on an additional 25 pounder in between and on top of the 10 plates, the jaws of others would drop; and then a few people would actually have the chutzpah to tell me:

    “… be careful.”

    My thought;

    People actually want to see me get hurt, or “fail”. When I succeeded, I have somehow dismantled their narrow worldview.

    Is ERIC KIM on drugs? 

    another funny bias; when I was doing so much crazy turbo thoughtting while in Vietnam (I was off the grid, got rid of my phone, didn’t communicate for about two years, no email no communication no social media no nothing… People would ask…)

    is ERIC KIM okay?

    Or,

    is ERIC KIM on drugs?

    Or–

    What happened to ERIC KIM?

    Simple; when you are disconnected from the BS of traditional American media thinking… Do you think different. Also, not having a phone, I think this is the 10,000 X secret cheat code to life. Assuming that you were a crypto trillionaire, and you no longer needed other people “opportunities“, or you didn’t really desire to get paid money from other people or corporations… What real use do you have of email anyways?

    When people say “opportunities”, I think it is a weird keratin stick; part of it is chasing some sort of legitimacy, part of it is chasing some sort of financial opportunities, brand sponsorships etc.

    Something I have personally discovered is this:

    brand Sponsorships are a trap. 

    Example, if you are sponsored by any sort of company or corporation or whatever… You are not really going to hundred percent say what is really on your mind. This is the same thing that goes with “brand ambassadors”– I find the whole thing a bit base; why? He or she who focuses too much on getting some sort of “ambassador ship is a signal that they are just chasing clout in some sort of mean way.

    Once again, if you already have $200 million worth of cryptocurrency bitcoin or chainlink or whatever – why do you need to get some sort of brand “ambassadorship” from anybody? Why do you want free equipment gear or stuff? Why not just buy it yourself?

    This is actually something I have discovered with a lot of guys in the photography space; they are already independently wealthy from some sort of other ventures, whether it be business etc. And then they go seek to try to become some sort of “ambassador“, for Leica camera whatever.

    That is not forget that Leica camera, the modern day rendition is essentially the brainchild of Dr. Andreas Kaufman– who I discovered is not a “real“ doctor; he caught his PhD in philosophy, which I think is a good idea but I think when people talk about him they assume that he has some sort of medical doctor or something.

  • Why I Bought Chainlink

    A simple heuristic that I learned from Nassim TALEB; don’t ask people what you should invest in, ask them… What did you invest in? 

    For example, I recently swapped a bunch of my bitcoin for chainlink. Why did I do it? My thoughts: 

    What is chainlink?

    Essentially it is a platform built upon Ethereum, the blockchain… that strives to solve real world problems.

    The first critical issue at hand is the notion of the “Oracle problem”, and cryptographic proof and truth.

    The general gist of the Oracle problem is that you have all these people purporting to say something… How do you know if someone is really telling the truth or not?

    Also, they’re great innovation of a decentralized oracle network. I think anything that is decentralized and can be done offline is a good idea; anything that has to be done when you’re connected to the web is fragile.

    For example, the “internet of things”, which includes all of your home devices, your home stuff etc. I think this includes your home speaker things, your Amazon echo or echo dot, your Apple HomePod thing, your ring Amazon nest devices etc. 

    Enabling transactional value?

    TVE — transactional value enabled?

    Chainlink staking?

    What is the purpose of technology and these things? A very basic idea is that the point is to help enable commerce and other things. Money makes the world go round, Publilius Syrus.

    What is money anyways? Money is movement. Anything that literally physiologically moves human beings in time and space is money.

    For example, if you promise somebody $30 an hour, they will walk around, move their bodies to clean toilets, etc.

    Also, money movement. The whole global economy to me is so fascinating; because we process and move information so quickly and so globally… how do you link it all together?  

    Chain – Link

    I find chainlink to be an interesting concept because wherever you go in real life, there are physical chain links everywhere.

    Also, technically the internet, the World Wide Web, is a bunch of hyperlinks which link websites together.

    My personal thought and prediction is that chainlink could become the next Google; Google indexes the whole internet, and made it easy for you to find any sort of website. What I think chainlink will do is link all of this information on the internet and computers and make them accessible, trustworthy, tamperproof.

    Just read it

    Only read stuff that you find interesting, skip over stuff you find boring.

    About a week or two ago, I reread the original bitcoin white paper, and I was so impressed with how short it was, how minimalistic it was, and how to the point it was. But… reading it… this time around… felt a bit boring.

    And this is the big thing: if something bores you, you gotta get out of it.

    Therefore, I sold or transferred or converted nine of my bitcoin and put it all into chainlink, at the time it was valued at ~20,800 LINK (CHAINLINK), with bitcoin at around $35,000 a bitcoin.

    I think what I try to do is think at least 30 years into the future. 20 or 30 years. It is funny, as I write this at the age of 35, 30 years from now Seneca is only going to be 32 years old, still a few years younger than me. My personal aspiration is to hold onto chainlink for at least 30 years, and then maybe transfer it to Seneca when he grows up. Or I just help him build some sort of company or entrepreneurial venture etc.

    Investing in things actually do something?

    I love bitcoin but maybe one of the big issues here is that bitcoin is like digital money and gold; most people just hold onto it, and I don’t think actually aspire to use it to actually pay for your latte at Starbucks or whatever. I think because bitcoin and cryptocurrency is so volatile; Everybody’s hope and dream and ambition is that their coin will rise value astronomically and they will become rich, buy the Lamborghini or whatever… and be happy.

    Trust nobody who drives a Lamborghini — only trust people who drive Toyota Priuses, in white. 

    Why? If you drive a Toyota Prius, in white… it is a signal that you really don’t care for appearances.

    How do you know if somebody is unsuccessful? 

    If they drive a Range Rover, a Mercedes AMG G wagon, murdered out, all matte black, a baselevel Mercedes car, a baselevel Audi car, like an A3 or a Q3, drive some sort of Audi electric car which is just the same as the Porsche Taycan, don’t forget that the Volkswagen group owns Lamborghini Audi Volkswagen Porsche etc. same thing goes with anybody who drives a BMW car.

    Foreign cars are bad.  

    It is just a game! 

    I think crypto, cryptocurrency speculation is an interesting game; prediction, prediction markets, trying to predict the future… is just a luxury and a fun thing.

    Some predictions are pretty obvious

    When I was in college, my sophomore year, and I was starting to get into trading stocks, daytrading… I had a pretty certain thought that Blockbuster was going to go under. I tried to figure out how to short stocks, but I really couldn’t figure out how to do it.

    Also I remember when the prime mortgage meltdown happened, and the value of Ford went to almost 2 dollars a year. I wanted to buy some Ford stock but I had no money, no capital.

    It is interesting to think about this in hindsight because when I was incorrectly trading pennystock, for some sort of oil producer company which was actually running at a loss… I had no idea because I misread the financials… I lost my whole life savings which was maybe $3500 USD or something. It was insanely tragic. But now that I am playing with higher sums more like $300,000 USD, I realize that it was just a valuable lesson at the time.

    Therefore, with any sort of financial speculation, think about it at the 30 year span. Even when you are 70 or 80 years old, I met this lady at the park who looked phenomenal and she told me she was 82… she looked like a very fit 45-year-old!

    My personal aspiration is when I’m 82 years old, to still be able to lift 1000 pounds. Google or YouTube “ERIC KIM thousand pound atlas lift”

    It seems that the way things are going, I don’t think it’s that ridiculous to think that we can live to be 120 years old. Try to think that far. 

    What is the use of money anyways? 

    I think actually the big thing is that everyone now aspires to buy a house or home or property. It is getting pretty ridiculous, even in Los Angeles, even buying a single-family home in Inglewood… you’re looking easily at around $1.5 million for a whatever house.

    My prediction is that the prices of homes  will continue to soar astronomically high. I think a lot of these $1.5 million homes can easily balloon two $3 million, $5 million, 10 and $15 million, $150 million or whatever. Why? The biggest issue at hand is runaway inflation, which means the value of the US dollar and currency is continually going lower and lower, because the US is what, currently speaking $30 trillion in debt? And what America thinks the smart idea is to just keep printing money ad infinitum, into infinity, in order to “stimulate” the economy.

