Yesterday I was talking to a friend about a really fun day I had a few months back. It was just randomly one of the most fun days I've ever had, and I think it was so fun as I had low responsibility that day, and zero expectations. Every fun thing that happened that day was a pleasant surprise. What's a wildly fun day you had and what made it so fun?

Can someone pretty please zap me? I think maybe I finally got it working again.

If you haven’t thought through who is the target audience of your post, if you don’t know what the learning objectives are, and if you aren’t using effective communication techniques… almost certainly you are not engaging in persuasion, you are indulging in emotional revenge.

If we are the professionals, if we are the experts on the technology of money, then it’s our job to meet others where they are and give them what they need. If our solutions require users to become tech experts, we have failed. If people chose not to use what we’ve built, that’s not their failing, it’s our failing.

Free speech is wildly important. Speaking your mind is a public service. When you can say whatever you want, what you choose to say reveals your character. Every word tells us who you are and we can decide clearly if we want to associate with you, or not. Thank you.

I'm prepping to go be all fancy at a friend's wedding, so I went to the store to buy a strapless bra and try some of those shape wear things... OMG, trying to shove your body into those restraints under florescent lighting is a scarring experience. I am a horrific monster. Apparently nothing on my body is in the right place. I am just a mushy sack of lumps and rolls. I am truly baffled that anyone has ever found me attractive. My sincerest apologies to anyone who has ever endured seeing me naked.

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?