Life: How badly I crave you.
Life: How much you mean to me.
Life: How I desire some excitement.
Life: Where are you now?
Life. Death. All the same.

This is a poem I wrote during a moment of serious blues. Such blues that mere words aren’t enough to explain and highlight what I felt. Only through art, a poem, could such feelings be reflected properly. Well, properly enough I hope anyway.

Warfare is constantly changing, adapting to new technology and strategies. Without actively being engaged in combat, armies will use old tactics for a new age, cease to exist as a consequence.

If there was a conflict between two nations, one with a weak, ill equipped fighting force, vs one that should be absolutely dominit. Who do you think would win? Would easily crush the opposing force. The larger one right? Well, that’s true in theory, but “no plans survive first contact with the enemy.” You see, the larger force, whilst on paper stronger, if they haven’t been constantly fighting, then it’s just deadweight.

  The generals would be peacetime generals, ones out of touch with the realities of modern conflict, who strategies with outdated tactics. World war 1 repeated that history, where bright colour uniforms and cavalry were shredded by machine guns and artillery fire. The army themselves no clue how to fight properly, again, trained with outdated tactics and strategies and easily get annihilated by the enemy. Their equipment is outdated and thoroughly not prepared for new creative warfare, involving UAVs, suicide drone bombs and improved explosive devices.

  All the logistics and ammunition is not adequate for the current situation. It’s easy to supply your troops with train lines, then the enemy blows up the tracks. What now? In World War II, they went through millions of ammunition each month, wildly above original estimates of tens of thousands.

  Let’s not forget that equipment produced in a lab is flashy, clean and theorically unstoppoable. A multi-million dollar tank gets brought down with a hundred thousand dollar rocket. Everything produced in peacetime, with requirements made based on armchair generals and speculation all turn worthless. Nothing more than expensive and self-harming scrap metal.

Have you ever played Civilisation V, a game where you’d progress your nation from the stone age into the modern era. Military is quite annoying, because it’s rather expensive and means you can’t produce economic or scientific output. Forgoing military isn’t an option either, for a weak opponent presents an ample opportunity to get what you want. Look at Canada’s maps, isn’t it weird they don’t own Alaska, that there’s this random chunk of America carved deep in their territory? That’s because America demanded it, and Canada acquiesced at the barrel of a gun. No matter how much you want peace, without power to defend yourself, your nation will get fucked over by others constantly.

  China wants to own the entire sea area around them, ones that several other nations border. Well, what’re you gonna do about it without power to stop them? Beg them? Pleed they don’t priortise their own gains?

  An army that doesn’t constantly fight, adapt and evolve is worthless. But, isn’t this tragic, that each nation has to be in perpetual conflict, perpetual warfare, in order to adequately protect themselves? Alternatives like mock battles might reduce the degradation of skill, except it cannot account for what the enemy would truly do on the battlefield. The only way to find out is to fight. So bless your nation’s incessant warfare, for it’s the only reason you’re kept safe right now.

Mainlanders have different cultures and that usually is dodgy in outside countries. This dodgy behaviour affect general perceptions and actions against all of that minority group, even the assimilated ones. Hence, assimilated miniorities are treated as dodgy, all because of mainlanders, and so begins the cycle of hatred.

My Chinese friend always talked shit about the mainland Chinese people. But, this guy was in Australia for less than 2 years, he was born and raised in China. Why on earth is there such a dislike for the mainlanders? My grandpa, Asian, born in Asia, raised in Asia, has been living in Australia for over 20 years. Even he dislikes the mainlander. He once told me, “Yo Kay, you aren’t Asian anymore, you’re Australian. Look at current Asian behaviour, dirty, crime ridden, dodgy, don’t associate your name with them anymore.”

  Slater Slate Codex mentioned that people don’t hate the outsiders, they hate the in group. For minorities, this ingroup is always their own ethnicity, but it’s not the assimilated ones. You see, assimilated and mainland minorities act drastically differently, they simply have 2 different cultures. But, most importantly, bad behaviour from mainland minorities adversity affects assimilated minorities, despite them and the rest of their group doing nothing.

  Have you ever experienced a mainland Indian, with their behaviour and mannerisms that is meant to deal with 1 billion people? There’s nothing worse than being behind a mainland Indian on the airplane. They don’t have any concept of personal space or common decently. The lady I was behind reclined her chair all the way back, leaving me barely any room to just sit. Even when it was time for food, she had to be told multiple times from the airline staff to put her seat upright. They also tend to be dirty, extremely dirty.

  Because it’s impossible to determine an assimilated and mainland Indian at a glance, that means all of them are treated as if they engage in the typical mainland behaviour. Effectively, it is racism and prejudice, even the most assimilated and educated minority is subject to such treatment, despite never doing anything to warrant that.

  So, the hatred grows, even more so as the numbers of mainlanders increase. Hence the general consensus on certain minorities dodgy behaviour cements itself through all walks of life. Like how shops are on guard against black people, the constant observation of black people being thief has changed how shops operate and train their staff against shoplifting. People can sense any change in behaviour, and it is no pleasant feeling.

  The exact same has happened to me, I’m Asian, people sterotype that Asians are smart and project that onto myself. Hence people I don’t know assume I’m smart, despite myself being a fucking dumbass and it annoys me greatly. In Australia, Aboriginals are ALWAYS drunk, not the just a cheeky drink drunk, but the I hate my life, everything sucks, drown myself in alcohol level drunk. So, now, each time I pass a group of Aboriginals, assuming they’re drunk and thus prone to unpredictable and aggressive behaviour.

The older we get, the more we want a faster return on investment. Don’t think about the payoff and learn like a child. Just step back and enjoy it instead.

Walking is simple, one leg forward at a time. Running isn’t too hard, as I started by walking fast from my frontdoor to the street, then progressively walking a bit faster until it became a run. Then running to the next house, and the next and the next. I slowly mastered running, step by step and got used to the process. For bikes, I already knew how to ride one when younger. But, recently, I’ve tried to learn to ride a penny board, that is a small skateboard specialised in cruising around, and it was terrifying.

  As I get older, my tolerance and will to learn new things have drastically declined. When I was younger, I tried to learn to play Dota and there was no resources back then. So I just played and played, failed and failed, until I became good enough. Yet now, when trying to play an RTS game, after just 5 minutes, I labelled it as too difficult and gave up. Even after watching a bunch of tutorials. I thought to myself, this is too hard, I’ll just go play something easier.

  Back to skateboarding, after watching a few tutorials, I wanted to go return my skateboard. I didn’t see the begnning steps, just stepping on the board, moving forward, balancing. What i saw was the infinite infinite steps required to master riding and just how far away I was. That was the terror that froze me. “I don’t have that much time to learn all that. It’s hard enough just to stand on the board, let alone move forward or even turn” I thought.

  Kids seem to have some infinite capacity to learn, whilst as adults, we shrink away. Take learning to sing, it’s a talent you go or not. Perhaps our awareness of the reality is what truly hinders us from advancing beyond a beginner. A child does not think about how difficult it is to ride down slopes, do advanced tricks or cruise at max speed as they take the first step on the skateboard. No, they’d take things one step at a time and not think much further beyond that. They’d revel in their incremental successes, rather than be held back by the magnitude of future work.

  I didn’t return my pennyboard, I took a step on, then a step on whilst moving forward .I tried to turn, go down minor slopes, stacked it a bit and tried braking. We can learn something from kids and their attitudes towards learning something new. Don’t be excessively aware of the future, don’t expect some insane grandeur, just take things one step at a time and celebrate each of those milestones. Purposefully restrict our awareness to not be subject to the terrors of learning something new.

Inspired by “Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning” by Tom Vanderbilt. Give that a read if this topic interested you. Now, if you excuse me, I got some skateboarding to learn.

Big cities strip away any connection with others. Only those you deem apart of your ingroup aren shown any humanity, the rest are NPCs in the game of life

Going to the supermarkets, the same generic lines are always uttered. Hello, good morning, how are you. And the typical response back, Hi, good thanks. In a big city, everyone is like an NPC, most times, the shopkeepers have the repeated quest line. Where you could chart out your entire day going from NPC dialogue to another. Anything that falls out of them is unexpected and not the norm. Like when someone, who was not the staff, said hello to me whilst getting a coffee.

  Such a mindset is necessary in a big city. It’s not possible to have whole hearted interactions with everyone. Hundreds of people pass by you just walking down a main street. The population density naturally speeds up everyone’s walking speed, and also their impatience. Everyone wants something from someone else, and anything that doesn’t fall into those categories is a waste of time. If being productive with work is your goal, then that’s great, otherwise it becomes a lonely lonely world. Everyone around you is nothing more than an NPC, a forgettable existence that means nothing. It’s no different from being totally alone.

  Within the 4 walls of an apartment, nothing else outside matters. Even though there’s several people living nearby, on the same level, and even more on each level, it’s like they don’t exist. A Japanese documentary talked about living alone in Japan, where a father lived within his apartment and his daughter visited occasionally. Except, this time, when she visited, she found her father dead. He died of old age. But, not a single neighbour knew, despite living only a few meters away, despite them passing by his apartment every day. Within those 4 walls, everyone lives their own universe and anything around them might as well not exist.

