-
AI ART
-
PICTURES
-
LOVE
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ERIC KIM ARCHIVE
PDF
- LEICA MANUAL PDF // MIRROR
- TRAVEL NOTES
- ZEN OF ERIC
- MASTERS VOLUME 1
- Photography Composition Manual v1
- Zen Photography
- STREET PHOTO CONTACT SHEETS
- STREET PHOTO CONTACT SHEETS VOLUME II
- Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography
- The Street Portrait Manual
- 100 Lessons From the Masters of Street Photography
THOUGHTS
- THE PHILOSOPHY OF RISK TAKING — PDF
- Why I Bought Chainlink — PDF
- How to Become a Philosopher
- How to Become a Stoic
ART PHOTO BOOKS
ERIC KIM PODCAST
MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER
- DOWNLOAD FREE // PDF DOWNLOAD // MIRROR
STOICISM
Delve into the mind of EK:
BOOKS
NEW CHATGPT BOTS
Crypto
- BACK TO CHAINLINK, EVERYONE SHOULD OWN *AT LEAST* ONE BITCOIN, AI IS NEXT $100T, 1000T INDUSTRY?
- Bitcoin Babe
ERIC KIM CHATGPT BOTS
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY STARTER KIT
- What is Street Photography? (2.4gb) / Download
- Black and White (2.3gb) / Download
- How to Shoot Street Photography (2.2gb) / Download
- Street Portraits 101 (1.9gb) / Download
- Conquer Your Fears (430mb) / Download
- Composition (460mb) / Download
- Masters (107mb) / Download
- Editing and Post-Processing (1.3gb) / Download
- Photography Projects (1.4gb) / Download
- Motivation (3.7gb) / Download
CRYPTO BY KIM
Brave new world for photographers and crypto:
- The Philosophy of Crypto
- BITCOIN SHALL BE THE LAST CRYPTO STANDING.
- Bitcoin Price Prediction
- Trust chainlink for the most accurate prices for bitcoin or any other crypto
- BITCOIN
- There is No Web 3.0
- 2 cents to 2 dollars?
- Crypto.com?
- Speculation vs Investing
- Building with Bitcoin
- DYNAMICS VS STATICS.
- How Do You Know if the Timing Is Right?
- BITCOIN IN THE NEWS
- BITCOIN & UNCERTAINTY
- Fake Money
- Why I Bought More Bitcoin (Again)
- How I Made Money with Crypto
- Better to buy Dogecoin then buy a Tesla
- NO LIMITS.
- ALL DIGITAL FUTURE.
- Digital over Physical Possessions
- DIGIBYTE.
- CHAINLINK.
- The Excitement of Starting from Zero
- HAPTIC INDUSTRIES NOW ACCEPTING CRYPTO AND BITCOIN
- In Praise of Crypto
- JUST BUY IT.
- Why I’m So Bullish on Bitcoin
- Bitcoin as the Simplest Cryptocurrency
- Why I bought (more) bitcoin
- Once You Become a Crypto Billionaire, Then What?
- Why Crypto is Under-Hyped
- The Joy of Speculation
- BITCOIN AND CRYPTOCURRENCY FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS
- Why I Bought Bitcoin
- Crypto Photography
- Crypto Thoughts
- On Making Money from Nothing
Soul Photography
Learn how to photograph with your soul:
- SHOOT WITH YOUR SOUL.
- How to Make Great Photos of People
- 5 Tips How to Embed Your Soul into Your Artwork
- Make Photos Which are a Direct Copy of Your Soul
- How to Shoot More Soulful Photos
- Why Photography is Good for the Soul
- The Soul of the Photographer
- How Do Images Affect Your Soul?
- How to Photograph With Your Soul
- How to Capture a Person’s Soul in a Photograph
- How to Shoot Photos With Soul
- Shoot with Your Soul
- Photography For the Soul
- Make Photos to Delight Your Soul
- The Soul of the Street Photographer
POEMS by KIM
YOU’RE THE BOSS POEMS
- LONGEVITY.
- GRATITUDE.
- MANDALORIAN
- FLY HIGHER #poem
- LIVE NOW!
- JOY
- ELEVATE YOUR SPIRIT
- UBERMAN
- SWOLE
- STAND
- POWER
- STEEL SPINE
- MONSTER
- JUGGERNAUT
- I Move
- ZEN ZONING.
- DARE.
- Life Isn’t Fair
- UPLIFT.
- Don’t Be Timid
- FLY HIGHER!
- Ain’t Nobody Stopping You!
- Seize Today!
- You Were Destined to Do Great Things, My Dear
- Fly Higher!
- CREATIVE DYNAMITE
- KILL EK
- ROOTS.
- MURALS.
