Libertarians: “Our ideas are the best ideas! We should grow our community! We need to tell everyone about our wonderful ideas!” Libertarians: Refuse to read any books on effective communication, and won’t take feed back. Libertarians: Attempt to communicate their wonderful ideas by yelling at others about how stupid they are. ...decades later... Libertarians: “Why aren’t our ideas popular? Is it us? No, no, it’s because everyone else is so stupid.”

I find heaven and hell to be abusive concepts, but often we cling to these ideas as we want some sort of justice for the many unpunished crimes on earth. The spiritual conceptualization of heaven and hell, or my fav of the many, offers a sort of justice with much less of the abusive context. Here is the idea… Everything is energy and vibration. We are unique wavelengths of energy that inhabit bodies. A big part of what we are doing on Earth is ‘choosing our vibration’. Our energy determines how we move through the world, and how we move through the world determines our energy. This often gets interpreted as ‘low vibration’ = bad, and ‘high vibration’ = good. (hierarchical terminology there, but I digress) So a person who engages in violence and hate, etc. has...is, a low vibration. While a person who moves through the world with love and understanding has…is, a high vibration. When we pass and our bodies wither away, what remains is our energy. If we are high vibration, then we exist on a high vibration plane of existence. In contrast, if we are low vibration, then when we pass we exist on a low vibration plane of existence. So we can think of heaven as the high vibration plane of existence and hell as the low vibration plane of existence. (of course there would probably be many planes of existence.) So these aren’t places that we are sent as reward or punishment by some cosmic dictator, this is simply breathing the air that you are capable of breathing in the state in which you exist. ...does that make sense?

There is this false dichotomy with existential beliefs. We tend to think that we must either believe that we are our bodies and this is all there is to existence, or that we must submit to the cosmic dictator to be saved from eternal damnation. I'm going with none of the above. I'm not a fan of dictators either here or in the afterlife, I submit to no one, and I am also not my body. And wow the hubris to think that we have existence sorted out.

A protector protects the autonomy of others. Someone who thinks that protection = control is not a protector, they are a tyrant.

Good morning, here is your regularly scheduled reminder that emotions are simply messengers from your subconscious mind. Ignore them at your own peril.

I’ve realized that I need to be able to talk about regulation well, professionally. So I’m refining my thoughts on it. This will be kinda rambling while I sort through it… It was a big "aha moment" for me when I realized why people like communism. Our instincts are built for living in small tribes, and in that context communism makes great sense, so does ‘regulation’ or community standards. So I get why people want it, but it doesn't scale well. Regulation is often purchased and then turned into a tool to keep new competition out. Community standards aren’t well enforced when we are a society of strangers. Have you heard the saying ‘we shouldn’t ask what causes poverty. Poverty is the natural state. We should ask what causes prosperity.’ and I think this applies here to. It’s not so much a question of how do we make the right rules to avoid market problems, it’s more a question of what are the right conditions for creating a healthy and thriving market? But not all healthy and thriving markets are a good thing. We could have a healthy and thriving slave trade. So how do we balance this? With decent laws and law enforcement. A lot of regulation could be replaced with law enforcement. If fraud is illegal, then that’s enough ‘regulation’ in a lot of situations. Que mas?

Decent humans are capable of acknowledging the struggles of others. Others who are different from them, others who they disagree with. And this is pretty much the measure of adulthood. Are you capable of taking responsibility for your behavior and are you capable of acknowledging experiences and realities outside of yourself? ...have you realized that the world does not revolve around you?

Not your drive, not your files.

We have this narrative that men only want young women and that they just aren’t attracted to older women and a man with options will always prefer a younger woman. But then we have the richest man in the world marrying a woman his age. We have this narrative that women only want men that are built like comic book superheros and that a woman with options will always chose the man with the biggest biceps. But then we have the existence of Pete Davidson. Maybe, people are actually pretty complex and attraction is an individual, and complex thing???

Submission is something that you beat someone into. Trust is earned. The red pill crew mistakes trust for submission. Sad and ugly. But they are right in that women want this... want to be able to trust. Being able to trust someone, someone who as earned your trust, is amazing for anyone in any kind of relationship, but trust is especially important for women in a sexual relationship with a man. Sex brings pregnancy and pregnancy is difficult and dangerous. Taking that risk with someone requires trust.

I did a thing. I flew to Mexico City to attend a FinTech conference and I joined a panel discussing digital assets... en espanol. I did public speaking in Spanish! I was appropriately terrified. But I think it went okay. I managed to say what I wanted to say and people seemed to understand me!

I know that you can't change people. And when you have a person in your life who you wish was different, and they aren't, you have to just accept that they are the way that they are and it's not your responsibility to fix them. You have to do that or it will drive you crazy. All of this I know... But, how do you do that?

Intelligence isn't as important as we think it is. Courage matters more.

I just spent 5 weeks in Chicago, I went for a walk nearly every day. I didn’t experience even one incident of street harassment. That is wildly unusual! And given that this was consistent over 5 weeks, I don’t think it was chance, I think something is different now. The question is what? I don’t think I suddenly became unattractive. I got lots of smiles and nods, and ‘good morning’ greetings. Maybe it’s because I’m a bit older? Maybe it’s in the way that I carry myself or in the way I dress these days? Or maybe… just maybe, the culture has changed. Or is that wishful thinking on my part?