  Is this good or bad? Big cities, where everything happens, with social events, business and high pay. The only price you need to pay is your soul. Either adapt, enjoy the life filled with NPCs and strangers, where the only “real” people are workmates, existing friends, or people you meet when trying to be social. If you worked remotely, lived alone and was introverted, then a city has everyone, yet not a single soul for you. Connections only happen if you put in the effort to make them, there is no spontaneous meetups, or regularly seeing a person, big cities are too large for that. Or be totally alone, where the only person to converse with is yourself. Where the only words uttered each day is hello, how are you, to a shop keeper NPC.

Welcome to a big city my friend. Welcome to apartment life.

The begger is humble, for their behaviour may grant them a desire. When there’s nothing to gain or lose, then you will see how people truly behave

I walked towards the supermarket and near the entrance was a beggar. This is nothing surprising, it’s a common scene these days. As per usual, I would ignore them and continue my shopping. However, this day a beggar asked me to buy something for him. He started off very polite, very reserved and humble. “Hi, excuse, could you please buy something inside the supermarket for me…” His body language was pleading, although standing up, he kept himself low, almost like a bow as he was speaking. Before he got into his reason, I cut him off and said “sorry, I can’t do that.”

  His entire demeanor instantly changed. Gone was the meek, quiet, and trying to act as pleasant beggar. Now, it was the aggressive beggar, “Why the fuck not?” he yelled. How amusing just how quickly he changed. How amusing how entitled he was. Why should anyone help anyone else where there’s no connections or relations? Why did he believe he was so entitled that I should fork out my finite funds for his needs? Even more so when there’s government funded homeless shelters and food in there. In that moment, after my rejection, and possibility many other rejections, his true self appears.

  If someone has something to gain by acting in a certain way, it’s not their true selves. Like the advice to watch how others treat waiters to judge them. Even if we treated a waiter like shit, they would still need to serve us regardless, after all, that’s what they’re getting paid for. Nobody has anything to gain by treating a waiter well or badly.

  So if you wanted to find out someone’s true self, observe how they handle rejection from someone where they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Observe how they dress, act and react when asking for that request. Compare that with a baseline of how they usually act to others and then we can see just what type of person they truly are.

Although, do this with much caution, ignorance is bliss after all. Do you really want to know which of your friends treat non-important like shit? Especially when, in your mind, they’re a “nice” person? Do you really want to know exactly what would happen if you became that non-important person? Nobody wants fake friends, even more so if they’re well hidden. But what if all your friends are fake, what if you have zero “real” friends. All because you wanted to test people and see what they’re truly like.

  People need their own privacy. Workplaces talk a lot of bring your “authentic” self in and this is the dumbest marketing scheme of the century. People are weird, they’re strange in so many different ways and sometimes, it’s better to know their front and keep it that way. A friend of yours might be perfectly fine to hang out with, until you realise they’re a hardcore anti-waste person and just dumpster dived for food before meeting you. Sometimes, it’s best not to know someone’s weird and wacky authentic self and just know the person they show you. As long as they’re not taking advantage of you, then ignorance is bliss my friend.

Body and mind are linked. Forge the body, and you’ll forge your mind. Not only physically stronger, but also mentally strengthened.

Sun and Steel was a book by an insane Japanese dude who seen the military aggression of Japan and then the softness, inflected by consumer goods. He ended his life after storming a JDF compound and then committed Seppuku. Pretty god damn nuts if you ask me. The book, Sun and Steel was an autobiography about reforging the body. Where to forge the body also forges the mind. They’re both intrinsically linked together. Just like soul eater said, a healthy soul resides in a healthy mind in a healthy body.

  There’s something fucking magical about forging the body. It like reduces your anxiety about this and that. In a way, you just become you. There’s less bullshit and less oh no my body sucks and all that. Your mind sharpens up, your senses don’t get dulled. But, most importantly, each time you exercise, each time you forge your soul, there’s power that springs forth like no tomorrow. Sun and STEEL baby.

  The body is the most direct connection one has to the mind. The body literally houses the mind. The worse the state of the body, the worse the state of the mind, with some exceptions. After 30, our mental state degrades in a linear fashion and there’s virtually no way to prevent this. Exercise slows down this progress so that we age gracefully. My grandpa is reaching over 70 but he doesn’t seem that physically old. Constant farmwork, moving around most of his body, and walking more than a few km per day just due to work has forged his body. Others aren’t the same, their body becomes weak and frail, as if a gust of wind would blow them over. They have not been forged in the sun, they have not become steel.

  Forging the body directly shifts your mindset, where what was lamented as impossible no longer becomes so. You feel invincible. Even beset by an infinite number of worldly issues, they don’t become your Achilles heel, instead, it’s merely a stepping stone towards further greatness.

Accountabliity Partners must know and understand you properly. They must be able to hit the truth about WHY you want to change.

I always see posts on Reddit asking for an accountability partner. Someone who you tell what you want to do so they can keep you accountable and on track with that goal. There’s even paid accountability groups, where everyone keeps each other accountable to whatever task they wanted to do. This all sounds great in theory. But, in practice it’s a lot more nuanced then just telling a random stranger on the internet what you want to do and magically expecting that you’d do that.

  The theory of accountability partners is that you, a social animal, care about the consequences of not going through with your word. However, people lie. Others don’t care about people in general. Words are the wind, just because you say something doesn’t mean you give a damn about going through with it. In the end, running away from those people, those groups, is always an option.
Online Universities (Unis) have an abysmal completion rate. Everyone starts the course then completely forgets about it. Physical Unis have layers of accountability, but they have real external punishments as well. In a course, friends would ask about how you went with the latest assignment. Nobody wants to be the person so constantly says they haven’t done it. Or in classes, the tutor would ask about your progress on the coursework. Again, do you really want to look like a dud?

  Normally, this is good enough to compel people to move forward. There’s a social shame and stigma attached to someone who does nothing. Except, for me, I just ran away. I ran away from the friends I made so I’d never need to talk about coursework. I stopped attending classes so the tutors could never ask me about assignments. I ran away, then failed that course.

  Just having someone to ask about your progress isn’t enough. Ben, on the the Charisma on Command podcast, talked about when he was hesitant to approach a girl in a bar. His friend tried multiple ways of convincing him but nothing worked. Until he touched upon who Ben saw himself as. A charismatic guy who runs the Charisma on Command Youtube channel. Could he really call himself someone charisma and teach others if he didn’t approach this girl? That was what compelled him forward. Not his friend being by his side, holding him accountable just by listening and watching him. It was holding him accountable to who he sees both his current and his future self to be.

  The correct type accountability partner must know who you see your current and future self as. Then and only then could they hold you accountable. There will always be times you falter and slack, after all, if it was easy, did you really need someone to constantly hold you to your word? Your partner’s true moment to shine is during those lulls, to re-invigorate yourself by holding you to who you wish to become. To align your current actions with your identity.

  Take myself as an example. After reading experiences at Nazi concentration camps, the Communist Revolution and the resulting mass incarnation or massacres from the Gulag Archipelago in Russia and The Great Leap Forward in China. I wondered, take everything away from a man, what does he have left? Let’s say we were in that same position. We lost everything. Our homes and possessions, family, friends, community and are locked up in hard labour. What do we have left? To me, the only thing I had left was my word. Hence, I define myself as a man of my word and will go to great lengths to keep it like that.

  However, yesterday, I said I’d fix my sleeping schedule. I’d wake up early in the mornings to take steps to will this world to my image. Yet, I failed. Instead, waking up midday and, yet again, nothing could be accomplished. My hypothetical accountability partner hold me against that. How I said I was a man of my word, yet what do my actions tell the world? They would provoke me into action to be who I define myself as. That is to get up and get ready early in the mornings, to will my world into existence, instead of sleeping half of it away. So, it isn’t perfect, but better than nothing.

General Intelligence training doesn’t exist, knowledge is domain limited and has extremely limited transfer.

You know those human benchmark tests? The ones that ask you to memorise a sequence of numbers, or the order of blocks flashing. These give the impression of testing our intelligence, or skills. A higher score means we’re more intelligent than others, or have some greater aspect somewhere in life compared to those with low scores. However, what would these tests actually do? The only thing it helps with is getting really good at the test itself! Why? Because knowledge, generally, is non-transferable. Being skilled at memorising numbers or flashing patterns doesn’t translate to anything else, besides extremely similar tasks.

  This is even true in cooking and baking. Although they’re so similar, you’re making food to eat, both require a diverging skillset, even if you’re a masterchef at cooking dinner, that might not be so for desserts like pudding. I would deem myself decent enough at cooking, however, the first time I made pudding it was burnt. Only immediately similar skills transferred over, not the overall skill of being good at cooking.

  Writing non-fiction vs fiction is another example. To write non-fiction isn’t overly difficult, just research a bunch and spew out words on a page, that’s exactly what my blog is. Even if we could write non-fiction perfectly fine, that doesn’t mean writing fiction is suddenly easy. Check out my fiction novel, Love, Life and Board games, https://www.scribblehub.com/series/115029/life-love-and-board-games/, it fucking sucks. Seriously, I cringe just thinking about that single chapter. Even for something as similar as writing, intelligence is non-transferable.

  An IQ test isn’t exactly an intelligence test, it measures how quickly we discover and apply the pattern. Ie new job, how fast do you learn. Getting proficient at an IQ test, which you can study and learn, doesn’t suddenly mean you’d pick up everything quickly, nah, you just get really good at performing IQ tests.

