MONOPOLY

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“Life is a game of monopoly, go outside and cop yourself some property.” – MIGOS

A random thing on the road to moving to LA is this — a random thing that was coming into my mind was this idea of finding some sort of property space, like buying a Triplex or a quadPlex, and essentially becoming some sort of noveau slumlord.

I had a funny interesting turbo thought when going to the Costco Business Center the other day, and buying some meat. Essentially the idea is simple:

Essentially the meat you buy and purchase is the raw material, and cooking it yourself is very simple and easy; yet, the reason why so many restaurants and businesses, even all you can eat Korean BBQ restaurants is that they make the process so complex, and intimidating to you.

Real estate is interesting to me because then you have the raw material which is the land, and then you could customize it later to your liking.

Why I love cars

The primary reason why I love cars so much is that ever since I was a kid, around 15 or 16 years old, it was an open creative canvas for me. Note, I actually got into cars before I got into photography; I was into cars ever since I was 15 years old and got my first drivers license permit in California, I only going to photography later, around the age of 18 when I graduated high school and was about to go to college.

Growing up, my family only ever rented. The notion that I could modify or do anything to my house or home was a non-concept.

The great joy and promise of being able to have my own car was that I could do anything to it that I wanted. The first car I ever got was a 1991 Sentra XE, a four-door sedan, which was surprisingly a five speed manual transmission car, with no tachometer! I had so much fun modifying and customizing and swapping it up, installing headers, intake and exhaust, repainting it, painting the dashboard from the ugly ass brown to black, and also even changing the headliner from the ugly brown beige color to a solid black felt.

Lesson:

Having the freedom, and the ability to modify and change things to your liking is great joy!

Mystifying things?

A funny difference that I’ve noted from my family, my family upbringing, and Cindy‘s family; Cindy grew up to owning their own home and property, therefore things like pouring cement, mixing cement, painting the walls, fixing home stuff was natural. Yet for them, cars were a mysterious black box; therefore the general concept was always buy new.

However, my great pride and joy is that in my whole adult life, I’ve never spent more than $2500 USD on a car. The last two cars which came under my wing including my mom‘s old 2009 Hyundai sonata, which was essentially acquired by me for free, as it sat dormant for about three years in my sister’s garage, collecting dust. About $2000 of repairs at the mechanic, and $1000 of overdue DMV fines, it essentially ran brand new! And a little bit of muscle wax from me, waxing the paint, painting the rims, debadging it, etc.

Then more recently, re-inheriting the family Prius; 2010 Prius. Essentially once again, acquiring it for nothing, spending $2700 to get a new catalytic converter which was stolen earlier, $300 for a catalytic converter shield, and about $2700 on a new ABS brake sensor, and also, about $600 for new Yokohama tires. Otherwise I got the car for free!

Thought:

Real men drive old (used) white Priuses!

How do really rich people do it?

Some fun facts I’ve learned:

Real rich people and successful people only ever purchase cars at auction; with some sort of superficial damage, and they buy it at an insanely deep discount, and spend small sums of money to fix it up, they never buy new. And it seems that a lot of successful people that I’ve met just buy old used Priuses at car auctions! For example, my old next-door neighbor used to own an exotic car sports dealership, he told me he even sold a Lamborghini to Mike Tyson. He also owns the infamous old-school Mercedes with the gull wing doors. Anyways, he told me that he for his daily cr just bought an old 2010 Prius at auction for only $7000! Also, he always trolls eBay and these websites for old used BMW M cars, and he says that “I didn’t buy it from him, I stole it from him!” Therefore maybe in the context of cars, to only steal a car, essentially get a car for so insanely cheap or free or under market value is the path. Buying a new brand new car is for idiots!
People overpay for home renovations; the true price of fixing up a bathroom should only be around $7000 (some of my friends spent almost $20,000 for this), to do a kitchen, maybe $15,000, and flooring you could essentially do it yourself for free. And it seems that what a lot of these real estate companies do is simple; take some sort of old property, got it, renovate it, which actually doesn’t cost that much money, maybe $30,000 per unit, and then resell it on the market for a higher price tag, and continue this process.

What is a millennial?

I think I have a good definition for millennials; essentially somebody who foolishly uses their money.

For example, it seems that millennials are overeager to buy new cars. Let’s say a modest new car is $30,000, and they down around $10,000. A monthly payment is around $350-$500. Then they forget that they bought a new car, and they probably want full coverage, so insurance wise, it might be another three to $500 a month! Boom, you’ve just added another thousand dollars a month in monthly expenses, which will haunt you for either 3 to 5 years. That’s money that you’re not putting in your bank account.

Or, it seems that any new car is such an insane rip off. Apparently even a Toyota Sienna Hybrid out the door is over $60,000 USD! That’s a lot of money.

Alcohol, food, eating out, weed, drugs, etc

“Fuck I’m broke as fuck! Why? I just came back from Vegas and blew all my money on food! Fuck, I gotta move out of SoCal!” – one of my friends in the gym hot sauna locker room

Another way that young people millennials etc. waste money is silly things like going to “festivals“, doing drugs, smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, going out to drink alcohol and cocktails, going to Vegas, gambling, eating out at new trendy restaurants, etc.

Also, having too much subscriptions to these media services like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ etc.

The overall bad thing is that many people just cannot save money. Why? The societal bias that one should partake in these activities. But, the wisdom is knowing that these things are not imperatives.

Finance, and loans?

Poking around this real estate and financing market, honestly it all seems like such a scam. For example, let us say that you take out a loan at 7% or 6.5%. But I say you borrow around $700,000. Almost the first 10 yours is devoted to paying off your interest, not even the principal.

What did Elon Musk do? When starting Tesla, he took out a massive loan from the US government, to build factories, battery packs, etc.

Therefore, it seems that if one is going to take out a massive loan, the goal is to quickly pay it back. Borrowing money as leverage to do something very very great and epic, and quickly leapfrog to the next thing.

Bigger and better to infinity and beyond!

Or, the goal is to just flip it. Do not get attached to it, and just think of real estate like a product.

For example, buying a property for $1.5 million, and then hopefully in the next 10 years, flipping it for $3 million USD! Then I suppose the goal is to just cop the profit, and then leapfrog onto the next bigger project.

Then things get interesting, because the goal isn’t about making money necessarily; but rather using your capital as leverage to keep leapfrogging to bigger and bigger things!

However, towards what ends? I don’t think there’s an end; the goal is bigger and better for the sake of it; the American ethos!

Houses as a project?

It also seems a lot of these real estate corporations, who knows maybe the investment comes from overseas, Saudi Arabia, mainland China, etc., is that somebody will buy at a property all in cash, maybe to wash the money, and then price it up, and then sit on it, and perhaps try to resell it for a profit into the future.

Why do people do this? Honestly a lot of people who have money which is illegit don’t seem to really care; they don’t really think about it too much.

Capital?

Another thought on capital in capitalism, what is it that the new religion of capital seeks?

Essentially, make money don’t spend it (Kanye West).

And also, accumulating more and more capital towards infinite ends!

Once again, perhaps the best way to think about capital and capitalism is to just think of it like a game of monopoly, a game, and do not take it too seriously.

Economics by KIM >

What do you do when you no longer fear anything?

I just hit a 9 plate rack pull for the first time, and before doing it, I felt zero ounces of fear. This was interesting, because then it is no longer a fear issue; simply it is an issue of ability and capability.

Then before attempting the nine plates, my only concern and focus was focusing, hyping myself up, and also striving to successfully maximally output all of my strength at the same time!

Perhaps than the best way to approach life is first strive to conquer fear, and then the next issue is a matter of technique, form and approach, and the physical and physiological strength to achieve and attempt things!

Fear versus ability

For example in street photography, a big consideration between the fear of shooting street photos, and then having the compositional ability to make photos you deem beautiful.

Both are critical.

A thought on value, in the context of photos and photography;

Which photos and street photos have the greatest value? Perhaps the photos which required the most courage to shoot!

Street photography is 99% balls.

Life narrative?

Another big consideration on my mind is in regards to life narrative.

When you’re on your deathbed, looking back at your life, thinking and considering certain parts of your life narrative that you were proud of attempting and doing — it doesn’t really matter whether you’re successful or not, simply, do an attempt what is epic and grand!

I think in America we’re too caught up on the notion of being “successful“ or not. I think my intervention is to think rather, the grandeur and courage of the attempt. To me it doesn’t really matter whether you’re successful or not. What matters more is whether you had the courage to attempt it in the first place!

However, this is where wisdom is critical; I think it’s a good idea to attempt things when you’re interested in it, but at the same time, you don’t want to be foolish about it. For example, to simply attempt something because you want some sort of external validation seems like a poor or a foolish decision. Rather, only attempt that which is personally interesting to you!

What motivates me?

A thought this morning; perhaps that which motivates me is the desire to dominate, to become master, to become number one!

For example, my personal past life goal was to dominate street photography, to become number one on Google for street photography! Also do become number one on Google for “ERIC KIM”.

Now that I have achieved these, perhaps then my next goal is to become number one on Google for philosophy?

Certainly Google is not a good litmus test, because now, I think there are too many foreign factors at play. Yet, the striving and desire to become ascendant, the top dog, number one, is what drives our American passion. Even at the gym, now that I have successfully atlas lifted 995 pounds, I am at least one trillion miles ahead of anyone else in my realm, not even people internationally can touch me!

And truth be told, it seems that it’s all or nothing in America. To live the grandest and best life, you got to be number one. For example, Tesl is one trillion ahead of any electric car company out there; I’m quite certain all of the other electric car companies in the long run or fail. Once the cybertruck comes out, Rivian will go under. And these other electric car companies by China and Vietnam? Good luck.

Become more

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LIFE NARRATIVE

Another big consideration on my mind is in regards to life narrative.

When you’re on your deathbed, looking back at your life, thinking and considering certain parts of your life narrative that you were proud of attempting and doing — it doesn’t really matter whether you’re successful or not, simply, do an attempt what is epic and grand!

I think in America we’re too caught up on the notion of being “successful“ or not. I think my intervention is to think rather, the grandeur and courage of the attempt. To me it doesn’t really matter whether you’re successful or not. What matters more is whether you had the courage to attempt it in the first place!

However, this is where wisdom is critical; I think it’s a good idea to attempt things when you’re interested, but at the same time, you don’t want to be foolish about it. For example, to simply attempt some thing because you want some sort of external validation seems like a poor or a foolish decision. Rather, only attempt that which is personally interesting to you!

Lifestyle Philosophy

Flexing is a Virtue

The more you flex, the more virtuous you’ll become!

Wisdom Over Ethics

Do what you consider is the wise decision, not the ethically “right” decision!

The Stoic Spartan Entrepreneurial Path to Life

The reason why video game is no longer interested is that there is no real risk associated with them; only grind.

I wonder if modern day life is also the same; in America at least on the way, we are taught that it is virtuous to grind. However, I have some more noble path in a more virtuous path is to forgo grinding, and think about the joy in risk instead? The Stoic Spartan Entrepreneurial path to life!

STOICISM 101

Become invincible:

The Stoic Masters

Learn from the master stoics:

See all philosophy >

Photo Stamina

The stamina to keep shooting and to keep going!

How We Scapegoat

Men scapegoats woman to be the root of his ills and vice versa.

The German Nazis and Hitler scapegoated the Jews.

Now America is trying to scapegoat China for her economic ills.

Nobody has the extreme courage to take responsibility for him or herself?

The Philosophy of Scapegoating

Essentially — we, out of weakness, refuse to blame our present bad situation on ourselves and we seek someone else to blame instead?

Solution: If you witness anyone scapegoating you, refuse to tolerate that shit!

Bricolage

Bricolage — essentially to just MacGyver it; what we Americans treat as a “ghetto” job.

What this means is given you have fewer resources, how can you Jerry rig a more novel solution? To common problems?

Demigod Physique

After 995 pound atlas lift:

So natty, so fresh:

Meditate

To meditate just means to think. To reflect, to consider.

*med– to measure, to heal, to consider

Hot sauna at the gym
Lifting weights at the gym with no headphones on
Driving with no music on
Taking naps during the day when I’m tired

LIFE IS A GAME OF MONOPOLY?

“Life is a game of monopoly, go out and cop yourself some property.” – MIGOS

A random thing on the road to moving to LA is this — a random thing that was coming into my mind was this idea of find some sort of property space, like buying a Triplex or a quadPlex, and essentially becoming some sort of noveau slumlord.

I had a funny interesting turbo thought when going to the Costco Business Center the other day, and buying some meat. Essentially the idea is simple:

Essentially the meat you buy and purchase is the raw material, and cooking it yourself is very simple and easy; yet, the reason why so many restaurants and businesses, even all you can eat Korean BBQ restaurants is that they make the process so complex, and intimidating to you.

Why I love cars

The primary reason why I love cars so much is that ever since I was a kid, around 15 or 16 years old, it was an open creative canvas for me. Note, I actually got into cars before I got into photography; I was into cars ever since I was 15 years old and got my first drivers license permit in California, I only going to photography later, around the age of 18 when I graduated high school and was about to go to college.

Growing up, my family only ever rented. The notion that I could modify or do anything to my house or home was a non-concept.

The great joy and promise of being able to have my own car was that I could do anything to it that I wanted. The first car I ever got was a 1991 Sentra XE, a four-door sedan, which was surprisingly a five speed manual transmission car, with no tachometer! I had so much fun modifying and customizing and swapping it up, installing headers, intake and exhaust, repainting it, painting the dashboard from the ugly ass brown to black, and also even changing the headliner from the ugly brown beige color to a solid black felt.

Mystifying things?

A funny difference that I’ve noted from my family, my family upbringing, and Cindy‘s family; Cindy grew up to owning their own home and property, therefore things like pouring cement, mixing cement, painting the walls, fixing home stuff was natural. Yet for them, cars were a mysterious black box; therefore the general concept was always buy new.

However, my great pride and joy is that in my whole adult life, I’ve never spent more than $2500 USD on a car. The last two cars which came under my wing including my mom‘s old 2009 Hyundai sonata, which was essentially acquired by me for free, as it sat dormant for about three years in my sister’s garage, collecting dust. About $2000 of repairs at the mechanic, and $1000 of overdue DMV fines, it essentially ran brand new! And a little bit of muscle wax from me, waxing the paint, painting the rims, debadging it, etc.

Then more recently, re-inheriting the family Prius; 2010 Prius. Essentially once again, acquiring it for nothing, spending $2700 to get a new catalytic converter which was stolen earlier, $300 for a catalytic converter shield, and about $2700 on a new ABS brake sensor, and also, about $600 for new Yokohama tires. Otherwise I got the car for free!

How do really rich people do it?

Some fun facts I’ve learned:

Real rich people and successful people only ever purchase cars at auction; with some sort of superficial damage, and they buy it at an insanely deep discount, and spend small sums of money to fix it up, they never buy new. And it seems that a lot of successful people that I’ve met just buy old used Priuses at car auctions!
People overpay for home renovations; the true price of fixing up a bathroom should only be around $7000 (some of my friends spent almost $20,000 for this), to do a kitchen, maybe $15,000, and flooring you could essentially do it yourself for free. And it seems that what a lot of these real estate companies do is simple; take some sort of old property, gut it, renovate it, which actually doesn’t cost that much money, maybe $30,000 per unit, and then resell it on the market for a higher price tag, and continue this process.

What is a millennial?

I think I have a good definition for millennials; essentially somebody who foolishly uses their money.

For example, it seems that millennials are overeager to buy new cars. Let’s say a modest new car is $30,000, and they down around $10,000. A monthly payment is around $350-$500. Then they forget that they bought a new car, and they probably want full coverage, so insurance wise, it might be another three to $500 a month! Boom, you’ve just added another thousand dollars a month in monthly expenses, which will haunt you for either 3 to 5 years. That’s money that you’re not putting in your bank account.

Alcohol, food, eating out, weed, drugs, etc

“Fuck I’m broke as fuck! Why? I just came back from Vegas and blew all my money on food! Fuck, I gotta move out of SoCal!” – one of my friends in the gym hot sauna locker room

Another way that young people millennials etc. waste money is silly things like going to “festivals“, doing drugs, smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, going out to drink alcohol and cocktails, going to Vegas, gambling, eating out at new trendy restaurants, etc.

Also, having too much subscriptions to these media services like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ etc.

The overall bad thing is that many people just cannot save money. Why? The societal bias that one should partake in these activities. But, the wisdom is knowing that these things are not imperatives.

Physiological Strength for the Sake of What?

Vlog

For the sake of more epic thinking, philosophies and undertakings!

Seneca Power

Insanely Beautiful

My new optimization in life. Moving forward, I will only opt for the insanely beautiful.

I think this is paid off well. For example my wife Cindy, as insanely beautiful. As a consequence, my first son and child, Seneca, also insanely beautiful. You’re going to look at your wife and your kid all day, don’t you want them to be insanely beautiful?

Also, homes in living quarters. I think we spend more time indoors at home than we think we do. Therefore doesn’t make sense to choose a living quarters or habitat which is insanely beautiful?

Also for myself, making my body, my physique, my look and appearance as beautiful as possible? When people stop, stare and seem dumbfounded?

Day Start

Open the blinds let the fresh air come in, open the windows
Cold shower
Tons of ERIC KIM COFFEE
Hit the gym, empty your bowels there, hit the hot sauna, workout one rep max, head out! Think of the gym like your morning commute & office? Co working space with hot sauna and weights!

Why Paradise?

It’s seems that man likes to think of the idea to seek paradise. But why, for the sake of what, towards what ends?

I think typically when people think of paradise, I think of eternal happiness, joy, carelessness, and thanksgiving. But, what is the better and to do instead was to seek war, challenge, conquest?

https://videopress.com/v/SKsrBwQQ?resizeToParent=1&cover=1&autoPlay=1&controls=1&loop=1&muted=1&persistVolume=0&playsinline=0&preloadContent=metadata&sbc&sbpc&sblc&useAverageColor=1

Becoming Spartan

Better Spartan than Stoic?

1. Reality calls

The first thought is ultimately, reality is supreme. I love stoicism, but my overall critique of stoicism is that it seems a bit divorced from reality. That is, a lot of Stoic thought is theoretical, whereas Spartan thought and practice is more deeply intertwined.

For example, in terms of bodily physique aesthetics, what does a Stoic look like? Nobody knows. But we have a very vivid depiction of what a spartan looks like; just watch the movie 300 on repeat.

2. Who did the ancients respect?

It seems almost universal in history, everybody respects the Spartans. For their courage, their witness, their manliness, etc.

3. Bellum!

What is also very interesting about the Spartans is that they were not positive warmongers. Rather, they were just focused on defense. They didn’t fuck with anybody, and also, they didn’t want to be fucked with.

3. What do you want to become?

What doesn’t a spartan look like? It seems the best way to become spartan is figure out what not to do. What petty actions not to engage in, etc.

4. Paradise is under the valley of swords

All is permitted!

I believe this to be one of the assassins creeds. Apparently this was actually historical fact.

I don’t think of war like a literal war in which you’re dealing with killing people. I am very anti-war. I believe in a metaphorical war; some sort of battle, challenge, conquest, overcoming.

For example, on my road to at atlas lifting over 990 pounds, everyone told me to “be careful”, that I may “hurt myself”, but in fact, that is precisely what makes it interesting; because I could seriously hurt myself, that is what forces me to focus.

On the road to my 990 pound atlas lift, I’ve been going super hard-core on yoga, flexibility, mobility, etc. The heavier I go, the more time I spend slowly preparing, warming up, stretching etc.

Therefore a theory;

The higher the chance of danger, the more glorious it is!

5. Crafting your own philosophy

I think ultimately what is most interesting is having the privilege to craft your own philosophy. Your own school of thought, your own thinking, and simply sharing it with others and propagating it outside.

Th simplest way to do this is simply through your own website and blog.

A simple way you could do this is just register a website and domain with your first and last name philosophy.com

The second is just start your own YouTube channel, and share your own philosophical thoughts.

Third, you could just start a podcast, anchor.fm

6. Now what?

So let us say that you become the uber Spartan, nothing perturbs you, you’re infinitely strong, then what?

Then, I think a good idea is to devote yourself in your life to philosophical thought, and continuing to pave new ideas and propagating it!

ERIC

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Think more:

Random thoughts on my mind

I just want to replace the sensor! I really love the idea of a camera which has an interchangeable sensor?
Creative constraints in photography; limit yourself to only one focusing distance. All macro mode.
Prius is the best car? If you drive a lot, Prius is 1000 times better than any Tesla.

More thoughts on EK BLOG

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Forward the turbo!

If this sparked even one interesting idea within you, feel free to forward to a friend!

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Ancient Etymology: The Ancient Roman or Ancient Greek Litmus Test

The website that I use more than Google is wiktionary.org. Typically what I do is this;

When there is a word, a concept or thing that I’m curious about, I go to wiktionary.org and I study the history or the etymology of it.

Why is this so beneficial? It gives me a greater clarity about the concept or thing, for example when studying the notion of “finance“; discovering that ultimately it just means finish. Therefore, maybe the wise way to think about an approach to finance is to think about the end?

What is Wisdom?

Not being a fool!

Not making big decisions at night, when you’re tired, or about to sleep.
Not making decisions when you’re “hot headed”. Cool, rational logic, hard, slow, enforced decisions are best.
No irrational passion with decision making

PHILOSOPHY BY KIM

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MAKE IT ENTERTAINING FOR YOURSELF!

Perhaps the best way to deal with the ‘bad’ stuff in life, just make it morosely entertaining for yourself!

STOICISM 101

Become invincible:

The Stoic Masters

Learn from the master stoics:

See all philosophy >

How to Think Critically

Critical, kritikos, means to judge.

To think critically means to wisely judge things, whether you deem it fit or not.

Or, judge it as being profitable or not, or advantageous or not.

Steering clear of foolishness?

There is no such thing as good or bad, or evil. To me it all comes down to wise or foolish.

What is foolish, foolishness, foolish behavior? Typically things which can cause permanent bodily mutilation, or a traumatic death. Driving fast, racing, texting while driving, drinking while driving or being high while driving etc.

What is the point of thinking?

A life of pure theory divorced from action seems a bit flaccid. I believe that your thoughts should also be in accordance with your actions.

For example, my thoughts or philosophies on fitness and weightlifting; I actually apply it to my own approach, and my thoughts and thinking often come to me after much experimentation.

Action first, thoughts later.

https://videopress.com/v/SKsrBwQQ?resizeToParent=1&cover=1&autoPlay=0&controls=1&loop=0&muted=0&persistVolume=1&playsinline=0&preloadContent=metadata&sbc&sbpc&sblc&useAverageColor=1

Anti-slave thinking

Rather, the goal is to become a solo thinker:

Culver City 3 Pick

EK LIFE

Empower yourself in life:

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Straight Line Philosophy

Vlog

First ascertain what you really desire in life, and then, choose the intelligent strategy how to most directly get there.

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DO IT ALL BABY!

Creative Constraint

Sociology vs Philosophy

I studied sociology as an undergrad, and it might’ve been one of the most formative things for me. But what is sociology, and what is the difference between sociology and philosophy?

My personal thought is sociology is practical, pragmatic, applied philosophy to society, other people, every day life.

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Sociological Theory

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Downtown LA, 2015 (shot on a Ricoh GR with the fixed-focal 28mm lens)

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BECOMING HAPPY

Everyone wants to be happy, even our best friend Aristotle said it is the one thing that men seek for the sake of itself.

What what is happiness? I think I got the answer; walking is happiness. Any sort of life, lifestyle, lifestyle approach which allows you to maximize your walking is happiness.

Strategies

I cannot speak for most people, because I don’t have a “real job“. That is, I don’t have a workplace, an office, or a place I must typically commute to.

However Cindy does.

A simple thought that I had is if you have the option, spend extra money which affords you the privilege to walk. For example, I wonder if in fact, shelling out the extra thousand, 2000, 3000, 4000, $5000, maybe even $10,000 a month would be positively beneficial to give you the privilege of walking.

It seems that the modern-day strategy that people partake in is that they sacrifice time in foolish ways. They decide to live further out, further away from work, in the suburbs, which means that they must spend more time driving in order to get to their workplace, in order to have the privilege of having a bigger house, a cheaper house, a smaller mortgage, cheaper rent etc.

Enemies to happiness?

Being forced to be indoors against your own will, this is cruel.

Also, being forced to be stuck in a car, in a bus, in an Uber, even if you had your own private driver, this is cruel.

For example, I once read an interview with Jony Ive, this is when he was still at Apple, in which he would commute for almost 2 hours a day (one way, so 4 hours every day in total), going from a desirable area of San Francisco to the Apple office in Cupertino, having a private driver chauffeur him in his Bentley,and I suppose Jony would just be in the backseat, doing work on his iPhone, iPad, MacBook laptop, etc. If I was Joni and truly committed, I would not make this foolish decision. I would literally just rent a hotel or an apartment or a house literally right next to Apple campus, or who knows, be like Elon Musk and just sleep in a sleeping bag in the office.

However, if you were forced to be sedentary or sitting, for four hours a day, or five hours a day, even if you were the backseat of a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, Lamborghini, a McLaren, whatever; would it be worth it? No. Even as a thought experiment, if you had a totally maxed out Tesla model S plaid, or a Tesla model X plaid, with 100% auto pilot, assuming the technology was flawless, and you could do other stuff while being autonomously driven around, would you still want to be forced to be sedentary, for 4-5 hours a day? No.

Can happiness be purchased?

You cannot buy happiness. You can buy insanely great coffee, ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE, 100% fine robusta which physiologically speaking, will give you a marvelous happiness bump and boost, but ultimately, beyond coffee, happiness cannot be bought.