- Keep Sailing
ESSAYS
Street Photo 101
ERIC KIM CHATGPT BOTS
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY STARTER KIT
- What is Street Photography? (2.4gb) / Download
- Black and White (2.3gb) / Download
- How to Shoot Street Photography (2.2gb) / Download
- Street Portraits 101 (1.9gb) / Download
- Conquer Your Fears (430mb) / Download
- Composition (460mb) / Download
- Masters (107mb) / Download
- Editing and Post-Processing (1.3gb) / Download
- Photography Projects (1.4gb) / Download
- Motivation (3.7gb) / Download
BECOME A PHOTOGRAPHY ENTREPRENEUR
Advice I would have given myself in photography, if I started all over again:
Until You Own Yourself You Can’t Be Free
Photography Entrepreneurship 101 by ERIC KIM De-lamify the future.
Photography Entrepreneurship 101 Presentation by ERIC KIM
ENTREPRENEURSHIP by KIM
ERIC KIM x HENRI NECK STRAP Enroll in my Udemy Course:
‘Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Photography Entrepreneurship’: Create Your Own Future >
Entrepreneurship Ideas
- InstaSlaves
- How to Become a Vlogger
- How to Build Your Own Self Brand
- SOLO MEDIA EMPIRE
- TIME LEVERAGE.
- How to Market Yourself in Photography
- How to Become More Ambitious
- Crypto Photography
- In Praise of Email Newsletters
- Propagate.
- Make Your Own Street Photography Blog
- Create the Information You Seek.
- Content over Technology
- How to Advertise Yourself as a Photographer
- CREATIVE WAYS TO USE YOUTUBE
- Photography Branding 101
- BUILD YOURSELF.
- Bet on Your Own Coin.
- The Photographer Should Also Make His/Her Own Music?
- Mix Your Photos and Videos
- JUST PUBLISH IT.
- EMPOWER OTHER PHOTOGRAPHERS.
- BECOME OUTSIDE THE BOX
- MOVE PEOPLE, MOVE PRODUCTS.
- SOCIAL MEDIA IS FRAGILE.
- Why Start a Photography Blog?
- Once You FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early), Then What?
- THE FUTURE IS PDF
- In Praise of Solo Photography Business Entrepreneurship
- LONGEVITY, DURABILITY AND SUCCESS
- Street Photography Philosophy Entrepreneurship
- YOU ARE THE PLATFORM
- JUST RISK IT.
- DON’T OPTIMIZE FOR THE ALGORITHM
- Scaleable Photography
- What Does it Mean to Become a Successful Photographer?
- 20 Photography Marketing, Branding, and Entrepreneurship Tips
- Create Your Own Social Media
- Individual Entrepreneurship
- YOU ARE THE ICON.
- BUILD!
- What is Success in Photography?
- EXTREME VISION
- Publish Fearlessly
- MAKE DOPE THINGS AND SHARE THEM WITH THE WORLD!
- THE AMBITIOUS PHOTOGRAPHER.
- PhotoLink
- Real World Applications
- You Are Your Own Ideal User
- What is Your Creative Vision?
- A More Dope, Prosperous Future for All Photographers
- CREATION & DISTRIBUTION.
- THE VALUE OF PHOTOS.
- How to Maximize Your Impact as a Photographer
- Why the World Needs More Bloggers
- DOMAIN EXPERTISE.
- The Joy of Speculation
- MAKE A NAME FOR YOURSELF.
- Propogate
- Meaningful Advantage or Not?
- PHOTO CREATOR.
- NOW IS YOUR DECISIVE MOMENT.
- I CANNOT BE IGNORED
- Photography Blogs are Highly *UNDERRATED*
- What is Your Competitive Advantage?
- Why 4K?
- Indirect Monetization
- The Future of Innovation in Photography
- Photography Innovation and Image Selection Idea: Let Google (YouTube) Suggested Thumbnail Pick Your Best Photo?
- How to Identify Your Competitive Advantage
- In Praise of Insanely Fast Wifi
- DIGITAL PUBLISHING IS KING.
- The Stoic-Entrepreneurship Mindset
- Marketing Tips for Photographers
- STARK DIFFERENTIATION
- MAXIMALIST
- Visual Entrepreneurship
- On Becoming a Full-Stack Visual Entrepreneur
- Real Photographers Don’t Use Instagram
- Brave New World of Blogging
- Don’t Go to Photography School
- Mass Success is a Failure?
- How to Maximize Your Archimedes Lever in Life
- Maximize Your Archimedes Lever
- How to Create Value Out of Nothing
- The Best Brand is No Brand
- What Do We Entrepreneurs *Really* Want?
- You Were Destined to Do Great Things
- Just Share Your Photos on Your Own Blog
- Your Blog is the Ultimate Form of Social Media
- The Future of Websites and Blogs
- Create a Company
- Money Photography Project
- WHY IT IS GOOD TO CHARGE MONEY FOR YOUR SERVICES AND PRODUCTS
- Google and YouTube SEO (Search Engine Optimization) 101: How Would You Type It?