  So any time you see shit like benchmark tests or the like, just do it for fun, but don’t take it seriously. Even though the study of intelligence is rather depressing, that there’s no single activity we can do to improve intelligence across all domains. Understanding these restrictions means we won’t waste time on silly tests and, instead, focus on a domain, trying to figure out which skills become transferable to the next role and which ones need to be learnt.

  Otherwise we’d become the Peter Principle, promoted to position of least competence. As people demonstrate skill in their job, they’d get promoted up and up. But, as they climb up, the skills they mastered for their current role doesn’t transfer over to the next. There’s a world of difference between being a programmer and a manager. Thus, eventually, they’re promoted until they don’t show enough competence to be promoted again. Hence they’re promoted to the position of least competence.

The man who doesn’t read only lives once before he dies. The man who reads lives a thousand different lives before he dies. This is a quote from George RR Martin when talking about the value of reading and I believe this statement is quite true. To read is to see how other people experience life and how their perspectives shaped their lives.

  Malcom X, black activist, was fiercely anti-white for most of his life. In fact, a majority was shaped through a tribal view of white man and black man. This man grew up in the 1920’s, where anti-black sentiment was far more deadly than today. Remember Michael Brown, the black who was shot and killed by police and kick started the Black Lives Matter movement. The most inconvenient fact that he was reaching for his gun before being shot and killed was revealed after a through investigation, an ignored fact. Or how, on average, white people are more likely to be killed by police than a black. Hence why today’s anti-black sentiment wasn’t as deadly as the 1920’s.

  Back then, there were serious consequences, like how Malcom X watched as hoons set fire to his house and the police just stood by and watched. These constant acts by white people against blacks shaped his world view, to the point everything became tribal. Us vs them. Blacks vs Whites. Although I thought, as I read through the biography, it was a dumb view. If I had lived the life he had, then I’m sure I wouldn’t have been so different.

  Reading about the lives of others can help us understand why people think a certain way. It can also help shape our own views, if we see the path someone else took to a particular worldview, then decide whether we want our own to be shaped like theirs.

There are limitations though. Somethings in life can’t be read about and understood properly. It’s only through living it can we experience something completely different. Like, experiencing the calming effects of the sea, the sights and smells. You just can’t experience the same thing through words, pictures or video. Not even VR can replicate that perfectly, it’d be nothing more than an imitation in the end.

  Or the granduer and magnificence of nature and hikes. Objectively reading about hikes sounds terrible. It’s a tough climb to go up 50 to 100 meters. You see trees? Well, you can see trees virtually anywhere, what’s the difference? Or the view at the summit. So what, someone has a pic on Instagram don’t they?

  What about living in small cities vs large cities. Reading about them sounds meh. A small city has everything closing early, where people rush around a lot less. A large city has things opened to till everyday and with everyone rushing towards their objective. Isn’t that the only difference? How can you explain the idylicness of the small city, the lack of any rush and the leisurely flow of time. Only through experiencing this could you properly comprehend what life is like in such a city.

  One final limitation would be suffering. My sharehouse was 2km from the Central Business District (CBD) of the city. I used to run 2km everyday, so such a small distance is a breeze. I’d be a relaxing walk to see the CBD and the surrounding regions, oh so I thought. As I continued my walk, I looked to my right and thought it was odd to see a 2 story building in the heart of the CBD. When I looked a bit closer, it turned out to be 8 stories. At the nearby intersection, on the right was a enourmous slope downwards and then going straight up back to the same level I was standing on. I thought to myself, hah, sucked in plebs that need to walk that.

  I checked directions to the sharehouse and realised I had to go right. It turns out that I was the pleb. So, with my 5 kilogram backpack and 10 kilogram suitcase, I struggled down and up that hill. At the very top, already out of breath, I cheered that the hill was done, it should be flat ground from here on out. Except, it wasn’t, the path just kept going up and up and up. Every time I stopped to catch my breath, I looked at the road and the inclines never stopped. Finally I reached a turning point and I thought the suffering was over.

  Too bad hell had no depth. Turning my head towards the path google maps showed, there was a 45 degree incline upwards. Is this even legal? I had to double check the maps, just in case there was a mistake. There wasn’t… My backpack felt heavier as I climbed upwards. My arms were aching from dragging what should’ve been a 10 kilogram suitcase upwards. Each footstep up resounded with a thud of my entire existence. The path of suffering, as I named it, required multiple breaks every few meters. Then, finally at the top, at the telephone poll that marked the end of my suffering, was just more inclines.

  Hell has no depths and the path of suffering proved that. Still, after just a tiny bit more, my suffering would be over and then it’d be flatland from there on. Surely, it can’t go any higher, right? Yet, again, I was wrong. The final road to the sharehouse was an incline. What I thought would be a leisurely 2km walk, turned out to be the depths of hell, well, at 150 meters of hell that is.

  Merely reading about my suffering cannot convey the truth to you. Only through experiencing the pain through your arms, legs, and back. Walking down and up hills. Puffed out every few meters. Sweating profusely. And experiencing the weight of the universe as you take another step forward. The weight of your entire existence with every step could you truly understand the path of suffering.

With $300 AUper week, I can’t afford much. $35-50 on foods, a shit ton on rent and whatever meager leftovers as either tourism or a meal out. As such, my meals taste so good, despite not having much. The restrictions elevated my experience of foods. Despite the fact it’s nothing more than some sausages, salads and a bit of relish, I’ve never had such a good meal in my life.

  It also elevated my meals out. Because of how finite my funds are, because of how my meals must be extremely cheap, a meal out is godly. In addition, the restriction of no oil and low carbs means my options for home meals are basically meat, salad and veggies, nothing else. When I eat out, there’s no restrictions, it’s full on food goodness.

  Restrictions, even though artificial, changes ones perspective on life. Much like how you only notice things after you lose them, the same story applies here. If you could meat wagyu steak everyday, then is it really special? Same story with rump or porterhouse steak. Only when you can’t afford it regularly does eating it become special. For how long did you have to wait to afford that steak? For how long have you been craving it. Finally you can cook up the steak and enjoy it. Not being able to afford it for a while only serves to heighten it’s value.

Although I wouldn’t do this forever, it is quite an interesting experience. It must be longer than a week though, at minimum 1-3 months. You see youtube videos of people trying to live under poverty for a week, but that means nothing. Why? Because it’s only a week, in the back of their minds, they can just go back to porterhouse steaks in a few days. With a month, the distance is far too long to imagine going back properly, thus you must change your lifestyle to accommodate a new way of living.

  Why wouldn’t living with $300 per week, in a first world country, be great in the long run? Well, you can’t really go anywhere or do anything. Friends wanna go out and eat? Sorry, I can’t afford that, my budget is $15 dollar meals. Going to some adventure room? Sorry, I cannot afford that. Eventually, they’d just stop inviting you all together. After all, your answer would always be how you couldn’t afford it anyway.

With money, a city is luxury and attractions. Without money, a city is a walled garden.

There’s a fair amount to do in the city. Many food places. You could go on meetup and socialise with those new to the city. You could enjoy the markets. Fine foods. Gelato or fish and chips by the harbour. Scenic seaplane tours or a cruise to nearby islands. So so much to do, yet so little time to experience them all. That is, if you had money. $20 meals. $10 drinks. $10 gelato. $200 for seaplanes or $150 for cruise tours.

  What’s a city without money? When your budget allows for a single meal out each week, with no entree or drink. You walk around and see all the sights, the things to do, only to come upon the sad realisiation that they’re walled off to you. Look at that awesome cruise, or that magnificent museum. Both of which you can only stare upon at a distance. Wishing. Hoping to go. So desperate, you want to befriend a rich old couple for a boat cruise..

  Thus, a city is simply the embodiment of sadness. Everywhere your eyes reach is somewhere you can never touch. The city, the central hub that has access to nearly everything. Cuisines of the world. Tourist attractions for days. Music and Arts. Everything someone could want. But not for you, the poor beggar.

  Then what is the city to a poor man, one without funds? The only source of enjoyment would be a few places without admission fee, usually funded by the government. Beyond that would be nature and hikes. These usually aren’t common in larger cities, for by necessity they sprawl outwards and consume all in their sights. Not even mountains are safe. I write this as I live upon a mountain, 145 meters above ground level, where everywhere my eyes can see is a mountains filled with houses on the edges of the summit.

This ongoing capitalist society has divided society, between those who have funds, and can afford luxuries and enjoyments that money brings. And those who have nothing, where not even nature is safe anymore. Welcome to our world.

I Am Death Stranded. Every friendship dies off when moving to the next city. Then what can make friendships stand the test of time?

  Death stranding, a game that has heavy philosophical ties of connecting with others and how, if we’re alone, without connections, the world is worse off. Each time I move to a brand new city, because I’m only staying in each city a short time, past friendships aren’t strong enough to withstand the test of time. It’s almost like a backpacker at a hostel, you meet with others there and make temporary friends. You go places, hang out, all knowing that whenever one of you leave, that relationship fades away.

  In the anime, Heroines run the show, the main character made 3 connections within the first few days. In contrast, it’s been 3 weeks since I moved to a new city and haven’t made a single strong connection. Friendships are strengthened with time and meetups. Without both, those relationships will fade by the time you visit that city again. I met someone interesting at a friend’s wedding and had an enjoyable chat, so I invited him out for board games. Board games, usually with 4-6 people, are deeply impersonal. All conversations are group ones and 1-1 chats are few and far between. Even though I might be fine arranging another meetup in a year from now, would he? In the end, I was just someone he chatted to at a wedding and played some board game with. That’s the extent of our relationship.