Things that money can do which can assist you and aid you in happiness include,

Using your money to buy a gym membership, or a yoga, CorePower membership
Using your money to buy beef and meat, either at Costco or the Costco Business Center. I recommend the beef ribs, or the beef tri-tip!
Using your money to pay for rent closer to your workplace, which allows you to have a 100% walking pedestrian lifestyle.
Having a situation which allows you to work outside, outdoors, without having to be stuck indoors or inside an office.
Buy an iPad Pro, the 11 inch smaller one, no accessories. The ultimate photo viewing device, and productivity device, it has brought me 1000 times more joy than any iPhone.

Physiology for the sake of what?

There’s a strange bias in today’s world that we have to somehow maximize our productivity, in order for the sake to work more, contribute more to society, “make a difference“.
For example, the modern-day notion of going to the gym and working out and exercising, the only thought is this:

It is critical for you to exercise daily, because it will make you healthy and healthier, in order for you to keep working more.

The reason why this line of thinking is so twisted is that it is for the sake of maximizing your work capacity, not your own personal happiness. Man is not permitted to be happy for the sake of being happy.

Happiness is also a flawed end goal

The other day, I was so insanely happy, maybe a 50 out of 10. But at the end of the day, happiness is a bit inconsequential. For me what is more critical is having the opportunity, physiological energy to pursue my creative tasks. Whether it be reviewing my photos, writing and blogging, thinking, producing knowledge, sending out email newsletters, etc.

Philosophy paths

Peter Limberg— shout out to him for his great “Minimum Viable Philosophy” essay. I like his tagline, “Less Foolish”.

A cool trend I see is the trend towards philosophy. Why? This is what I think:

“Self development” is just philosophy in (modern day capitalistic) disguise.

And what do I mean by this? Ultimately any sort of business, self development book is centered around a certain philosophy. And the book typically preaches some sort of strategy and technique in order to achieve that philosophical end.

Don’t be a dummy.

In life, there is no such thing as virtue, or sin, vice. To me, it is all about wisdom, knowledge, becoming less foolish, and “not being a dummy.”

I like the word dummy, because it is not so serious. For example, we joke around with kids to not be a dummy. Maybe this is a better path for us.

You should start your own philosophy blog

Oh and today’s world of ChatGPT, AI assisted writing, the question,

How do you know if something was written by ChatGPT, or a real human being?

For the most part you can’t. However, anything written by ERIC KIM passes the Turing test. Why? The way I talk is non-standard, the way I write is genuine, and ultimately I think the future of writing and thinking is predicated around philosophy. That is, there is already enough information and wisdom on the Internet on how to do anything. But not much information on why do XYZ. Or, should we do XYZ.

For example, I firmly believe that if your goal is to become superhuman, eating beef and meat is critical. But I philosophical question is should we eat beef and meat? Even if it is bad for the planet?

For example, if someone tells me, “Eric, you shouldn’t eat meat because it is bad for the planet“. But what if I say, “I know that eating meat is bad for the planet, but eating beef is best for me. So I don’t care.” Is one permitted to talk like this? This is the task and role of philosophy and ethics.

Hygiene?

The etymology of hygiene, in ancient Greek is the art of health.

In modern day times, hygiene as a concept has fallen out of vogue. Why? In the states, a lot of the modernized westernized world, we take it for granted. There is regular trash pick ups, we have clean albeit not too tasty running tapwater, and mostly clean air. And also, most foods we buy or eat, whether it be at the grocery store or a restaurant will not cause us food poisoning.

Food hygiene is very underrated as a concept. We moderns prefer tasty or good tasting food, we don’t really care much for hygiene anymore.

Hygiene as a metaphorical or philosophical concept

Here is where I find hygiene critical; some people, mentally, physically or unwell, their mental hygiene is poor, and their physical physiological bodily hygiene is also probably poor. Used as a metaphor.

If you see weird homeless people on the street, cracked out, smelling bad, do you distain the way they act? No. You just keep your distance, and run away.

In the zone?

Another thing that I’ve discovered is when I’m in the zone, I get so focused on the task at hand that when other people say random maybe possibly demeaning stuff to you, I don’t even have to forcibly ignore them, I just literally can’t hear them, I hear them literally, but because I’m so focused at the task at hand, what they said or intended doesn’t upset me.

What does it even mean to be happy?

I was doing some research on the etymology of happy, and no one is really quite certain where that word comes from. There are certain theories, like “happen”— fortunate, happen chance, hap— chance, luck, fortune, hampa— good luck, chance, from Proto indo European *kob— which means good fortune, prophecy, to bend, bow, fit in, work, succeed.

So why does this matter?

It seems that nowadays, English is the dominant world language. And if we operate in a certain linguistic manner, perhaps the common day words we use should be used with more precision and clarity.

For example, John Stuart Mill, a lot of the early American developers preach notions of the “pursuit of happiness“. But the issue is, if you can’t even define happiness, or if the notion of happiness is a modern day one, then perhaps this is not a good goal or path.

I say instead of seeking to be “happy“, maybe it is better to seek to be strong, well, powerful, and in a great mood. It seems that also, one of my passions being thinking, having the opportunity and clarity of thought is supreme to me.

Now what?

I still think certainly at the end of the day, it is fine to use every day words colloquially. So for example, what contributes a great life to me?

First, artistic and creative productivity. To me this pertains to photography, both shooting and making photos, reviewing photos, enjoying my photos, sharing my photos, thinking about photos, and the aesthetic joy that I get from looking at my own photos.

Second, philosophical and thinking power; this means, I have a passion for thinking, and thinking interesting thoughts. A life without thoughts is not a life worth having.

Third, the health, strength, growth, and muscles of my family. This pertains to my son, and also my wife. And of course certainly myself. Other day I took Seneca to the jungle gym, and at two years seven months old, the pure undiluted joy that he gets from running across the suspension bridge and the jungle gym is pure bliss to me.

Also, witnessing his muscular development, and how much pride and joy that I get watching him eat 100% grass fed ground beef, in super mini burger patties for him, and also him eating while you thinly sliced meat that we buy from H Mart. Seeing Seneca consume beef, and building his muscles brings me great joy.

As a tangent, I think a lot of this modern-day notions of child development are skewed. Rather than trying to educate your kids, make them brain smart, I think a better goal and path is instead, to develop their muscles.

Seeking happiness towards what ends?

First and foremost, as biological beings, I think perhaps it is critical for us to first seek to be physically, physiologically strong and well. An optimization towards physiological well-being is a good one.

Why? It is the necessary path. Without physiological strength and well-being, you can’t do anything. For example, it doesn’t matter if you have $100 billion in the bank, if you are physically or physiologically unwell, if you only sleep two hours a night, if you have no muscles or hotspots in your body, Nothing can be done.

Willpower is not real. Muscle power is real.

Society living is the best living

What is the point of money? Having the privilege of being around other human beings. This, paying rent, and buying beef as well. But beyond this, the additional utility of money is slim; once you have your digital camera, your Internet Wi-Fi connection, your iPad Pro etc., what else do you need? Not much.

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Happy thoughts

How about for now, let us just make our own personal happiness our priority?

The philosophy of happiness >

Experiments

If you’re having a hard time sleeping, my simple suggestion; start going to the gym at least once every single day, and use a hot sauna at least once a day, or really severe cases, go to the hot sauna twice a day.

One thing I found really interesting being in Japan, being at those random Japanese businessman hotels, or the wonderful Ryokans in Kyoto Uji, is at least in Japanese culture, the hot baths, are an integral part of their life and culture. That is, before they sleep, doing a really really hot bath is critical.

The same thing is in Korean culture, the jjim jjil bbang. Apparently in northern Scandinavian and Swedish countries, the really really hot sauna, whether it be dry or humid and steamy is also a critical part of their health.

According to the biological phenomenon hormesis, port duration of extreme heat and humidity is positively good for our physiological health and well-being.

All I need?

All I need is insanely fast Wi-Fi, muscle in my legs (985 pound atlas lift), iPad Pro and EK COFFEE and I’m happy!

House hunting thoughts

I never really knew, but I suppose I have very strong opinions on homes and living quarters and situations. That means for the most part I hate ugly. I hate old and ugly danky dark, dim, and ghetto apartments, especially here in LA.

I have a theory:

Perhaps ugly aesthetics actually causes our physiological happiness and well being to go down.

What is ugliness? Anything which causes our physiological well being to go downwards.

For example, I think the reason why old and danky and ghetto apartments have such an adverse reaction to us is because they scream “hygenically dangerous”. Hygiene as “the art of health”.

For example, the dark and danky typically means moldy. Mold is a poison.

Thus, the simplest thing with homes, houses, condos, duplexes, town houses, flats, hotels, airbnbs, motels sleeping or living quarters etc:

Ensure there is no mold
No poor air circulation (good air circulation is nett we for our health)
Not dark and dim and danky (sunlight, the sun as the best disinfectant, and mold killer)
Not loud
Not dirty
Not old

Now what?

After my Ricoh GR IIIX died, I’ve just been using my LUMIX G9 and Leica LUMIX 12mm f1.4 Lens and it produces insanely beautiful photos! Downsides — insanely big and heavy, which is bad.

I want something insanely different

At this point, money is no concern for us.

In terms of innovative cameras, I’m trending towards the point and shoot, integrated flash department. For example,

The only concern:

Are the integrated in camera JPEG settings good for us?

Also,

Share your best

Arsbeta.com — upload and share your best photos now!

What’s on my mind?

Still house apartment hunting in LA — checking out Culver City (downtown Culver City is insanely cool and walkable). Also going to check out Westwood and Sawtelle
Still backlogged around 7,000 photos on my LUMIX g9– on iPad Pro. Working on reviewing them!

Future photo innovations?

An AI-assisted Tool to help us cull down and curate our favorite photos.
Or an AI app thing that helps us automatically pick our best photos?

Forward the turbo!

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ASCENDANCY.

Vlog

The goal is to gain ascendancy, not to become “happier”:

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Entrepreneurial Thoughts

The other day when going to a ReStore, some sort of random secondhand furniture store, I stumbled upon one of the greatest finds of my life; about 900 pounds of steel; a shitload of 45 pound plates, neatly talked into a container, only $.50 a pound!

I think I counted it and it was around in total 14 45-pound plates, two 35-pound plates, two 10 pounder Rogue bumper plates, two 5 pounders, and two 2.5’ers.

This was such an insanely big deal for me because the last year or so I’ve been toying with this idea of creating and starting my own gym. But the big problem was this;

Getting access to steel plates, or any 45 pound plates is insanely expensive. The cheapest I could find on Amazon was around $90 for a single 45 pound plate!

The true cheapest option which a lot of commercial gyms do is get them produced in China at one of those mega industrial factories, and get them re-branded and shipped directly to the states but via cargo ship, on boat overseas. You can get a good price on this, but the big problem is that it just takes too long; you often have to wait several months before getting your package. And also you have to deal with international commerce which is always a little bit concerning when you’re dealing with credit card transactions, financial international exchanges etc.

Anyways, a thought on my mind:

Is it best for me to continue being the goat at the gym, and continue to keep going to the gym, having fun at the gym, keep making friends and making new friends, keeping in touch with friends and making new friends, hitting your personal records, enjoying the gym life, or, is it more interesting and better for me to start something epic and interesting myself?

I think the simple solution and answer is perhaps it is more important, or more interesting, or more critical to use this opportunity to start my own gym concept.

Or in other words,

When in doubt, choose the more entrepreneurial path!

FIGHT CLUB GOALS

A movie that has made a massive impact on me is FIGHT CLUB. I read the book and watched the movie, I think I actually might prefer the movie. Why? Even though I like imagination blah blah blah, I like visuals.

There is something interesting that I’ve discovered about society;

The bias of how we “should” be versus how things truly are.

For example let me give you example, society, modern day society, notions of chivalry etc. says that if a man wants to attract women, he must be prim and proper, nice kind, and romantic and cartel to all of the desires of the woman.

However based on my true observations, it seems different; the best ways to be loud, rambunctious, some sort of wild untamed beast, happy, good eye contact, smiling etc.

You don’t need to drink beer

Another way to reprogram yourself; don’t drink beer, don’t grow facial hair or a beard or a mustache, don’t wear a hat, a trucker hat, don’t wear sunglasses, don’t drive a big ass car with limo tint, etc.

I think the funny new modern day bias in today’s society is everyone wants to feel dominant, without having to somehow engage with other human beings. Therefore, people always hide behind something; once again people hide behind the tint in their cars, when they’re out in public they hide behind sunglasses, a hat, they hide behind being antisocial etc.

I would say instead, the better goal is to be insanely friendly, insanely cordial, and also insanely kind.

Making money?

What is money? The current thought I have about money is that it is like some sort of legal tender for debt, both private and public.

For example, the other day I critically looked at a $100 bill, after not having looked at cash money for a long time, and I was extremely discerning and read all of the text on it. It read:

This note is legal tender for all debts, both private and public.

There are many theories behind money, debt being one of them.

When we do entrepreneurial things, create businesses, become self-employed, start selling or services and products etc., what are we doing? Technically we’re not making money, assuming that money has to do with that. Instead it seems that we are doing something else; creating new sources of value.

What is value?

What is value? Value comes from valere which means strong. Colloquially, value means that which we care for, what we have heart for.

A simple approach to things in life is simply create things which we value, put yourself on the other side;

How do you know if something has value or not? Use yourself as your own litmus test; that means, if it has value to you, assuming that you used yourself as your own barometer, there is a high likelihood that it will have value for others.

How do you know? Simple; assuming that there are 7 billion people on the planet, 300, million Americans plus, and you’re using the Internet, or website a blog some sort of Ford facing platform, certainly there will be at least one human being on planet earth who will drive value from what you create and share.

The Philosophy of Fight Club

Super inspired from the movie ‘FIGHT CLUB’– in terms of how to conquer my personal fears in life, how to break free from societal bullshit, and to become the best version of myself:

Here are some life lessons I’ve learned from the film:

1. Self-improvement is masturbation

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In society, we are spoon-fed this need for constant ‘self-improvement’ in the eyes of some self-improvement guru.

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But the fallacy is that we need ‘improving.’ You are already perfect the way you are.

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Rather, Tyler Durden suggests we seek ‘self-destruction’ — the antithesis of self-improvement.

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Not to destroy ourselves to commit suicide or cut ourselves. Rather, to destroy the bullshit consumerist mentality we have in our minds.

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To destroy the false veil of reality, to see the truth in life.

2. Don’t squander your potential

‘I see all this potential; and I see it all squandered. Entire generation of slaves with white collars.’ – Tyler Durden

As humans, we have so much human potential. Yet, we waste it pointlessly. We waste it becoming consumerist slaves — except instead of chains, we wear golden rolexes. We live in a golden cage. We cannot fly free.

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So friend— how can you fulfill your potential in life?

3. Our life is a spiritual war

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‘Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. No purpose or place. No great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives.’

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To have a zest for life, we need struggle. We need pain. We need something to overcome.

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We need to find meaning in our lives— to find some deeper purpose.

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For me, I find purpose in life through creating art, through empowering others, and in terms of fulfilling my creative potential.

What is your drive in life?

4. Life is about pain and sacrifice

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‘Without pain and sacrifice, we would have nothing.’ – Tyler Durden

To me, life is all about sacrifice.

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My mom (umma) sacrificed her life and suffered to give me and my sister a better shot in life. Whenever I show my love for Cindy, there is always some sacrifice. As Nassim Taleb says, ‘Love without sacrifice is theft.’

How can you put more ‘skin in the game’ to life a life with more pain and sacrifice— but in a meaningful way?

5. Purge

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‘It is only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.’ – Tyler Durden

Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) — aka the alter ego of Edward Norton, blows up his own condo. But after purging himself of his prior life, he is free.

Practically speaking — I have gained much freedom by purging myself of my past. Purging my past negative memories, purging my superfluous possessions, and purging bullshit. This helped me become reborn, and now I feel free.

6. It is cooler not to own a car.

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‘I don’t have a car’ – Tyler Duren

Be like Tyler— don’t be a slave to wanting an expensive car. In-fact, it is cooler not to have a car.

Also consider, are you a slave to debt? Does debt have you working that job you hate, just so you can buy that next $30,000 car?

Consider if you are paid $20 an hour ($40,000 a year USD). Are you willing to work 1,500 hours (62.5 days straight with no rest), or 187 eight-hour working shifts (6.25 months at $20 an hour) just to buy a car, or any other bullshit consumerist good you don’t need?

What is your time worth to you? What is your life worth to you?

7. Who are you?

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‘You are not your job; you’re not how much money you have in the bank; you’re not the car you drive; you’re not the contents of your wallet.’ – Tyler Durden

Our identity is who we are as human beings— our soul, the creative work we do, our worldview, and our self-identity.

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We don’t need to identify ourselves via the work we do, how many 0’s we have in our bank account, or society’s labels of us.

8. There are no bullets inside

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In one of my favorite scenes, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton enter a convenience store, pull out the cashier, and Brad Pitt puts a gun to the head of the kid.

Brad Pitt asks the cashier what his dream in life was. The kid says it was to be a veterinarian, but he dropped out of school because it was too hard.

Brad Pitt then says, ‘I will kill you unless you go back to school and pursue your dream.’ The kid runs away.

Edward Norton says something like, ‘What the fuck — why did you do that?’

Brad Pitt then says to Edward Norton:

“Imagine how he feels— tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of his life. his breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.“

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Brad Pitt then also says that in life, when we have no fear or distractions, we can let ‘that which does not matter— truly slide.’

The best part— Edward Norton opens up the pistol, and sees that the gun has no bullets inside.

Assignment: If someone put a gun to the back of your head, and asked you what your life dream was — how would you answer? And what would you do tonight or tomorrow to pursue your dream?

9. Become the best version of yourself

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The interesting concept of Fight Club — Tyler Durden is the same person. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are the same person.

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However Brad Pitt is the idealized version of Edward Norton. Brad Pitt is everything that Edward Norton wants to be.

We all have an inner-Brad Pitt (or Tyler Durden). The only thing we need to do is to take radical change in our lives, to become what Nietzsche calls— the ‘over-man’ (or ‘superman’) who overcomes all the difficulties in his life.

We need to take responsibility for our lives. Not to blame others or make excuses. We just need to go out and pursue our dreams and do what we truly believe in — refusing to let the rules of society cage us in.

10. Life isn’t about winning or losing

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Fight Club isn’t about winning or losing. It is rather about fighting your inner-self, your inner-ego, your inner-fears. In Fight Club, you aren’t beating another person — you are just conquering your own fears in life. And you are getting closer to another human being in fraternity.

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In real life, there is no winning or losing. We are all on the same team in this world community of humanity. We need to help one another— build each other up, instead of tearing each other down.

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Let’s win in life together. Empower yourself in life:

See all philosophy >

Be strong,
Eric

If you want to conquer your fears and meet new peers, attend an ERIC KIM WORKSHOP >

CINEMA >

Cinematography and life lessons:

How to Think Better

I think for myself, ultimately one of my greatest passions is thinking and thoughts. And also health. But the question is this; how does one actually think better, and also, towards what ends?

1. Outside?

Whenever I wake up, it is typically a slow start. It takes a while to get my thoughts going.

Typically I start off the day with ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE, and I permit myself to have as many shots of espresso as I would like. I keep taking shots until I feel good.

Then I actually think the more critical component is just going outside, going outside in the direct sun, getting direct UV exposure, to the direct sun and the direct light.
Some theories:

First, I have a theory that man is not that different from plant, except we move quicker. Let us consider how plants and flowers bloom when the sun is out, and the shrivel when there is no sun.

There’s a funny saying amongst gardeners that the most critical thing to grow plants is lots of love, sunlight, water, and good soil. I wonder if the same applies to humans?

The question is how much sun is enough sun? And how long should we be outside? I say just follow your gut; it is just a feeling. If I haven’t had enough time outdoors, I spend more time outdoors. But if my skin is starting to hurt because the sun is starting to get too strong on my skin, I just go inside.

2. Your skin is the most important organ?

Another thought on health; I’ve discovered that actually, it seems that the best indicator of health is skin. That is, you could determine the health of somebody just by looking at the quality of their skin.

Also one thing that I’ve learned from one of my doctor friends, a past workshop student is that the best way to determine how old somebody is, to look at their hands. You can get lots of cosmetic surgery on your face and other parts of your body, but typically the hands tell all.

Even common gym dwellers; even though they may spend all day in the gym, and get impressive muscles and physique, typically bodybuilders before they get ready for a competition they either go out in the sun, and sunbathe a lot, or they get these fake dark brown spray tans to accentuate their muscles. But what I actually think what they’re trying to do is trying to show that they’re healthy by getting a fake spray tan.

This is tricky because there is a dosage issue here; too much time in the sun causes your skin to wear too quickly. If you are a poor migrant worker, and do not have any protective covering when you’re in the sun all day, your skin will age poorly. So there’s a fine line here; you don’t want to be the typical office worker or tech worker who is simply stuck indoors all day, without access to adequate sun or sunlight.

In fact, even going to some of the most elite shopping malls and places and looking at other humans, it is actually very rare that you could see somebody with healthy looking real skin, with healthy skin and a healthy tan.

Even a lot of people, I think they would look more beautiful if they spent more time outdoors in the direct sun, without a shirt on, getting a good tan.

3. Physical activity, walking and moving

Nietzsche one said, ”Trust no thought which doesn’t come to you while walking outdoors!” Also, don’t trust any thoughts while you are sitting. He had a funny Latin pun, in which the only sin against the Holy Spirit was sitting on your ass.

The last few days and week, I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time driving in a car, and I’ve been away from the gym for about five days. As a consequence, I actually literally feel my ligaments, tendons, sinews, and body atrophying. My theory is that when you spend a lot of time sitting or sedentary, there is not as much an opportunity for your body to bear the weight of your body on your hips, your back, your knees, ankles feet etc. Therefore literally any time spent sitting is bad for you.

My personal theory on happiness is that happiness is walking. Any life or lifestyle which promotes walking is the greatest blessing.

4. Thinking and thoughts for the sake of what?

One of the greatest things on my mind is that ultimately, what is the point in desired end of thinking and thoughts?

The first of the hugely pragmatic one; often your thoughts manifest your desires and motivators etc.

For example, if you’re always thinking about money, making more money, buying that new car, etc., then your real life activities will manifest in wasting lots of time to trying earn more money. But, what if a more effective approach instead would be to think; what is my personal philosophy of money? What do I want money for, what is the meaning of money, is this a worthwhile goal for me? And or how much time should I devote to trying to earn money? Also, how much money is enough?

Even Seneca once said,

What if right now, you already have too much money?

Nobody ever thinks this! Even back in ancient Roman times.

5. Ultimately, it comes down to philosophy?

Currently speaking, the most worshiped thing is business, economics, entrepreneurship, capital, capitalism, production, producerism, consumerism, media, or money and money accumulation.

However, perhaps a more interesting thing to consider is that philosophy is more critical.

For example, Elon Musk. Tesla and SpaceX. The underlying philosophical question is; should we strive to go to Mars or become an intergalactic species? Because in theory, I think if we took all the world resources, human talent and effort to create spaceships and stuff, we probably could do it.

Also with Tesla; the philosophical question is should we produce, drive, and operate electric cars? Certainly the execution of producing electric cars and putting them into existence is more difficult, but the first philosophical question is, should we do this?

6. What we eat, how we eat?

Currently speaking, my new favorite food may be beef intestines, specifically, large beef intestines. The other night Cindy and I went to our favorite all you can eat Korean barbecue restaurant, and after sampling and eating all of the foods, I think my personal favorite was the large beef intestine. It is so insanely rich, it feels like you’re eating liquid gold. Similar and akin to bone marrow.
Maybe even better than beef liver?

I personally believe this to be critical. Why? I think a lot of the modern day philosophies on diet and nutrition is nonsensical. Example there is a strange quantification of calories, protein, carbs, sugar, etc. But I think maybe a more interesting thought is trying to be more critical about the substances we consume.

For example, let us say that we broke down beef intestines into a certain quantified measure, and compared it and measured it to some sort of fake vegetable supplement. Would it yield the same thing? No.

Or another example; is eating 4 pounds of ribeye beef steak equivalent to eating 4 pounds of pea protein powder a day? Assuming that the grammage of protein was the same? No.

My personal thought on the anti-meat conspiracy is that ultimately it comes down to economics; meat is not efficient. It spoils to quickly, it’s not shelf stable, and also doesn’t yield great profit margins.

Also, this strange modern day trend we have towards “animal rights“; for example, animals, pets, dogs and cats have just become another consumer item. For example, getting that pug or Shiba Inu is almost like buying a new Louis Vuitton bag, or a Cartier watch. Also social media; for the most part everyone likes cute dogs and pets and animals. They don’t really offend anybody.

7. Take on the sun!

I thought while weightlifting and taking on things, I think my only enemy is the sun and physics!

It is so funny because just other day, I remember Southern California being so cold during the cruel winter. Now the sun is insanely hot, even I can barely take it. Now I understand why people wear baseball caps; it keeps the top of your forehead from burning, and also gives you a little bit better visibility when looking into the distance.

This is also another plus one for Tesla solar, or Tesla in general; if you could indeed harness all the power from the sun and convert into electricity energy, we’re set.

8. Think Beyond

To think beyond and look beyond — the generalized idea I have is that life is too short for the petty and inconsequential. Perhaps the greatest thing we could do it is to think beyond, and look beyond, which means, only grant yourself the privilege of attempting monsters of a task, things that the normal human being would not even think of or attempt!

For example, as I write these words it is currently the year 2023. Just three years ago, before all this Covid stuff happened, it was the year 2020. This was supposed to be an insanely important and pivotal year; the future.

Yet, we are still falling into the same memes, the same modes of living, the same boring old stuff. Why not attempt to look beyond, and become beyond?

9. Becoming the uberman

What is the time modern day man deserves to become? A beast, a monster, something else?

Why not just drive to become man? The most glorious and peak and over notion of a man?

Thus, my current life task and direction is becoming my own over man, the uberman as Nietzsche says.

What does this mean?

Create a new type of aesthetic; I call it demigod aesthetics.
Ignore what all of this nonsense call modern day advice on food; just look at what the ancient Greek heroes ate. Bone marrow, oxen.