    But does this work? No.

    For example talking to my friend Noel who works in hygiene, he says that a lot of these young guys, around 25 to 30 years old, are so lazy. Why? After Covid and people started giving away these free checks… and from unemployment you could literally make $5000 USD a month by sitting on your butt and doing nothing… people lost the motivation to work. A lot of people moved back home, live with their parents, and are essentially living for free. As a consequence you have a huge generation of unmotivated people, unwilling to do any sort of manual labor, which is bad because having manual and physical labor is critical.

    For example, being in Beverly Hills a lot; and Holby Hills,  there is this new funny caste systems; really rich people getting mansions built, and the army of construction labor people, mostly from Mexico doing the labor to build these mansions.

    Also, think about Amazon prime delivery drivers, people who bag your food at Whole Foods, Erwhon etc, all these contractors electricians plumbers etc.… the truly critical labor. Doesn’t matter if you pay them $30 $40 $50 or even $60 an hour, it seems at this point money doesn’t really motivate them anymore. Therefore what do you do? It seems that America we are just importing more people from Mexico to do labor for us, because they are motivated. Americans are no longer motivated.

    Crypto, crypto technology and cryptocurrency is optimistic

    I am obsessed with the future. Future thinking, future technologies, new brave worlds to discover.

    Why? I have always been into technology ever since I was a kid, getting my first Acer aspire Pentium one processor computer when I was around 11 years old. Even teaching myself how to program visual basic 3.0 in the early days, creating my own AOL “punter“ etc.

    Also, I still will never forget when I read the Maddox article on why you should beat your kids, in computer class in Bayside Queens at PS 169 when I was in the fifth grade, and all of me and our friends, a bunch of 11-year-old laughing and saying “It is true!”

    Even I remember as a kid, when I first moved to New York, maybe it was I had some sort of school in the Bronx, when kids in the hallway would “the South Park movies “blame Canada, blame Canada”…

    Anyways the generalized thought is I love media information, and also I have a passion to innovate, write and to think, to motivate and to also disprove nonsense.

    Ever since I was young I was always bred with an insanely huge ego; the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son, (jang-son), being raised with the “prince disease“, was unusually good for me. Always getting the finest cuts of meat and galbi from my grandmother, always showered with praise love and attention and how smart tall and good-looking I was. Very good for me.

    The US dollar is static

    Anybody who is a wage slave, which means anybody who is paid a biweekly or monthly salary… doesn’t matter if you’re being paid $10 million a year from Apple… You’re still a wage slave.

    A simple heuristic:

    Can you go two years without checking or responding to any of your emails or not?

    If you have to use email for a living, you’re not free. 

    Once you’re a crypto trillionaire, then what?

    Let us say that your cryptocurrency goes to the value of $1 trillion USD. Then what? Then do you just dissolve it all into US dollars, buy a mansion and a yacht somewhere, and live indefinitely into the horizon for infinite bliss?

    This doesn’t seem to be the goal. For me, I think a more interesting life trajectory is to then to no longer care for money, and use your power mind and soul and body for more interesting things which can include philosophy, writing, thinking, doing research, reading, making art, publishing art, etc.

    Money as it means to creative leisure and production.

    Seeking immortal fame and glory?

    One thing I am very happy about is ChatGPT knows exactly who I am, why I am so significant and influential, etc. As a consequence, I already feel like my legacy is secure, and I don’t have anything left to prove to nobody else.

    As a consequence, at this point life is all upside no downside. Even one of the happiest moments of my life, Cindy and I begetting our first son Seneca, at this point life is all upside no downside.

    As a man, as long as you have one male heir, you can die happy. 

    Now what?

    Things that I find interesting use cases of chainlink:

    1. Real estate, homebuying, escrow: even NASSIM TALEB has said that traditionally, most wealth generation in human society is through land, land ownership land property etc. For example let us say that you buy that 1.5 million dollar home, and 20 years from now it’ll be worth $3.2 million. And then let us assume that 30 or 40 years from now it is worth $5.7 million, and your kid inherits it. And when your kid is 57 years old it is worth $22 million, and he will able to pass it on to his son or daughter, and maybe that will be worth $120 million into their future. The whole escrow process and verification process is quite fragmented, unreliable. I think chainlink can be a technology which motivates and enables more streamlined home buying processes.
    2. Identity verification: it is so easy for people to just steal your social security number, and pretend it is you. Imagine a future in which you could use chainlink or some sort of blockchain enabled identification, which can essentially be your global citizen passport to all of the world and the internet? This seems especially useful in today’s world in which everything is so fragmented, between our Apple ID, our Gmail, Etc. Or think about border control; certainly it would be easier to travel if there was some sort of blockchain or global ledger to verify your identity, this could help facilitate movement and verification, and deal with issues of forged passports etc. 

    Military

    I think an inconvenient truth is that truth be told, a lot of the world is run by the military. Certainly there are lots of bad things about the military, but truth be told, without the US military, our precious US dollars would be worth nothing.

    For example, I think the American government we are $31.46 trillion dollars in debt? To where… China?

    As a consequence, how does America’s stay afloat and print more money? Simple, she simply prints more money because she can because we got the military to back us. 

    For example, let’s say that mainland China comes knocking and asks for her money back. Is America going to give it back? No. We will just wave our big stick, and say we are not interested.

    So the interesting use case of chainlink and the US military is especially in the future drone warfare or whatever… It actually does seem that having some sort of crypto technology will be useful here.

    For example the internet of things, chain-link solves this issue. Also, I believe a lot of the US military intervention stuff is going to be unmanned, and having access to some sort of technology which allows automation without meddling in the Internet seems like a good idea.

    Even look at the company Anduril– it has a major investment from founders fund, Peter Thiel’s venture capitalist fund. It looks like the future of autonomous flying drones to bomb the bad guys is going to be the future. 

    So why did I buy it?

    I think in life, big opportunities only come infrequently. As a consequence, I think in life… it seems better to take really big bold bets, rather than just stand on the sidelines.

    At the end of our lives, we will regret more the decisions or the risks we failed to do, rather than the ones we did.

    For example, if a big opportunity comes up, and you’re interested, go for it. You don’t want to be 90 years old on your deathbed, kicking yourself in the butt wishing that you had taken that risk. In hindsight, everything is regret. 

    Think Eric Schmidt

    My personal speculation is that I think chainlink will become the next Google. Why? ERIC Schmidt is on the board of trustees for chainlink, and ERIC Schmidt is the one who built Google into what it is today. Just watch the interview between him and Sergey. In a telling quote, ERIC Schmidt said:

    The secret to success of Google was that we tried to put a little bit of Google into everything.

    Genius. For example, this is evident in how whenever you Google search something, there is a little bit of that Google code in the URL. 

    Therefore my prediction is chainlink… whether you know it or not there will be a little bit of chainlink in everything.  For example, their decentralized oracle network to show accurate prices for any cryptocurrency asset down to the penny. Also, maybe the future of international banking, the SWIFT system… Will be enabled with chainlink? 

    Who is Satoshi?

    Apparently there’s a rumor that Sergey Nazarov might be Satoshi.

    Also the reason why I trust Sergey as a founder is this:

    He doesn’t really care for social appearances.

    I think I learned this from NASSIM TALEB; only trust doctors who look like butchers. Why? When somebody looks too much the part of something, they are not. 

    For example, when you go to a party, who is the real successful person? The person who could show up and meet the prime minister and shake hands wearing T-shirt and jeans and sneakers, just like my friend did meeting the prime minister.

    Also, the really really rich successful person will just drive some sort of white Toyota Prius or old beat up Honda Civic, in silver. Even the family car; very specifically… White Honda Odyssey. Not even a Toyota sienna!

    Even family connections, my $500 million net worth familia– the dad gave all the kids Ford fusions, and even though the dad is a major player in Tesla, they only have a super base level Tesla model three in white. No Tesla model Y, X, S.