- WHY RIGHT NOW IS THE BEST TIME FOR YOU TO START YOUR SIDE HUSTLE
- Digital Photography is the Future
- NEVER STOP EXPERIMENTING!
- WHAT IS INNOVATION?
- A Non-Ownership Future
- CONTROL OVER MONEY
- Economic Constraints Are Creative Constraints
- Become a Sole-Proprietor
- Entrepreneurship is a Mindset
- How to Master Mac
- The Future of Lifestyle
- Necessity is the Mother of Innovation
- Once We Have an Easy Life, Then What?
- Why I Don’t Read Comments
- YouTube SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for Photographers
- How to Become a Self-Employed Photographer
- How to Live Big With Little Money
- Why Blogging, Vlogging and Internet Media is More Important than Ever
- No Marketing, No Future
- Photography Marketing 101
- Google and YouTube are King
- Why I’m So Suspicious of Everyone Online and on the Internet
- How to Become More Notorious
- Kaizen Approach to Blogging
- How to Master Marketing
- CREATE WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE SEE MANIFESTED IN THE WORLD!
- Anti Silicon-Valley Thinking
- Your Name
- In Praise of WordPress
- NEVER STOP POSTING
- Your Future Portfolio is a Website
- Infinite Runway
- ERIC KIM ATTITUDE
- Financial Independence as a Road to Freedom of Speech?
- WHY OPEN SOURCE IS THE FUTURE
- Just Post It.
- Posts Are Products
- Photography Entrepreneurship Ideas
- YOU ARE KING.
- You’re Always in BETA MODE
- Build Your Own Media Empire
- WHY I DON’T MONETIZE MY YOUTUBE VIDEOS
- Why I Became an Entrepreneur
- The Uber-Photographer
- Create What You Would Like to See Manifested in the World
- Create the Future
- Entrepreneurship is Best During Uncertain Times
- Photography Entrepreneurship 101 Presentation by ERIC KIM
- Your Body is the Brand
- Your Name is Your Brand
- Create Your Own Social Media Platform
- BUILD IT OR BUY IT?
- Sell Yourself
- Create New
- Insta-Slaves
- YOU CANNOT FAKE ENTHUSIASM
- Why Hybrid is the Future
- Don’t Censor Yourself
- HOW I MASTERED MARKETING
- ERIC KIM BLOGS
- If Someone Offers You Help, You’re Stupid to *NOT* Take It.
- SEEK GREAT, NOT PERFECT.
- How I Became So Famous
- Let Reality Mould Itself to You
- ANTI ENTITLEMENT MENTALITY
- Live Your Life as If You Were a Billionaire
- HOW I THINK DIFFERENT
- Impact, Influence, Reach: The Three Pillars of Marketing
- ERIC KIM SCHOOL
- Classicism.
- MY PHILOSOPHY OF MONEY
- Money is Movement
- Elitism 2.0
- Mass Market or Luxury Market?
- Why You Must Market Yourself
- Why You Must Start an Email Newsletter
- How Laptops Can Change the World
- What Do You Want to Become?
- What is Really Holding You Back in Life?
- Why I Write: Writing as Meta-Thinking
- ADVERTISE YOURSELF
- Use Your First and Last Name
- How Blogging Can Change the World
- In Praise of Liberty
- How I Write in Markdown
- How I Became So Influential on YouTube
- REVERSE FLEX
- What a Time to Be Alive in Today’s Brave New World of Photography
- HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE YOURSELF FROM OTHERS
- YOU CHOOSE YOU
- My Life Photography Entrepreneurship Story
- WHY I DON’T BELIEVE IN COLLABORATION
- My Entrepreneurship Mindset
- YOU’RE THE HERO IN THIS GAME OF LIFE
- My Money Philosophy
- Why Brand and Market Yourself?
- PROFESSIONALISM IS FOR SUCKERS
- Just Share What Works for You
- How to Create Your Own Platform
- Living in a Post Monetary Society
- In Praise of Blogging
- The Entrepreneurial Lifestyle is the Best Lifestyle
- Algorithm Slavery
- ANTI VIEWS
- Entrepreneurship is The Goal
- The Art of Blogging
- IN PRAISE OF PURSUING YOUR PASSION
- How to Make Great Titles
- Sole Proprietorship
- Just Build It.
- VIA NEGATIVA
- PROMOTE YOURSELF
- Become a Full-Stack Entrepreneur
- How to Entertain Others
- My Experience Teaching My First Online Photography Creativity Workshop on Zoom
- Humans Aren’t Lazy
- One Shot.
- THE BRAVE SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH
- The Brave New COVID Lifestyle
- Start Your Own Business
- Minimum Viable Income ( MVI)
- TRAINING.
- WHY VIDEO?
- How to Become Bolder
- You’ve Always Already Been a Photography Entrepreneur!