10. Sleep

The last critical ingredient is sleep. Sleep is the ultimate tonic; even the gods sleep.

Throughout the day if you’re tired, the most effective thing to do is just take a nap. Also ironically enough, if you’re tired, don’t drink coffee. I think coffee ironically should be done this way:

Only drink coffee when you feel good.

During the day, if you’re tired, just take a nap! Power Nap or turbo nap.

Also, one of the best ways to deal with insomnia is simple; hit the hot sauna at least once or twice a day. Just go to your local gym membership place and do it there, or sign up for some sort of hot yoga, CorePower, local studio etc.

Thoughts on my mind

Thoughts on being an Asian American man in America

Thoughts on racism

Thoughts on justice and revenge

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Something which is often underrated about Amazon is Amazon web services. Amazon Web services runs the Internet.

Amazon light sail is the one.

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Start your own philosophy blog. For example I really like the thoughts of Peter On less foolish >
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Why app?

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Fortune favors the insanely brave!

ERIC

LOOK BEYOND

Life is too short to be basic. My personal recommendation instead is to think beyond and look behind. What does that mean? That means don’t just be another basic human being; set yourself insanely audacious life goals. Ultimately it doesn’t really matter whether you achieve them or not, what is more critical is the vision and the attempt!

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How to Think Better

I think for myself, ultimately one of my greatest passions is thinking and thoughts. And also health. But the question is this; how does one actually think better, and also, towards what ends?

1. Outside?

Whenever I wake up, it is typically a slow start. It takes a while to get my thoughts going.

Typically I start off the day with ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE, and I permit myself to have as many shots of espresso as I would like. I keep taking shots until I feel good.

Then I actually think the more critical component is just going outside, going outside in the direct sun, getting direct UV exposure, to the direct sun and the direct light.
Some theories:

First, I have a theory that man is not that different from plant, except we move quicker. Let us consider how plants and flowers bloom when the sun is out, and the shrivel when there is no sun.

There’s a funny saying amongst gardeners that the most critical thing to grow plants is lots of love, sunlight, water, and good soil. I wonder if the same applies to humans?

The question is how much sun is enough sun? And how long should we be outside? I say just follow your gut; it is just a feeling. If I haven’t had enough time outdoors, I spend more time outdoors. But if my skin is starting to hurt because the sun is starting to get too strong on my skin, I just go inside.

2. Your skin is the most important organ?

Another thought on health; I’ve discovered that actually, it seems that the best indicator of health is skin. That is, you could determine the health of somebody just by looking at the quality of their skin.

Also one thing that I’ve learned from one of my doctor friends, a past workshop student is that the best way to determine how old somebody is, to look at their hands. You can get lots of cosmetic surgery on your face and other parts of your body, but typically the hands tell all.

Even common gym dwellers; even though they may spend all day in the gym, and get impressive muscles and physique, typically bodybuilders before they get ready for a competition they either go out in the sun, and sunbathe a lot, or they get these fake dark brown spray tans to accentuate their muscles. But what I actually think what they’re trying to do is trying to show that they’re healthy by getting a fake spray tan.

This is tricky because there is a dosage issue here; too much time in the sun causes your skin to wear too quickly. If you are a poor migrant worker, and do not have any protective covering when you’re in the sun all day, your skin will age poorly. So there’s a fine line here; you don’t want to be the typical office worker or tech worker who is simply stuck indoors all day, without access to adequate sun or sunlight.

In fact, even going to some of the most elite shopping malls and places and looking at other humans, it is actually very rare that you could see somebody with healthy looking real skin, with healthy skin and a healthy tan.

Even a lot of people, I think they would look more beautiful if they spent more time outdoors in the direct sun, without a shirt on, getting a good tan.

3. Physical activity, walking and moving

Nietzsche one said, ”Trust no thought which doesn’t come to you while walking outdoors!” Also, don’t trust any thoughts while you are sitting. He had a funny Latin pun, in which the only sin against the Holy Spirit was sitting on your ass.

The last few days and week, I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time driving in a car, and I’ve been away from the gym for about five days. As a consequence, I actually literally feel my ligaments, tendons, sinews, and body atrophying. My theory is that when you spend a lot of time sitting or sedentary, there is not as much an opportunity for your body to bear the weight of your body on your hips, your back, your knees, ankles feet etc. Therefore literally any time spent sitting is bad for you.

My personal theory on happiness is that happiness is walking. Any life or lifestyle which promotes walking is the greatest blessing.

4. Thinking and thoughts for the sake of what?

One of the greatest things on my mind is that ultimately, what is the point in desired end of thinking and thoughts?

The first of the hugely pragmatic one; often your thoughts manifest your desires and motivators etc.

For example, if you’re always thinking about money, making more money, buying that new car, etc., then your real life activities will manifest in wasting lots of time to trying earn more money. But, what if a more effective approach instead would be to think; what is my personal philosophy of money? What do I want money for, what is the meaning of money, is this a worthwhile goal for me? And or how much time should I devote to trying to earn money? Also, how much money is enough?

Even Seneca once said,

What if right now, you already have too much money?

Nobody ever thinks this! Even back in ancient Roman times.

5. Ultimately, it comes down to philosophy?

Currently speaking, the most worshiped thing is business, economics, entrepreneurship, capital, capitalism, production, producerism, consumerism, media, or money and money accumulation.

However, perhaps a more interesting thing to consider is that philosophy is more critical.

For example, Elon Musk. Tesla and SpaceX. The underlying philosophical question is; should we strive to go to Mars or become an intergalactic species? Because in theory, I think if we took all the world resources, human talent and effort to create spaceships and stuff, we probably could do it.

Also with Tesla; the philosophical question is should we produce, drive, and operate electric cars? Certainly the execution of producing electric cars and putting them into existence is more difficult, but the first philosophical question is, should we do this?

6. What we eat, how we eat?

Currently speaking, my new favorite food may be beef intestines, specifically, large beef intestines. The other night Cindy and I went to our favorite all you can eat Korean barbecue restaurant, and after sampling and eating all of the foods, I think my personal favorite was the large beef intestine. It is so insanely rich, it feels like you’re eating liquid gold. Similar and akin to bone marrow.
Maybe even better than beef liver?

I personally believe this to be critical. Why? I think a lot of the modern day philosophies on diet and nutrition is nonsensical. Example there is a strange quantification of calories, protein, carbs, sugar, etc. But I think maybe a more interesting thought is trying to be more critical about the substances we consume.

For example, let us say that we broke down beef intestines into a certain quantified measure, and compared it and measured it to some sort of fake vegetable supplement. Would it yield the same thing? No.

Or another example; is eating 4 pounds of ribeye beef steak equivalent to eating 4 pounds of pea protein powder a day? Assuming that the grammage of protein was the same? No.

My personal thought on the anti-meat conspiracy is that ultimately it comes down to economics; meat is not efficient. It spoils to quickly, it’s not shelf stable, and also doesn’t yield great profit margins.

Also, this strange modern day trend we have towards “animal rights“; for example, animals, pets, dogs and cats have just become another consumer item. For example, getting that pug or Shiba Inu is almost like buying a new Louis Vuitton bag, or a Cartier watch. Also social media; for the most part everyone likes cute dogs and pets and animals. They don’t really offend anybody.

I WANT TO DO IT ALL!

A thought while getting hyped up with ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE:

I want to do it all!

EK MEDIA

YouTube morning routine

How and why?

I think for myself, entrepreneurship is in my veins. It is my passion, my lust, my personal interest, that which I am the most passionate about.

I think this is the great glory and gratitude and joy of America, being born in America, etc. Essentially the gist is that in America, you could do anything, become anything, create anything, attempt anything.

In America the nuance is that success or “making it“ is not guaranteed or promised. In fact, in America, the only privilege you have is the freedom to attempt something, not to succeed.

How does this matter?

Several things to consider;

First, you are alive, and one day you will die.

Second, it seems that a lot of life is personal preferences, and also, you have the power to dictate a certain type of lifestyle approach.

For example, we all have certain preferences, and to some degree we can control where we want to live, what kind of work to do, what to spend money on, what not to spend our money on, etc.

I think the biggest thing in modern day times is in regards to media. The reason why I discourage any sort of consumption of watching of sports is that it is essentially prostituted athleticism.

Let us consider why we like to watch sports. Essentially what it is is we get a second hand adrenaline high from watching and consuming sports.

I think the best visual that I have is from battle Angel Alita, the manga comic, in which in this dystopic future, we can get a first hand, POV of other athletes fighting racing and doing other dangerous things. Essentially we literally put ourselves in the shoes of others.

Unstoppable!

Perhaps a good way to visualize things or how to think about it is this; there is a certain desired outcome that you have, and, there might be a certain things which get in your way.

But is this true?

I think not.

For example, I think the big problem is in today’s world, we simply don’t know what we want in life.
The reason why I innovated Zen of Eric, or the why app is essentially a means to encourage people to think more critically about their desired outcomes in life.

Disregard foreign philosophies

It seems that a great downside of modern day times and living is that we believe that we must kowtow to some sort of other foreign authority. That we are not permitted to become our own authority.

For example, now that I critically think about it, maybe studying too much Taoism, zen, stoicism has been detrimental to myself.

I think aesthetically, to read philosophy is almost like reading practical and pragmatic philosophy. But ultimately we shouldn’t take things too literally.

Also another strange bias; in modern day times we are indoctrinated that reading more books is more better for us. That is, to read 1000 pages a day is considered virtuous.

However what I believe in is the opposite. Perhaps actually we should read less, walk more, think more, contemplate more, go to the gym more frequently, use the hot sauna more, drink more fine robusta, lift more, one rep max more, etc.

Why thoughts, innovation is critical

I think the problem in modern-day society, America, most of the westernized world, capitalism and consumerism is that we have to purchase happiness, well-being, innovation etc. For example, I’m a huge fan of Tesla Musk, Tesla, electric cars, car culture design, aesthetics etc.

I think the reason why critical thinking is so useful is that it cut to the chase.

For example, a lot of people desire or lust after a certain car; a Mercedes-Benz AMG wagon, a Porsche GT3 RS, a certain model of Tesla, Ferrari Lamborghini etc. Often times people spend an inordinate amount of time thinking and considering these things whereas maybe the best timesaver is this:

What if I just took all of that time effort and money and just invested in my self in my own body, perhaps this would give me more happiness?

For example, the other day while househunting in LA, I walked down Rodeo Drive with Seneca, and trolled around Beverly Hills a bit, and I realize that in regards to cars, everyone is just following the same old memes.

Also a fun trick; instead of looking in the car, look really hard at who the driver is.

For example the typical trope I see is that a lot of these high powered big SUVs are driven by women with sunglasses on, or a lot of these convertible sports cars with the top down is driven with men for balding, old, often over-fat.

So the funny thing is in regards to cars, when we see impressive cars, the question is this:

Do you desire the car, or find the car fascinating? Or do you desire to become the person who is driving the car?

We want to be happy?

HAPPY?

We want to become insanely happy?

Most people are unwell. Most people have poor health, even people who go to the gym every single day. Health can be characterized by many things, some of it is mental health, some of it is physical health, but ultimately all of it is physiological. That is, happiness joy and health cannot exist outside of your human body.

I personally believe in a “mortal” soul. That is, we all have a soul, which is essentially a metaphorical configuration of the blood, sinews, electric impulses, DNA, everything which is contained within this 3-D wire mesh which we call our human body. When we die our soul dies with us.

How are people unwell? People are unwell in regards to many things;

A lot of modern day people do not spend enough time outside, in the direct elements, in the direct sun. Therefore I wonder if a lot of people are lacking melanin in their skin.
A lot of people have weak legs, thighs, calves, hips, back, shoulders, feet. Even guys who go to the gym every single day, my simple heuristic is first to look at their legs and then look at everything else. If a man does not have calves or thighs or legs which resemble the Farnese Hercules, write them off.
The modern day mode of living is bad; too much time sitting, while sitting in a car stuck in traffic, sitting at a desk at the office, even a standing desk is bad in so far much as you’re stuck in a static position. Even a walking standing desk treadmill desk is bad in so far much as the movement is too regular; a more optimal thing is perhaps walking in some sort of uneven terrain, like walking in some sort of park or natural place with random tree roots bulging out etc., maybe just walking around with your iPad Pro and voice dictating your thoughts. Or just doing work on your iPhone.
I think the modern day man, or even woman can be characterized as some sort of sick animal; domesticated, caged, both literally and metaphorically, and are essentially like little battery pods in the Matrix, in which metabolic energy is extracted for driving consumerism.
Over consumption of sugar, fake sugars, strange beverages, and anemic plants. For example, in terms of beverages, I truly believe that the best approach is to just stick to water, plain tapwater or filtered tap water is fine, and black coffee with nothing added to it. I prefer EK COFFEE, straight up. I don’t drink any sort of alcohol, no beer, no wine, no whiskey, no spirits, nothing weird and foreign. I don’t even smoke weed or do drugs.

What do I desire to do?

Currently speaking, there are a lot of things on the chopping block:

Coffee innovation: it seems that in modern-day times, most adults drink coffee every single day, often several times a day. I think it is actually one of the things which is the most overlooked; we are not critical about the coffee we consume, we just simply treat it as a thing that gives us more power and energy. Yet perhaps we should become more discerning; everyone seems to be obsessed about health, but how come nobody ever talks about health in regards to coffee? ERIC KIM OMAKASE FINE ROBUSTA as the first step.
Diet health and fitness; I believe this to be really really critical; I’ve been obsessed with diet health and fitness ever since I was a fat kid, a fat kid at 11 and 12 years old in Bayside Queens New York. Now at the age of 35, being born in 1988, I’ve experimented and gone through a lot of the exercise fads, food fads, etc. Why is diet health and fitness so critical? I think people want to feel good, to feel strong, abundant, healthy and strong. It seems that the most critical thing then to consider is this trifecta. What do you eat and what you don’t eat, what you drink and what you don’t drink, what you consume and you don’t consume, when to eat, how much to eat, went to stop eating, went to start eating, etc. For example my recent visit to LA, going to Erewhon etc — LA people simply do not look well. They think it is “healthy“, to consume strange juices, and also don’t eat enough meat. It seems that nowadays the big moneymaker is beverages; some sort of miracle tonic, which promises a lot, but ultimately had some sort of fake sugar added to it. Also the reason why you should not trust a lot of these beverages which have “zero sugar added” is that they just put another strange chemical in it, which taste sweet. My personal theory is that even zero calorie sweeteners make you fat, because when your body senses or taste something sweet, your body will excrete insulin, which is one of the precursor to fat storage.
Weight lifting approaches — my one rep max atlas lift as example. Fitness is also another huge industry, and I think a lot of people follow fitness regimens like sheep. This is why I don’t trust anyone who does CrossFit, yoga, or any sort of standardized way of exercise. Also I don’t trust “powerlifters“, or “bodybuilders“; a more robust term to use is weightlifter. Why? My joy and passion is simply lifting weights, I consider it very fun and enjoyable and interesting and thrilling. A lot of these other categories follow some sort of strange approach and regimen.
Innovative thinking, philosophy; I think at the end of the day, what a lot of people desire is discovering some sort of deeper meaning in life. This means, philosophy is the way.

WORKSHOPS

I’m super pumped to announce my first, insanely unique INTRODUCTION TO STOICISM WORKSHOP. This workshop is limited to only three passionate individuals, and it will take place in downtown LA, December 2, 2023. If you’ve been curious about learning more about stoicism, or deepening your philosophical inquiry to life, this workshop is for you!

STOICISM WORKSHOP >

Also, I am very excited to go back to Philly, October 14th! Cindy is going to Philly for a conference, and concurrently I will also teach a CONQUER STREET PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP there!

PHILLY STREET WORKSHOP >

Also, November 4th I am also teaching a DISCOVER YOUR CREATIVE MISSION IN LIFE WORKSHOP in DOWNTOWN LA, NOVEMBER 4th. If you want to turbo charge your creativity and artistry, this workshop is for you.

Learn More >

Now what?

I encourage you to start your own blog! My new thought is don’t limit yourself by anything. Permit yourself to talk about anything and everything your heart desires.

For example for myself, my passion not only for photography, street photography, but philosophy, life, entrepreneurship, and everything in between.

START HERE

When in doubt, start here.

More turbo thoughts to come!

And stay posted on the blog or newsletter, for more fire! Also, feel free to forward this to a friend!

WHY?

Think more with ZEN OF ERIC

WHY?

Disregard Foreign Philosophies

If I think more critically about things, I think my greatest detriment is when I spend too much time thinking and considering too much of other philosophies. Foreign philosophies.

I believe the best philosophy is simply thinking about what you believe in, your own personal preferences, your own life experiences etc.

I WANT TO DO IT ALL!

A thought while getting hyped up with ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE:

I want to do it all!

EK MEDIA

YouTube morning routine

How and why?

I think for myself, entrepreneurship is in my veins. It is my passion, my lust, my personal interest, that which I am the most passionate about.

I think this is the great glory and gratitude and joy of America, being born in America, etc. Essentially the gist is that in America, you could do anything, become anything, create anything, attempt anything.

In America the nuance is that success or “making it“ is not guaranteed or promised. In fact, in America, the only privilege you have is the freedom to attempt something, not to succeed.

How does this matter?

Several things to consider;

First, you are alive, and one day you will die.

Second, it seems that a lot of life is personal preferences, and also, you have the power to dictate a certain type of lifestyle approach.

For example, we all have certain preferences, and to some degree we can control where we want to live, what kind of work to do, what to spend money on, what not to spend our money on, etc.

I think the biggest thing in modern day times is in regards to media. The reason why I discourage any sort of consumption of watching of sports is that it is essentially prostituted athleticism.

Let us consider why we like to watch sports. Essentially what it is is we get a second hand adrenaline high from watching and consuming sports.

I think the best visual that I have is from battle Angel Alita, the manga comic, in which in this dystopic future, we can get a first hand, POV of other athletes fighting racing and doing other dangerous things. Essentially we literally put ourselves in the shoes of others.

Unstoppable!

ERIC KIM KODAK PORTRA 400 FILM

From the EK ARCHIVES!

JUST GET ON WITH YOUR LIFE!

Never Stop Curating

Never stop pruning your inner circle!

Also just jot down your thoughts somewhere?

Composition Self Study

PDF LINK

PDF

DESIGN THOUGHTS

When people seem to universally love a certain design, it is a sign that it is a bad design?

For example, the new Prius or Prius Prime. Zero innovation in it?

Or taken further —

Any sort of design which isn’t polarizing ain’t good?

DESIGN THOUGHTS

Culver City 2 Picks

Culver City is lit!

Culver City 2 Screenshots

Culver City

Stoic Aesthetics

An idea from Peter Limberg—

What are stoic aesthetics?

1. Don’t be a non-man

The bad bias—

In todays world, the criticism of calling someone a bitch is that you’re saying that they’re a (weak) woman.

So to say, “Don’t be a bitch!” essentially means:

Don’t be a woman.

Inherent in this then means,

Women are inherently bad, weak, mean (base… basic, not “cruel”), irrational, lesser.

However we men… *should* we be comparing ourselves to women as some sort of lower tier benchmark? No.

2. I’m more proud of what I didn’t do, or didn’t say, or didn’t partake in?

A stoic aesthetic — we are more proud of *NOT* partaking in pettiness or smallness?

The corollary:

Be magnanimous!

STOICISM 101

Become invincible:

The Stoic Masters

Learn from the master stoics:

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If you can’t change them, ditch them!

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Philosophy Essays

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BECOMING HAPPY

Everyone wants to be happy, even our best friend Aristotle said it is the one thing that men seek for the sake of itself.

What what is happiness? I think I got the answer; walking is happiness. Any sort of life, lifestyle, lifestyle approach which allows you to maximize your walking is happiness.

Strategies

I cannot speak for most people, because I don’t have a “real job“. That is, I don’t have a workplace, an office, or a place I must typically commute to.

However Cindy does.

A simple thought that I had is if you have the option, spend extra money which affords you the privilege to walk. For example, I wonder if in fact, shelling out the extra thousand, 2000, 3000, 4000, $5000, maybe even $10,000 a month would be positively beneficial to give you the privilege of walking.

It seems that the modern-day strategy that people partake in is that they sacrifice time in foolish ways. They decide to live further out, further away from work, in the suburbs, which means that they must spend more time driving in order to get to their workplace, in order to have the privilege of having a bigger house, a cheaper house, a smaller mortgage, cheaper rent etc.

Enemies to happiness?

Being forced to be indoors against your own will, this is cruel.

Also, being forced to be stuck in a car, in a bus, in an Uber, even if you had your own private driver, this is cruel.

For example, I once read an interview with Jony Ive, this is when he was still at Apple, in which he would commute for almost 2 hours a day (one way, so 4 hours every day in total), going from a desirable area of San Francisco to the Apple office in Cupertino, having a private driver chauffeur him in his Bentley,and I suppose Jony would just be in the backseat, doing work on his iPhone, iPad, MacBook laptop, etc. If I was Joni and truly committed, I would not make this foolish decision. I would literally just rent a hotel or an apartment or a house literally right next to Apple campus, or who knows, be like Elon Musk and just sleep in a sleeping bag in the office.

However, if you were forced to be sedentary or sitting, for four hours a day, or five hours a day, even if you were the backseat of a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, Lamborghini, a McLaren, whatever; would it be worth it? No. Even as a thought experiment, if you had a totally maxed out Tesla model S plaid, or a Tesla model X plaid, with 100% auto pilot, assuming the technology was flawless, and you could do other stuff while being autonomously driven around, would you still want to be forced to be sedentary, for 4-5 hours a day? No.

Can happiness be purchased?

You cannot buy happiness. You can buy insanely great coffee, ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE, 100% fine robusta which physiologically speaking, will give you a marvelous happiness bump and boost, but ultimately, beyond coffee, happiness cannot be bought.

Things that money can do which can assist you and aid you in happiness include,

Using your money to buy a gym membership, or a yoga, CorePower membership
Using your money to buy beef and meat, either at Costco or the Costco Business Center. I recommend the beef ribs, or the beef tri-tip!
Using your money to pay for rent closer to your workplace, which allows you to have a 100% walking pedestrian lifestyle.
Having a situation which allows you to work outside, outdoors, without having to be stuck indoors or inside an office.
Buy an iPad Pro, the 11 inch smaller one, no accessories. The ultimate photo viewing device, and productivity device, it has brought me 1000 times more joy than any iPhone.

Physiology for the sake of what?

There’s a strange bias in today’s world that we have to somehow maximize our productivity, in order for the sake to work more, contribute more to society, “make a difference“.
For example, the modern-day notion of going to the gym and working out and exercising, the only thought is this:

It is critical for you to exercise daily, because it will make you healthy and healthier, in order for you to keep working more.

The reason why this line of thinking is so twisted is that it is for the sake of maximizing your work capacity, not your own personal happiness. Man is not permitted to be happy for the sake of being happy.

Happiness is also a flawed end goal

The other day, I was so insanely happy, maybe a 50 out of 10. But at the end of the day, happiness is a bit inconsequential. For me what is more critical is having the opportunity, physiological energy to pursue my creative tasks. Whether it be reviewing my photos, writing and blogging, thinking, producing knowledge, sending out email newsletters, etc.

Philosophy paths

Peter Limberg— shout out to him for his great “Minimum Viable Philosophy” essay. I like his tagline, “Less Foolish”.

A cool trend I see is the trend towards philosophy. Why? This is what I think:

“Self development” is just philosophy in (modern day capitalistic) disguise.

And what do I mean by this? Ultimately any sort of business, self development book is centered around a certain philosophy. And the book typically preaches some sort of strategy and technique in order to achieve that philosophical end.

Don’t be a dummy.

In life, there is no such thing as virtue, or sin, vice. To me, it is all about wisdom, knowledge, becoming less foolish, and “not being a dummy.”

I like the word dummy, because it is not so serious. For example, we joke around with kids to not be a dummy. Maybe this is a better path for us.

You should start your own philosophy blog

Oh and today’s world of ChatGPT, AI assisted writing, the question,

How do you know if something was written by ChatGPT, or a real human being?

For the most part you can’t. However, anything written by ERIC KIM passes the Turing test. Why? The way I talk is non-standard, the way I write is genuine, and ultimately I think the future of writing and thinking is predicated around philosophy. That is, there is already enough information and wisdom on the Internet on how to do anything. But not much information on why do XYZ. Or, should we do XYZ.

For example, I firmly believe that if your goal is to become superhuman, eating beef and meat is critical. But I philosophical question is should we eat beef and meat? Even if it is bad for the planet?

For example, if someone tells me, “Eric, you shouldn’t eat meat because it is bad for the planet“. But what if I say, “I know that eating meat is bad for the planet, but eating beef is best for me. So I don’t care.” Is one permitted to talk like this? This is the task and role of philosophy and ethics.

Hygiene?

The etymology of hygiene, in ancient Greek is the art of health.

In modern day times, hygiene as a concept has fallen out of vogue. Why? In the states, a lot of the modernized westernized world, we take it for granted. There is regular trash pick ups, we have clean albeit not too tasty running tapwater, and mostly clean air. And also, most foods we buy or eat, whether it be at the grocery store or a restaurant will not cause us food poisoning.

Food hygiene is very underrated as a concept. We moderns prefer tasty or good tasting food, we don’t really care much for hygiene anymore.

Hygiene as a metaphorical or philosophical concept

Here is where I find hygiene critical; some people, mentally, physically or unwell, their mental hygiene is poor, and their physical physiological bodily hygiene is also probably poor. Used as a metaphor.

If you see weird homeless people on the street, cracked out, smelling bad, do you distain the way they act? No. You just keep your distance, and run away.

In the zone?

Another thing that I’ve discovered is when I’m in the zone, I get so focused on the task at hand that when other people say random maybe possibly demeaning stuff to you, I don’t even have to forcibly ignore them, I just literally can’t hear them, I hear them literally, but because I’m so focused at the task at hand, what they said or intended doesn’t upset me.