  As I travel around, what is it that could make relationships last? Is it interests? Activities? Personality? Philosophy? There was a theory that, since we’re mammals and always grouped up for survival, friendships form within those groups to help us survive. When we leave the pack, those existing friendships no longer help us survive, thus die off. How many times have seemingly great relationships died because you left the pack? That is school, university, moving workplaces or moving away from your current city? At my previous workplace, I had a colleague with similar thoughts as myself, even then, our relationship became non-existent as soon as I left.

  Reene Brown mentioned being vulnerable with others and how that can form stronger connections. Without being vulnerable to some degree, relationships stay superficial. Where everything’s on the surface layer of “positive vibes”. Real talk can advance a shallow connection to one that can stand the test of time. After that, instead of being seen as a mere bundle of interests, you can be seen as who you truly are.

  I used to be good buddies with someone from school, but it started to fade away after he no longer played the same game and school ended. It was only after we talked about philosophies of life, sharing our similar thoughts and myself being vulnerable did the relationship turn solid. Now, even as we both live in different cities, I believe that a meetup would be met with open arms, whether it’s a year or decade from now.

  Too bad those deep conversations are difficult, especially since meeting new people, without common connections, is difficult. Soon enough, my journey will continue around the world. But, I wonder if, by the end of this journey, I’d be death stranded. All my connections in previous cities fade away as I hop from place to place. Then, even in my home city, those once strong connections become a few loose strands.

Ghosting, the act of seeing a message, application or any form of communication and then never responding. An example would be job applications where the businesses never responds with an accept or reject confirmation. Or finding a sharehouse, where the lister sees your inquiry and then never responds back. They’re countless other examples of ghosting and the thing they have all in common is how frustrating it is for you. You put in time and effort, the least they could do is respond with generic yes or no. Is that so much to ask for? Now for companies, they might be some legal basis, such as preventing evidence on discrimination. But for sharehouse listers? Surely they’d know how frustrating ghosting is, so why inflict those wounds onto others as well?

  Ghosting is not a modern phenomenon, it would’ve been more prevalent with expensive and unreliable communications. If it costs $10 to send a response, would you? There’s a few reasons on the increase of ghosting. First is a power imbalance and winner takes all. If a company has 100 job applications and 1 open position, it doesn’t matter if they don’t respond, they only need 1. Or in the case of sharehouse listing, they’d have multiple interested parties and only need to respond to the 1 who’ll take the house. Second is scale. The sheer volume chews up an extreme amount of time, not sending a rejection email adds up to hours of free time each year.

  Despite ghosting not being a modern phenomenon, it’s rise is partially because there’s virtually no consequences to ghosting anymore. If you didn’t respond with unreliable communications, you could’ve literally died by the time the mail reached you. The inventor of morse code electronic communications made that after sending a letter to his mother, which took weeks, and by then she was already deceased. Before that, in small villages, you could physically see others that didn’t respond to you and they’d be hell to pay without a good reason. Perhaps it’s not a rise, but rather we’re also extremely aware when we’re ghosted, thanks to read receipts.

Porn is vastly different from real sex and connection. It’s an infinite choice and variety. Pre internet, there was magazines, or erotic text. Realistically, you wouldn’t fap too much to it since there’s not that much choice and would get boring eventually. It’s also slow and more imaginative. Post internet porn is fast, and extremely available. It has every form of sub fetish possible. As such, masturbation tends to be quicker. Then, as we get bored of one type of porn, it goes more and more extreme, into hard core, etc.

  This has real life consequences, like porn induced erectile dysfunction (ED), pre-mature ejaculation, and just not having sex-drive for real human females anymore. Why? Because real females are completely different from porn. They aren’t the hardcore subfetish that your brain got used to. Not to mention they’re only a single choice, when online, you have infinite choice of whatever body matches your current desire. These consequences aren’t talked to as much, because it’s shamed, embarrassing to admit, even to our doctors who are legally obligated to keep details confidential. Ah the penis, the most private part no one wants to serious discuss with anybody. If I were into hardcore porn and got porn-included erectile dysfunction, never being able to have sex with my partner, there’s no way I’d talk about that to ANYBODY. I would break up with my partner, just to not face a daily reminder of my inability.

  Hence why there’s movements like NoFap November, to help those who went too deep in porn recover. Where people have said, after a few months of no stopping porn, they started to recover their porn induced ED, sex drive towards real females and pre-mature ejaculation. Most of the evidence is anecdotes. Somehow I think research would be difficult. What would the advert look like? Questionnaire, if you watch hardcore porn, please apply. Not to mention funding would be problematic, it isn’t exactly mass marketable and displays how advanced and highly regarded a University is…

  It’s likely that porn isn’t the best for us, it has long term consequences on our mental relationships with real females, sex drive and can cause erectile dysfunction. There’s good reason why most porn titles aren’t straight sex, they involve step sisters or something of the like. Watching porn/fapping 5-12 times a week is too damn much, no longer why that guy had problems! Personally, I think reduced porn intake would be the best. Pleasure with minimal consequences. After all, not everyone has a partner, hook-ups take time/effort to arrange and prostitutes are expensive.

All your actions, ultimately, benefit someone somewhere with power. 9/11, a terrorist attack against America by Osama bin Laden. What was his objective again? What was the purpose? All it did was give impetus to military-intelligence complex to pass new sweeping spying laws and start a war. Nothing, truly, changed for the better. Look at protests, what happens? Either it gets ignored, or suppressed completely, like anti-lockdown protests. What happens as a result? New spying laws get introduced and the mainstream media peddle a violent protest narrative. Our actions serve nothing more than ammo to pass bullshit laws. We’ve hit a point in time of self-fulfilling power cycles. That is those in charge help others of similar corrupt deposition remain in power.

  Protests are either ignored, or spun by the media to allow new laws to be passed. One way or another, they’d be utterly suppressed. Violence is not the option, for it’s only met with increased violence, in which the state has a monopoly on. Not to mention it destroys any popular support and give greater powers to the state to pass bullshit laws. Nor are ignorance and silence the answer, for more and more freedom and liberties would be stripped away. Silence, to a certain extent, is agreement.

  The greatest attack, the greatest act of vengeance is to simply leave. To take our tax dollars, take our minds, our talent, our dreams and ambitions towards a new land of freedom and liberties. Without votes, those in power would have to compromise. Without tax money, they can’t pay off people with free shit, turning policies more sensible. Or, have to take in greater bribes, which becomes extremely obvious. Finally, without our minds, our talents, our multiplicative value will be invested into another land. Overtime, the invested value in another land increases, attracting even more minds there, creating a cycle of wealth and knowledge that has been diminished in the home land. All because we decided to take an ultimate act of vengeance against a nation and it’s government.

Don’t celebrate in a linear fashion, otherwise celebrations will slow down to near non-existence. Celebrate the journey with random milestones, ones that aren’t tied to any particular destination.

It’s a natural tendency to celebrate things in a linear fashion. Say you have a youtube channel, so you’d celebrate the 1st view, 10th, 100th, 1,000th, 10,000th, 100,000th, 1,000,000th and so long. Except, this is a terrible idea. Look at how much each increment increases by. Progressively, celebration becomes few and far between. Then what motivation would be left? We constantly get bombarded news of overnight success, or fast rising stars. Too bad that’s not the same for all of us. There’s an availability bias on fast rising stars, everyone wants to report on that. It took Gigguk, the anime youtber, 10 years to reach 1 million subs. In contrast, it took a vtuber a few months to hit 400k. There isn’t as much fanfare for Gigguk’s long and arduous journey. So media gives the illusion of constant overnight success, instead of the slow slow and tedious road towards success.

  With a linear celebration and the illusion of instant success, we’ll all be constant depressed at our slow progress. Instead, celebrate incremental progress and the milestones. Don’t make things about some arbitrary number eons away. Make it small and constant. Instead of 1,000 to 10,000, make it each 1,000 people. Or create our own goals, things that matter and mean something for us. Celebrate along the journey, constantly, to feel it’s a path worth taking, to feel the pride and joy of our accomplishments. Don’t let some random number dictate whether we should celebrate something we take pride in. Don’t let those numbers halt all sense of feeling it reaching it.

  Even for my own podcast and blog, I don’t look at the numbers. No matter what the number is, I’d be disappointed it’s so low. So instead, I celebrate the small things, an interesting topic that episode, how my recording and vocals have improved, or improving my description by learning from other podcasts. In reality, it’s likely that I’ll never earn enough from the podcast or blog to sustain myself. I’ll never have millions upon millions of daily downloads like Joe Rogan. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t have a cake at the 50th episode, to celebrate the long and arduous journey thus far. So take joy in what we do, slowly, surely, and do it constantly with small, non-linear milestones.

A Blog and Podcast can naturally attract people who’re interested in your ideas to discuss with you. Instead of needing to have constant conversations where the other party isn’t interested in your thoughts.