- The Future is All Digital Everything
- Digital Sharecropping
- DO IT FOR YOUR PAST AND FUTURE SELF
- In Praise of Buffer and Redundancy
- ASKING FOR PERMISSION IS FOR SUCKERS.
- POST-MONETARY SOCIETY.
- Advertise Your Own Stuff
- THE FUTURE IS DIGITAL.
- Simulated Universal Basic Income
- Is Losing Followers a Good Thing?
- How to Add to Economic Activity
- DIGITAL CAPITALISM
- MONEY IS MOVEMENT
- Anything is Possible
- BRAVE NEW WORLD OF DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
- GENERATE
- How to Profit from Calamity
- Capitalism 2.0
- WHY I’M SO PASSIONATE ABOUT INFORMATION
- SOCIETY 2.0
- PHOENIX ENTREPENEURSHIP
- How to Make Art from Home
- BUY YOURSELF
- JUST BLOG IT.
- MARKET YOURSELF
- EXPENSIVE TALK
- SOCIAL MEDIA SLAVERY
- Who Are Your Ideal Followers?
- Why I Blog, Vlog, and Log
- Your Perspective is Irrefutable
- What are Your Hidden Powers?
- IMPACT MAXIMIZATION, not Profit Maximization
- Our Desire to Maximize Impact and Change
- 10 Rich Tips How to Make Money from Photography
- Create What You Would Love to Consume
- Publish is Pleasure
- Retire Now
- Do You Desire to Become the Best?
- Solo Entrepreneurship
- My Vision of Photography Entrepreneurship
- PUT YOUR NAME ON IT
- The Desire to Transcend Ourselves
- MONEY THOUGHTS
- How to Retire
- Via Negativa Productivity
- Why You Must Make Your Own Website
- Individuals over Companies
- Build Yourself
- Success is Survival
- Why You Shouldn’t Go to Photography or Art School
- How to Differentiate Yourself as a Photographer
- Surpass Yourself
- Can You Handle Extreme Freedom?
- Boutique or Mass Market?
- Proof of Concept
- Unified Field Theory for Photography
- Build a Company You’d Never Sell
- Play the Long Game
- Entrepreneurship and Art
- What is the Source of our Strength?
- What’s the Future for Photography?
- Full-Stack Visual Artist
- Why Scale?
- What is Your Unfair Advantage?
- Substance Marketing
- Share Your Dopeness with Others
- Frugality is Freedom
- Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for Entrepreneurship
- Don’t Follow or Predict Trends, Start Your Own Trend!
- If You’re Not Busy Growing, You’re Busy Dying
- Entrepreneurship born from Superabundance, not Need/Necessity
- Photography Entrepreneurship Philosophy
- How to Master Marketing in Photography
- Photography Entrepreneurship Tips and Ideas
- Is Hustle Sufficient Unto Success?
- Don’t do it for the money
- DIGITAL MARXISM
- Zen Entrepreneurship
- BOLDER IS BETTER.
- Streamers Shall Inherit the Earth
Photography Blogging
- Blogging is Public Meditations
- The Art of Blogging
- Give Me a Laptop and I Shall Move the World!
- The Future is Photography Blogging
- How to Become a GREAT Blogger
- If you can’t code, blog instead!
- Daily Blog of Activities
- How to Monetize a Blog Without Advertising
- How to Publish Yourself
- How to Blog
- The future of photography publishing is photography blogging.
- Why Become a Photography Blogger?
- Why You Must Become a Photography Blogger
- Why You Should Delete Your Instagram and Start Your Own Blog
Money
Self-Empowerment
- Life is Too Short to Be Negative
- Why You Must Follow Your Passion in Life
- How to Conquer Shyness
- Don’t Ask for Permission
- Onto the Next One
- Why You Must Self-Promote Yourself
- Why You Must Conquer Your Fears in Life
Marketing and Branding
- Why You Must Become a Photography Blogger
- Why Blog?
- Why You Must Self-Promote Yourself
- Create Substance, Not Content
- Photography Marketing and Branding 101
- How to Master Marketing in Photography
- 10 Tips How to Become a More Famous Photographer
Entrepreneurship Lifestyle
- Why Hustle?
- Why Save Money?
- Ascetic is Sexy
- Why You Must Become Self-Employed
- How to Push Yourself Beyond the Limit
- Is Location Independence Overrated?
Entrepreneurship Mindset
- How to Get Discovered
- Financial Independence
- Disregard Success or Failure; Always Attempt More!
- In Praise of Stubbornness
- Success is Personal Bravery
- Why You Must Become an Entrepreneur
- How to Brand and Market Yourself as a Photographer
- How to Conquer Haters
- How to Accumulate Capital
- Why Be Different?
- How to Master Marketing in Photography
- Don’t Play it Safe
- Why Blog?
- How to Be a More Productive Photographer
- How to Hustle
- True Productivity
- What Can Only You Do?
- Love Risk
- What is Success?
- Fill a Vacuum
- Think Big
- What is Your Dream in Life?