What does it even mean to be happy?

I was doing some research on the etymology of happy, and no one is really quite certain where that word comes from. There are certain theories, like “happen”— fortunate, happen chance, hap— chance, luck, fortune, hampa— good luck, chance, from Proto indo European *kob— which means good fortune, prophecy, to bend, bow, fit in, work, succeed.

So why does this matter?

It seems that nowadays, English is the dominant world language. And if we operate in a certain linguistic manner, perhaps the common day words we use should be used with more precision and clarity.

For example, John Stuart Mill, a lot of the early American developers preach notions of the “pursuit of happiness“. But the issue is, if you can’t even define happiness, or if the notion of happiness is a modern day one, then perhaps this is not a good goal or path.

I say instead of seeking to be “happy“, maybe it is better to seek to be strong, well, powerful, and in a great mood. It seems that also, one of my passions being thinking, having the opportunity and clarity of thought is supreme to me.

Now what?

I still think certainly at the end of the day, it is fine to use every day words colloquially. So for example, what contributes a great life to me?

First, artistic and creative productivity. To me this pertains to photography, both shooting and making photos, reviewing photos, enjoying my photos, sharing my photos, thinking about photos, and the aesthetic joy that I get from looking at my own photos.

Second, philosophical and thinking power; this means, I have a passion for thinking, and thinking interesting thoughts. A life without thoughts is not a life worth having.

Third, the health, strength, growth, and muscles of my family. This pertains to my son, and also my wife. And of course certainly myself. Other day I took Seneca to the jungle gym, and at two years seven months old, the pure undiluted joy that he gets from running across the suspension bridge and the jungle gym is pure bliss to me.

Also, witnessing his muscular development, and how much pride and joy that I get watching him eat 100% grass fed ground beef, in super mini burger patties for him, and also him eating while you thinly sliced meat that we buy from H Mart. Seeing Seneca consume beef, and building his muscles brings me great joy.

As a tangent, I think a lot of this modern-day notions of child development are skewed. Rather than trying to educate your kids, make them brain smart, I think a better goal and path is instead, to develop their muscles.

Seeking happiness towards what ends?

First and foremost, as biological beings, I think perhaps it is critical for us to first seek to be physically, physiologically strong and well. An optimization towards physiological well-being is a good one.

Why? It is the necessary path. Without physiological strength and well-being, you can’t do anything. For example, it doesn’t matter if you have $100 billion in the bank, if you are physically or physiologically unwell, if you only sleep two hours a night, if you have no muscles or hotspots in your body, Nothing can be done.

Willpower is not real. Muscle power is real.

Society living is the best living

What is the point of money? Having the privilege of being around other human beings. This, paying rent, and buying beef as well. But beyond this, the additional utility of money is slim; once you have your digital camera, your Internet Wi-Fi connection, your iPad Pro etc., what else do you need? Not much.

Think more with KIM

If you’re hungry to think more, deeper and further, think with me at one of my upcoming workshops:

CONQUER STREET PHOTOGRAPHY IN PHILLY OCTOBER 14th
Discover your creative mission in life — DOWNTOWN LA, NOVEMBER 4th

Also incoming SUPER STOIC DOWNTOWN LA WORKSHOP— stay posted.

EK PHOTO SUPPLY

EK NECK STRAP MARK II: Conquer the unknown
HENRI NECK STRAP MARK IV: LEGENDS NEVER DIE.
HENRI WRIST STRAP PRO: The mark of pros.

Obtain all >

Happy thoughts

How about for now, let us just make our own personal happiness our priority?

The philosophy of happiness >

Experiments

If you’re having a hard time sleeping, my simple suggestion; start going to the gym at least once every single day, and use a hot sauna at least once a day, or really severe cases, go to the hot sauna twice a day.

One thing I found really interesting being in Japan, being at those random Japanese businessman hotels, or the wonderful Ryokans in Kyoto Uji, is at least in Japanese culture, the hot baths, are an integral part of their life and culture. That is, before they sleep, doing a really really hot bath is critical.

The same thing is in Korean culture, the jjim jjil bbang. Apparently in northern Scandinavian and Swedish countries, the really really hot sauna, whether it be dry or humid and steamy is also a critical part of their health.

According to the biological phenomenon hormesis, port duration of extreme heat and humidity is positively good for our physiological health and well-being.

All I need?

All I need is insanely fast Wi-Fi, muscle in my legs (985 pound atlas lift), iPad Pro and EK COFFEE and I’m happy!

House hunting thoughts

I never really knew, but I suppose I have very strong opinions on homes and living quarters and situations. That means for the most part I hate ugly. I hate old and ugly danky dark, dim, and ghetto apartments, especially here in LA.

I have a theory:

Perhaps ugly aesthetics actually causes our physiological happiness and well being to go down.

What is ugliness? Anything which causes our physiological well being to go downwards.

For example, I think the reason why old and danky and ghetto apartments have such an adverse reaction to us is because they scream “hygenically dangerous”. Hygiene as “the art of health”.

For example, the dark and danky typically means moldy. Mold is a poison.

Thus, the simplest thing with homes, houses, condos, duplexes, town houses, flats, hotels, airbnbs, motels sleeping or living quarters etc:

Ensure there is no mold
No poor air circulation (good air circulation is nett we for our health)
Not dark and dim and danky (sunlight, the sun as the best disinfectant, and mold killer)
Not loud
Not dirty
Not old

Now what?

After my Ricoh GR IIIX died, I’ve just been using my LUMIX G9 and Leica LUMIX 12mm f1.4 Lens and it produces insanely beautiful photos! Downsides — insanely big and heavy, which is bad.

I want something insanely different

At this point, money is no concern for us.

In terms of innovative cameras, I’m trending towards the point and shoot, integrated flash department. For example,

The only concern:

Are the integrated in camera JPEG settings good for us?

Also,

Share your best

Arsbeta.com — upload and share your best photos now!

What’s on my mind?

Still house apartment hunting in LA — checking out Culver City (downtown Culver City is insanely cool and walkable). Also going to check out Westwood and Sawtelle
Still backlogged around 7,000 photos on my LUMIX g9– on iPad Pro. Working on reviewing them!

Future photo innovations?

An AI-assisted Tool to help us cull down and curate our favorite photos.
Or an AI app thing that helps us automatically pick our best photos?

Forward the turbo!

ERIC KIM NEWS >

Hungry to learn more?

BOOKS

BECOMING HAPPY

Everyone wants to be happy, even our best friend Aristotle said it is the one thing that men seek for the sake of itself.

What what is happiness? I think I got the answer; walking is happiness. Any sort of life, lifestyle, lifestyle approach which allows you to maximize your walking is happiness.

Strategies

I cannot speak for most people, because I don’t have a “real job“. That is, I don’t have a workplace, an office, or a place I must typically commute to.

However Cindy does.

A simple thought that I had is if you have the option, spend extra money which affords you the privilege to walk. For example, I wonder if in fact, shelling out the extra thousand, 2000, 3000, 4000, $5000, maybe even $10,000 a month would be positively beneficial to give you the privilege of walking.

It seems that the modern-day strategy that people partake in is that they sacrifice time in foolish ways. They decide to live further out, further away from work, in the suburbs, which means that they must spend more time driving in order to get to their workplace, in order to have the privilege of having a bigger house, a cheaper house, a smaller mortgage, cheaper rent etc.

Enemies to happiness?

Being forced to be indoors against your own will, this is cruel.

Also, being forced to be stuck in a car, in a bus, in an Uber, even if you had your own private driver, this is cruel.

For example, I once read an interview with Jony Ive, this is when he was still at Apple, in which he would commute for almost 2 hours a day (one way, so 4 hours every day in total), going from a desirable area of San Francisco to the Apple office in Cupertino, having a private driver chauffeur him in his Bentley,and I suppose Jony would just be in the backseat, doing work on his iPhone, iPad, MacBook laptop, etc. If I was Joni and truly committed, I would not make this foolish decision. I would literally just rent a hotel or an apartment or a house literally right next to Apple campus, or who knows, be like Elon Musk and just sleep in a sleeping bag in the office.

However, if you were forced to be sedentary or sitting, for four hours a day, or five hours a day, even if you were the backseat of a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, Lamborghini, a McLaren, whatever; would it be worth it? No. Even as a thought experiment, if you had a totally maxed out Tesla model S plaid, or a Tesla model X plaid, with 100% auto pilot, assuming the technology was flawless, and you could do other stuff while being autonomously driven around, would you still want to be forced to be sedentary, for 4-5 hours a day? No.

Can happiness be purchased?

You cannot buy happiness. You can buy insanely great coffee, ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE, 100% fine robusta which physiologically speaking, will give you a marvelous happiness bump and boost, but ultimately, beyond coffee, happiness cannot be bought.

Things that money can do which can assist you and aid you in happiness include,

Using your money to buy a gym membership, or a yoga, CorePower membership
Using your money to buy beef and meat, either at Costco or the Costco Business Center. I recommend the beef ribs, or the beef tri-tip!
Using your money to pay for rent closer to your workplace, which allows you to have a 100% walking pedestrian lifestyle.
Having a situation which allows you to work outside, outdoors, without having to be stuck indoors or inside an office.
Buy an iPad Pro, the 11 inch smaller one, no accessories. The ultimate photo viewing device, and productivity device, it has brought me 1000 times more joy than any iPhone.

Physiology for the sake of what?

There’s a strange bias in today’s world that we have to somehow maximize our productivity, in order for the sake to work more, contribute more to society, “make a difference“.
For example, the modern-day notion of going to the gym and working out and exercising, the only thought is this:

It is critical for you to exercise daily, because it will make you healthy and healthier, in order for you to keep working more.

The reason why this line of thinking is so twisted is that it is for the sake of maximizing your work capacity, not your own personal happiness. Man is not permitted to be happy for the sake of being happy.

Happiness is also a flawed end goal

The other day, I was so insanely happy, maybe a 50 out of 10. But at the end of the day, happiness is a bit inconsequential. For me what is more critical is having the opportunity, physiological energy to pursue my creative tasks. Whether it be reviewing my photos, writing and blogging, thinking, producing knowledge, sending out email newsletters, etc.

Philosophy paths

Peter Limberg— shout out to him for his great “Minimum Viable Philosophy” essay. I like his tagline, “Less Foolish”.

A cool trend I see is the trend towards philosophy. Why? This is what I think:

“Self development” is just philosophy in (modern day capitalistic) disguise.

And what do I mean by this? Ultimately any sort of business, self development book is centered around a certain philosophy. And the book typically preaches some sort of strategy and technique in order to achieve that philosophical end.

Don’t be a dummy.

In life, there is no such thing as virtue, or sin, vice. To me, it is all about wisdom, knowledge, becoming less foolish, and “not being a dummy.”

I like the word dummy, because it is not so serious. For example, we joke around with kids to not be a dummy. Maybe this is a better path for us.

You should start your own philosophy blog

Oh and today’s world of ChatGPT, AI assisted writing, the question,

How do you know if something was written by ChatGPT, or a real human being?

For the most part you can’t. However, anything written by ERIC KIM passes the Turing test. Why? The way I talk is non-standard, the way I write is genuine, and ultimately I think the future of writing and thinking is predicated around philosophy. That is, there is already enough information and wisdom on the Internet on how to do anything. But not much information on why do XYZ. Or, should we do XYZ.

For example, I firmly believe that if your goal is to become superhuman, eating beef and meat is critical. But I philosophical question is should we eat beef and meat? Even if it is bad for the planet?

For example, if someone tells me, “Eric, you shouldn’t eat meat because it is bad for the planet“. But what if I say, “I know that eating meat is bad for the planet, but eating beef is best for me. So I don’t care.” Is one permitted to talk like this? This is the task and role of philosophy and ethics.

Hygiene?

The etymology of hygiene, in ancient Greek is the art of health.

In modern day times, hygiene as a concept has fallen out of vogue. Why? In the states, a lot of the modernized westernized world, we take it for granted. There is regular trash pick ups, we have clean albeit not too tasty running tapwater, and mostly clean air. And also, most foods we buy or eat, whether it be at the grocery store or a restaurant will not cause us food poisoning.

Food hygiene is very underrated as a concept. We moderns prefer tasty or good tasting food, we don’t really care much for hygiene anymore.

Hygiene as a metaphorical or philosophical concept

Here is where I find hygiene critical; some people, mentally, physically or unwell, their mental hygiene is poor, and their physical physiological bodily hygiene is also probably poor. Used as a metaphor.

If you see weird homeless people on the street, cracked out, smelling bad, do you distain the way they act? No. You just keep your distance, and run away.

In the zone?

Another thing that I’ve discovered is when I’m in the zone, I get so focused on the task at hand that when other people say random maybe possibly demeaning stuff to you, I don’t even have to forcibly ignore them, I just literally can’t hear them, I hear them literally, but because I’m so focused at the task at hand, what they said or intended doesn’t upset me.

What does it even mean to be happy?

I was doing some research on the etymology of happy, and no one is really quite certain where that word comes from. There are certain theories, like “happen”— fortunate, happen chance, hap— chance, luck, fortune, hampa— good luck, chance, from Proto indo European *kob— which means good fortune, prophecy, to bend, bow, fit in, work, succeed.

So why does this matter?

It seems that nowadays, English is the dominant world language. And if we operate in a certain linguistic manner, perhaps the common day words we use should be used with more precision and clarity.

For example, John Stuart Mill, a lot of the early American developers preach notions of the “pursuit of happiness“. But the issue is, if you can’t even define happiness, or if the notion of happiness is a modern day one, then perhaps this is not a good goal or path.

I say instead of seeking to be “happy“, maybe it is better to seek to be strong, well, powerful, and in a great mood. It seems that also, one of my passions being thinking, having the opportunity and clarity of thought is supreme to me.

Now what?

I still think certainly at the end of the day, it is fine to use every day words colloquially. So for example, what contributes a great life to me?

First, artistic and creative productivity. To me this pertains to photography, both shooting and making photos, reviewing photos, enjoying my photos, sharing my photos, thinking about photos, and the aesthetic joy that I get from looking at my own photos.

Second, philosophical and thinking power; this means, I have a passion for thinking, and thinking interesting thoughts. A life without thoughts is not a life worth having.

Third, the health, strength, growth, and muscles of my family. This pertains to my son, and also my wife. And of course certainly myself. Other day I took Seneca to the jungle gym, and at two years seven months old, the pure undiluted joy that he gets from running across the suspension bridge and the jungle gym is pure bliss to me.

Also, witnessing his muscular development, and how much pride and joy that I get watching him eat 100% grass fed ground beef, in super mini burger patties for him, and also him eating while you thinly sliced meat that we buy from H Mart. Seeing Seneca consume beef, and building his muscles brings me great joy.

As a tangent, I think a lot of this modern-day notions of child development are skewed. Rather than trying to educate your kids, make them brain smart, I think a better goal and path is instead, to develop their muscles.

Seeking happiness towards what ends?

First and foremost, as biological beings, I think perhaps it is critical for us to first seek to be physically, physiologically strong and well. An optimization towards physiological well-being is a good one.

Why? It is the necessary path. Without physiological strength and well-being, you can’t do anything. For example, it doesn’t matter if you have $100 billion in the bank, if you are physically or physiologically unwell, if you only sleep two hours a night, if you have no muscles or hotspots in your body, Nothing can be done.

Willpower is not real. Muscle power is real.

Society living is the best living

What is the point of money? Having the privilege of being around other human beings. This, paying rent, and buying beef as well. But beyond this, the additional utility of money is slim; once you have your digital camera, your Internet Wi-Fi connection, your iPad Pro etc., what else do you need? Not much.

Think more with KIM

If you’re hungry to think more, deeper and further, think with me at one of my upcoming workshops:

CONQUER STREET PHOTOGRAPHY IN PHILLY OCTOBER 14th
Discover your creative mission in life — DOWNTOWN LA, NOVEMBER 4th

Also incoming SUPER STOIC DOWNTOWN LA WORKSHOP— stay posted.

EK PHOTO SUPPLY

EK NECK STRAP MARK II: Conquer the unknown
HENRI NECK STRAP MARK IV: LEGENDS NEVER DIE.
HENRI WRIST STRAP PRO: The mark of pros.

Obtain all >

Happy thoughts

How about for now, let us just make our own personal happiness our priority?

The philosophy of happiness >

Experiments

If you’re having a hard time sleeping, my simple suggestion; start going to the gym at least once every single day, and use a hot sauna at least once a day, or really severe cases, go to the hot sauna twice a day.

One thing I found really interesting being in Japan, being at those random Japanese businessman hotels, or the wonderful Ryokans in Kyoto Uji, is at least in Japanese culture, the hot baths, are an integral part of their life and culture. That is, before they sleep, doing a really really hot bath is critical.

The same thing is in Korean culture, the jjim jjil bbang. Apparently in northern Scandinavian and Swedish countries, the really really hot sauna, whether it be dry or humid and steamy is also a critical part of their health.

According to the biological phenomenon hormesis, port duration of extreme heat and humidity is positively good for our physiological health and well-being.

All I need?

All I need is insanely fast Wi-Fi, muscle in my legs (985 pound atlas lift), iPad Pro and EK COFFEE and I’m happy!

House hunting thoughts

I never really knew, but I suppose I have very strong opinions on homes and living quarters and situations. That means for the most part I hate ugly. I hate old and ugly danky dark, dim, and ghetto apartments, especially here in LA.

I have a theory:

Perhaps ugly aesthetics actually causes our physiological happiness and well being to go down.

What is ugliness? Anything which causes our physiological well being to go downwards.

For example, I think the reason why old and danky and ghetto apartments have such an adverse reaction to us is because they scream “hygenically dangerous”. Hygiene as “the art of health”.

For example, the dark and danky typically means moldy. Mold is a poison.

Thus, the simplest thing with homes, houses, condos, duplexes, town houses, flats, hotels, airbnbs, motels sleeping or living quarters etc:

Ensure there is no mold
No poor air circulation (good air circulation is nett we for our health)
Not dark and dim and danky (sunlight, the sun as the best disinfectant, and mold killer)
Not loud
Not dirty
Not old

Now what?

After my Ricoh GR IIIX died, I’ve just been using my LUMIX G9 and Leica LUMIX 12mm f1.4 Lens and it produces insanely beautiful photos! Downsides — insanely big and heavy, which is bad.

HAPPY!

Everyone wants to be happy, even our best friend Aristotle said it is the one thing that men seek for the sake of itself.

What what is happiness? I think I got the answer; walking is happiness. Any sort of life, lifestyle, lifestyle approach which allows you to maximize your walking is happiness.

Strategies

I cannot speak for most people, because I don’t have a “real job“. That is, I don’t have a workplace, an office, or a place I must typically commute to.

However Cindy does.

A simple thought that I had is if you have the option, spend extra money which affords you the privilege to walk. For example, I wonder if in fact, shelling out the extra thousand, 2000, 3000, 4000, $5000, maybe even $10,000 a month would be positively beneficial to give you the privilege of walking.

It seems that the modern-day strategy that people partake in is that they sacrifice time in foolish ways. They decide to live further out, further away from work, in the suburbs, which means that they must spend more time driving in order to get to their workplace, in order to have the privilege of having a bigger house, a cheaper house, a smaller mortgage, cheaper rent etc.

Enemies to happiness?

Being forced to be indoors against your own will, this is cruel.

Also, being forced to be stuck in a car, in a bus, in an Uber, even if you had your own private driver, this is cruel.

For example, I once read an interview with Jony Ive, this is when he was still at Apple, in which he would commute for almost 2 hours a day (one way, so 4 hours every day in total), going from a desirable area of San Francisco to the Apple office in Cupertino, having a private driver chauffeur him in his Bentley,and I suppose Jony would just be in the backseat, doing work on his iPhone, iPad, MacBook laptop, etc. If I was Joni and truly committed, I would not make this foolish decision. I would literally just rent a hotel or an apartment or a house literally right next to Apple campus, or who knows, be like Elon Musk and just sleep in a sleeping bag in the office.

However, if you were forced to be sedentary or sitting, for four hours a day, or five hours a day, even if you were the backseat of a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, Lamborghini, a McLaren, whatever; would it be worth it? No. Even as a thought experiment, if you had a totally maxed out Tesla model S plaid, or a Tesla model X plaid, with 100% auto pilot, assuming the technology was flawless, and you could do other stuff while being autonomously driven around, would you still want to be forced to be sedentary, for 4-5 hours a day? No.

Can happiness be purchased?

You cannot buy happiness. You can buy insanely great coffee, ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE, 100% fine robusta which physiologically speaking, will give you a marvelous happiness bump and boost, but ultimately, beyond coffee, happiness cannot be bought.

Things that money can do which can assist you and aid you in happiness include,

Using your money to buy a gym membership, or a yoga, CorePower membership
Using your money to buy beef and meat, either at Costco or the Costco Business Center. I recommend the beef ribs, or the beef tri-tip!
Using your money to pay for rent closer to your workplace, which allows you to have a 100% walking pedestrian lifestyle.
Having a situation which allows you to work outside, outdoors, without having to be stuck indoors or inside an office.
Buy an iPad Pro, the 11 inch smaller one, no accessories. The ultimate photo viewing device, and productivity device, it has brought me 1000 times more joy than any iPhone.

Physiology for the sake of what?

There’s a strange bias in today’s world that we have to somehow maximize our productivity, in order for the sake to work more, contribute more to society, “make a difference“.
For example, the modern-day notion of going to the gym and working out and exercising, the only thought is this:

It is critical for you to exercise daily, because it will make you healthy and healthier, in order for you to keep working more.

The reason why this line of thinking is so twisted is that it is for the sake of maximizing your work capacity, not your own personal happiness. Man is not permitted to be happy for the sake of being happy.

Happiness is also a flawed end goal

The other day, I was so insanely happy, maybe a 50 out of 10. But at the end of the day, happiness is a bit inconsequential. For me what is more critical is having the opportunity, physiological energy to pursue my creative tasks. Whether it be reviewing my photos, writing and blogging, thinking, producing knowledge, sending out email newsletters, etc.

Philosophy paths

Peter Limberg— shout out to him for his great “Minimum Viable Philosophy” essay. I like his tagline, “Less Foolish”.

A cool trend I see is the trend towards philosophy. Why? This is what I think:

“Self development” is just philosophy in (modern day capitalistic) disguise.

And what do I mean by this? Ultimately any sort of business, self development book is centered around a certain philosophy. And the book typically preaches some sort of strategy and technique in order to achieve that philosophical end.

Don’t be a dummy.

In life, there is no such thing as virtue, or sin, vice. To me, it is all about wisdom, knowledge, becoming less foolish, and “not being a dummy.”

I like the word dummy, because it is not so serious. For example, we joke around with kids to not be a dummy. Maybe this is a better path for us.

You should start your own philosophy blog

Oh and today’s world of ChatGPT, AI assisted writing, the question,

How do you know if something was written by ChatGPT, or a real human being?

For the most part you can’t. However, anything written by ERIC KIM passes the Turing test. Why? The way I talk is non-standard, the way I write is genuine, and ultimately I think the future of writing and thinking is predicated around philosophy. That is, there is already enough information and wisdom on the Internet on how to do anything. But not much information on why do XYZ. Or, should we do XYZ.

For example, I firmly believe that if your goal is to become superhuman, eating beef and meat is critical. But I philosophical question is should we eat beef and meat? Even if it is bad for the planet?

For example, if someone tells me, “Eric, you shouldn’t eat meat because it is bad for the planet“. But what if I say, “I know that eating meat is bad for the planet, but eating beef is best for me. So I don’t care.” Is one permitted to talk like this? This is the task and role of philosophy and ethics.

Hygiene?

The etymology of hygiene, in ancient Greek is the art of health.

In modern day times, hygiene as a concept has fallen out of vogue. Why? In the states, a lot of the modernized westernized world, we take it for granted. There is regular trash pick ups, we have clean albeit not too tasty running tapwater, and mostly clean air. And also, most foods we buy or eat, whether it be at the grocery store or a restaurant will not cause us food poisoning.

Food hygiene is very underrated as a concept. We moderns prefer tasty or good tasting food, we don’t really care much for hygiene anymore.

Hygiene as a metaphorical or philosophical concept

Here is where I find hygiene critical; some people, mentally, physically or unwell, their mental hygiene is poor, and their physical physiological bodily hygiene is also probably poor. Used as a metaphor.

If you see weird homeless people on the street, cracked out, smelling bad, do you distain the way they act? No. You just keep your distance, and run away.

In the zone?

Another thing that I’ve discovered is when I’m in the zone, I get so focused on the task at hand that when other people say random maybe possibly demeaning stuff to you, I don’t even have to forcibly ignore them, I just literally can’t hear them, I hear them literally, but because I’m so focused at the task at hand, what they said or intended doesn’t upset me.

What does it even mean to be happy?

I was doing some research on the etymology of happy, and no one is really quite certain where that word comes from. There are certain theories, like “happen”— fortunate, happen chance, hap— chance, luck, fortune, hampa— good luck, chance, from Proto indo European *kob— which means good fortune, prophecy, to bend, bow, fit in, work, succeed.

So why does this matter?

It seems that nowadays, English is the dominant world language. And if we operate in a certain linguistic manner, perhaps the common day words we use should be used with more precision and clarity.

For example, John Stuart Mill, a lot of the early American developers preach notions of the “pursuit of happiness“. But the issue is, if you can’t even define happiness, or if the notion of happiness is a modern day one, then perhaps this is not a good goal or path.

I say instead of seeking to be “happy“, maybe it is better to seek to be strong, well, powerful, and in a great mood. It seems that also, one of my passions being thinking, having the opportunity and clarity of thought is supreme to me.

Now what?

I still think certainly at the end of the day, it is fine to use every day words colloquially. So for example, what contributes a great life to me?