A while ago I read an article that said writing is socialisation for introverts and big thinkers. Nothing bores a big thinker more than small talk, the mundane shit about weather, what Gary or Sue did over the weekend, gossip and rumours. All those are of little consequence. They aren’t intellectually stimulating. After telling some friends about my podcast, they engaged me on the topics. Some agreed, others disagreed and offered counter point. By simply broadcasting my thoughts, others were able to discuss the deeper topics that interested me.

  As we get older and older, continuous or spontaneous meetups rarely do occur. Back in the 1800’s, there was salons people gathered together and talked. That would be a natural avenue to explore ideas and gain insights into others. However, such a thing no longer happens. School is one place, but there’s no going back there. Uni is another, except it only lasts 4 years. After that? Perhaps churches if you’re religious, or maybe public transport. The only time people meetup is when planning an event together, going someplace, parties or meeting up for dinner.

  Since these events are planned well in advance, all parties want to enjoy their time together, for such meetups are precious. This makes talking about big topics a risky gamble. You might need to probe for several different topics before one mutually interests both parties. Not to mention you risk boring them to death if they aren’t interested. A blog helps resolves those issues, the other party would only bring up articles they resonated with or enjoyed. Even asking about what articles they read helps, at least we have an idea what they liked. Since writing is dense, the conversations can begin in earnest.

  Introverted people, on average, aren’t on the spot thinkers, we would have to reflect and think about our words first. Which makes writing the best medium of communication. In person discussions, usually, would revolve around what’s already been said, so there’s no on the spot communication. We’d already have an idea of the topic at hand and can converse fluently on the subject matter.

Broadcasting our thoughts also helps connect with others we never thought shared similar ideas, or were interested in deep thoughts. As we age, making new connections becomes more difficult. In addition, deep thinkers are often alone. Writing, after all, is a very solitary act. Thinking doesn’t happen in a party house with EDM blaring out every night. It happens in solitude. Since the mundane everyday conversations bore us, it’s difficult to find those we connect with. Try meeting someone and ask something like, who are you and what do you want, it’s a bit too heavy. There’s a period where others test the waters, where conversations are naturally lighter.

  Even for myself, I never really talk about deeper topics around others in person. There’s no real catalyst for deeper thoughts, it’s just a fun event surrounded by others. Think about parties, everyone’s talking, and everyone wants to talk to others as well. So the natural time to talk to somebody is reduced. Most topics would be simple and short, that can start and stop at any time without dramatic loss to the overall story. If I never communicated my blog or podcast to others, nobody would know I’m a deep thinker.

Cloud seeding, a process where iodine is launched into the clouds to attract water molecules, thus create rain. Newer technologies involve drones to emit sparks, these sparks would attract water molecules together to form rain. Drones, unlike cloud seeding, only uses electricity so the cost effectiveness is much higher. This technology is already used in the Middle East, namely Dubai, as there’s virtually no rainfall there.

  New weather shaping technologies have immense potential to reshape our response to severe weather conditions. This includes cloud clearing. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China cleared the skies for the opening ceremony, 10 minutes after it rained again. Unlike cloud seeding, this technology isn’t used often, there aren’t many innovations in that space due to lack of interest. However, couldn’t this same technology be used to prevent severe storms or rainfall? In 2022, Australia has experienced flash flooding which damaged or destroyed millions of dollars’ worth of buildings. We already have quite advanced weather detection systems, like seeing a relatively accurate picture of the weather for 14 days all around the world.

  So as soon as there’s a severe weather event, clear the clouds to reduce the potential damage of the storm/rainfall. In theory, since clouds are collections of water molecules that bound together, all we need to do is unbind enough of the clouds before it reaches the storm phase. The costs for research/investment into cloud clearing technologies, although expensive, it’s dwarfed by the immense damage heavy rain/storms can cause to individuals, families, towns and communities.

  Of course, the biggest risk is unforeseen consequences. If we keep clearing storms, then would they come back later in the future with greater ferocity? Bushfires have always been a great problem in Australia, especially with the expanding urban landscape. In the past, bushfires burnt through the land, where trees evolved to grow after a fire. Now, due to artificial suppression of fires, they isn’t regular fires that clear the vegetation and bark. Overtime this built up and up, even mega bushfires erupted, armed with decade’s worth of burnable materials. All because we put bushfires out, to prevent harm to the ever-growing urbanisation.

BELLE, beautiful animation, god tier songs, great writing and packed with emotions. I cried when watching this, it was a touching anime. A touching anime that ALMOST was a masterpiece. You see, this anime tries to do a bit too much for it’s own good. There’s a beauty and the beast element, you see the name Belle, like Bell from Beauty and the Beast, except with an extra e to not get sued 😊. Cancel culture with sponsorships. Constant reactions from the mass internet to see how people pile on others. A silent mass majority that becomes strong when they unite against the tyranny of the minority. There’s a minor romance, and teenage girl feelings.

  All of this in less than 2 hours, yeah, way too much. The fundamental theme throughout the anime was Suzu, the main character, trying to comprehend why her mother would go so far to help a stranger. Everything else, literally everything else, could’ve been cut out and not affect the emotional impact of this movie. In fact, it would’ve strengthen it as more time could’ve been spent on the main story, instead of sub stories.

  The most useless parts of the movie was beauty and the beast and cancel culture man. You see, the beast never ends up with the beauty in the end, so why even include this fairy tale for? In most of the anime, you see Suzu crushing on Hisatake, and dealing with feelings of insecurity due to his popularity. So, if she ended up with the beast, it’d be illogical. Since she didn’t, then the fairy tale has no moral value. Beauty and the Beast exists to say that the beauty can transform the beast into who he could be by seeing past his obvious flaws and exterior. Honestly, I think that was added for the marketing department. Beauty and the beast does sell, the movie cover on my anime list contains them. If you removed that part, there would be no change to the overall story. Sure there needs to be a new way that the beauty meets the beast, but that’s for the better.

  The second part that could be removed was cancel culture man. His powers to unmask people in real life was a bit strange and raised many questions. Like, is he the only one with those powers? Does anyone else have those powers? Why does he have it? He was the main antagonist that drive beauty to meet the beast. For a villain, he had no real good development, and too much screen time to justify the cost. He either needed some serious rewriting or to trim off his scenes, like trimming off the fat, so the movie could get to the real meat.

  In the grand scheme, my complaints don’t make or break the movie. It’s a great film that everyone who likes great writing and anime should watch. I’d give it an almost a masterpiece out of masterpiece if not for all the things mentioned above.

At first, my friend told me to watch this, but I have an allergic relation to idol animes. They’re all the same generic garbage where a bunch of girls sing. However, the first episode blew me away. The ambience, the emotions, the writing and the animation. A little girl that dreamed of singing, being an idol, despite being stuck in hospital. Despite all odds, during high school, she enters SELECTION PROJECT, a show game for training idols. For over 10 years she dreamed of this moment. For over 10 years she’s trained and is a great singer. However, disaster strikes during her performance, stage fright. She lost the popular vote and failed her dream of being an idol. Putting on a strong front to her friends, her family, but alone, she cries. A dream she made over 10 years ago. 10 years’ worth of practice, of ambition, of sacrifice, all gone poof from a single mistake.

 In that moment, SELECTION PROJECT was more than just than an idol anime. What would she do now? Despondent, faking being fine so nobody worries about her. How would she lead her life now that she didn’t become an idol? That was the high point, then everything went downhill. One of the girls in the competition, that won, dropped out and said you deserve it more than me and I’ll make it in America. Thus the asspull happens, the main character will now join SELECTION PROJECT as an idol. She made it, right?

 Later on, as the anime progresses, we get manufactured drama between the 9 idol members. Over the drama sequence, they learn something that changes their mind and everyone makes up. Then they live happily ever after. After the main character became an idol, due to the winner dropping out, SELECTION PROJECT became just another generic idol garbage anime. Sure, it does have good animation and songs, there’s no doubt about that. Except, the story was just like the rest, uninspired, following a formula. In fact, the anime existed to sell the songs!

 Honestly, it’s a tragedy. She didn’t make it to the SELECTION PROJECT to become an idol. She fucked up. Her dreams were crushed. But, would she really let things end like this? Would she really give up a 10 year dream because she failed an audition? At that moment, I wanted her to strive and struggle on to become an idol, despite her failure on the grand stage. I wanted her to try alternate means to become an idol. For me, that was where a true story could’ve happened. Where life isn’t about magically succeeding because you wanted it. Let’s get real here, everyone wants to win, even if you tried everything in your power, you could STILL fail. It’s not when you fail over that matters, but what you do when you’re beaten down, trodden on and laughed upon that truly defines who you are.

 So SELECTION PROJECT is a great generic idol anime about girls who sing and dance. If that’s what you’re into, then watch it, listen to the songs, and enjoy the anime. But if you’re like me, someone who wants to watch something real, where 2d characters transform into something much more. Characters who, despite not existing, feel more real than real life. Who occupy a space in your heart, where you won’t forget their struggle, their hopes, their dreams and how they existed. Then, it’s not an anime for you.

Shortly after deepfakes were created, alarms were raised about how it could be used to create fake child pornography (CP). Most of the deepfakes sites have veered away from hosting this type of content, understandable due to the dangerous attention it could bring itself. Despite all the laws, regulations, arrests and website take downs, this CP never ceases to exist. Recently, in 2021, someone in Japan was arrested for owning several CP magazines he bought from Germany. How on earth is that possible? Germany has all the same laws and regulations as other places in regard to CP, yet someone could fly in and out after purchasing a CP magazine.