    Anyways, the founder Sergey — he always wears the same blue flannel, and really has an air of insouciance that is good. He isn’t the one looking all flashy driving around in the Lamborghini. He probably just drives a Honda Civic or Honda Accord, and I think he is really trying to build something he cares for.

    I think there’s a saying in Silicon Valley amongst venture capital firms, bet on the jockey not the horse. That means, better to invest in the founder of a great thing, rather than the company or the product. For example, it is wise to bet on Elon Musk and anything he built, rather than Other companies which are built by random CEOs and non-visionaries.

    I bet on Sergey N.

    Investors 

    My brother-in-law Khanh told me: if you spent $80,000 to buy a Tesla model S several years ago, that would be worth $500,000 today!

    True investors live like poor people, and speculate on the thing, rather than buying the thing.

    For example, instead of spending $120,000 on Tesla, I would instead prefer to buy $120,000 worth of Tesla stock.

    Why? Things that go up in value overtime versus things that go down in value.

    For example, even though a Tesla car gets software updates over the air, eventually over time, the value of it will slowly depreciate. The battery range will become less, more wear and tear on the vehicle etc. Even the world’s best car can be robust at best, not antifragile.

    What is antifragile? Something that overtime gets better and stronger and more powerful and better and more robust… rather than the opposite.

    This might be the intelligence of collecting rare collector cars, like old Ferraris or whatever… even old Porsche cars, over time, the value of them will go up.

    Even apparently the old Toyota Supra, the one that showed up in fast and the furious, they are worth close to $250,000 now!

    So perhaps the best way to think about things is to think of them like financial investments, rather than toys.

    Other good news 

    It looks like their new chainlink staking, chainlink economics is also doing very well. The full pool has been filled already!

    Now what?

    I think at the end of the day, I don’t really care for money that much, I am more interested in speculation, risk, and thinking and predicting the future. This is my prime joy and bliss.

    Don’t simply sit on the sidelines, twiddling your thumbs for some sort of magical future to get better. I say rather than waiting for the future, speculate and invest in it right now!

    ERIC

    ***

    So what do you want for Christmas this year?

    I think for Christmas, simple things you could do:

    1. For family, invest in a collective experience. This means take a fun family trip somewhere, maybe go to Joshua tree and rent an Airbnb, go on some great hikes etc. Make the experience memorable.
    2. Just write somebody a handwritten card, or just give them a FaceTime call! Love attention and care is the best present you can give.
    3. Buy somebody a good bag of coffee, or, gift them some ERIC KIM Omakase coffee; 100% fine robusta, the best coffee on the planet. It seems that everyone drinks coffee now, even for myself the best random presents I’ve gotten were bags of great coffee! 
    4. Weightlifting equipment like Titan.Fitness, or rogue fitness; gift it to yourself or to a friend or family member! From Titan.fitness — I personally bought some farmers carry handles which I love, a loadable Olympic dumbbell. I bought a rogue fitness 400 pound sandbag, and a Texas power squat bar which I love. Giving the gift of fitness might be one of the best things you could do, or just buy somebody a core power yoga membership, or buy it for yourself! I’m really a big fan of hot yoga; something about the hot temperature sauna and sweating feels therapeutic.
    5. Vibram five finger shoes, the toe shoes. For yourself or a family member. Just go on their website and order three pairs, and keep the one that fits and return the other sizes. 

    What else?

    Some thoughts on sublime beauty:

    Sublime Beauty

    So what are we searching for, what are we looking for?

    I think what we see is some sort of sublime beauty, joy, flourishing.

    How do we attempt to achieve this? Through our cars our homes our clothing etc. 

    However… I think true sublime beauty can only be achieved by yourself, through your own artistic creations.

    For example, your own child, producing begetting and making and birthing your own child; there is seriously no greater joy.

    Also, your artistic creations. Your photos, the artwork you produce. I also qualify DALL-E 3 images, ChatGPT and AI art in it!  Why? Ultimately it is your brainchild; doesn’t really matter whether you produced it by yourself by hand or whatever. For example, Matisse in his advanced years apparently lost mobility in his body and hands, and would simply point with the stick to his assistance to create artwork for him.

    Also, Andy Warhol. He was notorious for having an army of assistance producing work for him.

    My thought on artificial intelligence and AI generated art is free. The idea is that the artwork we create is ours.

    One thing I find surprising is that the greatest boon for AI generated art is that it is all open source! Isn’t this phenomenal? 

    Open art

    Art wants to be free! Art wants to propagate into the real world, not be constrained by nothing, whether digital rights management, closed doors or borders etc.

    This is my general idea with open source artwork; I hate that so much of great photos and art is simply trapped within printed books, not easily accessible or findable on the internet. My huge frustration with photography:

    If I am trying to find the book “the Americans“, or any other book out there, any photo book… Why can’t I just Google it or find it online for free?

    I have a very simple suggestion: make the images online for free, everything open source and full resolution… and what you do instead is you charge money for the printed physical book.

    For example, let us say that you’re planning to publish a photo book. The easiest way to approach this is have an open source free full resolution PDF available online to download, to give your potential customer and clients a taste of what to expect. And then if they like your photos enough, they will buy the printed book.

    Why? people like physical things. I think the bias is that people don’t like to pay for digital things, but we are more than happy to pay for physical things.

    For example, a very simple strategy to thrive as a modern day photographer entrepreneur and artist visual artist, Fatar for it to have all of your artwork open, open source, full resolution JPEG or PDF or whatever… and barbell that with charging a lot of money for your products, physical products, embodied workshop experiences etc.

    How to create sublime beauty?

    For me, sublime beauty in the context of photography is high grain, gritty high contrast black-and-white. It is a simple aesthetic taste for myself; to me there is nothing more beautiful more sublime.

    Also, taking photos of your loved ones. This involves your kids, your wife or your spouse, and even yourself.

    Even my friend Josh White said it wisely: At the end of your life, are you going to care about all these photos that you shot of strangers, or are you going to care about photos that you shot of your loved ones? 

    Love

    I think instead of thinking about love, better to think about heart, care, curation, what you care for.

    For example, the word coeur– same as courage, curate, care.

    It all comes down to the heart.

    Just don’t do nothing you don’t care for

    One of the via negativa ways we could live life; just don’t do anything you don’t care for.

    For example when you’re talking to kids, best to ask “What don’t you want to be when you grow up?”

    Also happiness is via negativa; better to ascertain what makes you miserable, what you hate, what you despise… and figuring out how to subtract or delete that from your life, rather than doing things that make you “happy”.

    For example, personal annoyances of myself include being stuck in traffic, dealing with subscriptions and subscription model things, closed source things, modern day news and media and Facebook Instagram, YouTube, family annoyances and drama, other peoples problems etc.

    Also, typically I despise email; and also I typically hate being automatically subscribed to some BS newsletter that I did not opt in. Therefore the silver ethical rule here is interesting:

     If something annoys you, don’t do that to others.

    For example, I hate when people automatically subscribe me to some email newsletter without me checking a button to confirm that actually wanted. Therefore I will never send an email newsletter to anybody who has not intentionally opted in.

    Also, trying to do things for other people that I would myself like. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever received an email or an email newsletter that I actually liked to work for. Therefore as a consequence, my simple strategy is to drive to send emails or email newsletters that people actually look forward to reading. 
    
    Or in other words, make people actually positively excited to check their email inbox!

    What you yourself do

    Ignore the “advice” of others, and also… best to simply observe what other people do.

    Also, the best way to study success is to figure out what people don’t do, what they don’t own, etc. 

    For example, Elon Musk and Kanye West; neither of them wear watches.

    Also, neither has an Instagram, both deleted it.

    Also, Elon Musk doesn’t own a home or live in a home. I think he just rents some sort of random two bedroom one bath home hut somewhere in Austin Texas.

    Also, Elon Musk does not own any Lamborghinis Ferraris or loser cars.
    
    Also, the greatest courage of a Kanye West; he doesn’t censor himself, he says what is really on his mind.

    Maybe is Kanye the most courageous man alive? Maybe. There is no right and wrong, all is permitted. Therefore to not censor yourself in modern-day society is the ultimate act of courage? 