First, artistic and creative productivity. To me this pertains to photography, both shooting and making photos, reviewing photos, enjoying my photos, sharing my photos, thinking about photos, and the aesthetic joy that I get from looking at my own photos.

Second, philosophical and thinking power; this means, I have a passion for thinking, and thinking interesting thoughts. A life without thoughts is not a life worth having.

Third, the health, strength, growth, and muscles of my family. This pertains to my son, and also my wife. And of course certainly myself. Other day I took Seneca to the jungle gym, and at two years seven months old, the pure undiluted joy that he gets from running across the suspension bridge and the jungle gym is pure bliss to me.

Also, witnessing his muscular development, and how much pride and joy that I get watching him eat 100% grass fed ground beef, in super mini burger patties for him, and also him eating while you thinly sliced meat that we buy from H Mart. Seeing Seneca consume beef, and building his muscles brings me great joy.

As a tangent, I think a lot of this modern-day notions of child development are skewed. Rather than trying to educate your kids, make them brain smart, I think a better goal and path is instead, to develop their muscles.

Seeking happiness towards what ends?

First and foremost, as biological beings, I think perhaps it is critical for us to first seek to be physically, physiologically strong and well. An optimization towards physiological well-being is a good one.

Why? It is the necessary path. Without physiological strength and well-being, you can’t do anything. For example, it doesn’t matter if you have $100 billion in the bank, if you are physically or physiologically unwell, if you only sleep two hours a night, if you have no muscles or hotspots in your body, Nothing can be done.

Willpower is not real. Muscle power is real.

Society living is the best living

What is the point of money? Having the privilege of being around other human beings. This, paying rent, and buying beef as well. But beyond this, the additional utility of money is slim; once you have your digital camera, your Internet Wi-Fi connection, your iPad Pro etc., what else do you need? Not much.

Think more with KIM

If you’re hungry to think more, deeper and further, think with me at one of my upcoming workshops:

CONQUER STREET PHOTOGRAPHY IN PHILLY OCTOBER 14th
Discover your creative mission in life — DOWNTOWN LA, NOVEMBER 4th

Kids are artistic geniuses

Seneca at two years, seven months old:

HAPPY!

Everyone wants to be happy, even our best friend Aristotle said it is the one thing that men seek for the sake of itself.

What what is happiness? I think I got the answer; walking is happiness. Any sort of life, lifestyle, lifestyle approach which allows you to maximize your walking is happiness.

Strategies

I cannot speak for most people, because I don’t have a “real job“. That is, I don’t have a workplace, an office, or a place I must typically commute to.

However Cindy does.

A simple thought that I had is if you have the option, spend extra money which affords you the privilege to walk. For example, I wonder if in fact, shelling out the extra thousand, 2000, 3000, 4000, $5000, maybe even $10,000 a month would be positively beneficial to give you the privilege of walking.

It seems that the modern-day strategy that people partake in is that they sacrifice time in foolish ways. They decide to live further out, further away from work, in the suburbs, which means that they must spend more time driving in order to get to their workplace, in order to have the privilege of having a bigger house, a cheaper house, a smaller mortgage, cheaper rent etc.

Enemies to happiness?

Being forced to be indoors against your own will, this is cruel.

Also, being forced to be stuck in a car, in a bus, in an Uber, even if you had your own private driver, this is cruel.

For example, I once read an interview with Jony Ive, this is when he was still at Apple, in which he would commute for almost 2 hours a day (one way, so 4 hours every day in total), going from a desirable area of San Francisco to the Apple office in Cupertino, having a private driver chauffeur him in his Bentley,and I suppose Jony would just be in the backseat, doing work on his iPhone, iPad, MacBook laptop, etc. If I was Joni and truly committed, I would not make this foolish decision. I would literally just rent a hotel or an apartment or a house literally right next to Apple campus, or who knows, be like Elon Musk and just sleep in a sleeping bag in the office.

However, if you were forced to be sedentary or sitting, for four hours a day, or five hours a day, even if you were the backseat of a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, Lamborghini, a McLaren, whatever; would it be worth it? No. Even as a thought experiment, if you had a totally maxed out Tesla model S plaid, or a Tesla model X plaid, with 100% auto pilot, assuming the technology was flawless, and you could do other stuff while being autonomously driven around, would you still want to be forced to be sedentary, for 4-5 hours a day? No.

Can happiness be purchased?

You cannot buy happiness. You can buy insanely great coffee, ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE, 100% fine robusta which physiologically speaking, will give you a marvelous happiness bump and boost, but ultimately, beyond coffee, happiness cannot be bought.

Things that money can do which can assist you and aid you in happiness include,

Using your money to buy a gym membership, or a yoga, CorePower membership
Using your money to buy beef and meat, either at Costco or the Costco Business Center. I recommend the beef ribs, or the beef tri-tip!
Using your money to pay for rent closer to your workplace, which allows you to have a 100% walking pedestrian lifestyle.
Having a situation which allows you to work outside, outdoors, without having to be stuck indoors or inside an office.
Buy an iPad Pro, the 11 inch smaller one, no accessories. The ultimate photo viewing device, and productivity device, it has brought me 1000 times more joy than any iPhone.

Physiology for the sake of what?

There’s a strange bias in today’s world that we have to somehow maximize our productivity, in order for the sake to work more, contribute more to society, “make a difference“.
For example, the modern-day notion of going to the gym and working out and exercising, the only thought is this:

It is critical for you to exercise daily, because it will make you healthy and healthier, in order for you to keep working more.

The reason why this line of thinking is so twisted is that it is for the sake of maximizing your work capacity, not your own personal happiness. Man is not permitted to be happy for the sake of being happy.

Happiness is also a flawed end goal

The other day, I was so insanely happy, maybe a 50 out of 10. But at the end of the day, happiness is a bit inconsequential. For me what is more critical is having the opportunity, physiological energy to pursue my creative tasks. Whether it be reviewing my photos, writing and blogging, thinking, producing knowledge, sending out email newsletters, etc.

Philosophy paths

Peter Limberg— shout out to him for his great “Minimum Viable Philosophy” essay. I like his tagline, “Less Foolish”.

A cool trend I see is the trend towards philosophy. Why? This is what I think:

“Self development” is just philosophy in (modern day capitalistic) disguise.

And what do I mean by this? Ultimately any sort of business, self development book is centered around a certain philosophy. And the book typically preaches some sort of strategy and technique in order to achieve that philosophical end.

Don’t be a dummy.

In life, there is no such thing as virtue, or sin, vice. To me, it is all about wisdom, knowledge, becoming less foolish, and “not being a dummy.”

I like the word dummy, because it is not so serious. For example, we joke around with kids to not be a dummy. Maybe this is a better path for us.

You should start your own philosophy blog

Oh and today’s world of ChatGPT, AI assisted writing, the question,

How do you know if something was written by ChatGPT, or a real human being?

For the most part you can’t. However, anything written by ERIC KIM passes the Turing test. Why? The way I talk is non-standard, the way I write is genuine, and ultimately I think the future of writing and thinking is predicated around philosophy. That is, there is already enough information and wisdom on the Internet on how to do anything. But not much information on why do XYZ. Or, should we do XYZ.

For example, I firmly believe that if your goal is to become superhuman, eating beef and meat is critical. But I philosophical question is should we eat beef and meat? Even if it is bad for the planet?

For example, if someone tells me, “Eric, you shouldn’t eat meat because it is bad for the planet“. But what if I say, “I know that eating meat is bad for the planet, but eating beef is best for me. So I don’t care.” Is one permitted to talk like this? This is the task and role of philosophy and ethics.

Hygiene?

The etymology of hygiene, in ancient Greek is the art of health.

In modern day times, hygiene as a concept has fallen out of vogue. Why? In the states, a lot of the modernized westernized world, we take it for granted. There is regular trash pick ups, we have clean albeit not too tasty running tapwater, and mostly clean air. And also, most foods we buy or eat, whether it be at the grocery store or a restaurant will not cause us food poisoning.

Food hygiene is very underrated as a concept. We moderns prefer tasty or good tasting food, we don’t really care much for hygiene anymore.

Hygiene as a metaphorical or philosophical concept

Here is where I find hygiene critical; some people, mentally, physically or unwell, their mental hygiene is poor, and their physical physiological bodily hygiene is also probably poor. Used as a metaphor.

If you see weird homeless people on the street, cracked out, smelling bad, do you distain the way they act? No. You just keep your distance, and run away.

In the zone?

Another thing that I’ve discovered is when I’m in the zone, I get so focused on the task at hand that when other people say random maybe possibly demeaning stuff to you, I don’t even have to forcibly ignore them, I just literally can’t hear them, I hear them literally, but because I’m so focused at the task at hand, what they said or intended doesn’t upset me.

What does it even mean to be happy?

I was doing some research on the etymology of happy, and no one is really quite certain where that word comes from. There are certain theories, like “happen”— fortunate, happen chance, hap— chance, luck, fortune, hampa— good luck, chance, from Proto indo European *kob— which means good fortune, prophecy, to bend, bow, fit in, work, succeed.

So why does this matter?

It seems that nowadays, English is the dominant world language. And if we operate in a certain linguistic manner, perhaps the common day words we use should be used with more precision and clarity.

For example, John Stuart Mill, a lot of the early American developers preach notions of the “pursuit of happiness“. But the issue is, if you can’t even define happiness, or if the notion of happiness is a modern day one, then perhaps this is not a good goal or path.

I say instead of seeking to be “happy“, maybe it is better to seek to be strong, well, powerful, and in a great mood. It seems that also, one of my passions being thinking, having the opportunity and clarity of thought is supreme to me.

Now what?

I still think certainly at the end of the day, it is fine to use every day words colloquially. So for example, what contributes a great life to me?

First, artistic and creative productivity. To me this pertains to photography, both shooting and making photos, reviewing photos, enjoying my photos, sharing my photos, thinking about photos, and the aesthetic joy that I get from looking at my own photos.

Second, philosophical and thinking power; this means, I have a passion for thinking, and thinking interesting thoughts. A life without thoughts is not a life worth having.

Third, the health, strength, growth, and muscles of my family. This pertains to my son, and also my wife. And of course certainly myself. Other day I took Seneca to the jungle gym, and at two years seven months old, the pure undiluted joy that he gets from running across the suspension bridge and the jungle gym is pure bliss to me.

Also, witnessing his muscular development, and how much pride and joy that I get watching him eat 100% grass fed ground beef, in super mini burger patty for him, and also him eating while you thinly sliced meat that we buy from H Mart. Seeing Seneca consume beef, and building his muscles brings me great joy.

As a tangent, I think a lot of this modern-day notions of child development are skewed. Rather than trying to educate your kids, make them brain smart, I think a better goal and path is instead, to develop their muscles.

“Self development” is just philosophy in (modern day capitalistic) disguise.

HAPPY.

Happy Thoughts

Everyone wants to be happy, even our best friend Aristotle said it is the one thing that men seek for the sake of itself.

What what is happiness? I think I got the answer; walking is happiness. Any sort of life, lifestyle, lifestyle approach which allows you to maximize your walking is happiness.

Strategies

I cannot speak for most people, because I don’t have a “real job“. That is, I don’t have a workplace, an office, or a place I must typically commute to.

However Cindy does.

A simple thought that I had is if you have the option, spend extra money which affords you the privilege to walk. For example, I wonder if in fact, shelling out the extra thousand, 2000, 3000, 4000, $5000, maybe even $10,000 a month would be positively beneficial to give you the privilege of walking.

It seems that the modern-day strategy that people partake in is that they sacrifice time in foolish ways. They decide to live further out, further away from work, in the suburbs, which means that they must spend more time driving in order to get to their workplace, in order to have the privilege of having a bigger house, a cheaper house, a smaller mortgage, cheaper rent etc.

Enemies to happiness?

Being forced to be indoors against your own will, this is cruel.

Also, being forced to be stuck in a car, in a bus, in an Uber, even if you had your own private driver, this is cruel.

For example, I once read an interview with Jony Ive, this is when he was still at Apple, in which he would commute for almost 2 hours a day, going from a desirable area of San Francisco to the Apple office in Cupertino, having a private driver show for him and his Bentley, and I suppose Johnny would just be in the backseat, doing work on his iPhone, iPad, MacBook laptop, etc.

However, if you were forced to be secretary or sitting, for four hours a day, or five hours a day, even if you were the backseat of a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, Lamborghini, a McLaren, whatever; would it be worth it? No.

Can happiness be purchased?

You cannot buy happiness. You can buy insanely great coffee, ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE, 100% fine robusta which physiologically speaking, will give you a marvelous happiness bump and boost, but ultimately, beyond coffee, happiness cannot be bought.

Things that money can do which can assist you and aid you in happiness include,

Using your money to buy a gym membership, or a yoga, CorePower membership
Using your money to buy beef and meat, either at Costco or the Costco Business Center. I recommend the beef ribs, or the beef tri-tip!
Using your money to pay for rent closer to your workplace, which allows you to have a 100% walking pedestrian lifestyle.
Having a situation which allows you to work outside, outdoors, without having to be stuck indoors or inside an office.

Physiology for the sake of what?

There’s a strange bias in today’s world that we have to somehow maximize our productivity, in order for the sake to work more, contribute more to society, “make a difference“.
For example, the modern-day notion of going to the gym and working out and exercising, the only thought is this:

It is critical for you to exercise daily, because it will make you healthy and healthier, in order for you to keep working more.

The reason why this line of thinking is so twisted is that it is for the sake of maximizing your work capacity, not your own personal happiness. Man is not permitted to be happy for the sake of being happy.

Happiness is also a flawed end goal

The other day, I was so insanely happy, maybe a 50 out of 10. But at the end of the day, happiness is a bit inconsequential. For me what is more critical is having the opportunity, physiological energy to pursue my creative tasks. Whether it be reviewing my photos, writing and blogging, thinking, producing knowledge, sending out email newsletters, etc.

Philosophy paths

Peter Limberg— shout out to him for his great “Minimum Viable Philosophy” essay. I like his tagline, “Less Foolish”.

Don’t be a dummy.

I life, there is no such thing as virtue, or sin, vice. To me, it is all about wisdom, knowledge, becoming less foolish, and “not being a dummy.”

I like the word dummy, because it is not so serious. For example, we joke around with kids to not be a dummy. Maybe this is a better path for us.

You should start your own philosophy blog

Oh and today’s world of ChatGPT, AI assistant writing, the question,

How do you know if something was written by ChatGPT, or a real human being?

For the most part you can’t. However, anything written by Eric Kim passes the Turing test. Why? The way I talk is non-standard, the way I write is genuine, and ultimately I think the future of writing and thinking is predicated around philosophy. That is, there is already enough information and wisdom on the Internet on how to do anything. But not much information on why do XYZ. Or, should we do XYZ.

For example, I firmly believe that if your goal is to become superhuman, eating beef and meat is critical. But I philosophical question is should we eat beef and meat? Even if it is bad for the planet?

For example, if someone tells me, “Eric, you shouldn’t eat meat because it is bad for the planet“. But what if I say, “I know that eating meat is bad for the planet, but eating beef is best for me. So I don’t care.” Is one permitted to talk like this? This is the task and role of philosophy and ethics.

Happy Thoughts

Everyone wants to be happy, even our best friend Aristotle said it is the one thing that men seek for the sake of itself.

What what is happiness? I think I got the answer; walking is happiness. Any sort of life, lifestyle, lifestyle approach which allows you to maximize your walking is happiness.

Strategies

I cannot speak for most people, because I don’t have a “real job“. That is, I don’t have a workplace, an office, or a place I must typically commute to.

However Cindy does.

A simple thought that I had is if you have the option, spend extra money which affords you the privilege to walk. For example, I wonder if in fact, shelling out the extra thousand, 2000, 3000, 4000, $5000, maybe even $10,000 a month would be positively beneficial to give you the privilege of walking.

It seems that the modern-day strategy that people partake in is that they sacrifice time in foolish ways. They decide to live further out, further away from work, in the suburbs, which means that they must spend more time driving in order to get to their workplace, in order to have the privilege of having a bigger house, a cheaper house, a smaller mortgage, cheaper rent etc.

Demigod Picks

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY CONTACT SHEETS VOLUME II 2 PDF DOWNLOAD

Download pdf

Move Weight Picks

Happy Supreme Picks

Favorites

The Philosophy of Masculinity

Going to the gym as training your manliness, your masculinity.
Each and every man seeks to become apex masculinity.

Bad Stoicism

Stoicism is immoral, but that is also why it is good! Also effective.

STOICISM 101

Become invincible:

The Stoic Masters

Marcus Aurelius statue — Marcus Aurelius

Learn from the master stoics:

See all philosophy >

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE GYM

Am I the first serious philosopher and the first serious weight lifter?

1. Public strength

Something that I’ve observed is that I am much stronger, physiologically stronger, when I’m at the gym around a lot of other people. I believe if I were just working out or lifting weights in a vacuum, or a home gym or garage, I would be a lot less strong, and also a lot more bored.

2. Social life

90% of the fun I get from going to the gym is the social life. To quote Cindy, who studies the social life of libraries in colonial Vietnam, I am interested in the social life of the gym. Post college, I haven’t really had the opportunity to be as social. But for me, going to the gym is great.

https://videopress.com/v/MIT0mreU?resizeToParent=1&cover=1&autoPlay=1&controls=1&loop=1&muted=1&persistVolume=0&playsinline=0&preloadContent=metadata&sbc&sbpc&sblc&useAverageColor=1

Equipment

EQUIPMENT by KIM

There is no “perfect” camera. Don’t fall into GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) and falsely believe that buying a new camera will make you a better photographer.

If you’re not feeling inspired in your photography, I recommend you to buy books, not gear. Also check out these 75+ Inspirational Photo Books You Gotta Buy. You can also download my free books.

Equipment Articles >

Digital Medium Format Photography

Smartphone Photography >

Film Photography 101 >

My favorite camera: RICOH GR III

Currently my favorite camera is the RICOH GR III:

Best Equipment by ERIC KIM

This is a list of my personal favorite equipment in photography, computers, and life:

Of course, this list probably won’t apply to you — but this is advice I would give myself (if I needed to buy stuff):

Film cameras

If you’re new to shooting film, pick up a copy of FILM NOTES.

eric kim melbourne benjamin thompson — Portrait by Benjamin Thompson // Leica MP + Henri Neck Strap + SF 24D flash + Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron ASPH lens

Best film rangefinder

Leica MP + Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron Lens

Best affordable film rangefinder

Leica M6 + Voigtlander 35mm f/2.5 Lens

Best compact film camera

Contax T3

Best medium-format film camera

Hasselblad 500-series

Best black and white film

Kodak Tri-X 400 (pushed to 1600): $5

Best color film

Kodak Portra 400: $8.50

Best film scanner

For medium-format/35mm: Epson v800: $800

For 35mm: Plustek OpticFilm 8100: $270

Camera accessories

eric kim street photography gfx fujifilm medium format digital-7340

Best camera shoulder bag

SAIGON SATCHEL

Best camera backpack

Fits 13” Laptop and Camera: Thinktank Perception 15 (black): $120

Best photography neck strap

Best photography software

Adobe Lightroom

Best video editing software

iMovie (free) or Final Cut Pro X ($300)

Books

See all my free books.

Best educational photography book

Magnum Contact Sheets

Best black-and-white photography art book

“Exiles” by Josef Koudelka

Best color photography art book

“The Suffering of Light” by Alex Webb

Best photography handbook

Street Notes

Best philosophy book

On the Shortness of Life – Seneca ($8) // 10 Lessons Seneca Has Taught Me.

Best digital tools

Best laptop

Maxed-out 13” MacBook Pro (Refurbished)

Best phone

The smallest iPhone available (currently iPhone Mini)

Best Mac Apps

Best writing app

IA Writer (for writing)

Best screen recorder

Camtasia

Best image resizer

JPEGmini Pro

Audio

eric kim hanoi street photography-0012663

Best earbuds

In-ear monitors

Apparel

Best underwear

ExOfficio Men Boxer Brief (black): $26

Best T-shirt

Outlier NYC Merino Wool T-Shirt

Best socks

Outlier NYC Black Merino Wool Socks

Best pants

Merino Wool Leggings (black)

Best glasses

LINDBERG – Titanium

Finance

eric kim street photography x100f fujifilm-7232

Best bank

Chase

Best entrepreneurial tools

Best blogging platform

WordPress.org + Genesis theme

Best paid online services

eric kim street photography gfx fujifilm medium format digital-7360

Best cloud storage

Dropbox (Pro)

Diet & Nutrition

Food

Intermittent fasting — with one big meal a day (only dinner)

Workout

Deadlifts (one rep max) + squats + dumbbell press + chin-ups + pushups

Conclusion

Of course this is just a list of stuff that work for me. It probably won’t work for you.

But I got inspired to make this list– because it took me about 10 years to figure out the best equipment for me. And this works for me, and I hope it can help simplify your purchasing decisions (at least in photography and some other details).

I’ll continue to do articles and videos related to equipment– because I do believe (up to a certain degree) having the ‘right’ equipment in life makes life easier. But the problem is falling victim to GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) where we are buying stuff for the sake of it (has happened to me).

If you already have a bunch of equipment that works for you– stick with it. But if you need some help, I hope this list helped you.

Always,
Eric

Life Goals?

Dear friend, a thought on my mind; perhaps the best way to approach life is to consider our life goals, and also for us to become more critical and discerning on how to achieve those life goals.

For example, our creative life goals, and also, what we want to achieve in a single day, in a week, or our lifetimes.

1. Mastering your physiology

I just hit the legendary 975 pound atlas lift, powered by ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE, and a realization for myself:

I have a passion and a lust for ever more.

For example, it seems at least for myself, the direction and path I desire is to always have higher numbers.

For example, when I consider my younger days when I was 16 years old, and I had my 1991 Sentra SE-R, 5 speed coupe, and the joy that I had was always changing the modifications and things on it, do you ever give it more horsepower, torque, improve performance, etc.

However, I was never interested in comparing my car with other people. In fact, I had deep pride in my car, and how unique it was. The Sentra SE-R, the B 13, a unique model built from 1991 to 1993, was practically unheard of, even when I was a teenager. Similar to performance to an old-school BMW M3, and superior performance to the Honda Civic SI, which was also very popular when I was a teenager.

It seems that nowadays, at least in cars and car culture, we are obsessed with having more horsepower, more performance points, etc. It seems that the traditional benchmark in holidays is to have the Tesla model S plaid, 1000+ horsepower etc. I think this is what drives us, both metaphorically and literally, for example the dodge hellcat, SRT, dodge challengers etc., everyone wants to have the mythical 1000+ horsepower. But a funnier life goal and path:

Maybe a better life goal is instead, to desire to lift 1000 pounds.

I am fairly certain that I should be able to atlas lift over 1000 pounds, within the next year or two. I find this to be an interesting pursuit, because the only things I require is courage and time. The courage to attempt it, and time.

Also, focus. I think focus is a critical part of the equation, as the criticality of focus is that before you attempt a certain lift, when you load up over 10 plates on the bar, you gotta focus. You must focus to channel all of your energy, guts, courage, chutzpah into that one single given moment.

Why? Several things. First and foremost, you must focus and hype yourself up in order to have the courage to even attempt it in the first place.

Second, you want to be successful. The courage necessary for the attempt is critical, but technically the desired outcome is to be successful. To succeed.

Truth be told I don’t really care for “failure“, that is not being successful. If I try a given day give it my all, even if I had supreme focus and I was not successful, it doesn’t bother me that much. I’ll just try again in a few days, in a week, and if I have a long enough runway, I know I will eventually be successful.

2. Time

The reason why I believe time to be a critical component is at least in the context of weightlifting, if you attempt a one rep max, consistently, at least once a week, every week, let’s say for 10 years straight, certainly you’ll get stronger in the long term.

Are having a more long-term vision towards the future is a good one. Why?

I’ll give you an example. This summer me Cindy and Seneca spent about a month and a half in Asia, about two weeks in Hadong South Korea, and about a month in Saigon Vietnam. Because I did not have my typical gym, I noticed that my strength went down a little bit, or at least my technique and familiarity went down a little bit. But ultimately in the long term vision of things, I was not really affected. Actually, within about a week of coming back, or two weeks of coming back, I’ve been able to hit greater personal records than I had before I left to Asia. For example my rack pull, before leaving I was able to do eight plates, 25, five, and a 2.5’er. But a few days ago, I was able to supersede that old personal record, by doing a plate and a 35, 845 pounds. Therefore, even though I was gone from the gym for about a month and a half, I was able to achieve a new personal record that was 5 pounds greater than I was before my trip.

Also my atlas lift. 970 pounds was my new personal record before my trip, and after my trip, I was a little bit concerned if I lost too much strength and chutzpah. But even though I am still jetlagged, and I am sure that my strength waned a bit, I’ll be able to hit a new personal record of 975 pounds. That is 5 pounds more than it was before!

Therefore my big suggestion life is this; maybe in terms of vision, it is good to think at the three month, six month, year, 1-3 year, five year, 10 year, 20-30 year spans.

For example, I remember after I graduated UCLA, and I was living in West LA, and there was a tiny Tesla showroom dealership in the area. This is when Tesla was still just the rebranded lotus car. This is one there was only a Tesla roadster. I think Tesla was already IPO’d public at the time.

I think the genius of Musk, Jeff Bezos, etc. is that their vision encapsulates very long periods of time.

For example, SpaceX. Or thinking about colonizing space and mars. Certainly we have to think at the decade, 20 year, 30 year, 40 year time span. To think short periods of time is not useful.

I think the reason why I enjoyed reading Invent and Wander by Jeff Bezos so much, which is just a collection of his shareholder letters is that it is clear that Jeff Bezos had at least a 30 year vision. For example with Amazon prime, it was seen as pure insanity. Now we just take it as an expected thing. Fortunately for myself, I still see Amazon prime as pure magic and phenomenal. The same thing goes with Uber, etc.

