Facetiming with my sister yesterday. Caught our cat at just the right moment.

I am leaving Sicily at just the right time. It is BAKING here. I can barely leave my apartment.

.....which is pretty good for my work schedule.

For sure!

Mmh, cost is definitely a big factor.

What are your typical meals if I may ask?

Yes, advantages and disadvantages.

I still think WAY too many people prematurely think they've got everything together, though. No. We have a lot to improve. We should be grateful for what we have, yes, but we live in a really screwed up world.

Yep, the cactus helped show me that

Yes, Sciacca and Agrigento.
I'm staying til the end of May - almost over!

Oh hell yeah! Taking Souls.

Been listening to Jocko myself. That line about "you 18, 20, 24 year old young guns, you think that life will be forever. Well it goes by, and it *goes by **QUICK***... I hear the clock ticking, I'm taking scalps" - nothing like that to get pumped up into adrenaline mode.

Agree.
(When voice messages on Peepeth? 😄)

No phone verification? Nice!!!

Can't say you love nature if you haven't got nice and close with a cactus.

Grateful.
Grateful that I'm living in a beautiful country.
Grateful for my opportunities.
Grateful for my youth.
Grateful for my naiveté and recognition that I have a lot to learn from others.
Grateful for my cultivated willingness to work hard.
Grateful for those that appreciate me not just despite of, but because of my quirks.
Grateful for Bitcoin.
Grateful for not getting rich in the last bull run.
Grateful.

Just updated my now.txt https://jamesscaur.keybase.pub/now.txt
I replace it every 2 weeks. Inspired by @sivers.

SHINE ON YOU CRAZYYYY DIAAAMOND https://youtu.be/cWGE9Gi0bB0?t=505

I think this premature feeling of "I'm a good person" is holding humanity back and preventing us from progressing and becoming better. Guilt is actually good sometimes. We should feel compelled to make things better, not feel like we figured it all out & "it's not my problem"

There is something about eating meat that rubs me the wrong way. It's the moral transgression of eating another living being. In a way it's like eating myself. That **should** come with some feeling of remorse. It's wrong that I can fool myself into thinking it's 100% OK.

And there's lots of things like this, not just meat-eating. It's possible to shirk moral responsibility for relationships, environment, + more.

not at all, appreciate your opinion

No doubt about that.

I believe it's very difficult to eat healthy without meat. But I'm sure it's possible as well.

I'm very much for a revolution in how we consume meat.

I feel like we're totally turned off from death as a society, we don't really appreciate animal nor human deaths. That strikes me as the second-worst thing about how we consume meat (the first being the nasty conditions most animals live in.)

"Things You Should Never Do, Part I" - on the danger of rewriting an entire codebase instead of incrementally improving it. Plant the flowerbeds, paint the windows - don't bulldoze the lot.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/

Will definitely be an improvement

I wish decentralised identity solutions like Keybase were more user-friendly and accepted by the masses. If I could use a version of WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal, but based on a decentralised key that I own vs. a SMS number, that'd be perfect.

Man, traditional social media is cancer.

I can't see how it can be good for anyone. MAYBE if you select who you follow, you can get inspired and pumped up.

But me it just slowly saps away at my life, confidence, and creativity. There's no usage limit. Just millions of posts that spawn more posts.

There's no real relationship in being one like among thousands.

Texting and videochats are significantly better.

Similar for me, but solely pull movements. Hands are nicely torn up.

Cacti don't get enough love.

RP @Jason: "bottom line:

1. Life isn’t fair—so what are you doing about that?

2. The game is rigged in favor of the rich, the hard working, the bold & the connected (2 of those obviously favor the already rich)

3. YC made the startup game fairer, for that @paulg deserves our thanks"

https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1130175485873229825

haven't tried it yet, awesome that it's a reality now though. the future will be weird!

My takeaways: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6536287902266200066

A decade of #remotework https://blog.viktorpetersson.com/2019/05/18/a-decade-of-remote.html

On board with this: "If you actually care about reducing or eliminating the number of abortions, simply hold men accountable for their actions." https://medium.com/s/can-we-talk/men-cause-100-of-unwanted-pregnancies-eb0e8288a7e5

I think the likes of Impossible Burger is one of those steps, where it's the type of meat you can eat more carelessly but there is less sacrifice and pain involved in creating it. Sure it may be processed and untraditional but it's more ethical than battery farming.

I reckon it's a spectrum, the crappiest way of eating meat is when it's a pig in some battery farm with no opportunity to be social/intelligent, carelessly killed in a disrespectful & painful manner, then eaten with zero gratitude or remorse (or worse, thrown out).