    Sublime thoughts

    Beautiful body, beautiful thoughts.

    How to gain more beautiful thoughts? My simple suggestion is maximum time in the direct sun, ideally topless. Also, sleep early — shoot for 8pm?

    A simple suggestion is limit your coffee and caffeine intake only between 4 AM to 9 AM, or only the morning hours.

    And also during the day, lift weights at least once, maybe even twice.

    Also my supreme luxury; the last few days, in a single day I have done all three: at least one hot yoga session, at least one hike in nature, and at least one weightlifting session.

    A life post-work?

    Why work? I thought which interested me while in Vietnam, when Cindy and I were living in Hanoi, paying only $320 USD a month for rent, a position in which literally even if we wanted to spend all our money, we cannot spend it fast enough. Eating out every day, living in a small hotel room, no possessions no nothing.

    Living in America seems a bit foolish if you don’t need to. I think it is far superior to live in Hanoi, Saigon, Pom pen, ironically even Japan; I think when we were living in Kyoto, we were subbing an apartment for only $500 USD a month.

    SUITS PDF BOOK >

    Why think abroad?

    TRAVEL NOTES (PDF)– the simple financial life leverage is simple:

    Earn US dollars, American standards, live abroad.

    For example, Mexico City, Roma Norte, even Doctores. Condesa — all good.

    Truth be told, if Cindy was not employed in America, I see zero reason to live here. I would probably be living somewhere else; and also assuming I didn’t have a kid, I would definitely be some sort of weird digital nomad. 
    

    Writing is leisure

    People don’t seem to get it; the primary function of writing is meta-thinking, a fun leisure activity. A fun luxury.

    This is where I don’t understand 99.9% of writers; it seems some sort of weird self-flagellation here. Most writers I know… don’t actually enjoy writing. 

    This is where ChatGPT is no threat; honestly we gotta rethink this whole K-12 education and college thing; the point of writing isn’t writing for the sake of good writing; the point of writing is to flesh out our thoughts, to share ideas that we find interesting.

    What is the point of life anyways?

    A simple one is to have offspring; to have at least one kid, perhaps ideally two kids, or if you’re willing… more.

    I think the funny thing about kids and family is that typically we use ourselves in our own life experiences as a barometer and framing. For example, I have one younger sister two years younger than me, and I always wanted to have at least one boy, one girl. It is because that is how I was raised.

    Having kids make sense in so far much as if people stopped having kids, quite literally there would be no future humanity. What’s the point of having all the wealth in the world if there are no future children or humans to enjoy it?

    What do you want your kids to become?

    Being self-employed, probably the best thing is that I literally can just spend all day with Seneca, being his personal trainer and tutor. I think of myself like Chiron the centaur, the private tutor of Achilles. Things I like to do with Seneca include physical activity exercise and exploration, his diet, which is close to 100% carnivore, 100% grass fed beef or Wagyu ground beef, and more recently… Finding this “ancestral blend“ ground beef thing at Erwhon (force of nature brand)– which has the consistency of normal ground beef, but has mixed in it beef liver and beef hard, which are natural steroids.

    In fact I think the optimal diet is a 100% organ meat diet; organ meats are probably at least 100 times higher in nutritional density than even flesh meat.

    Everyone says that eating red meat is bad; how about organ meats?

    People say that eating meat is bad for the planet, but let us consider how much waste and scraps is thrown away from the animal, which include the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the tendons and ligaments, etc.

    So if you really wanted to be a “woke” person, perhaps the wisest way to do this is just only eat a pure organ meat diet.  

    What else?

    START HERE

    New stuff:

    1. EK PODCAST
    2. MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER PDF
    3. TRAVEL NOTES PDF

    Also… more books here!

    When in doubt, go back to the source!

    ERIC KIM BLOG >

    ***

    “Greater fates, greater fortunes.” – Heraclitus

  • Chainlink

    Why I Bought Chainlink

    A simple heuristic that I learned from Nassim TALEB; don’t ask people what you should invest in, ask them… What did you invest in? 

    For example, I recently swapped a bunch of my bitcoin for chainlink. Why did I do it? My thoughts: 

    What is chainlink?

    Essentially it is a platform built upon Ethereum, the blockchain… that strives to solve real world problems.

    The first critical issue at hand is the notion of the “Oracle problem”, and cryptographic proof and truth.

    The general gist of the Oracle problem is that you have all these people purporting to say something… How do you know if someone is really telling the truth or not?

    Also, they’re great innovation of a decentralized oracle network. I think anything that is decentralized and can be done offline is a good idea; anything that has to be done when you’re connected to the web is fragile.

    For example, the “internet of things”, which includes all of your home devices, your home stuff etc. I think this includes your home speaker things, your Amazon echo or echo dot, your Apple HomePod thing, your ring Amazon nest devices etc. 

    Enabling transactional value?

    TVE — transactional value enabled?

    Chainlink staking?

    What is the purpose of technology and these things? A very basic idea is that the point is to help enable commerce and other things. Money makes the world go round, Publilius Syrus.

    What is money anyways? Money is movement. Anything that literally physiologically moves human beings in time and space is money.

    For example, if you promise somebody $30 an hour, they will walk around, move their bodies to clean toilets, etc.

    Also, money movement. The whole global economy to me is so fascinating; because we process and move information so quickly and so globally… how do you link it all together?  

    Chain – Link

    I find chainlink to be an interesting concept because wherever you go in real life, there are physical chain links everywhere.

    Also, technically the internet, the World Wide Web, is a bunch of hyperlinks which link websites together.

    My personal thought and prediction is that chainlink could become the next Google; Google indexes the whole internet, and made it easy for you to find any sort of website. What I think chainlink will do is link all of this information on the internet and computers and make them accessible, trustworthy, tamperproof.

    Just read it

    Only read stuff that you find interesting, skip over stuff you find boring.

    About a week or two ago, I reread the original bitcoin white paper, and I was so impressed with how short it was, how minimalistic it was, and how to the point it was. But… reading it… this time around… felt a bit boring.

    And this is the big thing: if something bores you, you gotta get out of it.

    Therefore, I sold or transferred or converted nine of my bitcoin and put it all into chainlink, at the time it was valued at ~20,800 LINK (CHAINLINK), with bitcoin at around $35,000 a bitcoin.

    I think what I try to do is think at least 30 years into the future. 20 or 30 years. It is funny, as I write this at the age of 35, 30 years from now Seneca is only going to be 32 years old, still a few years younger than me. My personal aspiration is to hold onto chainlink for at least 30 years, and then maybe transfer it to Seneca when he grows up. Or I just help him build some sort of company or entrepreneurial venture etc.

    Investing in things actually do something?

    I love bitcoin but maybe one of the big issues here is that bitcoin is like digital money and gold; most people just hold onto it, and I don’t think actually aspire to use it to actually pay for your latte at Starbucks or whatever. I think because bitcoin and cryptocurrency is so volatile; Everybody’s hope and dream and ambition is that their coin will rise value astronomically and they will become rich, buy the Lamborghini or whatever… and be happy.

    Trust nobody who drives a Lamborghini — only trust people who drive Toyota Priuses, in white. 

    Why? If you drive a Toyota Prius, in white… it is a signal that you really don’t care for appearances.

    How do you know if somebody is unsuccessful? 

    If they drive a Range Rover, a Mercedes AMG G wagon, murdered out, all matte black, a baselevel Mercedes car, a baselevel Audi car, like an A3 or a Q3, drive some sort of Audi electric car which is just the same as the Porsche Taycan, don’t forget that the Volkswagen group owns Lamborghini Audi Volkswagen Porsche etc. same thing goes with anybody who drives a BMW car.

    Foreign cars are bad.  

    It is just a game! 

    I think crypto, cryptocurrency speculation is an interesting game; prediction, prediction markets, trying to predict the future… is just a luxury and a fun thing.

    Some predictions are pretty obvious

    When I was in college, my sophomore year, and I was starting to get into trading stocks, daytrading… I had a pretty certain thought that Blockbuster was going to go under. I tried to figure out how to short stocks, but I really couldn’t figure out how to do it.