3. Photo time

A thought that I’ve been having recently, I love the gym, but in someways, going to the gym eats into my photography time. That is, time it takes me to review my photos, time it takes me to process my photos and upload them, or even time necessary for me to blog, write, send out email newsletters, do more website stuff, backend stuff, building websites, blogs, etc.

Time is a critical component. But the question is, how do we gain more time?

Technically you can’t gain more time in a given day, or even a single lifespan. Let us assume that the maximum possible human lifespan is 120 years, but more realistically it might be around 80 to 90 years. I personally aspire to live to 120 years old, but whether I will be successful or not is uncertain. Why? I don’t know if I will die traumatically in a car accident, if I catch some sort of random cancer or a disease, life is always uncertain. Therefore the consequence is in life, we must always be cautious, in terms of our time and our life.

The first thought I have is it is a good idea to be insanely discerning with your time in your life. That is, do not trade your time or your life for anything else what you do not consider important or critical to you. For example nowadays, the only thing I really care to do is my creative work, spend maximum time with Seneca, etc. Everything else doesn’t really matter to me anymore.

I think in life, focusing on innovation is a good one. Why? I believe the greatest boon to being American is our ethos of innovation.

4. Thinking beyond?

As humans, human beings, what is a good way to think about life in approach life?

I think a basic notion is to think beyond. Do you think beyond our small little bubble, or small town or city or county or state, or even our nation. It seems much more interesting to focus on the planet, the globe, etc.

I think one of the best things of traveling internationally is that it widens our perspective and worldview, that is, we can think bigger, more globally and beyond.

5. Mad max world

I think it is clear that climate, the world, weather temperature and other things are becoming weirder and weirder. My friend Seth calls this “global weirding”— the general idea is that certainly notions of “climate change“ and “global warming“ is too political and misleading. I think more robust concepts include pollution, and weird weather or climate patterns.

For example as I write these words, there is big news that this upcoming Monday or Tuesday there will be a massive hurricane in Southern California. I consider this very weird because currently they speak this, the sun is insanely bright and it’s close to 100° degrees Fahrenheit. That’s around 40°C.

I think currently we’re living in a Mad Max world. What I currently witness is this:

During the day, it is almost too bright, the sun is too strong to go outside in the direct sun. The only solutions include wearing a baseball cap, a wide brimmed hat, long pants and long sleeves, protect your skin.

For myself the heat doesn’t really bother me, but certainly if the UV radiation from the sun is too strong, you can’t really go outside.

I still prefer this insanely hot and bright and scorching sun weather over cold and damp and bone chilling, but still, the climate and the sun is brutal.

I was talking with some people, why California, why southern California, it seems that other states, the climate is not so good. For example Arizona Utah and Nevada, Las Vegas, Texas, Austin is almost too hot. Certainly the east coast has lots of great options, but for some reason people seem reticent to move to the East Coast.

Imagine living in the world in which the pollution and the sun and the climate is too unwelcoming outside. Then what do you do, just live in a mall for the rest of your life? Or live indoors for the rest of your life? Not desirable.

So my general takeaway point is given that climate, outdoors, the world outside everything is shitty, still make the best out of it!

6. Life philosophy?

It seems that the things which need to be beefed up is our thinking and our philosophy towards life, being alive, innovation and beyond. This will be the topic that we continue to work on.

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If you’re hungry for a new embodied reality experience to take you beyond, some new workshops which might be interesting to you:

Master Street photography in Philly, this upcoming October 14
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Life Goals?

Dear friend, a thought on my mind; perhaps the best way to approach life is to consider our life goals, and also for us to become more critical and discerning on how to achieve those life goals.

For example, our creative life goals, and also, what we want to achieve in a single day, in a week, or our lifetimes.

1. Mastering your physiology

I just hit the legendary 975 pound atlas lift, powered by ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE, and a realization for myself:

I have a passion and a lust for ever more.

For example, it seems at least for myself, the direction and path I desire is to always have higher numbers.

For example, when I consider my younger days when I was 16 years old, and I had my 1991 Sentra SE-R, 5 speed coupe, and the joy that I had was always changing the modifications and things on it, do you ever give it more horsepower, torque, improve performance, etc.

However, I was never interested in comparing my car with other people. In fact, I had deep pride in my car, and how unique it was. The Sentra SE-R, the B 13, a unique model built from 1991 to 1993, was practically unheard of, even when I was a teenager. Similar to performance to an old-school BMW M3, and superior performance to the Honda Civic SI, which was also very popular when I was a teenager.

It seems that nowadays, at least in cars and car culture, we are obsessed with having more horsepower, more performance points, etc. It seems that the traditional benchmark in holidays is to have the Tesla model S plaid, 1000+ horsepower etc. I think this is what drives us, both metaphorically and literally, for example the dodge hellcat, SRT, dodge challengers etc., everyone wants to have the mythical 1000+ horsepower. But a funnier life goal and path:

Maybe a better life goal is instead, to desire to lift 1000 pounds.

I am fairly certain that I should be able to atlas lift over 1000 pounds, within the next year or two. I find this to be an interesting pursuit, because the only things I require is courage and time. The courage to attempt it, and time.

Also, focus. I think focus is a critical part of the equation, as the criticality of focus is that before you attempt a certain lift, when you load up over 10 plates on the bar, you gotta focus. You must focus to channel all of your energy, guts, courage, chutzpah into that one single given moment.

Why? Several things. First and foremost, you must focus and hype yourself up in order to have the courage to even attempt it in the first place.

Second, you want to be successful. The courage necessary for the attempt is critical, but technically the desired outcome is to be successful. To succeed.

Truth be told I don’t really care for “failure“, that is not being successful. If I try a given day give it my all, even if I had supreme focus and I was not successful, it doesn’t bother me that much. I’ll just try again in a few days, in a week, and if I have a long enough runway, I know I will eventually be successful.

2. Time

The reason why I believe time to be a critical component is at least in the context of weightlifting, if you attempt a one rep max, consistently, at least once a week, every week, let’s say for 10 years straight, certainly you’ll get stronger in the long term.

Are having a more long-term vision towards the future is a good one. Why?

I’ll give you an example. This summer me Cindy and Seneca spent about a month and a half in Asia, about two weeks in Hadong South Korea, and about a month in Saigon Vietnam. Because I did not have my typical gym, I noticed that my strength went down a little bit, or at least my technique and familiarity went down a little bit. But ultimately in the long term vision of things, I was not really affected. Actually, within about a week of coming back, or two weeks of coming back, I’ve been able to hit greater personal records than I had before I left to Asia. For example my rack pull, before leaving I was able to do eight plates, 25, five, and a 2.5’er. But a few days ago, I was able to supersede that old personal record, by doing a plate and a 35, 845 pounds. Therefore, even though I was gone from the gym for about a month and a half, I was able to achieve a new personal record that was 5 pounds greater than I was before my trip.

Also my atlas lift. 970 pounds was my new personal record before my trip, and after my trip, I was a little bit concerned if I lost too much strength and chutzpah. But even though I am still jetlagged, and I am sure that my strength waned a bit, I’ll be able to hit a new personal record of 975 pounds. That is 5 pounds more than it was before!

Therefore my big suggestion life is this; maybe in terms of vision, it is good to think at the three month, six month, year, 1-3 year, five year, 10 year, 20-30 year spans.

For example, I remember after I graduated UCLA, and I was living in West LA, and there was a tiny Tesla showroom dealership in the area. This is when Tesla was still just the rebranded lotus car. This is one there was only a Tesla roadster. I think Tesla was already in Public at the time.

I think the genius of Elon musk, Jeff Bezos, etc. is that their vision encapsulates very long periods of time.

For example, SpaceX. Or thinking about colonizing space and mars. Certainly we have to think at the decade, 20 year, 30 year, 40 year time span. To think short periods of time is not useful.

I think the reason why I enjoyed reading Invent and Wander by Jeff Bezos so much, which is just a collection of his shareholder letters is that it is clear that Jeff Bezos had at least a 30 year vision. For example with Amazon prime, it was seen as pure insanity. Now we just take it as an expected thing. Fortunately for myself, I still see Amazon prime as pure magic and phenomenal. The same thing goes with Uber, etc.

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WHAT IS YOUR PRIME VISION IN LIFE?

LASER FOCUS.

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Anyways, I thought on my mind is in regards to focus, laser focus. Some thoughts on focus:

How to focus?

The philosophy of focus is tricky; on one hand, in modern-day times it is seen as virtuous to focus. To “not get distracted“.

I know for myself, I am easily distracted by superfluous things. Therefore it is my personal passion to not be distracted.

The first question you must ask yourself is this:

Do I want to focus?

For example, Nassim Taleb writes that contrary to popular wisdom, by him not focusing on a single given subject, he was able to advance his thinking and philosophy.

On the other hand, innovators like Steve Jobs gave advice to Sergey and Larry Page about how focus was critical.

For example, the advice that Steve Jobs gave to Larry Page and Sergey Brin was how Google should just focus on search, their most critical component, and not get distracted by other things like android, etc.

Looking at things a little bit zoomed out, I think Steve Jobs may have been correct. When we look at Android, it is a very sad and poor imitation of Apple and iOS. If Android was never invented, I don’t really think that the world would suffer.

In fact, thinking about things more critically, upon much consideration and thinking, and also personal use of android and android products, essentially it’s Google’s sneaky way of injecting more advertisements into your life. The decade+ plan of android and Google Maps is quite simple; gather more personal preferences of users and user behavior in order to deliver more “relevant“ advertisements.

Your life

There is certainly a difference between your life, and the life of these corporations. The reason why I think corporations are not a good example is that ultimately, the strategies don’t really pertain much to the individual. It seems more effective to focus on your own personal life and thriving, rather than just look at what companies are doing.

The philosophy of living and life

To think deeply, ultimately what you want to think and consider is that you only have one life, this one given life. So the question is in this life, what do you desire to achieve, attempt, or do? Do you care for your legacy? Do you care for the thriving of other future human beings beyond you? Do you not care? Underlying all of these considerations is a certain life philosophy. And I think that is guiding principles are critical.

In terms of my personal legacy, what I want to leave behind, how I wish to contribute to society, the general thought is I want to help assist empowering other individuals. For example, I just think of my 12-year-old, 15-year-old, 16-year-old, 18-year-old, 19-year-old, 21 year old, 26 year old self, and I think and consider; I thought given point in my life in that age, what advice and wisdom do I wish that other people shared with me?

No external media?

In terms of laser focus, another strategy and path is no external media, beyond yourself, the vibrations of your own mind, and other embodied reality experiences you have in person with other human beings.

For example, one of the best things that I’ve personally done is go to the hot sauna every single day, religiously. Why? I consider it like my meditation zen focus, chamber, in which I come up with lots of great creative ideas.

There are also some theories that perhaps being in a really really hot sauna, in which the heat and humidity is much higher, which forces your body to sweat, might be positively good for you in terms of your hormones. Hot heat therapy in the hot sauna at the gym, or even doing hot yoga, a form of hormesis.

Why movies or media?

There are always great new movies coming out, great new TV shows, series, etc. But I think out of all of this, the ultimate goal is towards human thriving, some sort of strengthening, or challenges.

A simple thought:

The time you spend watching media movies or shows, just use that time to go to the gym instead.

For example, I love superhero movies. I love the Marvel movies, the superhero movies, mostly the ones that came out before Disney bought out Marvel. I personally love the hero struggle, the hero narrative, etc. Why? I see myself in their shoes; when I watch a superhero movie, it makes me think that I’m the superhero.

What does a superhero have to deal with? In America, which has Judeo Christian, Protestant, Jesus sacrifice mentality, the general thought is that a hero sacrifices his life for the collective. That is, let us consider all of these heroic movies and films, typically the lead sacrifices his or her life in order to save humanity, people beyond them, etc.

The tricky thing is when we go further back in history, let’s say studying the Iliad, the Odyssey, etc., the narrative is a bit different. For example, let us consider Achilles in the Iliad. He is not sacrificing anything for the collective. Instead, his initial plan was just to go back to his own land, ideally take Breisis with him, stop war campaigning, and just retire and chill out. However it was the death of his best friend Patroclus which drove him to seek revenge. I wonder if John Wick is almost like the modern-day Achilles; some sort of antihero that we are actually rooting for.

Your goals?

Once again, the tricky thing is that for you, what are your personal goals, or life mission?

Discovering your creative mission

Another critical thing is discovering your creative mission in life. That is, assuming you were a trillionaire, what would you do with your time life and physiological energy?

My general thought is that everyone is unique, and has a diverse range of skill sets they could use to leverage and move the world.

For example, let us say that you’re into cars, photography, and innovation. I think there is an interesting way you can cross pollinate all of these interests.

Or for myself, my passion for photography and coffee. Creating the first photographers blend, the first coffee optimized to help stimulate and motivate photographers.

The traditional wisdom is everyone tells you to stay focused on a single small niche. Based on my life experiences, and thinking more long-term, I don’t think this is the way. Much more effective instead of taking insanely long term.

That is, allow yourself to indulge all of your creative interests.

Focus and diversity

A simple thought is when you are investigating and pursuing all of your diverse interests, just be insanely focused on each one at a time. No need to justify yourself. In the long run, all of these things will dovetail nicely.

Now what?

Focus on your health, your physicality, and don’t sacrifice your health for anything. Also focus on the health of your wife, your kids, and certainly yourself.

Assuming you want to become more productive in life, the simple path is focusing on your health. If you are insanely healthy, productivity will come naturally.

White space

Another thought on my mind in regards to design, as well as a mental thing; how white space is critical.

What is white space? Simply put, white space is having buffer, not overloading yourself or your schedule, even for the promise of making more money.

If you’re confronted with the question; should I take on this additional work to make extra money, or should I choose to refuse it in order to maximize my mind space and mental white space, choose your mental white space.

The philosophy of making money

Another thought I had this morning is in regards to money. How to make money, why make money, how much money should we make.

I think the upside of being self-employed, an entrepreneur, is that in some regards, you have some control over this.

Social life is the best stimulus

Another thought; a simple thought I have is that perhaps the best stimulus is other people. That means, being at the gym, being at the park, being at the mall, any opportunity to be around other human beings is good for us.

Why is the modern day man so antisocial?

My theory is that because it is almost seen as a new ethic; to intrude upon other people is considered bad.

For example, when you interact with other human beings, sooner or later you will offend somebody. And this is all part of the game.

This is my theory:

Better to risk a social interaction, be friendly and say hi, and be given the cold shoulder or a bad interaction, rather than not attempt it at all.

I think this might be the cure and panacea for modern day living.

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY X STOICISM

A great crossover that I personally think about the difference of stoicism, and modern day life, is that stoicism must be practiced, almost like a martial arts.

Typically speaking, our use of stoicism, ethics, modern day ethics, etc. is predicated on opportunities.

For example, other people. If you’re at home all day, don’t have to expose yourself to any real life interactions with other people, you have no need for stoicism.

Also, the Internet is fake. Nowadays with ChatGPT, it is really impossible to know whether the online commentator, troll, Twitter account, etc., is a real human being or not. Therefore my suggestion is to just disable all comments on the Internet, don’t read any comments on the Internet, And only rely on face-to-face interactions.

Demigod focus

I personally believe that one of the best ways to focus is that there needs to be some Mokadem of danger, that is, there needs to be some sort of downside risk, some sort of risk of life or death.

For example, my 10 plate challenge. The general gist is easy;

Put a barbell on the squat rack, and load it up with 10 plates. Then see if you can successfully lift it up, a little bit off the bar even half a centimeter, once, for even half a second.

It doesn’t really matter whether you are able to successfully lift it or not, what is most important and critical is the attempt, your focus, your courage.

The reason why I find this to be so essential is that before attempting to do this, the courage necessary is phenomenal. There is really no other time in which I truly am afforded the opportunity to focus that much.

I think the reason why this gives me such zen and intense focus opportunity is that if I don’t focus, and give it my 100% effort, who knows, maybe there is a risk of injury? Funny enough though, with the atlas lift, I’ve suffered zero injuries. At worst I cannot budge the bar. But my desire is to move the bar, so regardless, my focus is to get into a zen mode, to tune out all distractions, channel 100% of my strength and courage into that one single moment, and lift the weight with all my might.

Adrenaline training

I have a theory about focus; it has to do with adrenaline. That is, people often think that adrenaline, fear is a bad thing, but even the notion of “fear“ is misguided. Maybe fear is nothing but adrenaline in overdrive, which is untamed.

I often think about the movie 300, the moment in which king Leonidas and his heroic 300 are preparing to go to battle with king Xerxes and the millions of Persian missionaries. What happens is this— the narrator says something like,

He felt no fear. Simply a heightened sense of things.

Very very interesting, I think I may feel the same sentiment. When I am ready to hype myself up for a godly lift, it isn’t necessarily fear which I feel, rather, a heightened sense of things.

Also interestingly enough, wondering and while doing the lift itself, and the barbell is on my shoulders, my hearing goes deaf. For about a few seconds, I literally cannot hear the music, but the second I put down the barbell, the music turns back on.

Therefore, once again, the interesting thought is that perhaps, adrenaline training is what we need. And this is the focus of my workshops; to help you tame your adrenaline, to train your adrenaline, and for you to learn to turn “fear” and your adrenaline into your slave, your own pet monster, to unleash it when you deem it necessary.

Focus for the sake of what?

I think the difficult and tricky thing is that in modern day times, notions of “focus“ are deemed as some sort of pseudo-virtuous thing in which becoming “focused” is towards money and capital accumulation. That is, the purpose of focusing, being “productive“, is in order to make money, accumulate and accrue more capital, etc.

Call but what if focusing, your own personal desire to focus isn’t for any of these things? Then what?

How to see and look further

Elon Musk vision goals; essentially to see and think beyond.

My simple thought is in regards to your life goals, be laser vision focused on what you consider truly critical, your life mission while you are still on planet earth.

For example, one of my current life goals is propagating fine robusta to the masses. Also I got lots of goals with diet health and fitness, and certainly photography, street photography courage, philosophy stoicism and everything in between.

Also with my workshops, honestly at this point I’m starting to think that I just want to do it because I care, and I have a lot of insane fun doing it! In my mind I see myself as a bitcoin billionaire. Therefore, at this point I almost see things like making money as a hobby.

Prime Vision

To have a prime vision, a primary vision. To find yourself, your entrepreneurial ventures, etc.

It seems that in modern day times, we are always seeking funding, some sort of external externalized funding. But perhaps, this isn’t a good path. Why? If you want someone else to find you, external funding, maybe the thing that you’re doing isn’t really worth doing. That is, true genius is shown through what you are willing to sacrifice, out of your own pocket etc.

For example, I think a lot of people want external funding in terms of traveling, expenses, building something etc. however, while traveling is great, perhaps a lot of trouble is more romanticized than anything.

My thought instead is fund yourself. True skin in the game.

Now what?

Some thought and philosophy assignments for you:

First, the philosophy of money. For you, what is the meaning of finances? Why does it matter to you, and also what does it mean to you?

Second, think about your health. How would you define health for yourself, and also why does it matter to you?

Third, think about your own creativity, your own creative life. What is it that you desire to create as an artist, and towards what ends, why, and also how to best propagate it?

To think these thoughts deeper, have a chat with ERIC KIM AI.

CONQUER WITH EK

If you’re hungry and ready to conquer, conquer with me:

Conquer street photography in Philly, this upcoming October 14, 2023
Discover your creative mission in life, my brand new workshop in downtown LA later on this year November 4, 2023 – ALL NEW!
Achieve peak creativity in Seattle, next year February 10, 2024

Some new workshops in the making:

Introduction to stoicism workshop, later on this year in downtown LA
Street photography master workshop
Next year, Seoul/Hadong South Korea workshop 2024

Always stay tuned to the ERIC KIM workshops page, or this newsletter.

Now what?

Pursuing your own passion for photography is still a noble goal.

Keep shooting, keep making art, and upload your best photos to ARS BETA >

Random thoughts on my mind

Prime, primer thoughts. Perhaps the best color or the paint concept is primer flat gray. Why? The promise of infinite opportunities, anything is possible.

Morning Routine

Just vlog your morning routine! And drink more EK COFFEE!

Forward the turbo

If this sparked even one interesting thought within you, feel free to forward to a friend!

ERIC

And when lost,

START HERE

LASER FOCUS.

HYPED UP on ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE— I’m currently drinking the black bag, THE PHOTOGRAPHER, which is 50% fine robusta and 50% liberica.

Some thoughts on focus:

How to focus?

The philosophy of focus is tricky; on one hand, in modern-day times it is seen as virtuous to focus. To “not get distracted“.

I know for myself, I am easily distracted by superfluous things. Therefore it is my personal passion to not be distracted.

The first question you must ask yourself is this:

Do I want to focus?

For example, Nassim Taleb writes that contrary to popular wisdom, by him not focusing on a single given subject, he was able to advance his thinking and philosophy.

On the other hand, innovators like Steve Jobs gave advice to Sergey and Larry Page about how focus was critical.

For example, the advice that Steve Jobs gave to Larry Page and Sergey Brin was how Google should just focus on search, their most critical component, and not get distracted by other things like android, etc.

Looking at things a little bit zoomed out, I think Steve Jobs may have been correct. When we look at Android, it is a very sad and poor imitation of Apple and iOS. If Android was never invented, I don’t really think that the world would suffer.

In fact, thinking about things more critically, upon much consideration and thinking, and also personal use of android and android products, essentially it’s Google’s sneaky way of injecting more advertisements into your life. The decade+ plan of android and Google Maps is quite simple; gather more personal preferences of users and user behavior in order to deliver more “relevant“ advertisements.

Your life

There is certainly a difference between your life, and the life of these corporations. The reason why I think corporations are not a good example is that ultimately, the strategies don’t really pertain much to the individual. It seems more effective to focus on your own personal life and thriving, rather than just look at what companies are doing.

The philosophy of living and life

To think deeply, ultimately what you want to think and consider is that you only have one life, this one given life. So the question is in this life, what do you desire to achieve, attempt, or do? Do you care for your legacy? Do you care for the thriving of other future human beings beyond you? Do you not care? Underlying all of these considerations is a certain life philosophy. And I think that is guiding principles are critical.

In terms of my personal legacy, what I want to leave behind, how I wish to contribute to society, the general thought is I want to help assist empowering other individuals. For example, I just think of my 12-year-old, 15-year-old, 16-year-old, 18-year-old, 19-year-old, 21 year old, 26 year old self, and I think and consider; I thought given point in my life in that age, what advice and wisdom do I wish that other people shared with me?

No external media?

In terms of laser focus, another strategy and path is no external media, beyond yourself, the vibrations of your own mind, and other embodied reality experiences you have in person with other human beings.

For example, one of the best things that I’ve personally done is go to the hot sauna every single day, religiously. Why? I consider it like my meditation zen focus, chamber, in which I come up with lots of great creative ideas.

There are also some theories that perhaps being in a really really hot sauna, in which the heat and humidity is much higher, which forces your body to sweat, might be positively good for you in terms of your hormones. Hot heat therapy in the hot sauna at the gym, or even doing hot yoga, a form of hormesis.

Why movies or media?

There are always great new movies coming out, great new TV shows, series, etc. But I think out of all of this, the ultimate goal is towards human thriving, some sort of strengthening, or challenges.

A simple thought:

The time you spend watching media movies or shows, just use that time to go to the gym instead.

For example, I love superhero movies. I love the Marvel movies, the superhero movies, mostly the ones that came out before Disney bought out Marvel. I personally love the hero struggle, the hero narrative, etc. Why? I see myself in their shoes; when I watch a superhero movie, it makes me think that I’m the superhero.

What does a superhero have to deal with? In America, which has Judeo Christian, Protestant, Jesus sacrifice mentality, the general thought is that a hero sacrifices his life for the collective. That is, let us consider all of these heroic movies and films, typically the lead sacrifices his or her life in order to save humanity, people beyond them, etc.

The tricky thing is when we go further back in history, let’s say studying the Iliad, the Odyssey, etc., the narrative is a bit different. For example, let us consider Achilles in the Iliad. He is not sacrificing anything for the collective. Instead, his initial plan was just to go back to his own land, ideally take Breisis with him, stop war campaigning, and just retire and chill out. However it was the death of his best friend Patroclus which drove him to seek revenge. I wonder if John Wick is almost like the modern-day Achilles; some sort of antihero that we are actually rooting for.

Your goals?

Once again, the tricky thing is that for you, what are your personal goals, or life mission?

Discovering your creative mission

Another critical thing is discovering your creative mission in life. That is, assuming you were a trillionaire, what would you do with your time life and physiological energy?

My general thought is that everyone is unique, and has a diverse range of skill sets they could use to leverage and move the world.

For example, let us say that you’re into cars, photography, and innovation. I think there is an interesting way you can cross pollinate all of these interests.

Or for myself, my passion for photography and coffee. Creating the first photographers blend, the first coffee optimized to help stimulate and motivate photographers.

The traditional wisdom is everyone tells you to stay focused on a single small niche. Based on my life experiences, and thinking more long-term, I don’t think this is the way. Much more effective instead of taking insanely long term.

That is, allow yourself to indulge all of your creative interests.

Focus and diversity

A simple thought is when you are investigating and pursuing all of your diverse interests, just be insanely focused on each one at a time. No need to justify yourself. In the long run, all of these things will dovetail nicely.

Now what?

Focus on your health, your physicality, and don’t sacrifice your health for anything. Also focus on the health of your wife, your kids, and certainly yourself.

Assuming you want to become more productive in life, the simple path is focusing on your health. If you are insanely healthy, productivity will come naturally.

White space

Another thought on my mind in regards to design, as well as a mental thing; how white space is critical.

What is white space? Simply put, white space is having buffer, not overloading yourself or your schedule, even for the promise of making more money.

If you’re confronted with the question; should I take on this additional work to make extra money, or should I choose to refuse it in order to maximize my mind space and mental white space, choose your mental white space.

The philosophy of making money

Another thought I had this morning is in regards to money. How to make money, why make money, how much money should we make.