 Psychopathic serial killers aren’t normal people. They kill obsessively even when it makes no sense to do so. Like how Ted Bundy escaped from prison, only to immediately go back to kill again. Any logical person would at least wait until things cool down again. Society has to grapple with the fact some people are just born with a certain mindset. They didn’t choose to be like this, it’s just nature.

 Perhaps child paedophiles are the same, created due to evolutionary processes gone wrong. Most people act softer around children, like smiling, laughing, or pulling funny faces. Biologically this makes sense. If we were like lions, who cast their cubs into the wilderness to survive, humanity wouldn’t exist today. Then what if this natural tendency to like children went a step too far? So are child paedophiles like psychopaths? Are they inborn or can they be created?

 You can generate non-existent humans with AI. Right now, deepfakes paste faces over existing models. It still requires real people. But soon enough AI can generate entirely fabricated scenes and people, without Hollywood’s multi-million dollar budgets. Then, if someone were to create use AI to create CP, that’s entirely fake, what would happen? Would that still be illegal, even though they aren’t real and doesn’t harm real children? Would the spread of this software actually be beneficial? Due to a rise of fake CP and a dramatic decline of real CP. That is free market economics take over. Or would this create a new generation that thirsts after the real thing?

 Humans can be desensitised to nearly anything, and overtime, go down a deeper and deeper hole. ISIS produced gory videos to normalise violence and it worked quite well in their forces. Such desensitisation occurs within the military and police, eventually being exposed to enough violence results in equally violent retribution to enemies. Porn tends to drift people towards more extreme content, as straight sex becomes tame and boring for them. Just like how marriages become stagnant and partners wish for more sexual variety, usually in the form of cheating.

 Child paedophile is both born and made. Genetic processes might depose a person towards liking children to a disturbing degree. Whilst desensitisation drags others down a rabbit hole that may end up with someone going to Germany to purchase a CP magazine. In the beginning, AI-generated CP would have a positive outcome, children aren’t being harmed in the making of such videos. Eventually, when one doesn’t want the “fake” stuff anymore, they’ll turn to the real sources. With demand, there will ALWAYS be supply. US couldn’t stop physical drugs from entering the country, even with over $1 trillion spent. So how could they prevent digital goods that can’t be stopped with car inspections, sniffer dogs or border security?

I was quite ambivalent about posting this. Notice how I keep using the term, CP? That’s like a safe guard so search engines don’t blacklist my site. It’s said curiosity killed that cat, well, this is my curiosity. A recent article about someone buying a CP magazine kicked this all off, combined with AI, the future will not be so black and white. I didn’t want to do any research into this topic either, as the cost of accidently stumbling onto a CP site is quite severe. In a way, it’s very taboo.

 The fact I’m even writing an article about this raises questions in the eyes of a common man. Why would you even be thinking about this? I would be hesitate to recommend my blog to a friend with this article being on the front page. It’s not the best image for myself. Yet at the same time, if one steers away from topics, isn’t that running blindfolded? Trying to avoid what you see and pretend it doesn’t exist is like Chinese mainlanders who come across an uncomfortable truth about China. A Fal Gong practitioner was handing out pamphlets about the Communist party of China’s treatment of them and the Chinese lady covered her ears, stomped forward and sang loudly to avoid the truth. I don’t want to be like that, even if it’s ugly, I want to see the truth of the world.

There’s a theory about learning languages, where you only need the most frequent words in order to convey your ideas. Since 20% of the words make up 80% of word usage according to the paredo distribution. This theory does have validity. Johnny Harris spoke about how he minored in French at Uni and couldn’t even order a baguette in France. That’d be the most depressing realisation, that you wasted 5 years of your life for naught. There’s a quote, 400 words can run a battleship and 800 words can rule the world. Instead of trying to understand all the insane grammar rules, which are quite boring, try to learn to convey your thoughts through stringing words together. He memorised 400 words that he thought would be most used and then constantly talked to a native language speaker.

 However, I’m a software developer, why would I use my pitiful brain and try to think up words, when I can get a definitive list? So, over the week, I analysed the most frequent words in 1,200 Japanese animes and dramas. This list, hopefully, will help you and I be able to understand and speak what we see, feel and hear in the world around us.

From this list, the most frequent word is I 私 (watashi) female form, with 163k counts, then this これ (kore), with 100k counts, and thing; matter 事 (koto), with 100k counts. A tiny bit later, informal I 俺 (ore), with 95k counts.

 Now, what does this tell us? First off, that females talk more or are more frequent in animes/dramas. This isn’t too surprising, the subtitles are mainly from anime’s and female characters bring more viewership/revenue. This is a rather frequent word in normal day use. Thing; Matter; means that objects are constantly referred to. Then informal I is because nobody goes full formal all the time.

The number of frequent words is staggering. English required 800 words, but my list contained 8 thousand words, and that’s the top 10%, not 20%…  See the embedded airtable for the entire file. Of course, this word list is useless unless we start memorise them, at least 1,000, so get going 🙂

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Ahmed Fasih, who wrote the entire strategy to get Japanese sentences into words and for his assistance.

Dr Yoshinaga Naoki for creating J.DepP and helping when I was getting errors.

Resources

Jp Subtitles See that link for the entire list of Animes/Dramas analysed.

QR Code Scanner

Yes, it’s that time of the year when everyone remakes an existing app that has thousands out there. This time I made a QR Code Scanner that’s entirely web based and can be added to home without installing another app. The limitations are that it more or less only works on Chrome/Chromium based browsers due to using new Web APIs. Furthermore, it’s only for links as it’ll redirect to them immediately.

 Unlike other QR Code scanning apps, that support all QR codes, including text, mine is just for links. By only supporting links, it can redirect immediately to a site, thus being more efficient compared to other apps.

 This was a fun project, the advances in Web APIs make things that were only possible via an app extremely simple. You can even scan barcodes, although my app doesn’t support that, isn’t that amazing?

Check out my QR Code Scanner App.

Completely ad-free, no trackers nothing, just you, the camera and a qr code.

Happy New Years. All around the world this line is being repeated several million times in a span of 24 hours. It’s said to your friends, family, neighbours and stork clerks. With the rise of digital messaging, many would send out Happy New Year’s messages to those around them as well. I’m the same, every year I send out a Happy New Year’s message to everyone I’ve consistency talked to over the year. I do not know why I’ve done this, but it’s been a practice I’ve followed for the last 8 years.

 As the years pass by, my friend circle dwindles down to nothing. As an overly private person, I don’t make connections easy and after school and University ended, that has become a near impossible task. Last year, after seeing a future with nobody to send Happy New Year messages to, I decided to expand the list to people that I wanted to get to know better as well. Eventually, people will get busy in their lives, without using social media to remind other of your existence, it’ll fade away into dust. A simple greeting with a fun activity you did together, like playing board games, helps refresh your memory of why you continue to hang around them. It also gives a small talking point, so conversation doesn’t immediately die off.

 Every year, I send a New Year’s greeting to everyone I talked to and others I wanted to continue interacting with. Overtime, this list gets smaller and smaller and one day, there’ll be nobody left to message. I hope that this day doesn’t come and my practice of messaging people means I won’t be forgotten. So do you have a similar practice, where you message Happy New Year’s to people? What’s your criteria for messaging others?

Goals aren’t strategies, don’t get a long todo list mixed up with strategy. Real strategy is achieving a challenge with finite resources, it’s HOW you’ll accomplish something, not the WHAT you want to have done.

Objectives Key Results (OKR), this is a managerial fad that has taken over the world. A majority of companies have these, it could even be disguised under a different name like North Star. These, by themselves, aren’t too bad, it’s better to have some goal rather than none. It also makes it easier for you to get promoted, if you met all these goals, then a payraise or promotion is justified. However, these days they macerade themselves as the grand strategy, the path forward for companies and how they’ll deal with all their competition.

 In reality, these goals are nothing more than a To-Do list with fancy wording to make them sound sophisticated and legit. Anything that’s not immediately achievable is labelled as future goals, thus gives the appearance of a long term strategy. Except, a real strategy is accomplishing a set challenge or task with finite resources, it’s not WHAT we are doing, but HOW are we going to accomplish that.

 Take Intel. After AMD has released several Zen architecture CPUs, they’ve been battered and bruised. As of 2021, AMD’s CPU’s are generally cheaper, use less power and have better specs. Over a decade of monopoly made Intel complacent and they just release a slightly better chip with an insane price, after all, nobody could compete anyway. However, that all changed. Even the laptop segment isn’t safe, where more and more laptop manufacturers include AMD.

 Using OKRs or goals, it’s to beat AMD’s CPUs and regain market share, but that’s just what they need to do. It’s a long laundry list of stuff, what’s even the point of writing that down, it’s fairly obvious. Intel’s strategy is to hire a technical CEO, invest into new chip designs and partially use TSMC manufacturing instead of solely their own. Although it’s somewhat of a to-do list, it’s certainly not a terrible strategy.

 Thus, I implore you to look at your OKR’s, goals and separate what’s just a long list of stuff to do with fancy wording to make managers happy and a real strategy to achieve a challenge or objective with finite resources.

Let’s use this blog as a case study, the end goal would be to produce enough value that 100 – 1,000 people would donate $10 per month. With that amount, I would no longer need a day job to sustain myself. Generally speaking, only a very small percentage of people would donate unless it’s a very tight-knit community.