- 8 Blogging Productivity Tips
- Why Be Normal?
- How Much Suffering Are You Willing to Endure to Achieve Your Dreams?
Photography Entrepreneurship 101
- Don’t Sit Still!
- Bitcoin for Photographers
- Don’t Be Timid
- Why Start Your Own Photography Blog?
- Fill a Void
- 1,000 True Followers: How to Build Your Own Niche in Photography
- Photography Entrepreneurship 101: Why You Must Start Your Own Email Newsletter
- TURBO CREATION: Why a Maxed-Out MacBook Laptop is the Best Investment You Can Make for Photography Entrepreneurship
Life and Productivity Hacks
- My Ultimate Productivity and Life Hacks
- Life/Productivity Hack: Write (Type on a phone) While Walking on a Dynamic Treadmill
- ERIC KIM Life, Creativity, and Productivity Hacks
How to Make a Living from Your Passion
- Digital Nomad Photographer
- Build Your Own Instagram!
- How to Be More Ambitious
- Do It Your Way
- How to Measure Your Progress as a Photography Entrepreneur + Come Up With New Ideas
- How to Make a Living From Your Passion in Photography
Put a Dent in the Universe.
- Fear Disguised as Reason
- Distraction is the Enemy
- Innovate for the Sake of Innovating!
- Reality is Malleable!
- Stoic Entrepreneurship
- Against Self-Preservation
- The Purpose of Life is to Make New Stuff!
How to Succeed as an Entrepreneur
- You Have No Limits.
- Calculated Risk-Taking
- Invest in Yourself
- The Secret of Happiness: Shoot for the Moon!
- Moonshot Thinking
- Why We Should all Be Photography Entrepreneurs
- Memento Mori Entrepreneurship
- Why it is Better to Beg For Forgiveness than Ask For Permission
- How to Become a Digital Nomad
- Why You Must Own Your Own Platform
- First Principle Thinking for Photography Entrepreneurs
- How I Became a Digital Nomad
- Better to Beg For Forgiveness than Ask For Permission!
- Spurn Pleasing Others!
- Create Your Own Niche
- How to Gain More Exposure For Your Photography
- Intense Focus
- How to Conquer Your Fears as an Entrepreneur
- Define Yourself
- Let Dissatisfaction Drive You Forward!
- It Doesn’t Matter if Someone Else Has Done it Before!
- How to Succeed as a Photography Entrepreneur: Be Extremely Resourceful
- Open Source Business Model in Photography Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurship 101: Growth and Innovation Over Self-Preservation
- How to Create Value as a Photography Entrepreneur
- Why Become a Photography Entrepreneur?
- Why You Must Ignore Nay-Sayers to Succeed in Entrepreneurship, Business, and Life
The Modern Photographer: Tips, Strategies, and Tactics to Thrive as a Visual Artist in the Digital Age
Marketing, Branding, Entrepreneurship Principles For Success
MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER is your new philosophical and practical primer to succeed as a modern photographer in today’s digital world.
Business Mental Models
- How to Succeed as a Photography Entrepreneur: Be Extremely Resourceful
- Open Source Business Model in Photography Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurship 101: Growth and Innovation Over Self-Preservation
How to Monetize Your Photography
- Photography Entrepreneurship 101: INFLUENCE
- Should I Monetize My Passion for Photography?
- 10 Practical Photography Monetization Strategies: Pricing, Google SEO, & Entrepreneurship
- How to Make Money From Street Photography
Why Become a Photography Entrepreneur?
Take control of your own photographic destiny:
THE MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER
- CREATIVE CAPITALISM
- How to Monetize Your Photography
- 5 Practical Photography Career Tips and Advice
- 10x Thinking
- How to Hustle as a Photographer
- How to Become Your Own Master Marketer
- The ‘T’ Technique of Success
- Go Ahead and Sell Out
- What is Your Unique Voice?
- Why You Must Self-Promote Yourself
- What is Your Unique Angle as a Photographer?
- Photography Content Marketing 101
- Why You Must Become Your Own Publisher
- The Art of Cross-Pollination in Photography
Photography Entrepreneurship Articles
- Why You Shouldn’t Trust Your Pictures to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Flickr
- How to Make Money From Your Photography
- Photography SEO and Blogging: How to Become Number One on Google
- Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation
- Now is the Best Time to Be a Photographer
- PRODUCERISM
- What Is The Value of a Picture?
- Your Photographic Labor is Not Free
PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOPS 101
- Chapter 1. How to Make a Photography Blog
- Chapter 2. How to Price Yourself
- Chapter 3. How to Find Your Market
- Chapter 4. Why Teach Workshops?
- Chapter 5. How to Build Trust
- Chapter 6. How to Market Yourself
- Chapter 7: Why Should Someone Attend Your Workshop?
KEYS TO SUCCESS
- Why You Must Be a “Personality” in Order to Succeed
- THRIVE OR DIE.