I think the upside of being self-employed, an entrepreneur, is that in some regards, you have some control over this.

Social life is the best stimulus

Another thought; a simple thought I have is that perhaps the best stimulus is other people. That means, being at the gym, being at the park, being at the mall, any opportunity to be around other human beings is good for us.

Why is the modern day man so antisocial?

My theory is that because it is almost seen as a new ethic; to intrude upon other people is considered bad.

For example, when you interact with other human beings, sooner or later you will offend somebody. And this is all part of the game.

This is my theory:

Better to risk a social interaction, be friendly and say hi, and be given the cold shoulder or a bad interaction, rather than not attempt it at all.

I think this might be the cure and panacea for modern day living.

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY X STOICISM

A great crossover that I personally think about the difference of stoicism, and modern day life, is that stoicism must be practiced, almost like a martial arts.

Typically speaking, our use of stoicism, ethics, modern day ethics, etc. is predicated on opportunities.

For example, other people. If you’re at home all day, don’t have to expose yourself to any real life interactions with other people, you have no need for stoicism.

Also, the Internet is fake. Nowadays with ChatGPT, it is really impossible to know whether the online commentator, troll, Twitter account, etc., is a real human being or not. Therefore my suggestion is to just disable all comments on the Internet, don’t read any comments on the Internet, And only rely on face-to-face interactions.

Demigod focus

I personally believe that one of the best ways to focus is that there needs to be some Mokadem of danger, that is, there needs to be some sort of downside risk, some sort of risk of life or death.

For example, my 10 plate challenge. The general gist is easy;

Put a barbell on the squat rack, and load it up with 10 plates. Then see if you can successfully lift it up, a little bit off the bar even half a centimeter, once, for even half a second.

It doesn’t really matter whether you are able to successfully lift it or not, what is most important and critical is the attempt, your focus, your courage.

The reason why I find this to be so essential is that before attempting to do this, the courage necessary is phenomenal. There is really no other time in which I truly am afforded the opportunity to focus that much.

I think the reason why this gives me such zen and intense focus opportunity is that if I don’t focus, and give it my 100% effort, who knows, maybe there is a risk of injury? Funny enough though, with the atlas lift, I’ve suffered zero injuries. At worst I cannot budge the bar. But my desire is to move the bar, so regardless, my focus is to get into a zen mode, to tune out all distractions, channel 100% of my strength and courage into that one single moment, and lift the weight with all my might.

Adrenaline training

I have a theory about focus; it has to do with adrenaline. That is, people often think that adrenaline, fear is a bad thing, but even the notion of “fear“ is misguided. Maybe fear is nothing but adrenaline in overdrive, which is untamed.

I often think about the movie 300, the moment in which king Leonidas and his heroic 300 are preparing to go to battle with king Xerxes and the millions of Persian missionaries. What happens is this— the narrator says something like,

He felt no fear. Simply a heightened sense of things.

Very very interesting, I think I may feel the same sentiment. When I am ready to hype myself up for a godly lift, it isn’t necessarily fear which I feel, rather, a heightened sense of things.

Also interestingly enough, wondering and while doing the lift itself, and the barbell is on my shoulders, my hearing goes deaf. For about a few seconds, I literally cannot hear the music, but the second I put down the barbell, the music turns back on.

Therefore, once again, the interesting thought is that perhaps, adrenaline training is what we need. And this is the focus of my workshops; to help you tame your adrenaline, to train your adrenaline, and for you to learn to turn “fear” and your adrenaline into your slave, your own pet monster, to unleash it when you deem it necessary.

Focus for the sake of what?

I think the difficult and tricky thing is that in modern day times, notions of “focus“ are deemed as some sort of pseudo-virtuous thing in which becoming “focused” is towards money and capital accumulation. That is, the purpose of focusing, being “productive“, is in order to make money, accumulate and accrue more capital, etc.

Call but what if focusing, your own personal desire to focus isn’t for any of these things? Then what?

Why Stoicism?

Stoicism isn’t perfect, but the general gist of it, I think it’s a good way to live life!

STOICISM 101

Become invincible:

The Stoic Masters

Learn from the master stoics:

See all philosophy >

LASER FOCUS

HYPED UP on ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE— I’m currently drinking the black bag, THE PHOTOGRAPHER, which is 50% fine robusta and 50% liberica.

Some thoughts on focus:

How to focus?

The philosophy of focus is tricky; on one hand, in modern-day times it is seen as virtuous to focus. To “not get distracted“.

I know for myself, I am easily distracted by superfluous things. Therefore it is my personal passion to not be distracted.

The first question you must ask yourself is this:

Do I want to focus?

For example, Nassim Taleb writes that contrary to popular wisdom, by him not focusing on a single given subject, he was able to advance his thinking and philosophy.

On the other hand, innovators like Steve Jobs gave advice to Sergey and Larry Page about how focus was critical.

For example, the advice that Steve Jobs gave to Larry Page and Sergey Brin was how Google should just focus on search, their most critical component, and not get distracted by other things like android, etc.

Looking at things a little bit zoomed out, I think Steve Jobs may have been correct. When we look at Android, it is a very sad and poor imitation of Apple and iOS. If Android was never invented, I don’t really think that the world would suffer.

In fact, thinking about things more critically, upon much consideration and thinking, and also personal use of android and android products, essentially it’s Google’s sneaky way of injecting more advertisements into your life. The decade+ plan of android and Google Maps is quite simple; gather more personal preferences of users and user behavior in order to deliver more “relevant“ advertisements.

Your life

There is certainly a difference between your life, and the life of these corporations. The reason why I think corporations are not a good example is that ultimately, the strategies don’t really pertain much to the individual. It seems more effective to focus on your own personal life and thriving, rather than just look at what companies are doing.

The philosophy of living and life

To think deeply, ultimately what you want to think and consider is that you only have one life, this one given life. So the question is in this life, what do you desire to achieve, attempt, or do? Do you care for your legacy? Do you care for the thriving of other future human beings beyond you? Do you not care? Underlying all of these considerations is a certain life philosophy. And I think that is guiding principles are critical.

In terms of my personal legacy, what I want to leave behind, how I wish to contribute to society, the general thought is I want to help assist empowering other individuals. For example, I just think of my 12-year-old, 15-year-old, 16-year-old, 18-year-old, 19-year-old, 21 year old, 26 year old self, and I think and consider; I thought given point in my life in that age, what advice and wisdom do I wish that other people shared with me?

No external media?

In terms of laser focus, another strategy and path is no external media, beyond yourself, the vibrations of your own mind, and other embodied reality experiences you have in person with other human beings.

For example, one of the best things that I’ve personally done is go to the hot sauna every single day, religiously. Why? I consider it like my meditation zen focus, chamber, in which I come up with lots of great creative ideas.

There are also some theories that perhaps being in a really really hot sauna, in which the heat and humidity is much higher, which forces your body to sweat, might be positively good for you in terms of your hormones. Hot heat therapy in the hot sauna at the gym, or even doing hot yoga, a form of hormesis.

Why movies or media?

There are always great new movies coming out, great new TV shows, series, etc. But I think out of all of this, the ultimate goal is towards human thriving, some sort of strengthening, or challenges.

A simple thought:

The time you spend watching media movies or shows, just use that time to go to the gym instead.

For example, I love superhero movies. I love the Marvel movies, the superhero movies, mostly the ones that came out before Disney bought out marvel. I personally love the hero struggle, the hero narrative, etc. Why? I see myself in their shoes; when I watch a superhero movie, it makes me think that I’m the superhero.

What does a superhero have to deal with? In America, which has Judeo Christian, protestant, Jesus sacrifice mentality, the general thought is that a hero sacrifices his life for the collective. That is, let us consider all of these heroic movies and films, typically the lead sacrifices give her her life in order to save humanity, people beyond them, etc.

The tricky thing is when we go further back in history, let’s say studying the Iliad, the odyssey, etc., the narrative is a bit different. For example, let us consider Achilles in the Iliad. He is not sacrificing anything for the collective. Instead, his initial plan was just to go back to his own land, ideally take Breisis with him, stop war campaigning, and just retire and chill out. However it was the death of his best friend Patroclus which drove him to seek revenge. I wonder if John Wick is almost like the modern-day Achilles; some sort of antihero that we are actually rooting for.

iPhone Photos

The Innovator

Waking up this morning, and having some great ERIC KIM OMAKASE Coffee to get me going, some thoughts:

1. Innovate?

After being abroad, then coming back, the general thought I have is that perhaps at the end of the day, the most important and critical thing is in regards to innovation. How to innovate, why innovate, etc.

I think in America, we have a passion for innovation, however it is limited towards purchasing innovation. That is, we love innovation and the new, but the only way it seems accessible to innovate is through purchasing it. This means we purchase innovation by eagerly awaiting for new innovative products, whether it be the new iPhone, iPhone Pro, any Apple device, Tesla, electric car, something.

I think the big problem is that deep innovation cannot be purchased, it must be done by you.

2. Why do we feel so incapable?

Perhaps the reason we feel so incapable is that because the culture, modern-day culture, or culture in America or maybe high labor prices etc. is that things seem inaccessible to be done by us. We like the thinking or the concept that we can do things ourselves, and that we can be innovators.

ASIA X AMERICA

How to Become a Great Man

Don’t be petty or small.
Love risk, danger, the uncertain.
Speak your mind directly.
Don’t tolerate BS or disrespect.
Don’t argue; arguing is for weaklings.
Ignore the preferences and what others say; others use fake rationality and BS ethics. Just do as you please and when others object you don’t gotta respond nor justify yourself.

ETHICS by KIM

BETTER TO FOLLOW YOUR GUT AND BE WRONG THAN DISOBEY YOUR GUT AND BE RIGHT ERIC KIM UNORTHODOX ETHICS

Your Own Personal Code of Ethics

Transformed

After spending two months in Asia, this time about two weeks in Hadong South Korea, and about a month and a half in Vietnam, and coming back home to the states, I feel like a transformed man. How and why? The findings:

1. American thoughts

Lots of discoveries about America, coming back here with fresh new eyes. First and foremost, there seems to be this trend towards fear of other people, or strange antisocial behavior. This fear averse modern-day society of Americans is bad.

My simple suggestion is be the change. Instead be insanely friendly, and say hi to everybody you see.

One of the great things about being in Vietnam is the culture is great. People are insanely friendly, happy, social, and jokesey. Coming back to the states, Americans tend to be reserved, brittle, strangely curmudgeonly.

Don’t act like the typical antisocial American. Instead, be insanely friendly and happy.

2. Car thoughts

I some new thoughts in regards to cars; the great thing about being in Asia, Vietnam, is that having a car is a bad thing. Better to not own a car and just ride a Grab taxi anywhere.

Therefore the general thought is this; put less care and attention in your car.

What is the best car? I think a used white Prius; I recently re-inherited our old 2010 Prius, and white, and I love it! Cindy‘s younger sister Jennifer was driving the car for a while, but unfortunately in the middle of the night they stole the catalytic converter, and she no longer wanted to deal with the car. She initially was just going to sell the whole Prius to the mechanic for only $2700, but I thought this was a great opportunity, so Cindy and I offered to pay for the new catalytic converter, around $3000, and we just took it to the shop to replace the ABS brake sensor, another $2700 USD, and $350 for a catalytic converter shield, to prevent or discourage a future theft.

So all in all, around $5000-$6000 for a brand new (used) and insanely great reliable Prius!

Interestingly enough, chatting with the owner Vallentine (he is the owner of Hybrid 911, which is specialized in fixing Priuses and hybrids), and he told me that he used to have the P100D Tesla MODEL S 2017 model, the refreshed model, but ultimately ended up selling it because the charging was annoying, especially with long road trips.

I still love cars from a metaphorical and design and aesthetic perspective; but, my new ambition is to drive this Prius to at least 350,000, 450,000 or 500,000 miles. And instead use and invest my money into myself, my body, my entrepreneurial ventures, And beyond.

The easiest way to become rich is not to waste money on a car.

Photo is all we need

When being stuck in LA, LA traffic, and having the privilege of shooting photos out the window, a turbo thought I had:

As long as we got photography, all of existence and being alive is justified.

Pure vision: lately I’ve been so inspired by Seneca, how he sees and shoots everything with a pure vision. No obstructions, only positivity, joy and curiosity.

Seneca is currently only two years and seven months old, yet he understands photography and photo opportunities. He does this finger trigger motion with his hand, whenever he sees abstract textures, he knows that it is a good opportunity for me to shoot.

How to more productively review your photos

Having around 1500 images to quickly review through some photos I shot in LA and recently, something I did on my iPad Pro was view the images buy a three column wide matrix, and reviewed the photos without my glasses on. This type of myopic vision was actually good for me; I was not distracted by details, but instead focused on the general composition and form of things.

To cross pollinate this idea and concept, there is a funny theory that a lot of the impressionist painters had poor vision, that is the reason why they saw the world so abstract and out of focus was because they had poor vision.

A simple technique you could do is apply Gaussian blur to your photos to better judge the composition, or, you can also view your photos or other photos without glasses on.

How to Get More Done in a Day

Walk more in order to get more done!

Also, spend maximal time outdoors.

Also, during the day drink as much ERIC KIM Omakase coffee as you want! The secret and intelligence of robusta coffee is that it has more caffeine, and lower sugar content— healthier for you!

Becoming a Visual Artist Picks

Sublime Beauty

Only humans and women can be sublime beauty.

Cindy as sublime beauty:

Man on a Mission Picks

Art Photos

Transformed

After spending two months in Asia, this time about two weeks in Hadong South Korea, and about a month and a half in Vietnam, and coming back home to the states, I feel like a transformed man. How and why? The findings:

1. American thoughts

Lots of discoveries about America, coming back here with fresh new eyes. First and foremost, there seems to be this trend towards fear of other people, or strange antisocial behavior. This fear averse modern-day society of Americans is bad.

My simple suggestion is be the change. Instead be insanely friendly, and say hi to everybody you see.

One of the great things about being in Vietnam is the culture is great. People are insanely friendly, happy, social, and jokesey. Coming back to the states, Americans tend to be reserved, brittle, strangely curmudgeonly.

Don’t act like the typical antisocial American. Instead, be insanely friendly and happy.

2. Car thoughts

I some new thoughts in regards to cars; the great thing about being in Asia, Vietnam, is that having a car is a bad thing. Better to not own a car and just ride a Grab taxi anywhere.

Therefore the general thought is this; put less care and attention in your car.

What is the best car? I think a used white Prius; I recently re-inherited our old 2010 Prius, and white, and I love it! Cindy‘s younger sister Jennifer was driving the car for a while, but unfortunately in the middle of the night they stole the catalytic converter, and she no longer wanted to deal with the car. She initially was just going to sell the whole Prius to the mechanic for only $2700, but I thought this was a great opportunity, so Cindy and I offered to pay for the new catalytic converter, around $3000, and we just took it to the shop to replace the ABS brake sensor, another $2700 USD, and $350 for a catalytic converter shield, to prevent or discourage a future theft.

So all in all, around $5000-$6000 for a brand new (used) and insanely great reliable Prius!

Interestingly enough, chatting with the owner Vallentine (he is the owner of Hybrid 911, which is specialized in fixing Priuses and hybrids), and he told me that he used to have the P100D Tesla MODEL S 2017 model, the refreshed model, but ultimately ended up selling it because the charging was annoying, especially with long road trips.

I still love cars from a metaphorical and design and aesthetic perspective; but, my new ambition is to drive this Prius to at least 350,000, 450,000 or 500,000 miles. And instead use and invest my money into myself, my body, my entrepreneurial ventures, And beyond.

The easiest way to become rich is not to waste money on a car.

Pure Vision

Insanely Great Photos

Fun Photos

Joy

LA COMMUTING Thoughts

The other day, woke up pretty early, got some good writing done (Man on a Mission), was feeling high strength, and decided that it may be a good opportunity and chance for me to go househunting and apartment hunting in LA with Cindy. We loaded up our car, and drove down to LA, spent the whole day there and came back, and after the whole day there coming back, this was the most fatigued I felt in a very long time.

Thoughts on my mind:

Why was I so tired? Is it still the jet lag, or is it the fact of being stuck in the car all day, or driving all day?

Commuting?

Commute — to change, alter (con muto).

meytH— to change, to exchange, to move.

What does it mean to commute, what is a commute?

I suppose after studying the etymology, to commute means to simply exchange places. For example, typically you sleep in your home, wake up, and then you commute to work, whether it be walking driving etc.

In modern day times, or if you live in LA or southern California, the notion of a commute is generally speaking being stuck in traffic or being stuck in a car or being stuck driving for several hours a day.

For example, in my case, starting off in Orange County and driving to LA, even with Cindy and carpool, it still took us about an hour and five minutes to get to LA. And the tricky thing about driving to LA especially coming from Orange County is that the closer you get to LA, the more ratchet it gets. People drive more aggressively, the freeways become more condensed, interchanges become a little bit more unpredictable and confusing.

Concrete Islands

I call it “concrete archipelago hopping” to quote my friend Evyn Le Espiritu.

Basically the issue in LA, and a lot of southern California is that all of these different neighborhoods are like concrete islands, which instead of being separated by water is separated by traffic.

For example, Cindy and I toured several neighborhoods which included Marina del Rey, some outskirts of Santa Monica, Culver City, Westwood, etc. Even though they are all in close proximity to UCLA, during rush hour, trying to go from the east side to the west side is all local and you’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Would a Tesla solve this issue?

Another thing that I’ve learned which is intelligent in Asia, Southeast Asia, is that rich people don’t drive themselves; either have private drivers, or just ride grab taxi or an Uber anywhere. In Asia, only servants drive.

In America we have this funny strange thing in which we want to be the driver. We want to be the man at the helm, the cockpit, inside the fuselage.

Even the notion of a modern-day sports car or a hyper car, I think the general analogy is that it is almost like having your own private jet fighter. I think this is what Lamborghini is going for, you may not be able to buy a jet fighter, and be like Tom Cruise, but, you can have your own land based jet fighter which is a modern day Lamborghini.

However, even if you have the worlds best Lamborghini or car or hyper car whatever, during peak rush-hour in LA, you’re stuck. I don’t know anybody who likes to drive during bumper-to-bumper rush-hour.

The curiosity on my mind is this:

If I had a Tesla, either with basic auto pilot, the one which does the “smart cruise control“ on the freeway, auto staying in the lane and keeping distance in front of the other car, or even full auto pilot, would this solve the issue?

For example, let me assume that in the morning, before leaving to LA at 10 AM, I was at 100% energy, honestly I think it would have just been better for me to go to the gym and try to hit over 10 plates for my atlas lift. After driving commuting going to LA coming back, I felt like my battery went down to a critical low of 2%.

Thus my curiosity:

If I had a Tesla, either with basic auto pilot or full auto pilot, would having to commute and drive deplete me of less energy?

For example, if I had auto pilot, would my energy levels still be at close to 100%? At 90%? At 80%? At 60%? 50%? 40%? 30%? Or about the same?

I know that when I’m stuck in traffic, but someone else is driving me, like during peak rush-hour in Saigon, it didn’t really bother me too much to be stuck in traffic. I just used that time to review my photos on my iPhone, or even publish some ideas to my blog, using my iPhone.

Jet lag?

Was I so tired yesterday because I was still jetlagged? Still a little bit uncertain, but the general takeaway point:

Conserve your energy and strength.

I think some certainties:

1. Driving drains your battery

Having to actively drive yourself saps you of your strength and energy: for example, typically I am able to easily atlas lift over nine plates at the gym, but yesterday after driving all day, and hitting the gym, I was so fatigued that I barely had energy and chutzpah to do seven plates. Being cognizant of my body, I still had the muscular strength to lift more, but, my overall feeling and just was I didn’t have the chutzpah to do it. Therefore purely speaking from a productivity energy perspective, if you want to maximize your energy, and to minimally deplete your energy, drive as little as humanly possible.

Chutzpah vlog >

I like this analogy of thinking of your human energy like a battery or a smart phone battery. That is, when you wake up first thing in the morning, and during the day, you got 100% battery life, but as the day goes on, your battery life gets drained. Things you could do to recharge your battery include drinking more ERIC KIM COFFEE, taking a nap, or sleeping. Sometimes also good way to recharge your battery is ironically hitting the gym, lifting weights, doing the hot sauna, or even going out in the direct sun, catching some sun.

2. I don’t like tint

For the 2010 Prius that we recently inherited, it has pretty much full tint. Close to limo tint in the back and the back windshield, the front is quite dark, and I think there’s even a little bit of tint on the front windshield.

For myself, I get maximum physiological energy when I am in the direct sun, or I have the privilege and opportunity to get more direct light. Therefore, I don’t like tint or tint in cars because it makes things darker, and I feel like this saps me of some of my energy. Maximum sunlight and brightness is key for me to maximize my physical energy.

Therefore being stuck in the car all day, the downside is it because you are stuck in the car all day with tint, you have less energy and power.

3. Gravity on your legs and joints

Another big downside of being stuck in a car, or being seated in either the front seat or the backseat of a car is that when you are in a sitting position, and gravity doesn’t have an opportunity to work on your legs. I have a theory that when you do not have the privilege to stand, walk, or have the opportunity for gravity to work on your legs, your lower body, your back, your spine, your hips, your knees, your ligaments and joints etc., Your metabolism and physiological energy shuts down.

Therefore, even if you had a 100% private driver, or even the $15,000 self 100% self driving tesla, still being forced to be in a seated position is positively bad for you.

Lesson: optimize your life such a manner in which you are never sitting.

4. How to watch a movie, or TV show series?

One of the things I hate about flying is that you are forced to sit the whole time. Whenever possible, Seneca included, I prefer to stand, kill time by walking around the cabin, etc.

Was it Virgin Airlines, or some sort of other airlines which had some sort of club lounge in which you were able to stand and hang out? I think this is a really good idea for airplanes.

Anyways, another simple thought I have is if there is a TV show, a series, or a movie you want to watch, it seems that the best idea is to watch it while standing, while walking outdoors, just download it to your iPad Pro, and walk around while watching it outside. This is far superior of a watching experience; I believe the greatest benefit of movies films and cinema is that motivates you to move, literally. Any sort of movie or action film which inspires you to move your legs walk around, is good.

For example, when I first watched the Foundation series on Apple TV+, I would just download it all to my iPhone or iPad Pro, and watch it while walking around the block with an umbrella during the summertime in the blazing Southern California sun.

Therefore as a fun experiment, avoid sitting.

5. Anti inferior coffee?

During our house and Tim trip in LA, Cindy and I briefly stopped by a Trader Joe’s and Cindy picked up some snacks and one of those cold brew Trader Joe’s coffees. Apparently 100% arabica. However, the coffee was insanely terrible. Immediately I felt my throat act up, and actually gave me a bad feeling. I actually felt more tired than I did before having it.

Therefore, my personal passion with ERIC KIM Coffee, to truly bring you the most superior and supreme coffee to help you thrive.

What makes ERIC KIM COFFEE different? 100% fine robusta, the most healthy coffee and the most supreme for your physiology.

My personal commitment to myself; I will only ever drink EK COFFEE ever again.

6. Trading your health, your well-being, and your physiological energy for money?

Assuming that driving and sitting as positively bad for you and your health, let us consider how most people make their money and living, nowadays taxi drivers and Uber drivers, Amazon prime delivery people, or the traditional office worker who sits in front of a computer and sits on a chair at a desk all day.

Even the traditional Silicon Valley worker with standing desk isn’t much better. I think there’s something positively bad about your health when we are forced to stay indoors, not moving, and just staring at a screen all day.

Therefore the traditional way that a lot of people make money nowadays is simply trading their health for money. Also, having to fly internationally or even domestically for a living is positively bad for your health.

7. Voluntary versus involuntary commuting

I think having a small commute is positively good. To drive 15 or 20 minutes somewhere is often good to just get out of the house, change of scenery etc.

Also to drive a little bit a day I think is also good for us.

But the dosage is in the poison. this means, maybe driving 15 minutes somewhere and then driving 15 minutes back is good for us, but having to drive an hour or an hour and 30 minutes somewhere and two hours back is really bad for us.

Therefore my suggestion is in regards to your life and lifestyle, work etc., I don’t think we should ever be forced to commute anywhere, we should only commute optionally if we want to.

Now what?

I think the general takeaway point is we actually like to be in person to do things. Nobody wants to be on zoom all day.

Therefore my simple suggestion; perhaps the best life is a life in which you do a short voluntary commute, to do things in person.

We prefer in person. But then we don’t like to be stuck in the car.

For example, a short 10 to 15 minute commute somewhere, to do something in person, whether if you work, creative work, going to the gym or yoga, going to a coffee shop, eating out etc.

Just limit your commute.

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LA THOUGHTS

The other day, woke up pretty early, got some good writing done (Man on a Mission), was feeling high strength, and decided that it may be a good opportunity and chance for me to go househunting and apartment hunting in LA with Cindy. We loaded up our car, and drove down to LA, spent the whole day there and came back, and after the whole day there coming back, this was the most fatigued I felt in a very long time.

Thoughts on my mind:

Why was I so tired? Is it still the jet lag, or is it the fact of being stuck in the car all day, or driving all day?

Commuting?

Commute — to change, alter (con muto).

meytH— to change, to exchange, to move.

What does it mean to commute, what is a commute?

I suppose after studying the etymology, to commute means to simply exchange places. For example, typically you sleep in your home, wake up, and then you commute to work, whether it be walking driving etc.

In modern day times, or if you live in LA or southern California, the notion of a commute is generally speaking being stuck in traffic or being stuck in a car or being stuck driving for several hours a day.

For example, in my case, starting off in Orange County and driving to LA, even with Cindy and carpool, it still took us about an hour and five minutes to get to LA. And the tricky thing about driving to LA especially coming from Orange County is that the closer you get to LA, the more ratchet it gets. People drive more aggressively, the freeways become more condensed, interchanges become a little bit more unpredictable and confusing.

