Walked into the sauna (86 celsius), two women were in it. Stayed 15 minutes, they left after 10. Went to the cold plunge pool for 3 minutes, then back in the sauna. About 5 minutes later, women come back, I'm in the same spot. We sit together 10 minutes, before they leave. I'm thinking they don't know I left to cool down. To them, I've been in for at least 33 minutes at 86, must have seemed like a God.

Best parents: create conditions for kids to make errors without catastrophic consequences. Next best: checked out parents who provide insufficient guardrails. Worst: parents who endeavor to prevent all errors.

Diet is less important than mindset. Person with the right mindset will end up with an adequate diet. Person with a good diet might not end up with the right mindset. Everything is downstream from mind. People obsess over diet because it's much easier.

Cell battery is dying, you will be spared from at least five more shitposts. Gonna have to break out the Sudoku.

Plane delayed an hour because some dude got belligerent, had to be tackled as he was boarding, and we missed our runway slot.

Giving billion-dollar ideas for free to you lettuce-hands bitches and crickets. View quoted note →

Idea for air travel: Build platforms in front of every gate like they have for trains or rollercoasters. Plane pulls into the U-shaped dock/platform, opens on both sides like a Delorean, people with seats on the far side walk around the U to board at their row. Every row boards at once. When finished “doors” clasp shut. Figure it saves 10-20 minutes per flight for every traveler in perpetuity, vastly outweighing the cost of the platforms and re-design of the planes.

Had the idea maybe scientific advancements are not so much discoveries of how the world works but new possibilities conjured from the void.

Which is it: government bad, don’t want them to have any or government bad, they’re not buying any? View quoted note →

It’s fine to be wrong. Just don’t be wrong and certain.

2. Immigration policy as a tennis tournament. If you are organizing a tennis tournament you cannot let in people who have no idea how to play. Tennis with novices is terrible. For tennis to be enjoyable it requires a baseline of skills. Likewise, you cannot let *anybody* have entry into a civilized Western country. You must have certain baseline civilized values, like respect for private property, civil behavior, etc. Almost anyone *can* learn tennis — it doesn’t depend on any particular biographical detail — but knowing how to play is not a default setting for humans. The catastrophic immigration policy across the west over the last decade elided the truth that people *can* learn with the reality that not everyone has. So what you wind up with is a much shittier experience for everyone.

Two notes for possible future essays: 1. Cantillon Effect for social trends. Those closest to the trend setters gain the most status from adopting it, as it goes mainstream people jump on just to fit in, and the stragglers who get in late are cringe as the trend setters are already moving on to the next one. Those chasing fiat trends never gain enough status and never develop a sense of personal taste for themselves.

In case anyone doubts my claim to be a rapper, here are a couple of my latest rhymes: I’m an oligarch I’m your overlord Get out three rhymes ‘Fore you get in a word I give advice like Ann Landers Got more homes than Bernie Sanders Funded gain of function at the Wuhan Lab I’m the one who made you take that jab. I’m an oligarch I’m your overlord Get out three rhymes ‘Fore you get in a word You eat the bugs Live in a pod While I dine like Dionysus At the feast of the Gods I’m an oligarch…

Gonna change my bio to “nostr’s self-appointed theologian.” But the current bio more or less covers that. Thing is I am a theologian. And a journalist, an artist, a rapper and a comedian. Nostr is the place to showcase my skillset or lack thereof. And no one can stop me.

Yes it is. I am more with @Beefy on this even though I believe in God. The “spiritual” has to be contained within the reality as it is. Otherwise it is an exercise in semantics. One cannot describe The Everything anymore than one can describe a void. Atheists err in believing a negative without evidence. Or, put differently, absence of “evidence” (the kind for which they are looking) is not evidence of absence. An atheist has no reason to believe there is nothing. But @Beefy’s arguments strike me as agnostic, not atheistic. And the deepest agnosticism is a path to God IMO. View quoted note →

It seems some envision Christ as the door guy at the heaven club. You needed to have the secret password or the accumulated status via demonstrated fealty to gain admission. I reject this formulation. It is not a serious theology. The kingdom of heaven must necessarily lie within.

I am not a Christian but I am pretty sure the real Christ wouldn’t want you to follow Him to receive a reward (heaven) or to avoid a punishment (hell). The heaven must be in the following and the hell must be in the rejection itself. Otherwise, Christianity would just be another game. I say this only because I respect Christianity as a genuine path to God. I am not a Christian because I don’t think it is the ONLY path. But I believe there are real Christians who are following a real path, even if they are a small minority of those who claim to be such.

Posting into the void — notes for future essays for when I get back.

The moment you get fed up with the infinite chop and stop giving a shit is the moment it will run.