- Impatience is a Virtue
- Create Your Own Category
- HOW TO DREAM BIG.
- Will Not or Cannot?
- Why Not?
- How to Think BIG
- How to Stay Ahead of the Curve
- How to Invest in Yourself
- The Two Camera Rule
- MEANINGFUL DIFFERENTIATION
- Advice For College Students
- How to Thrive in Uncertain Times
- CANNIBALIZE YOURSELF.
- DO AND GROW RICH
- Does Fear of Punishment Hold You Back?
- HOW TO GET MORE FOLLOWERS
- How to Innovate
- How to Build Your Own Empire
- YOU ARE ENTITLED TO HARD WORK.
- PICK YOURSELF.
- OWN YOUR PLATFORM
- 10 KEYS TO SUCCESS
Table of Contents
Learn how to make a living from your passion:
- Preface. BRAVE NEW WORLD OF PHOTOGRAPHY
- Chapter 1. How to Create Value
- Chapter 2. ZEN CAPITALISM
- Chapter 3. Scarcity
- Chapter 4. How to Brand Yourself
- Chapter 5. How to Build a True Following
- Chapter 6. The Blueprint to Success in Photography
- Chapter 7. HOW TO BE BOLD
- Chapter 8. How to Sell Out
- Chapter 9. GO AGAINST THE GRAIN
- Chapter 10. EXTREME ABUNDANCE
- Chapter 11. Photography Experience Economy
- Chapter 12. Why You Should Make Money for Your Photography
- Chapter 13. How to Become a Famous Photographer
Photography Business 101
How to Make Money with Photography
CAMERA MONEY USD by ANNETTE KIM - How to Charge More Money in Your Photography
- Why You Should Not Pursue Photography as Career
- Can Photography Make You Rich?
- How I Earn $200,000+ a Year From Photography
- How to earn $10,000 a month as a photographer
- Why you must be an expensive photographer
Photography Marketing 101
- Why Have More Followers?
- Why You Should Do Photography Work For Free
- How I Became an Internet Famous Photographer
- Photography Blogging Ideas
- Why You Should Promote Your Own Name
- How to Build a Following
- How to Stand Out as a Photographer.
- HOW TO GO VIRAL AS A PHOTOGRAPHER.
- How to Master Marketing
- How to Sell Yourself
How to Hustle.
- Entrepreneurial Advice to My 18 Year Old Self
- How to Become Insanely Productive.
- 5 Lessons From Hesiod on Hustling
Entrepreneurial Principles
- It is Better to Beg For Forgiveness Than Ask For Permission
- The Free Way to Become Rich
- JUST DO IT.
- 7 Steps: How to Make a Living From Your Passion
- How to Do What You Love for a Living
- How to Create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
- How to Fail Big
- How to Invest in Yourself
- How to Be Bold in Photography and Life
- Mission: Cover Your Rent and Food
- 1,000 True Fans
- The “10x Principle”: The Only Difference Between “Success” and “Failure”
- Make More Value Not Money
- We Live in a Photo Utopia
How to be a Full-time Photographer
- How to Make a Living From Photography
- The 3 Principles of Making Money With Photography
- Advice for Aspiring Full-Time Photographers
- Don’t Go Into Debt For Your Photography
- How to Brand Yourself as a Photographer
- Trust: The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed as a Photographer
Photography Blogging
- How to become rich from photography blogging
- How to Make a Living with Blogging
- 50 Blogging Tips For Beginners
- How to Start Your Own Photography Blog
- A Photographer’s Guide to SEO, Blogging, and Social Media
How to Teach Photography
- How to Become a Photography Teacher
- How to Teach a Street Photography Class
- Why I Teach Street Photography Workshops
Social Media
- Why I Deleted My Instagram
- The Social Media Blackbook for Photographers
- Why Do You Need More Likes or Followers?
- Instagram is Going to Be the Next Facebook
- Don’t Trust “Free” Photography Social Networks
How to Save Money
MONEY 101
- Just Follow the Money
- My Money Philosophy
- Eternal fame and glory over money
- The Trillion Dollar Question: How to Make Money on the Internet Without Advertising?
- Entrepreneurship that Doesn’t Involve Money-Making?
- Money Ain’t Real
- Making Money for Fun, Not to Get Rich
- Why Money?
PHILOSOPHY BY KIM
Essays by KIM
- How to Become a Philosopher
- Deep Vanity
- Time Will Tell
- What is Wisdom?
- LOOK *BEYOND*
- BECOMING MORE IMMORAL?
- ‘LUCK’ VS COURAGE
- ‘SKILL’ VS MERIT?
- Becoming Antifragile
- How to “Improve” Men
- The Art of Virtue
- How to Dominate
- JUST SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCES AND WISDOM WITH OTHERS.
- How to Get More Done in a Single Day – MEMENTO MORI PHILOSOPHY
- THINK FOR YOURSELF
- Cruel?