Concrete Islands

I call it “concrete archipelago hopping” to quote my friend Evyn Le Espiritu.

Basically the issue in LA, and a lot of southern California is that all of these different neighborhoods are like concrete islands, which instead of being separated by water is separated by traffic.

For example, Cindy and I toured several neighborhoods which included Marina del Rey, some outskirts of Santa Monica, Culver City, Westwood, etc. Even though they are all in close proximity to UCLA, during rush hour, trying to go from the east side to the west side is all local and you’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Would a Tesla solve this issue?

Another thing that I’ve learned which is intelligent in Asia, Southeast Asia, is that rich people don’t drive themselves; either have private drivers, or just ride grab taxi or an Uber anywhere. In Asia, only servants drive.

In America we have this funny strange thing in which we want to be the driver. We want to be the man at the helm, the cockpit, inside the fuselage.

Even the notion of a modern-day sports car or a hyper car, I think the general analogy is that it is almost like having your own private jet fighter. I think this is what Lamborghini is going for, you may not be able to buy a jet fighter, and be like Tom Cruise, but, you can have your own land based jet fighter which is a modern day Lamborghini.

However, even if you have the worlds best Lamborghini or car or hyper car whatever, during peak rush-hour in LA, you’re stuck. I don’t know anybody who likes to drive during bumper-to-bumper rush-hour.

The curiosity on my mind is this:

If I had a Tesla, either with basic auto pilot, the one which does the “smart cruise control“ on the freeway, auto staying in the lane and keeping distance in front of the other car, or even full auto pilot, would this solve the issue?

For example, let me assume that in the morning, before leaving to LA at 10 AM, I was at 100% energy, honestly I think it would have just been better for me to go to the gym and try to hit over 10 plates for my atlas lift. After driving commuting going to LA coming back, I felt like my battery went down to a critical low of 2%.

Thus my curiosity:

If I had a Tesla, either with basic auto pilot or full auto pilot, would having to commute and drive deplete me of less energy?

For example, if I had auto pilot, would my energy levels still be at close to 100%? At 90%? At 80%? At 60%? 50%? 40%? 30%? Or about the same?

I know that when I’m stuck in traffic, but someone else is driving me, like during peak rush-hour in Saigon, it didn’t really bother me too much to be stuck in traffic. I just used that time to review my photos on my iPhone, or even publish some ideas to my blog, using my iPhone.

Jet lag?

Was I so tired yesterday because I was still jetlagged? Still a little bit uncertain, but the general takeaway point:

Conserve your energy and strength.

I think some certainties:

1. Driving drains your battery

Having to actively drive yourself saps you of your strength and energy: for example, typically I am able to easily atlas lift over nine plates at the gym, but yesterday after driving all day, and hitting the gym, I was so fatigued that I barely had energy and chutzpah to do seven plates. Being cognizant of my body, I still had the muscular strength to lift more, but, my overall feeling and just was I didn’t have the chutzpah to do it. Therefore purely speaking from a productivity energy perspective, if you want to maximize your energy, and to minimally deplete your energy, drive as little as humanly possible.

Chutzpah vlog >

I like this analogy of thinking of your human energy like a battery or a smart phone battery. That is, when you wake up first thing in the morning, and during the day, you got 100% battery life, but as the day goes on, your battery life gets drained. Things you could do to recharge your battery include drinking more ERIC KIM COFFEE, taking a nap, or sleeping. Sometimes also good way to recharge your battery is ironically hitting the gym, lifting weights, doing the hot sauna, or even going out in the direct sun, catching some sun.

2. I don’t like tint

For the 2010 Prius that we recently inherited, it has pretty much full tint. Close to limo tint in the back and the back windshield, the front is quite dark, and I think there’s even a little bit of tint on the front windshield.

For myself, I get maximum physiological energy when I am in the direct sun, or I have the privilege and opportunity to get more direct light. Therefore, I don’t like tint or tint in cars because it makes things darker, and I feel like this saps me of some of my energy. Maximum sunlight and brightness is key for me to maximize my physical energy.

Therefore being stuck in the car all day, the downside is it because you are stuck in the car all day with tint, you have less energy and power.

3. Gravity on your legs and joints

Another big downside of being stuck in a car, or being seated in either the front seat or the backseat of a car is that when you are in a sitting position, and gravity doesn’t have an opportunity to work on your legs. I have a theory that when you do not have the privilege to stand, walk, or have the opportunity for gravity to work on your legs, your lower body, your back, your spine, your hips, your knees, your ligaments and joints etc., Your metabolism and physiological energy shuts down.

Therefore, even if you had a 100% private driver, or even the $15,000 self 100% self driving tesla, still being forced to be in a seated position is positively bad for you.

Lesson: optimize your life such a manner in which you are never sitting.

4. How to watch a movie, or TV show series?

One of the things I hate about flying is that you are forced to sit the whole time. Whenever possible, Seneca included, I prefer to stand, kill time by walking around the cabin, etc.

Was it Virgin Airlines, or some sort of other airlines which had some sort of club lounge in which you were able to stand and hang out? I think this is a really good idea for airplanes.

Anyways, another simple thought I have is if there is a TV show, a series, or a movie you want to watch, it seems that the best idea is to watch it while standing, while walking outdoors, just download it to your iPad Pro, and walk around while watching it outside. This is far superior of a watching experience; I believe the greatest benefit of movies films and cinema is that motivates you to move, literally. Any sort of movie or action film which inspires you to move your legs walk around, is good.

For example, when I first watched the Foundation series on Apple TV+, I would just download it all to my iPhone or iPad Pro, and watch it while walking around the block with an umbrella during the summertime in the blazing Southern California sun.

Therefore as a fun experiment, avoid sitting.

LA THOUGHTS

The other day, woke up pretty early, got some good writing done (Man on a Mission), was feeling high strength, and decided that it may be a good opportunity and chance for me to go househunting and apartment hunting in LA with Cindy. We loaded up our car, and drove down to LA, spent the whole day there and came back, and after the whole day there coming back, this was the most fatigued I felt in a very long time.

Thoughts on my mind:

Why was I so tired? Is it still the jet lag, or is it the fact of being stuck in the car all day, or driving all day?

Commuting?

Commute — to change, alter (con muto).

meytH— to change, to exchange, to move.

What does it mean to commute, what is a commute?

I suppose after studying the etymology, to commute means to simply exchange places. For example, typically you sleep in your home, wake up, and then you commute to work, whether it be walking driving etc.

In modern day times, or if you live in LA or southern California, the notion of a commute is generally speaking being stuck in traffic or being stuck in a car or being stuck driving for several hours a day.

For example, in my case, starting off in Orange County and driving to LA, even with Cindy and carpool, it still took us about an hour and five minutes to get to LA. And the tricky thing about driving to LA especially coming from Orange County is that the closer you get to LA, the more ratchet it gets. People drive more aggressively, the freeways become more condensed, interchanges become a little bit more unpredictable and confusing.

Concrete Islands

I call it “concrete archipelago hopping” to quote my friend Evyn Le Espiritu.

Basically the issue in LA, and a lot of southern California is that all of these different neighborhoods are like concrete islands, which instead of being separated by water is separated by traffic.

For example, Cindy and I toured several neighborhoods which included Marina del Rey, some outskirts of Santa Monica, Culver City, Westwood, etc. Even though they are all in close proximity to UCLA, during rush hour, trying to go from the east side to the west side is all local and you’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Would a Tesla solve this issue?

Another thing that I’ve learned which is intelligent in Asia, Southeast Asia, is that rich people don’t drive themselves; either have private drivers, or just ride grab taxi or an Uber anywhere. In Asia, only servants drive.

In America we have this funny strange thing in which we want to be the driver. We want to be the man at the helm, the cockpit, inside the fuselage.

Even the notion of a modern-day sports car or a hyper car, I think the general analogy is that it is almost like having your own private jet fighter. I think this is what Lamborghini is going for, you may not be able to buy a jet fighter, and be like Tom Cruise, but, you can have your own land based jet fighter which is a modern day Lamborghini.

However, even if you have the worlds best Lamborghini or car or hyper car whatever, during peak rush-hour in LA, you’re stuck. I don’t know anybody who likes to drive during bumper-to-bumper rush-hour.

The curiosity on my mind is this:

If I had a Tesla, either with basic auto pilot, the one which does the “smart cruise control“ on the freeway, auto staying in the lane and keeping distance in front of the other car, or even full auto pilot, would this solve the issue?

For example, let me assume that in the morning, before leaving to LA at 10 AM, I was at 100% energy, honestly I think it would have just been better for me to go to the gym and try to hit over 10 plates for my atlas lift. After driving commuting going to LA coming back, I felt like my battery went down to a critical low of 2%.

Thus my curiosity:

If I had a Tesla, either with basic auto pilot or full auto pilot, would having to commute and drive deplete me of less energy?

For example, if I had auto pilot, would my energy levels still be at close to 100%? At 90%? At 80%? At 60%? 50%? 40%? 30%? Or about the same?

I know that when I’m stuck in traffic, but someone else is driving me, like during peak rush-hour in Saigon, it didn’t really bother me too much to be stuck in traffic. I just used that time to review my photos on my iPhone, or even publish some ideas to my blog, using my iPhone.

Jet lag?

Was I so tired yesterday because I was still jetlagged? Still a little bit uncertain, but the general takeaway point:

Conserve your energy and strength.

I think some certainties:

1. Driving drains your battery

Having to actively drive yourself saps you of your strength and energy: for example, typically I am able to easily atlas lift over nine plates at the gym, but yesterday after driving all day, and hitting the gym, I was so fatigued that I barely had energy and chutzpah to do seven plates. Being cognizant of my body, I still had the muscular strength to lift more, but, my overall feeling and just was I didn’t have the chutzpah to do it. Therefore purely speaking from a productivity energy perspective, if you want to maximize your energy, and to minimally deplete your energy, drive as little as humanly possible.

Man on a Mission

To sell ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE and to propagate fine robusta to the states and to the world; my mission?

Being a missionary?

An interesting thought that I got from Peter Thiel in his ZERO TO ONE book is the notion of a missionary versus a mercenary. The difference is that a missionary does something because they really believe in the mission, whereas a mercenary does something for money, merx, which means market.

Now there is nothing wrong to do things for money. Or to follow market trends or to do things which makes sense according to the market. For example, if I want to maximize my earning potential or salary, it is probably best that I become some sort of tech manager, some sort of upper management at one of the big tech companies. This is probably the best part to earn a $550,000 a year, $750,000 a year, $1.2 million a year, $2.5 million a year, etc.

Or more directly, if you want to immediately start earning a bunch of money, it seems that the best industries to go are in the blue collar ones which are considered either unhygienic or dangerous. For example electricians make a lot of money, easily over $350,000 a year. Why? People are afraid of heights, climbing electricity poles, and also the fear that they may accidentally touch the wrong wire and electrocute themselves and die.

Or, let us consider a very very important part of modern day society which is sanitation and hygiene. People who pick up your trash, sort it, or even plumbers who drain stuck pipes. If anything people who do hygiene might have the most critical jobs in modern-day society, and their income reflects it. They can easily earn over $500,000 a year. But, do you really want to clean other peoples poop for a living? Or smell like trash all day, every day, even after you go home, take a shower and put on a bunch of cologne? I personally wouldn’t.

Why become a missionary?

Typically when we think about missionaries we think about religious missionaries. Or people who go on “missions“ in high school or college, typically to some developing country, some poor village, building up clean water infrastructure, etc. Yet to only have the villagers dismantle the clean water filtration systems to scavenge the parts for other household goods, and then being instructed by the organizations to intentionally dismantle the equipment to prevent the villagers from “doing it wrong.” (true story)

Mission impossible?

Missio— mitto— to send out.

Meyth— to change, to exchange, to remove.

Mey— to strengthen, to change, to exchange, to bind, to change places.

I find the etymology behind the concept of going on a “mission“ as fascinating. Why? It is kind of related to traveling, changing places, change and exchange. Let us consider that in terms of modern day global finance, a lot of money is made through currency exchanges. Also for myself, whenever I travel abroad, and I exchange or change the place in which I live and breathe for a certain period of time, and then I go back to the states, I come back a transform person. Even though Southern California may be the same, I am changed. And this is good.

How to go on more missions in life?

I suppose the general notion of Tom Cruise, mission, Mission impossible is this general notion that you do not stay at home. When Tom Cruise gets a “mission“, he is typically dispatched to go to some sort of dangerous place, in order to either resolve, solve, or fix some sort of potentially dangerous problem.

Or let us consider my beloved John Wick. Let us consider all of the international intercontinental hotels he visits, in Rome, and also the wonderfully fantastic Osaka Intercontinental in John Wick 4.

Traveling as a good way to discover your mission in life?

Colloquially when we talk about “mission“, we mean to talk about some sort of generalized concept of some sort of higher purpose or calling in life. That is you pursue some thing for autotelic purposes, not for just making money.

Once again I think this is a tricky thing to understand, because I think typically we believe that money motivates people to do things. This is true to a certain extent. For example, most people would probably not work full-time as Amazon prime delivery truck drivers, Uber drivers, or even K-12 public school teachers if they had the opportunity not to. Most people if they won $1 billion in the lottery, would immediately quit their jobs. No matter how much they convinced themselves that “it is their passion.”

Military living stipend?

An interesting thought that I got from Nietzsche was his idea that with professions, perhaps we should just be paid some sort of honorarium— some sort of relieve base salary, or payment to just cover our basic living costs. For example, working in the military. You earn enough money when you are out doing dangerous stuff to just ensure that you have enough money coming in that you don’t need to worry about money. Yet typically military people do not enter the military for pay. I think most people or at least men who enter the military, young men, it is because they desire some sort of sense of adventure, challenge, and to become “more manly”.

Even something that I realized about academics, the academy, becoming a professor, tenure-track professor is that it is almost like entering the military. When you are in graduate school, you essentially live like a monk, imagine trying to live in the bay area in Berkeley earning only $22,000 a year. I actually had a friend who became an involuntary vegan, subsisting on lentils and rice when he was at his UC Berkeley PhD program because his graduate school stipend barely covered his rent, let alone his food.
On the flipside, I think our labor should be valued, and we should not self flagellate or think it is virtuous to accept less pay or money. Yet once again, ultimately being a missionary, we do things for autotelic higher purposes, not for pay.

What motivates John Wick?

Is John Wick motivated by money? No. He has higher missions; avenging the murder of his beloved cute dog that he got from his deceased wife, seeking revenge, staying alive, trying to get out of the game, etc.

Money making as a mission?

I have a theory; perhaps the reason why people are so obsessed with making money in today’s world is that it is a very simple, quantified mission, and something which is praised according to modern day capitalism. To continue to accrue a higher salary, to put more money in the bank, and to indefinitely grow your funds in capital is seen as the ultimate virtue.

Thus the mission of the modern day person: indefinitely accrue more money and capital.

What should your mission be in life?

Now this is a more tricky thought; the philosophy of things. That is, is there a “should“, in regards to what you “should“ do in your life?

First and foremost no. You “should“ not have to be forced to do anything that you don’t want to do. Certainly there are basic things like paying your rent, feeding yourself etc. Yet if you really do want financial independence or whatever, best to just live in Hanoi Vietnam, where you could rent a brand new studio apartment really nice, for only $350 USD a month.

Even in the states, I subsist on a 100% carnivore diet, 100% beef, or lamb as a luxury. At the Costco Business Center, even with inflation and considering what I coined the “beef index”, most beef could still be had for $2.99 a pound, $3.99 a pound, etc. Most people cannot consume that much meat or beef anyways. I eat a lot, typically 3 to 4 pounds of beef a day. But if you are the modern-day American who could only eat 1 pound, maybe 2 pounds tops, you could feed yourself on easily five dollars a day.

Also being creative in terms of paying rent. There are many intelligent ways that you could spend less money on rent, for example, life sharing, renting out a room in a home, living with family, etc. I still believe that the greatest path in life is towards self-employment and self entrepreneurship. Therefore reducing your expenses to the minimum is the wise path.

Also a recent realization, in terms of transportation. Assuming that you live in Southern California and need a car, it really seems that the best car to get is some sort of older used white Prius. For example I recently re-inherited our old 2010 Prius, and I love it! Lamborghinis, Porsches are for losers. If I were to get a all electric car, it would probably just be a super base level Tesla model 3 in white.

Your mission?

A simple thought is perhaps a great and grand calling in mission in life is in regards to art, philosophy, and entrepreneurship.

1. Pursue art

First, if you’re reading this I assume that you’re some sort of photographer, visual artist, etc. Devoting your life and focusing your life on art is a great path. For example, artists last. It seems that society is moved much by artists. Let us consider modern day artists who include Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, Jay-Z, etc.

Or, other artists like Andy Warhol, Basquiat, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, or going back to the old-school like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.

The tricky thing is in today’s world, the notion of being a “artist” has been commodified. That is, we need to somehow make money, or a lot of money from art to justify it.

However, let us consider Michelangelo and painting the Sistine chapel. Essentially he just had a sponsor and was paid an honorarium to do it. Also Leonardo da Vinci, a full stack renaissance man. To call him an “artist“ is almost too feeble of a notion. He was a fully developed man.

Therefore first and foremost, pursuing art is a good mission in life — assuming that your art has a higher purpose, and you seek to empower future human beings from it.

2. Philosophy

The second stack is philosophy. Thinking meditating and writing and publishing and blogging and blogging your thoughts, ideas, and philosophies in regards to philosophy.

What is philosophy anyways? To me basically put, philosophy is discovering and considering the “why” of things. That is, to consider the purpose behind things, and thinking about notions of “should“ and “should not”.

The reason why philosophy is such a critical path is that it saves us a lot of time and effort.

For example, some people toil away for decades, 30 40 50 years to make a bunch of money and to become “successful“. But, if you critically thought about it, from a philosophical perspective, and you realized that this was an ineffective path, you just saved 30 to 40 years of your life.

Or a funny philosophical innovation I made and discovered; rather than spending $250,000, $350,000 on a car or a Lamborghini, better to just do insanely epic demigod weightlifting one rep max style at the gym, and transform your own body into a Lamborghini.

3. Empowering humanity

Perhaps one of my missions in life is to help empower other fellow entrepreneurs. Thus my passion with ERIC KIM COFFEE, ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE; to create the world’s best coffee to inspire motivate and uplift entrepreneurs and great thinkers.

Also, coffee as the ultimate stimulant and substance to get you going, before and going to the gym. I don’t think there has yet been a coffee tailored for weight lifters, powerlifters, or hypelifters. This is where I believe that my fine robusta, 100% fine robusta to be such a strong idea; maximum caffeine content which is also “safer“ than these dangerous pre-workout cocaine powder.

4. Passion for marketing?

In modern day times, marketing gets a bad rap. It is seen as a disrespectful form of doing things, yet in truth, I think marketing is great. I personally believe that marketing is a great artistic endeavors, and also highly practical.

I suppose I am very fortunate because one of my passions in life is marking. And this is the fun that I had with ERIC KIM OMAKASE Coffee.

I think what is lacking in coffee, marketing and coffee, individual coffee bags and beans is a lack of some sort of focus on how it will help improve your life.

For example, the productivity coffee, the entrepreneur. There is zero doubt that coffee makes us more productive. It does. So why not just brand it for what it is?

Also, thinking philosophy and coffee. Some of the greatest minds in history have been aided with coffee. For example, even my beloved Nassim Taleb is hugely inspired by coffee. Also, most thinkers, writers, creative people I know drink coffee and love it.

Third, photography and coffee. Photography is my ultimate Archimedes lever, I don’t know a single photographer who doesn’t love coffee and coffee shops.

Therefore maybe another fun mission I could do in life is to try to teach more marketing concepts to other people?

What is “OMAKASE”?

The reason why I branded it as ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE is I like that idea of having an experimental tasting menu. That is why with every order of ERIC KIM OMAKASE Coffee, you get three individualized bags:

THE ENTREPRENEUR: The golden bag, optimize to unleash your fullest maximum in your entrepreneurship. 100% find robusta, 12 out of 10 caffeine content, to motivate you into maximum productivity.
THE THINKER: The first coffee to be branded and marketed as being a positively beneficial aid to your thinking. A sublime roast with bright and yellow blueberries, 100% fine robusta, to kickstart your creative thinking.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER: The black bag. I believe drinking great coffee as 1000X times better than buying a new camera lens or camera equipment. Shout out to Anthony Larson for taking me to chromatic coffee roasters in San Jose, insanely great coffee, insanely great espresso as bringing me 1000 times more joy than even the world’s most expensive Leica camera. In fact, I would probably prefer to have 100 bags of ERIC KIM coffee than to have the worlds most expensive camera.

The next coffee roast I envision as creating to replace the silly port pre-workout powder is. A coffee optimized for the gym, weight lifters, competitive athletes. Once again 100% fine robusta.

SEIZE ERIC KIM COFFEE >

Prius thoughts

Recently we we re-inherited our old 2010 Prius, and after using it a few days to just commute around, go to the gym and yoga, go to the local Costco Business Center etc., I love it! Why?

I think there is something about the 2010 model that I like in so far much as the dashboard is quite minimal. No stupid and touch screens or LCD screens to distract us.

I am such an insanely huge fan of Tesla, Elon Musk etc., yet the big downside that I see is that I find the touchscreen to be more annoying than useful. In fact I think in today’s world, not having a touchscreen or LCD screens is the ultimate luxury.

For example if I wanted some sort of sublime sports car, I would prefer a 100% manual transmission, no air conditioning, no car radio or info tenement system, no power steering, etc. Very much like my original 1990 Mazda Miata that I had, five speed with no frills. Even the new Porsche cars, 911 GT 3RS, has too many superfluous dials and LCD screens in the car.

Why hybrid?

I still think in modern day life, a hybrid car is best. Why? If you drive a hybrid, a Prius or whatever, you might only need to fill up your tank every two weeks, maybe even every three weeks, or just once a month! In terms of lifestyle, and this is much easier than having to hunt around for electric car chargers.

Also, for myself I think only having an electric car or a Tesla will be worth it the moment in which recharging your car from 0 to 100 is actually faster than filling up your gas tank. For example, filling up my gas tank might only take me two or three minutes. I think in order for an electric car or a Tesla to entice me, the new Tesla supercharger mark II must go from 0 to 100 in less than a minute. In terms of physics this may not be possible, but I think the pursuit is worth it.

Incoming Workshops

Incoming ERIC KIM workshops headed to you:

October 14th: CONQUER THE STREETS OF PHILLY
Feb 10, 2024: SUBLIME CREATIVITY WORKSHOP SEATTLE

Also, I am currently working on new workshops in downtown LA, as well as New York City. The focus of New York City will be about becoming a visual artist, in downtown LA will also be centered around this visual artist notion.

I’m also thinking about doing some sort of workshops on marketing entrepreneurship, blogging, vlogging, YouTube, media etc. State posted on this newsletter or the workshops page.

SoCal is Paradise

The exciting news is that soon me and Cindy are moving to LA, maybe Santa Monica, Culver City, somewhere around there.

What I realized about Los Angeles etc. is that even though Southern California is not perfect, it is still paradise for me. Why? Maximal sunlight, maximum brightness. Something that I have discovered about my own personal physiology is that I thrive with the sun. Las Vegas and Texas and Arizona is maybe too bright and too hot for me.

Also I really love the gym fitness culture in Southern California. And also lots of different yoga studios for Cindy to go to.

Some thing I have discovered through my travels and being abroad; honestly all places suck. The best strategy is to just reap the maximum upside of wherever you live, no matter how shitty it may be.

Now what?

Blogging, vlogging, building and developing and innovating websites still the future.

Also, photography and video and the internet.

Start building your own website blog, wordpress.org platform with Amazon web services.

Photography is the way!

Never stop photographing!

ERIC KIM START HERE, BOOKS, PRODUCTS

ERIC

Infinite motivation on EK BLOG >

PHILOSOPHY IS THE FUTURE

Why I love cars

Mystifying things?

How do really rich people do it?

What is a millennial?

Alcohol, food, eating out, weed, drugs, etc

Finance, and loans?

Bigger and better to infinity and beyond!

Houses as a project?

Capital?

What do you do when you no longer fear anything?

Fear versus ability

Life narrative?

What motivates me?

Become more

Gym thoughts

The Stoic Masters

Why I love cars

Mystifying things?

How do really rich people do it?

What is a millennial?

Alcohol, food, eating out, weed, drugs, etc

1. Reality calls

2. Who did the ancients respect?

3. Bellum!

3. What do you want to become?

4. Paradise is under the valley of swords

5. Crafting your own philosophy

6. Now what?

“It’s over 9,000!!!”

Random thoughts on my mind

Forward the turbo!

The Stoic Masters

Steering clear of foolishness?

What is the point of thinking?

Sociological Theory

Photography and Sociology

Sociological Theory

Photography and Sociology

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY 101

Brave New Street Photography

Street Photographs

Street Photography Philosophy

Street Photography Articles

Street Photography Techniques

Street Photography Ideas

Street Photography Composition Techniques

FUNDAMENTALS OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

Street Photography Inspiration

Beginner Street Photography Articles

Definitions in Street Photography

How to Shoot Street Photography

Street Photography Equipment

How to Conquer Your Fears in Street Photography

Intermediate Street Photography Articles

Advanced Street Photography Articles

Street Photography Tips & Technique

Street Photography Guides

Street Photography Equipment

Street Photography Editing and Workflow

How to Start a Street Photography Project

Learn From the Masters of Street Photography

The Masters of Photography

Free Downloads

Free Street Photography Books

THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY COMPOSITION

VIRTUAL REALITY COMPOSITION

The Game of Composition

Technical compositions

Philosophy of Composition

Photography Composition Concepts

Street Photography Composition Tips

Photography Composition Tips

Color Theory

Learn From the Masters of Composition

Dynamic Photography Composition 101

Painting Compositions

Dynamic Photography Composition Tips

Composition Theory

Street Photography Composition 101