 Then the goals would be grow the blogs readers, increase the amount of donators or create a dedicated community, much like MrMoneyMustache’s audience. These are not strategies, it’s just a wishlist of things I want to happen. I can’t whip up some motivational post or speech to accomplish this goal. A practice that occurs more and more in companies these days, where the leader sets some ambitious goals, says various placeholder motivational stuff and then expects everyone to accomplish that.

 Let’s take growing the blog’s readers, first I’d need to install website analytics, something that I opted not to have, to gauge how many readers are using the site. Then to see what the typical blog growth looks like, so I have a baseline comparison. After that, I’d need to define what genre my blog will be in, at the moment, it’s everything I have in my mind. But in reality, it’s far better to reduce the scope to a few topics, like philosophy and software development, so the audience knows exactly what they’re getting. All of these is just to set a baseline and create a brand.

 To actually grow the audience, I could post on aggregator blogs to increase exposure, to post to social media sites and reddit. In addition, to create a RSS feed and submit to RSS aggregators, that’ll expand the reach of my blog. Finally, to appear as guest posts of blogs with a similar genres. All of these, although not guaranteed to increase readers, it does increase the number people who would read my articles, and if they’re interested, continue on my blog.

 Now, this isn’t something I’m interested in doing. The entire point of this blog is to not suppress my thoughts, to pander to the market and the like. Instead, it’s to write about whatever interests me and hopefully, someone else would be interested in it as well. A friend of mine asked if I looked at the reader statistics and I said no. What point is there? If there’s 1, I’d get depressed on how few there is, if there’s 100, I’d get depressed that there isn’t as much as I hoped there’d be and this cycle repeats endlessly, even into the millions.

This blog post was based on Good Strategies Bad Strategies by Richard P. Rumelt, I’d recommend you to read it if you’re interested in companies and strategies. Even if you aren’t in a managerial position, at least you know that your company is full of shit and isn’t a long term winner. Thus you can switch boats into one that’ll fly upwards instead of slowly driving itself into the ground. Perhaps it won’t happen in the first 10ish years, but it’ll occur eventually as more and more bullshit gets introduced with zero real world value.

Visit Player Picker for a easy way to pick the starting player. Just put your finger on the app and then it’ll randomly select a person.

The biggest issue with board games is that picking the first player can be a tough. By nature, humans are political creatures with all forms of alliances, but in a simple and fun board game session, you don’t want to show overt favoritism. However, subconsciously, this can come out. In addition, there’s only so many ways you can decide who goes first, whether it’s by age, birth dates, heights and more. Overtime, it’ll be the same person starting, thus you’d need to constantly come up with new ideas just to pick the first person to start!

 This is where Player picker comes in. All you need to do is place your finger on the app and it’ll randomly decide who starts. It’s designed for up to 8 players, although, in theory, the limit is how many touch inputs Chrome supports. By designed for 8 players, I mean I only added 8 unique colours.

Now, if you’ve already played some board games, you already know these apps exist and they’re quite good, so what’s the difference between mine and all the others? Basically nothing. I just made this because some apps only support 6 players, whilst mine supports 8. Besides that, there’s no real difference. You could even say it’s worse in terms of visual features and animations. The main reason I made this was because I wanted to.

 Instead of installing another app, Player Picker is a web app that can install to your homepage, a Progressive Web App (PWA) as the lingo goes. It was surprisingly difficult to find libraries with multi-touch capabilities I wanted. It doesn’t seem to be that fleshed out. One that I found, Interactjs, hasn’t been updated in months so I don’t know whether the library is still being maintained. In fact, the hard bit was trying to search for and use multi-touch libraries because I didn’t want the hassle of native touch fuckery. In the end, I had to use native touch fuckery anyway because existing libraries didn’t have what I wanted. That was the most frustrating developer experience I ever had.

Why would I create an app that already exists and its done better? What value does that have? My question is if it always NEEDS to be valuable to others to have value. For me, the app has infinte value for it was an amusing and worthwhile development experience. Messing around with multi-touch and Progressive Web Apps taught me a lot. Now, it’s not going to be an app many people use, for most people, whether it’s a PWA or something downloaded from the app stores doesn’t matter. But, for me, not needing to install an overly bloated app, having everything run as the web is great. An app is extremely unnecessary for such a simple application. All it needs is touch capabilities and animation, something that existed for years in the web. In the future, it’ll be completely offline and hosted statically, meaning I won’t pay a cent for it, thus will remain online for as long as the CDN exists.

 On a side note, isn’t it amusing how overly philosophical I needed to get to justify creating an app for fun?

Starting Player Picker

Check out my new text-based game: Text Based Novel Game, Anti Destiny Storyteller!

In order to retire, I must find methods of generating income and one such method was to make a text based game. The idea was to start with a basic text game and then gradually improve upon it. Eventually creating an AI variant, similar to AI Dungeon. In my foolish mind, this would be simple task and wouldn’t take too long. Oh how wrong I was.

 A US Navy general remarked that you should not integrate more than 2 new technologies into a ship, anymore becomes widely expensive to get running. Considering that the US’s newest aircraft carrier has blown it’s budget, doubling the billions spent, I’d say he’s correct. 5 new technologies were far too much and the results speak for themselves.

As someone who watches anime, Visual Novels were the original game type, where it’s a bunch of images with text flicking through. That would’ve been perfect, except I can’t draw nor want to spend the enormous funds to draw hundreds or thousands of images. Thus I stuck to text-based. The new technologies here was designing a text-based game, using React/NextJS for the website and then writing a story. It turns out creating a good game and story is no easy task, so much that my initial dreams of an AI powered text-based game went into flames. To add AI when I was already struggling with the existing technologies would be a death sentence.

 Without any external motivation in terms of funds, everything is quite dependent on my internal willpower. To have the game stalled for weeks due to figuring out tech would kill any motivation and thus the entire project would die. For it’s very easy to start things, when everything’s new and fresh, when all the simple things take less than an hour to complete. Each completed task is another burst of inspiration to keep going. However, as time ticks on, tasks no longer become so easy, so simple. Fatigue, boredness and motivation plummets to nothing.

Thus, making something simple first, and keeping the new tech to a minimum is the only way to keep that internal fire going and create something. So this is the basis of my text-based game. The story is what you seen in the last post. The gameplay is reading. What mattered here was the tech, which would eventually result in the AI version. So please do checkout my text-based novel game.

https://linear-text-novel.vercel.app/

After reading an excessive amount, I was always interested in writing a story. Except, it takes an insane amount of work to create something at least half decent. I wasn’t going to try, until I kept reading bad story after story, with terrible development, characters and especially token roles. Where one is defined by their sex and features. So, to spite them, I tried to create my own version that was better… Yeah nah, I realise why those stories are so generic, because how damned difficult it is to create a good story!

So here’s my attempt, I hope you can have a read.

Anti-Destiny Hero

Chapter 1

All my life I have been told what I cannot be. All my life people never viewed me as me, but rather as handicapped girl that needs help. Nobody has ever seen me as me. I almost felt the same way, that all I’ll ever amount to is a handicapped girl that people give pity to. Everything changed when a saw that hero, who took down all the bad guys with a smile on his face. It was at that moment I wanted to be a hero and told everyone I knew. But, nobody thought that was possible. For them, a hero isn’t someone in a wheelchair. My parents encouraged me with hidden pity, they didn’t’ believe me and just didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Some of my friends were bemused, “You want to become a hero?” they joked, barely able to suppress their laughter.

Others snarled, “You can’t even get up a flight of stairs yourself, who are you going to save?”, “When someone gets robbed and runs up the stairs, what then? Will you angry tell them to come down?”

From that day onward, I decided to become a hero, no matter what other people say. Even if I’m in a wheelchair, even if I’m a girl, does it matter? I want people to see me as who I choose to become, not what I was born with.

Well, even as I say that, there isn’t too much heroic actions in my day to day life. On my way to University, sometimes I encounter guys hitting on a girl that’s clearly uncomfortable. “Hey, buzz off, she ain’t interested in you lot” I shout. They look around to see who said that and can never see me at first. “Uncomfortable? Impossible, she’s having the time of her life with us” Carl scoffs. I never do manage to convince them, but it gives enough time for the girl to slip away. Carl and co gets a little mad but they don’t do anything to me. As much as I hate to be defined as a wheelchair girl, it is awfully convenient at times.

Behind the veil of benign day to day actions, there is evil larking in the shadows. My University was packed with people till recently, then everyone disappeared off to somewhere. Eavesdropping on others, I pick up strange rumours. “Did you hear that Noah got addicted on Fizz? He hasn’t left his room in weeks now” replied Lane in hushed tones. Leigh nervously looked around and sharply remarked, “Don’t talk about it anymore, you know it’s illegal to take or even discuss drugs in Domni. Just last month some people that were discussing Fizz publicily were pulled away by some dangerous looking people.” It doesn’t seem real though, how could people even get Fizz when drugs are so illegal?

Either way, I ignore those comments and continue to my Mechanical Engineering course. “Hey Kay, made new changes to your ride again?” Isabel beemed. “Of course”, I replied, “Just added some a small motor to my wheels to go a bit faster. It’s not done yet though.” Isabel went full on geek mode on me, asking what the power is and how long it’ll last, you see, she helps me with these modifications. She also knows that I want to be a hero, so it’s a blessing to have someone like her. Even though I’m bound to these wheels, it doesn’t mean the cheapest wheelchair is what I’ll be suck with for the rest of my life. I’m not adding spikes the the wheels like a chariot, nor do I have that much skills, it’s just enough to try out different ideas, which sometimes fails.