- GO DEMIGOD.
- How to Be Happy: Challenge and Danger Philosophy
- To Become Greater, You Must Become *LESS* Productive!
- Imperfect Beauty
- The Philosophy of Pleasure
- What Interests You?
- Anti Theory of Everything
- Become?
- STRONGER OR NOT?
- Carte Blanche Ideals
- CHOOSE JOY
- Don’t Judge Your Impulses
- On Becoming Less Human
- COWARDICE.
- The Philosophy of Futurism
- PHILOSOPHY IS VALUE-SETTING
- PHILOSOPHY IS NOT LIFESTYLE
- WHY STANDARDIZATION IS BAD.
- YOUR OWN TABLE OF VALUES.
- RETRO IS BAD.
- INSANELY LOFTY THOUGHTS.
- Strive to *Lose* Weight, Not *Gain* Weight
- DIABLO II ANALOGIES FOR REAL LIFE.
- If You Know Your *WHY* You Can Discover Any *HOW*
- Life is Too Short to Be Miserable
- What Consumption Takes Skill?
- OFF THE GRID.
- REALITY IS CRUEL.
- Pain is Information
- WHY REMOVE VULGARITY AND DISORDER FROM OUR EYES?
- AUTOTELIC.
- UNPLUG.
- How to Become a Philosopher
- SUBOPTIMAL IS OPTIMAL
- THE LUST FOR MORE.
- TO DO IS TO BECOME.
- IN PRAISE OF AGGRESSIVE.
- THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPTIMISM
- OUR PHILOSOPHICAL WILL TO EXISTENCE
- Is Hope a Vice?
- MOVE MEAN
- Carte Blanche Ideals
- One Interesting Thought
- What Lasts? What Doesn’t Last?
- A WOUND STIMULATES THE RECUPERATIVE POWERS
- Children & Purpose
- Thoughts on Becoming a Parent
- Where Does Our Desire to Upgrade Come From?
- WE ALWAYS NEED SOMETHING FURTHER TO ASPIRE TO.
- Self-Task Yourself an Awesome Mission in Life
- Differentiation vs Equalization
- My Passion to *Become* Something More
- No Aesthetic or Ethos is Forever
- What is Your Higher Purpose in Life?
- IT WILL NEVER SATISFY YOU.
- How to Decide
- Things You *Want* to Do vs Things You *MUST* Do
- Towards a More Beautiful Mode of Existence and Future
- EXTREME GRATITUDE.
- AMAP (As Much as Possible) or None.
- Why or How Does it Matter?
- The Philosophy of Time and Events
- How *Not* to Resent
- FORWARD LOOKING
- DOMAIN FLEXIBILITY.
- The Miracle of Human Growth
- EXTREME ADAPTATION.
- Why Plan?
- You Don’t Need to Justify Yourself
- The Philosophy of Ego
- True vs False Passions
- How to Achieve Tranquility
- On Making Your Own Philosophy
- The Purpose of Life is to Create New Life
- Think On!
- The Wisdom of Doing Nothing
- Congruency
- My Thoughts on Meditation
- The Philosophy of Purpose
- Emulate Yourself
- Good Fear, Bad Fear
- For the Betterment of Humanity or Just Yourself?
- What you *really* believe in and care for is manifested through your actions (or non-actions)
- Why Culture is Your Enemy
- YOUR EXPERIENCES ARE KING.
- LIFE IS INHERENTLY GOOD.
- Artistic, Physical, and Philosophical Muscles
- All New Experiences are Good Experiences
- What is the Purpose of X?
- UTILITY.
- Philosophy is a Luxury
- The Attempt is More Interesting than the Result
- Joyfulness vs “Happiness”
- Effectiveness Over Happiness
- Self Actualization
- MAXIMAL ENGAGEMENT
- Life & Pain
- On Living Every Day with No Regret
- Learn as if you’re going to live forever, live as if you’re going to die tomorrow
- Live Every Day Like it Were the Last Day of Your Life
- Self-Determination
- FALSE GRATITUDE vs REAL GRATITUDE
- HOW TO LIVE MORE
- THE UPSIDE OF TRAGEDY
- Satisfaction is a Sucker’s Game
- Supreme Repose
- WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE? According to ERIC KIM
- STUBBORN, FLEXIBLE
- EVERYTHING HAPPENS AS IT *SHOULD* HAVE HAD HAPPENED
- Good Addiction, Bad Addiction?
- What is the Best Life?
- The Philosophy of Thinking
- The Philosophy of Conspiracies
- Conspiracies
- Growth
- Skepticism.
- What Do You Really Want Out of Life?
- Seem or Be?
- Learn Through Pain
- Respect Yourself
- In Praise of Elitism
- Why Independent Thinking?