    Also I remember when the prime mortgage meltdown happened, and the value of Ford went to almost 2 dollars a year. I wanted to buy some Ford stock but I had no money, no capital.

    It is interesting to think about this in hindsight because when I was incorrectly trading pennystock, for some sort of oil producer company which was actually running at a loss… I had no idea because I misread the financials… I lost my whole life savings which was maybe $3500 USD or something. It was insanely tragic. But now that I am playing with higher sums more like $300,000 USD, I realize that it was just a valuable lesson at the time.

    Therefore, with any sort of financial speculation, think about it at the 30 year span. Even when you are 70 or 80 years old, I met this lady at the park who looked phenomenal and she told me she was 82… she looked like a very fit 45-year-old!

    My personal aspiration is when I’m 82 years old, to still be able to lift 1000 pounds. Google or YouTube “ERIC KIM thousand pound atlas lift”

    It seems that the way things are going, I don’t think it’s that ridiculous to think that we can live to be 120 years old. Try to think that far. 

    What is the use of money anyways? 

    I think actually the big thing is that everyone now aspires to buy a house or home or property. It is getting pretty ridiculous, even in Los Angeles, even buying a single-family home in Inglewood… you’re looking easily at around $1.5 million for a whatever house.

    My prediction is that the prices of homes  will continue to soar astronomically high. I think a lot of these $1.5 million homes can easily balloon two $3 million, $5 million, 10 and $15 million, $150 million or whatever. Why? The biggest issue at hand is runaway inflation, which means the value of the US dollar and currency is continually going lower and lower, because the US is what, currently speaking $30 trillion in debt? And what America thinks the smart idea is to just keep printing money ad infinitum, into infinity, in order to “stimulate” the economy.

    But does this work? No.

    For example talking to my friend Noel who works in hygiene, he says that a lot of these young guys, around 25 to 30 years old, are so lazy. Why? After Covid and people started giving away these free checks… and from unemployment you could literally make $5000 USD a month by sitting on your butt and doing nothing… people lost the motivation to work. A lot of people moved back home, live with their parents, and are essentially living for free. As a consequence you have a huge generation of unmotivated people, unwilling to do any sort of manual labor, which is bad because having manual and physical labor is critical.

    For example, being in Beverly Hills a lot; and Holby Hills,  there is this new funny caste systems; really rich people getting mansions built, and the army of construction labor people, mostly from Mexico doing the labor to build these mansions.

    Also, think about Amazon prime delivery drivers, people who bag your food at Whole Foods, Erwhon etc, all these contractors electricians plumbers etc.… the truly critical labor. Doesn’t matter if you pay them $30 $40 $50 or even $60 an hour, it seems at this point money doesn’t really motivate them anymore. Therefore what do you do? It seems that America we are just importing more people from Mexico to do labor for us, because they are motivated. Americans are no longer motivated.

    Crypto, crypto technology and cryptocurrency is optimistic

    I am obsessed with the future. Future thinking, future technologies, new brave worlds to discover.

    Why? I have always been into technology ever since I was a kid, getting my first Acer aspire Pentium one processor computer when I was around 11 years old. Even teaching myself how to program visual basic 3.0 in the early days, creating my own AOL “punter“ etc.

    Also, I still will never forget when I read the Maddox article on why you should beat your kids, in computer class in Bayside Queens at PS 169 when I was in the fifth grade, and all of me and our friends, a bunch of 11-year-old laughing and saying “It is true!”

    Even I remember as a kid, when I first moved to New York, maybe it was I had some sort of school in the Bronx, when kids in the hallway would “the South Park movies “blame Canada, blame Canada”…

    Anyways the generalized thought is I love media information, and also I have a passion to innovate, write and to think, to motivate and to also disprove nonsense.

    Ever since I was young I was always bred with an insanely huge ego; the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son, (jang-son), being raised with the “prince disease“, was unusually good for me. Always getting the finest cuts of meat and galbi from my grandmother, always showered with praise love and attention and how smart tall and good-looking I was. Very good for me.

    The US dollar is static

    Anybody who is a wage slave, which means anybody who is paid a biweekly or monthly salary… doesn’t matter if you’re being paid $10 million a year from Apple… You’re still a wage slave.

    A simple heuristic:

    Can you go two years without checking or responding to any of your emails or not?

    If you have to use email for a living, you’re not free. 

    Once you’re a crypto trillionaire, then what?

    Let us say that your cryptocurrency goes to the value of $1 trillion USD. Then what? Then do you just dissolve it all into US dollars, buy a mansion and a yacht somewhere, and live indefinitely into the horizon for infinite bliss?

    This doesn’t seem to be the goal. For me, I think a more interesting life trajectory is to then to no longer care for money, and use your power mind and soul and body for more interesting things which can include philosophy, writing, thinking, doing research, reading, making art, publishing art, etc.

    Money as it means to creative leisure and production.

    Seeking immortal fame and glory?

    One thing I am very happy about is ChatGPT knows exactly who I am, why I am so significant and influential, etc. As a consequence, I already feel like my legacy is secure, and I don’t have anything left to prove to nobody else.

    As a consequence, at this point life is all upside no downside. Even one of the happiest moments of my life, Cindy and I begetting our first son Seneca, at this point life is all upside no downside.

    As a man, as long as you have one male heir, you can die happy. 

    Now what?

    Things that I find interesting use cases of chainlink:

    1. Real estate, homebuying, escrow: even NASSIM TALEB has said that traditionally, most wealth generation in human society is through land, land ownership land property etc. For example let us say that you buy that 1.5 million dollar home, and 20 years from now it’ll be worth $3.2 million. And then let us assume that 30 or 40 years from now it is worth $5.7 million, and your kid inherits it. And when your kid is 57 years old it is worth $22 million, and he will able to pass it on to his son or daughter, and maybe that will be worth $120 million into their future. The whole escrow process and verification process is quite fragmented, unreliable. I think chainlink can be a technology which motivates and enables more streamlined home buying processes.
    2. Identity verification: it is so easy for people to just steal your social security number, and pretend it is you. Imagine a future in which you could use chainlink or some sort of blockchain enabled identification, which can essentially be your global citizen passport to all of the world and the internet? This seems especially useful in today’s world in which everything is so fragmented, between our Apple ID, our Gmail, Etc. Or think about border control; certainly it would be easier to travel if there was some sort of blockchain or global ledger to verify your identity, this could help facilitate movement and verification, and deal with issues of forged passports etc. 

    Military

    I think an inconvenient truth is that truth be told, a lot of the world is run by the military. Certainly there are lots of bad things about the military, but truth be told, without the US military, our precious US dollars would be worth nothing.

    For example, I think the American government we are $31.46 trillion dollars in debt? To where… China?

    As a consequence, how does America’s stay afloat and print more money? Simple, she simply prints more money because she can because we got the military to back us. 

    For example, let’s say that mainland China comes knocking and asks for her money back. Is America going to give it back? No. We will just wave our big stick, and say we are not interested.

    So the interesting use case of chainlink and the US military is especially in the future drone warfare or whatever… It actually does seem that having some sort of crypto technology will be useful here.

    For example the internet of things, chain-link solves this issue. Also, I believe a lot of the US military intervention stuff is going to be unmanned, and having access to some sort of technology which allows automation without meddling in the Internet seems like a good idea.

    Even look at the company Anduril– it has a major investment from founders fund, Peter Thiel’s venture capitalist fund. It looks like the future of autonomous flying drones to bomb the bad guys is going to be the future. 

    So why did I buy it?

    I think in life, big opportunities only come infrequently. As a consequence, I think in life… it seems better to take really big bold bets, rather than just stand on the sidelines.

    At the end of our lives, we will regret more the decisions or the risks we failed to do, rather than the ones we did.

    For example, if a big opportunity comes up, and you’re interested, go for it. You don’t want to be 90 years old on your deathbed, kicking yourself in the butt wishing that you had taken that risk. In hindsight, everything is regret. 