After that class was over, I groaned to Isabel, “Finally it’s done, that was a grueling 2 hours.” “Casey really is an intense lecturer, always going so fast! Were you going to finish off your motor changes now” Isabel commented. “Definitely, let’s head to the mechanical workshop now” I stated.

After reading an excessive amount, I was always interested in writing a story. Except, it takes an insane amount of work to create something at least half decent. I wasn’t going to try, until I kept reading bad story after story, with terrible development, characters and especially token roles. Where one is defined by their sex and features. So, to spite them, I tried to create my own version that was better… Yeah nah, I realise why those stories are so generic, because how damned difficult it is to create a good story!

So here’s my attempt, I hope you can have a read.

Anti-Destiny Hero

Chapter 1

All my life I have been told what I cannot be. All my life people never viewed me as me, but rather as handicapped girl that needs help. Nobody has ever seen me as me. I almost felt the same way, that all I’ll ever amount to is a handicapped girl that people give pity to. Everything changed when a saw that hero, who took down all the bad guys with a smile on his face. It was at that moment I wanted to be a hero and told everyone I knew. But, nobody thought that was possible. For them, a hero isn’t someone in a wheelchair. My parents encouraged me with hidden pity, they didn’t’ believe me and just didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Some of my friends were bemused, “You want to become a hero?” they joked, barely able to suppress their laughter.

Others snarled, “You can’t even get up a flight of stairs yourself, who are you going to save?”, “When someone gets robbed and runs up the stairs, what then? Will you angry tell them to come down?”

From that day onward, I decided to become a hero, no matter what other people say. Even if I’m in a wheelchair, even if I’m a girl, does it matter? I want people to see me as who I choose to become, not what I was born with.

Well, even as I say that, there isn’t too much heroic actions in my day to day life. On my way to University, sometimes I encounter guys hitting on a girl that’s clearly uncomfortable. “Hey, buzz off, she ain’t interested in you lot” I shout. They look around to see who said that and can never see me at first. “Uncomfortable? Impossible, she’s having the time of her life with us” Carl scoffs. I never do manage to convince them, but it gives enough time for the girl to slip away. Carl and co gets a little mad but they don’t do anything to me. As much as I hate to be defined as a wheelchair girl, it is awfully convenient at times.

Behind the veil of benign day to day actions, there is evil larking in the shadows. My University was packed with people till recently, then everyone disappeared off to somewhere. Eavesdropping on others, I pick up strange rumours. “Did you hear that Noah got addicted on Fizz? He hasn’t left his room in weeks now” replied Lane in hushed tones. Leigh nervously looked around and sharply remarked, “Don’t talk about it anymore, you know it’s illegal to take or even discuss drugs in Domni. Just last month some people that were discussing Fizz publicily were pulled away by some dangerous looking people.” It doesn’t seem real though, how could people even get Fizz when drugs are so illegal?

Either way, I ignore those comments and continue to my Mechanical Engineering course. “Hey Kay, made new changes to your ride again?” Isabel beemed. “Of course”, I replied, “Just added some a small motor to my wheels to go a bit faster. It’s not done yet though.” Isabel went full on geek mode on me, asking what the power is and how long it’ll last, you see, she helps me with these modifications. She also knows that I want to be a hero, so it’s a blessing to have someone like her. Even though I’m bound to these wheels, it doesn’t mean the cheapest wheelchair is what I’ll be suck with for the rest of my life. I’m not adding spikes the the wheels like a chariot, nor do I have that much skills, it’s just enough to try out different ideas, which sometimes fails.

After that class was over, I groaned to Isabel, “Finally it’s done, that was a grueling 2 hours.” “Casey really is an intense lecturer, always going so fast! Were you going to finish off your motor changes now” Isabel commented. “Definitely, let’s head to the mechanical workshop now” I stated.

Chinese government mandates stories to conform with acceptable Chinese Communist values, thus making anime boring. Boring anime = no watchers = no money = dead industry.

Japanese wares used to be seen as low quality, garbage where the only redeeming factor is the cheap price. But, overtime, their production quality rose higher and higher until today. Where Japanese goods are known for it’s high quality.

 The same story is playing out for China, they used to produce absolute garbage, but it was cheap so everyone bought it. As time goes on, as more money flows in, manufacturing processes are improving to a point where the only low quality products are from dodgy suppliers.

How does this relate to anime you ask? Anime is following the very same trend, it started off as hot garbage and nowadays, it’s decent. Still seen with a stigma of low quality, but evidence of improvements is obvious. The 3D animations isn’t pixar quality yet, the 2D animations still haven’t perfected the art as of now. However, it’s only a matter of time.

 Then, isn’t it strange to say the Chinese anime studios may collapse? After all, the trends are obvious, the population and thus money is free flowing. What could possibly stop such a giant? Itself, yes that’s right, China itself could cause the collapse of Chinese anime. You see, the Chinese government has been ramping up it’s socialist policies and propaganda. Games like Playeruknown’s BattleGrounds required changes to “support the Chinese communist values.” That’s a real story by the way. But people aren’t going to sit there and watch propaganda. Given ones free choice, people will always gravitate towards the most interesting stories and forcefully embedding communist into stories isn’t interesting.

The extreme ramp up of imbuing stories with acceptable Chinese Communist values will reduce the enjoyment of stories. Without people activity enjoying the underlying stories, there’ll be no money to be made in Chinese anime. No money means no talent, no training, no researching the latest techniques. So the Chinese government, by making stories boring due to forceful propaganda, may cause the anime industry to die before it truly blooms. The novel industry is another target, with some post-apocalyptic stories had to revise the year of the demise because of the Communist Party’s 5 year technological superiority plan.

Chinese government mandates stories to conform with acceptable Chinese Communist values, thus making anime boring. Boring anime = no watchers = no money = dead industry.

Japanese wares used to be seen as low quality, garbage where the only redeeming factor is the cheap price. But, overtime, their production quality rose higher and higher until today. Where Japanese goods are known for it’s high quality.

 The same story is playing out for China, they used to produce absolute garbage, but it was cheap so everyone bought it. As time goes on, as more money flows in, manufacturing processes are improving to a point where the only low quality products are from dodgy suppliers.

How does this relate to anime you ask? Anime is following the very same trend, it started off as hot garbage and nowadays, it’s decent. Still seen with a stigma of low quality, but evidence of improvements is obvious. The 3D animations isn’t pixar quality yet, the 2D animations still haven’t perfected the art as of now. However, it’s only a matter of time.

 Then, isn’t it strange to say the Chinese anime studios may collapse? After all, the trends are obvious, the population and thus money is free flowing. What could possibly stop such a giant? Itself, yes that’s right, China itself could cause the collapse of Chinese anime. You see, the Chinese government has been ramping up it’s socialist policies and propaganda. Games like Playeruknown’s BattleGrounds required changes to “support the Chinese communist values.” That’s a real story by the way. But people aren’t going to sit there and watch propaganda. Given ones free choice, people will always gravitate towards the most interesting stories and forcefully embedding communist into stories isn’t interesting.

The extreme ramp up of imbuing stories with acceptable Chinese Communist values will reduce the enjoyment of stories. Without people activity enjoying the underlying stories, there’ll be no money to be made in Chinese anime. No money means no talent, no training, no researching the latest techniques. So the Chinese government, by making stories boring due to forceful propaganda, may cause the anime industry to die before it truly blooms. The novel industry is another target, with some post-apocalyptic stories had to revise the year of the demise because of the Communist Party’s 5 year technological superiority plan.

With this article, my blog has officially came to life!!!

I’ve wanted to create a blog for over a year now and have been started and stopped numerous times. Sometimes I gained a mad burst of inspiration and really hammer down. But this feeling would inevitably fizzle out and die.

 My day job is technically a web developer so I thought this would extremely easy. Just need to sit my ass down and whip something up, but it wasn’t. You see, I wanted to use new technologies and new methods and all that shit. So I researched, tried, found it’s too damn hard and then played some games instead. This process repeated for months and months.

Why did I suddenly start now? Time has been accelerating for me, I cannot be stuck on this blog and leave all my other ideas to the wayside. Thus I tried to make things simple as possible

 But Kay, why even bother create your own site? There’s so many easy ways to get a blog out there these days. Hell, you don’t even need to code, use Medium or Substack and boom, instant blog. Why waste over a year, fucking around, instead of using existing options?

There’s this side of me that likes creating things, likes the thrill and the challenge. Sure I could do some clickty click and get my writings out there. If I didn’t use Medium or Substack, there’s Wordpress and Shopify to use. Why bother creating something that already exists?

 There’s a danger in that logic, everything in the world has already been created, eventually you’ll never create anything. But that knowledge isn’t yours, you don’t know how to create a website, create that blog, use Laravel, Vue and hack up a CMS. Only by creating can you transform what is in your head to the world. Also, it’s fun. Just using a premade solution is boring, there’s create joy in the craft of things.

So that's the story on how I took over 2 years, dicking around, really not doing much, constantly restarting the project, to create my simple ass blog.