The best way is when you have such a connection with the animal that it had a very real chance to survive instead of you.

There are steps in between

Spiritual is a huge cliche of a word, my definition is - living in accordance with the *logos* / nature (which includes our natural desires to keep humanity going/do the right thing/live in a good environment)

Kind of like the old Roman idea of resisting more advanced weapons because it would make the warriors less vulnerable, so they'd have less spirit to fight as hard. I feel like we should have skin in the game.

No human society has succeeded without eating meat (afaik). It's rich in nutrients that can't be found in plants in high enough quantities. From a pure physical standpoint eating meat is awesome and efficient.

Preparing meat definitely takes on a weird feeling when you accidentally cut yourself with the knife. Definitely hits you that you're eating something like you that used to be alive. Yet also, I'm finding myself more comfortable with eating meat the closer I get to the killing the animal itself. I feel like the ideal way, spiritually, that you can eat meat is when you genuinely risk your life in order to eat it.

https://txbatch.com and contracting while we're still working on making a sustainable + profitable business

I actually like experiencing the different flavours of mundanity. Life sucks everywhere. Every culture is flawed. There's generally more noticeable negative or disappointing things about everywhere I go. I think perception is wired that way. But seeing the differences is at least exciting, and it makes me more appreciative of places as a whole.

I don't think you travel to another country without improving yourself.

Never could put my finger on how to articulate this before now. The current state of the world is beginning to force us to rely on real-world close relationships more than ever. https://twitter.com/bitstein/status/1129508492673523712

Looking forward to getting "Everything is F*cked" by Mark Manson - here's a recent interview: https://youtu.be/O7ANnnZL3jQ

The main points of the book seem to be:
* choose your pain don't avoid pain
* treat the struggle to make things better as the end in itself (not the means to an end)
* why? because on the other side of success everything's still f*cked (hence the title)

Never thought I'd see this on ESPN. Times are changing. Worth watching. "When you think you know everything you realise you don't know anything."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYcnaYEzX7Y

👀

I think there's still many chances to get wealthy yet, though the speculative bubble days are over. Focus on what excites you most about cryptocurrency. Do you like Bitcoin, uncensorable global money, established, stable, most likely to change the world? Then check out https://bitcoin.page. Do you like Ethereum, the tech that makes Peepeth possible? Start playing with @MyCrypto and https://ethereum.org/learn/

Just reminded me to reread the Alchemist.

Because of that they were able to stay for the full year and actually recoup a solid portion of their savings while still having a kickass holiday.

Similar with Europe for me, I've had way more opportunities + contracts to keep TxBatch going simply due to the Euro time zone, while also getting to experience a ton of cool countries

Being from New Zealand definitely helped me commit to long-term travel balanced with work, too. Flying across the world is damn expensive not to mention burns tons of fuel (something like driving to work for multiple years simply for 1 leg).

I was motivated by seeing the likes of an Argentinian couple who had travelled to NZ on working holidays. They saved up for years then got higher wages for unskilled work there.

Phrasing.

*(was spent genuinely partying in a way that I couldn't)
(if I hadn't worked)
(and if I had instead compressed my costs/travel into a few days)

I think this is also one of the reasons people have so much fun at certain universities, because the study balances out the play and people have genuine reason to celebrate (like passing tests, completed assignments).

I can definitely say that my last day in Georgia after we published the TxBatch MVP (https://vimeo.com/307334369) was spent GENUINELY partying in a way that I couldn't if I hadn't worked & compressed costs/travel into a few days

I think I actually started this method of travelling when I still had my old job in New Zealand, sure I was salaried and had to be in the office, but I could often just book a day off or work overtime and get the next day free, and I made the most of them (visiting hostels around the country, skiing, sports)

And working is super important because it:

- Balances out and avoids any feelings of guilt for the times of pure relaxation/play. I'm fairly conscientious and don't do well when I have large spans of free time.
- keeps me humble and humanises me to the people I live with
- proves to the people I meet that they can have a similar lifestyle
- eliminates fear of the trip "ending"
- **extends my runway** lol

The second 2 help me see how local people live and definitely help a lot with language. My rusty Danish of 2 years break came back almost instantly living with Danes. Sicilians are telling me I'm already speaking Italian quite well (have been here 1.5 mo)

(On the supermarket note, an observer could probably conclude that New Zealanders like candy, chips, beer, milk, and peanut butter, which is all accurate)