    Think Eric Schmidt

    My personal speculation is that I think chainlink will become the next Google. Why? ERIC Schmidt is on the board of trustees for chainlink, and ERIC Schmidt is the one who built Google into what it is today. Just watch the interview between him and Sergey. In a telling quote, ERIC Schmidt said:

    The secret to success of Google was that we tried to put a little bit of Google into everything.

    Genius. For example, this is evident in how whenever you Google search something, there is a little bit of that Google code in the URL. 

    Therefore my prediction is chainlink… whether you know it or not there will be a little bit of chainlink in everything.  For example, their decentralized oracle network to show accurate prices for any cryptocurrency asset down to the penny. Also, maybe the future of international banking, the SWIFT system… Will be enabled with chainlink? 

    Who is Satoshi?

    Apparently there’s a rumor that Sergey Nazarov might be Satoshi.

    Also the reason why I trust Sergey as a founder is this:

    He doesn’t really care for social appearances.

    I think I learned this from NASSIM TALEB; only trust doctors who look like butchers. Why? When somebody looks too much the part of something, they are not. 

    For example, when you go to a party, who is the real successful person? The person who could show up and meet the prime minister and shake hands wearing T-shirt and jeans and sneakers, just like my friend did meeting the prime minister.

    Also, the really really rich successful person will just drive some sort of white Toyota Prius or old beat up Honda Civic, in silver. Even the family car; very specifically… White Honda Odyssey. Not even a Toyota sienna!

    Even family connections, my $500 million net worth familia– the dad gave all the kids Ford fusions, and even though the dad is a major player in Tesla, they only have a super base level Tesla model three in white. No Tesla model Y, X, S.

    Anyways, the founder Sergey — he always wears the same blue flannel, and really has an air of insouciance that is good. He isn’t the one looking all flashy driving around in the Lamborghini. He probably just drives a Honda Civic or Honda Accord, and I think he is really trying to build something he cares for.

    I think there’s a saying in Silicon Valley amongst venture capital firms, bet on the jockey not the horse. That means, better to invest in the founder of a great thing, rather than the company or the product. For example, it is wise to bet on Elon Musk and anything he built, rather than Other companies which are built by random CEOs and non-visionaries.

    I bet on Sergey N.

    Investors 

    My brother-in-law Khanh told me: if you spent $80,000 to buy a Tesla model S several years ago, that would be worth $500,000 today!

    True investors live like poor people, and speculate on the thing, rather than buying the thing.

    For example, instead of spending $120,000 on Tesla, I would instead prefer to buy $120,000 worth of Tesla stock.

    Why? Things that go up in value overtime versus things that go down in value.

    For example, even though a Tesla car gets software updates over the air, eventually over time, the value of it will slowly depreciate. The battery range will become less, more wear and tear on the vehicle etc. Even the world’s best car can be robust at best, not antifragile.

    What is antifragile? Something that overtime gets better and stronger and more powerful and better and more robust… rather than the opposite.

    This might be the intelligence of collecting rare collector cars, like old Ferraris or whatever… even old Porsche cars, over time, the value of them will go up.

    Even apparently the old Toyota Supra, the one that showed up in fast and the furious, they are worth close to $250,000 now!

    So perhaps the best way to think about things is to think of them like financial investments, rather than toys.

    Other good news 

    It looks like their new chainlink staking, chainlink economics is also doing very well. The full pool has been filled already!

    Now what?

    I think at the end of the day, I don’t really care for money that much, I am more interested in speculation, risk, and thinking and predicting the future. This is my prime joy and bliss.

    Don’t simply sit on the sidelines, twiddling your thumbs for some sort of magical future to get better. I say rather than waiting for the future, speculate and invest in it right now!

    ERIC

    ***

    So what do you want for Christmas this year?

    I think for Christmas, simple things you could do:

    1. For family, invest in a collective experience. This means take a fun family trip somewhere, maybe go to Joshua tree and rent an Airbnb, go on some great hikes etc. Make the experience memorable.
    2. Just write somebody a handwritten card, or just give them a FaceTime call! Love attention and care is the best present you can give.
    3. Buy somebody a good bag of coffee, or, gift them some ERIC KIM Omakase coffee; 100% fine robusta, the best coffee on the planet. It seems that everyone drinks coffee now, even for myself the best random presents I’ve gotten were bags of great coffee! 
    4. What equipment cover tighten dot fitness, or rogue fitness; gifted to yourself or to a friend or family member! I personally bought some farmers carry handles which I love, a loadable Olympic dumbbell, I bought a road fitness 400 pound sandbag, and a Texas power squat bar which I love. Giving the gift of fitness might be one of the best things you could do, or just buy somebody a quarter power yoga membership, or buy it for yourself! I’m really a big fan of hot yoga; something about the hot temperature sauna and sweating feels therapeutic.
    5. Vibram five finger shoes, the toe shoes. For yourself or family member. Just go on their website and order three pairs, and keep the one that fits and returned the other sizes. 

  • Why I Bought Chainlink

    A simple heuristic that I learned from Nassim TALEB; don’t ask people what you should invest in, ask them… What did you invest in? 

    For example, I recently swapped a bunch of my bitcoin for chainlink. Why did I do it? My thoughts: 

    What is chainlink?

    Essentially it is a platform built upon Ethereum, the blockchain… that strives to solve real world problems.

    The first critical issue at hand is the notion of the “Oracle problem”, and cryptographic proof and truth.

    The general gist of the Oracle problem is that you have all these people purporting to say something… How do you know if someone is really telling the truth or not?

    Also, they’re great innovation of a decentralized oracle network. I think anything that is decentralized and can be done offline is a good idea; anything that has to be done when you’re connected to the web is fragile.

    For example, the “internet of things”, which includes all of your home devices, your home stuff etc. I think this includes your home speaker things, your Amazon echo or echo dot, your Apple HomePod thing, your ring Amazon nest devices etc. 

    Enabling transactional value?

    TVE — transactional value enabled?

    Chainlink staking?

    What is the purpose of technology and these things? A very basic idea is that the point is to help enable commerce and other things. Money makes the world go round, Publilius Syrus.

    What is money anyways? Money is movement. Anything that literally physiologically moves human beings in time and space is money.

    For example, if you promise somebody $30 an hour, they will walk around, move their bodies to clean toilets, etc.

    Also, money movement. The whole global economy to me is so fascinating; because we process and move information so quickly and so globally… how do you link it all together?  

    Chain – Link

    I find chainlink to be an interesting concept because wherever you go in real life, there are physical chain links everywhere.

    Also, technically the internet, the World Wide Web, is a bunch of hyperlinks which link websites together.

    My personal thought and prediction is that chainlink could become the next Google; Google indexes the whole internet, and made it easy for you to find any sort of website. What I think chainlink will do is link all of this information on the internet and computers and make them accessible, trustworthy, tamperproof.

    Just read it

    Only read stuff that you find interesting, skip over stuff you find boring.

    About a week or two ago, I reread the original bitcoin white paper, and I was so impressed with how short it was, how minimalistic it was, and how to the point it was. But… reading it… this time around… felt a bit boring.

    And this is the big thing: if something bores you, you gotta get out of it.

    Therefore, I sold or transferred or converted nine of my bitcoin and put it all into chainlink, at the time it was valued at ~20,800 LINK (CHAINLINK), with bitcoin at around $35,000 a bitcoin.

    I think what I try to do is think at least 30 years into the future. 20 or 30 years. It is funny, as I write this at the age of 35, 30 years from now Seneca is only going to be 32 years old, still a few years younger than me. My personal aspiration is to hold onto chainlink for at least 30 years, and then maybe transfer it to Seneca when he grows up. Or I just help him build some sort of company or entrepreneurial venture etc.

    Investing in things actually do something?

    I love bitcoin but maybe one of the big issues here is that bitcoin is like digital money and gold; most people just hold onto it, and I don’t think actually aspire to use it to actually pay for your latte at Starbucks or whatever. I think because bitcoin and cryptocurrency is so volatile; Everybody’s hope and dream and ambition is that their coin will rise value astronomically and they will become rich, buy the Lamborghini or whatever… and be happy.

