If you can stay away from loose money and loose women, your chances of success in life are pretty high. Investment property tends to fall in the former category, but tends to attract the latter. That’s a double-whammy of ‘bad decision’. Cheekiness aside, I am absolutely not a fan of investment property. Now, investment property […]
Life Engineering: Stability and Fragility
We have an astronomical number of choices in life, but most of these choices are restricted by culture. Some of these restrictions are good, but many of them are bad. Culture gives us defaults for our expectations, hopes, dreams, and desires, but some of these can lead to great pain and suffering. I’m up for […]
Smart Phones
Oh, smart phones. What have you done to us? I used to have a slight tendency to be one of those self-righteous Luddites who resisted new technologies in defense of the old. I had a flip phone in high school, and I kept this flip phone well into my 20s. For my tunes, I even […]
The Tyranny of Stuff
All the thrift stores seem to have had the same bright idea: “Hey, since there’s a pandemic, let’s limit the hours during which people can bring donations!” I’m no virologist, but I suspect that keeping people inside at the cash register is more dangerous than keeping people outside, typically at great distance from other people […]
Escape!
We live in a world full of over-commitment. Being passionate about something has become akin to goodness, but for all the dedication and passion, I don’t see a tremendous amount of good being done in the world. We are also constantly exposed to fictional characters who have absolutely no balance in their lives but who […]
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
The best way to organize junk is to not have it in the first place. Humans have become very clever inventing devices and contraptions to store and organize things, but these are often the symptoms of a greater problem, namely that we have so much to be stored and organized in the first place. Back […]
Brief Thoughts on Ultralight Philosophy
For the past few weeks, I’ve been watching YouTube videos on backpacking. My first trip last month was a bit of a fiasco, with my sleeping bag and tent strapped to the back of my pack, but I proved that I was willing to make it happen, and quickly upgraded to a larger pack. It […]
Brain Food (Books Suck: Part 2)
I went backpacking last weekend and found a new mining adit in a valley I frequent. The entrance was huge and monolithic and appeared to be very stable, but I didn’t go inside. I was alone, far away from people and trails, and I value my life. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t occur to […]
It Could be Worth Something Someday!
One of the biggest reasons people hold on to old junk is that “it could be worth something someday!” On very rare occasions, this can be true. One of my friends has mentioned that certain classic or otherwise limited-production cars go up in value, ditto for rare guns, and I don’t want to ignore this […]
Walking Distance
I’ve spent portions of the past two days changing the rear struts on my car. Yesterday, the passenger side changed without a problem, which was awesome, but I hit a snag on the driver’s side when one of the lug bolts wouldn’t come off. I knew it was going to sheer off, and it did, […]