    Trust nobody who drives a Lamborghini — only trust people who drive Toyota Priuses, in white. 

    Why? If you drive a Toyota Prius, in white… it is a signal that you really don’t care for appearances.

    How do you know if somebody is unsuccessful? 

    If they drive a Range Rover, a Mercedes AMG G wagon, murdered out, all matte black, a baselevel Mercedes car, a baselevel Audi car, like an A3 or a Q3, drive some sort of Audi electric car which is just the same as the Porsche Taycan, don’t forget that the Volkswagen group owns Lamborghini Audi Volkswagen Porsche etc. same thing goes with anybody who drives a BMW car.

    Foreign cars are bad.  

    It is just a game! 

    I think crypto, cryptocurrency speculation is an interesting game; prediction, prediction markets, trying to predict the future… is just a luxury and a fun thing.

    Some predictions are pretty obvious

    When I was in college, my sophomore year, and I was starting to get into trading stocks, daytrading… I had a pretty certain thought that Blockbuster was going to go under. I tried to figure out how to short stocks, but I really couldn’t figure out how to do it.

    Also I remember when the prime mortgage meltdown happened, and the value of Ford went to almost 2 dollars a year. I wanted to buy some Ford stock but I had no money, no capital.

    It is interesting to think about this in hindsight because when I was incorrectly trading pennystock, for some sort of oil producer company which was actually running at a loss… I had no idea because I misread the financials… I lost my whole life savings which was maybe $3500 USD or something. It was insanely tragic. But now that I am playing with higher sums more like $300,000 USD, I realize that it was just a valuable lesson at the time.

    Therefore, with any sort of financial speculation, think about it at the 30 year span. Even when you are 70 or 80 years old, I met this lady at the park who looked phenomenal and she told me she was 82… she looked like a very fit 45-year-old!

    My personal aspiration is when I’m 82 years old, to still be able to lift 1000 pounds. Google or YouTube “ERIC KIM thousand pound atlas lift”

    It seems that the way things are going, I don’t think it’s that ridiculous to think that we can live to be 120 years old. Try to think that far. 

    What is the use of money anyways? 

    I think actually the big thing is that everyone now aspires to buy a house or home or property. It is getting pretty ridiculous, even in Los Angeles, even buying a single-family home in Inglewood… you’re looking easily at around $1.5 million for a whatever house.

    My prediction is that the prices of homes  will continue to soar astronomically high. I think a lot of these $1.5 million homes can easily balloon two $3 million, $5 million, 10 and $15 million, $150 million or whatever. Why? The biggest issue at hand is runaway inflation, which means the value of the US dollar and currency is continually going lower and lower, because the US is what, currently speaking $30 trillion in debt? And what America thinks the smart idea is to just keep printing money ad infinitum, into infinity, in order to “stimulate” the economy.

    But does this work? No.

    For example talking to my friend Noel who works in hygiene, he says that a lot of these young guys, around 25 to 30 years old, are so lazy. Why? After Covid and people started giving away these free checks… and from unemployment you could literally make $5000 USD a month by sitting on your butt and doing nothing… people lost the motivation to work. A lot of people moved back home, live with their parents, and are essentially living for free. As a consequence you have a huge generation of unmotivated people, unwilling to do any sort of manual labor, which is bad because having manual and physical labor is critical.

    For example, being in Beverly Hills a lot; and Holby Hills,  there is this new funny caste systems; really rich people getting mansions built, and the army of construction labor people, mostly from Mexico doing the labor to build these mansions.

    Also, think about Amazon prime delivery drivers, people who bag your food at Whole Foods, Erwhon etc, all these contractors electricians plumbers etc.… the truly critical labor. Doesn’t matter if you pay them $30 $40 $50 or even $60 an hour, it seems at this point money doesn’t really motivate them anymore. Therefore what do you do? It seems that America we are just importing more people from Mexico to do labor for us, because they are motivated. Americans are no longer motivated.

    Crypto, crypto technology and cryptocurrency is optimistic

    I am obsessed with the future. Future thinking, future technologies, new brave worlds to discover.

    Why? I have always been into technology ever since I was a kid, getting my first Acer aspire Pentium one processor computer when I was around 11 years old. Even teaching myself how to program visual basic 3.0 in the early days, creating my own AOL “punter“ etc.

    Also, I still will never forget when I read the Maddox article on why you should beat your kids, in computer class in Bayside Queens at PS 169 when I was in the fifth grade, and all of me and our friends, a bunch of 11-year-old laughing and saying “It is true!”

    Even I remember as a kid, when I first moved to New York, maybe it was I had some sort of school in the Bronx, when kids in the hallway would “the South Park movies “blame Canada, blame Canada”…

    Anyways the generalized thought is I love media information, and also I have a passion to innovate, write and to think, to motivate and to also disprove nonsense.

    Ever since I was young I was always bred with an insanely huge ego; the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son, (jang-son), being raised with the “prince disease“, was unusually good for me. Always getting the finest cuts of meat and galbi from my grandmother, always showered with praise love and attention and how smart tall and good-looking I was. Very good for me.

    The US dollar is static

    Anybody who is a wage slave, which means anybody who is paid a biweekly or monthly salary… doesn’t matter if you’re being paid $10 million a year from Apple… You’re still a wage slave.

    A simple heuristic:

    Can you go two years without checking or responding to any of your emails or not?

    If you have to use email for a living, you’re not free. 

    Once you’re a crypto trillionaire, then what?

    Let us say that your cryptocurrency goes to the value of $1 trillion USD. Then what? Then do you just dissolve it all into US dollars, buy a mansion and a yacht somewhere, and live indefinitely into the horizon for infinite bliss?

    This doesn’t seem to be the goal. For me, I think a more interesting life trajectory is to then to no longer care for money, and use your power mind and soul and body for more interesting things which can include philosophy, writing, thinking, doing research, reading, making art, publishing art, etc.

    Money as it means to creative leisure and production.

    Seeking immortal fame and glory?

    One thing I am very happy about is ChatGPT knows exactly who I am, why I am so significant and influential, etc. As a consequence, I already feel like my legacy is secure, and I don’t have anything left to prove to nobody else.

    As a consequence, at this point life is all upside no downside. Even one of the happiest moments of my life, Cindy and I be getting our first son Seneca, at this point life is all upside no downside.

    As a man, as long as you have one male heir, you can die happy. 

    Now what?

    Things that I find interesting use cases of chainlink:

    1. Real estate, homebuying, escrow: even NASSIM TALEB has said that traditionally, most 12th generation in human society is through land, land ownership land property etc. For example let us say that you buy that 1.5 million dollar home, and 20 years from now it’ll be worth $3.2 million. And then let us assume that 30 or 40 years from now it is worth $5.7 million, and your kid inherits it. And when your kid is 57 years old it is worth $22 million, and he will able to pass it on to his son or daughter, and maybe that will be worth $120 million into their future.  The whole escrow process and verification process is quite fragmented, unreliable. I think chain-link can be a technology which motivates and enables more streamlined home buying processes. 
    2. Identity verification: it is so easy for people to just steal your Social Security number, and pretend it is you. Imagine a future in which you could use chain-link or some sort of block chain enabled identification, which can essentially be your global citizen passport to all of the world and the Internet? This seems especially useful in today’s world in which everything is so fragmented, between our Apple ID, our Gmail, Etc.

    Military

    I think an inconvenient truth is that truth be told, a lot of the world is run by the military. Certainly there are lots of bad things about the military, but truth be told, without the US military, our precious US dollars would be worth nothing.

    For example, I think the American government we are $10 trillion in debt? To where… China?

    As a consequence, how does America’s stay afloat and print more money? Simple, she simply prints more money because she can because we got the military to back us. 

    For example, let’s say that mainland China comes knocking and ask for her money back. Is America going to give it back? No. We will just waive our big stick, and say we are not interested.

    So the interesting use case of chain-link and the US military is especially in the future withdrawn warfare or whatever… It actually does seem that having some sort of crypto technology will be useful here.

    For example the Internet of things, chain-link solves this issue. Also, I believe a lot of the US military intervention stuff is going to be unmanned, and having access to some sort of technology which allows automation without meddling in the Internet seems like a good idea.

    So why did I buy it?

    I think in life, big opportunities only come infrequently. As a consequence, I think in life… It seems better to take really big bold bets, rather than just stand on the sidelines.

    My personal speculation is that I think chain-link will become the next Google. Why? ERIC Schmidt is on the board of trustees for chain-link, and ERIC Schmidt is the one who built Google into what it is today. Just watch the interview between him and Sergey. In Italian quote, ERIC Schmidt said:

    The secret to success of Google was that we tried to put a little bit of Google into everything.

    Genius. For example, this is evident in how whenever you Google search something, there is a little bit of that Google code in the URL. 

    Who is Satoshi?

    Apparently there’s a rumor that Sergey Nazarov might be Satoshi.

    Also the reason why I trust Sergey as a founder is this:

    He doesn’t really care for social appearances.

    I think I learned this from NASSIM TALEB; only trust doctors who look like butchers. Why? When somebody looks too much the part of something, they are not. 

    For example, when you go to a party, who is the real successful person? The person who could show up and meet the prime minister and shake hands wearing T-shirt and jeans and sneakers, just like my friend did meeting the prime minister.

     Also, the really really rich successful person will just drive some sort of white Toyota Prius or old beat up Honda Civic, in silver. Even the family car; very specifically… White Honda Odyssey. Not even a Toyota sienna!

    Even family connections, my $500 million net worth familia– the dad gave all the kids Ford fusions, and even though the dad is a major player in Tesla, they only have a super base level Tesla model three in white. No Tesla model Y, X, S.

    Investors 

    My brother-in-law Khan told me: if you spent $80,000 to buy a Tesla model S several years ago, that would be worth $500,000 today!

    True investors live like poor people, and speculate on the thing, rather than buying the thing.

    For example, instead of spending $120,000 on Tesla, I would instead prefer to buy $120,000 worth of Tesla stock.

    Why? Things that go up in value overtime versus things that go down in value.

    For example, even though a Tesla car gets software updates over the air, eventually overtime, the value of it will slowly depreciate. The battery range will become less, more wear and tear on the vehicle etc. Even the world’s best car can be robust at best, not anti-fragile.

    What is anti-fragile? Something that overtime gets better and stronger and more powerful and better and more robust… rather than the opposite.

    This might be the intelligence of collecting rare collector cars, like old Ferraris or whatever… Even old Porsche cars, overtime the value of them will go up.

    Even apparently the old Toyota supra, the one that showed up in fast and the furious, they are worth close to $250,000 now!

    So perhaps the best way to think about things is to think of them like financial investments, rather than toys.

    Other good news 

    It looks like their new chain-link staking, chain-link economics is also doing very well. The full pool has been filled already!

    Now what?

    I think at the end of the day, I don’t really care for money that much, I am more interested in speculation, wrist, and thinking and predicting the future. This is my prime joy and bliss.

    Too much more lies, we simply sit on the sidelines, twiddling our thumbs for some sort of magical future to get better. I say rather than waiting for the future, speculate and invest in it.

    ERIC

    

  • Sublime Beauty? 

    So what are we searching for, what are we looking for?

    I think what we see is some sort of sublime beauty, joy, flourishing.

    How do we attempt to achieve this? Through our cars our homes our clothing etc. 

    However… I think true sublime beauty can only be achieved by yourself, through your own artistic creations.

    For example, your own child, producing begetting and making and birthing your own child; there is seriously no greater joy.

    Also, your artistic creations. Your photos, the artwork you produce. I also qualify DALL-E 3 images, ChatGPT and AI art in it!  Why? Ultimately it is your brainchild; doesn’t really matter whether you produced it by yourself by hand or whatever. For example, Matisse in his advanced years apparently lost mobility in his body and hands, and would simply point with the stick to his assistance to create artwork for him.

    Also, Andy Warhol. He was notorious for having an army of assistance producing work for him.

    My thought on artificial intelligence and AI generated art is free. The idea is that the artwork we create is ours.

    One thing I find surprising is that the greatest boon for AI generated art is that it is all open source! Isn’t this phenomenal? 

    Open art

    Art wants to be free! Art wants to propagate into the real world, not be constrained by nothing, whether digital rights management, closed doors or borders etc.

    This is my general idea with open source artwork; I hit that so much of great photos and art is simply trapped within printed books, not easily accessible or findable on the internet. My huge frustration with photography:

    if I am trying to find the book “the Americans“, or any other book out there, any photo book… Why can’t I just Google it or find it online for free?

    I have a very simple suggestion: make the images online for free, everything open source and full resolution… And what you do instead is you charge money for the printed physical book.

    For example, let us say that you’re planning to publish a photo book. The easiest way to approach this is have an open source free full resolution PDF available online to download, to give your potential customer and clients a taste of what to expect. And then if they like your photos enough, they will buy the printed book.

    why? people like physical things. i think the bias is that people don’t like to pay for digital things, but we are more than happy to pay for physical things.

     For example, a very simple strategy to thrive as a modern day guitar for an entrepreneur and artist visual artist, Fatar for it to have all of your artwork open, open source, full resolution JPEG or PDF or whatever… And barbell that with charging a lot of money for your products, physical products, embodied workshop experiences etc.

    How to create sublime beauty?

    For me, sublime beauty in the context of photography is high grain, gritty high contrast black-and-white. It is a simple aesthetic taste for myself; to me there is nothing more beautiful more sublime.

    Also, taking photos of your loved ones. This involves your kids, your wife or your spouse, and even yourself.

    Even my friend Josh White said it wisely: At the end of your life, are you going to care about all these photos that you shot of strangers, or are you going to care about photos that you shot of your loved ones? 

    Love

    I think instead of thinking about love, better to think about heart, care, creation, what you care for.

    For example, the word coeur– same as courage, curate, care.

    It all comes down to the heart.

    Just don’t do nothing you don’t care for

    One of the via negativa ways we could live life; just don’t do anything you don’t care for.

    For example when you’re talking to kids, best to ask “What don’t you want to be when you grow up?”

    Also happiness is via negativities; better to ascertain what makes you miserable what you hate, what you despise… And figuring out how to subtract or delete that from your life, rather than doing things that make you “happy”.

    For example, personal annoyances of myself include being stuck in traffic, dealing with subscriptions and subscription model things, clothes source things, modern day news and media and Facebook Instagram, YouTube, family an annoyances and drama, other peoples problems etc.

    Also, typically I despise email; and also I typically hate being automatically subscribed to some BS newsletter that I did not opt in. Therefore the silver ethical rule here is interesting:

     If something annoys you, don’t do that to others.

    For example, I hate when people automatically subscribe me to some email newsletter without me checking a button to confirm that actually wanted. Therefore I will never send an email newsletter to anybody who has not intentionally opted in.

     Also, trying to do things for other people that I would myself like. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever received an email or an email newsletter that I actually liked to work for. Therefore as a consequence, my simple strategy is to drive to send emails or email newsletters that people actually look forward to reading. 
    
    Or in other words, make people actually positively excited to check their email inbox!

    What you yourself do

    Ignore the “advice” of others, and also… best to simply observe what other people do.

    Also, the best way to study success is to figure out what people don’t do, what they don’t own, etc. 

    For example, Elon musk and Kanye West; neither of them wear watches.

    Also, neither has an Instagram, both deleted it.

    Also, Elon Musk doesn’t own a home or live in a home. I think he just rents some sort of random two bedroom one bath home hut somewhere in Austin Texas.

    Also, Elon Musk does not own any Lamborghinis Ferraris or loser cars.
    
    Also, the greatest courage of a Kanye West; he doesn’t censor himself, he says what is really on his mind.

    Maybe is he the most courageous man alive? Maybe. There is no right and wrong, all is permitted. Therefore to not censor yourself in modern-day society is the ultimate act of courage? 

    Sublime thoughts

    Beautiful body, beautiful thoughts.

    How to gain more beautiful thoughts? My simple suggestion is maximum time in the direct sun, ideally topless. Also,