- I Will Never Die
- Bitter is Better
- The Genesis of Nihilism and Existential Dread
- The Ethics of Personal Enrichment
- Good vs Not Good
- Punished by Privilege
- Abstinence Over Moderation
- Just Leave Others Alone
- You Can Only Critique that Which You Truly Understand and Love
- ERIC KIM Critique of Metaphysics
- Only Trust Philosophers Who Deadlift
- Heuristic: If Someone Talks Shit About Others Behind Their Back, Most Likely They’re Also Talking Shit About You Behind Your Back
- Virtue is a Privilege
- What Are Your Life Goals?
- Honesty
- Why I’m Anti Moderation
- No Spite, No Malice.
- Ascending Life or Descending Life?
- Double Edged Sword
- Ignorance.
- Why I Don’t Trust “Nice Guys”
- Why You Must Share Your Opinion
- Selfish Isn’t Evil
- Wisdom is the Goal
- YOU ARE KING.
- MASTER YOURSELF
- What is “Good” for You is Often what is Bad for You
- Care.
- BITTERSWEET
- ONE REP MAX
- Morality and Ethics is the Snare
- BY HELPING YOURSELF, YOU BEST HELP OTHERS
- Insanity is Good.
- Think Deep.
- PHILOSOPHY IS THE FUTURE.
- Open Mind vs Closed Mind
- ENTHUSIASM IS GENIUS
- Towards a More Critical and Rigorous Line of Thinking
- How to Encourage and a Foster Independent and Free Thinking
- What is the Purpose of Life?
- WHY PHILOSOPHY IS SUPREME.
- Elitism.
- I Cannot Form an Opinion About Somebody Until I’ve Met Them in the Flesh
- ALL GENETICS ARE GOOD GENETICS.
- Happiness vs Freedom
- The Birth of a Hater
- My Way Isn’t the Right Way
- Walking as an Existential Thing
- Why I’m So Tolerant
- Mortal Gods
- THE HUMAN SPECIES
- Why I’m So Skeptical
- Just Follow the Money
- Why Selfish?
- WHY WE CANNOT BLAME OTHERS
- Why Are We So Anti Elitism?
- What Actually Interests You?
- How to Become Yourself
- SELF HATE
- Optimistic Fatalism
- Death is the Ultimate Creative Constraint
- FLUX.
- How to Think for Yourself
- FLESH
- How to Live the Best Life
- Why Live a Life Without Regrets?
- Why Plato Ruined Art and Aesthetics for Us
- Self Respect
- Hypocrite vs Contradict
- Ideals vs Reality
- Spaceship Philosophy
- What is Your Ideal Life?
- MY EXTREME GRATITUDE TOWARDS LIFE AND BEING ALIVE!
- Critique of Utilitarianism
- Don’t Treat Others the Way You Want to Be Treated
- The Eternal Recurrence of Tragedy and Joy in Life
- Elite Asceticism
- Why I Don’t Like Numbers
- Action and Reaction, Cause and Effect
- The Antidote to Nihilism: The Philosophy of Nothingness
- ERIC KIM Notes on Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- EXPLOIT CHAOS.
- WHY I DON’T BELIEVE IN GENETICS
- Self-Wisdom
- The Future Belongs to the Fearless
- INDIVIDUALISM
- Why Live Forever?
- THIS TOO WILL PASS.
- Why Education?
- How to Become Yourself
- Things Shouldn’t Go Back to the Way They Used to Be
- Why Am I So Cruel?
- The Great Joy of Existence
- Virtue for the Sake of Virtue
- NO DISDAIN.
- INTELLIGENT IGNORANCE
- A LIFE WITHOUT PAIN, DIFFICULTY OR TRAGEDY ISN’T A LIFE WORTH LIVING
- BITTER IS BETTER.
- EXPLOIT THE BEST FROM TRAGEDY AND LIFE
- DISREGARD FOR SELF-PRESERVATION
- PAIN.
- WHAT IF EVERYTHING IS NOT GONNA BE ALRIGHT?
- Tomorrow is Never
- Life is the Ultimate Creative Constraint
- EMBODIED REALITY
- BLACK SWAN
- THINGS WILL NEVER GO BACK TO THE WAY THEY USED TO BE
- What are you *really* afraid of?
- HAPPINESS ISN’T THE GOAL
- Philosophy is King
- Why is Selfish Evil?
- YOU’RE CONSTANTLY IN A STATE OF BECOMING
- ENTITLEMENT A SIN?
- NARCISSISM
- BE BRUTALLY HONEST WITH YOURSELF
- WHY FREE WILL?
- OBEY YOUR OPINION
- EGO IS GOOD.
- WHY IT IS GOOD TO BE INTO YOURSELF
- Seek the Good Pain
- Anti-Perfection in Photography, Art, and Life
- Can You Become an End into Yourself?
- WHY I LIVE
- Why I Hate Decline
- Why I Eat
- Why am I So Positive and Optimistic?
- EFFORT IS ENJOYMENT
- Never Stop Gaining
- TRUST YOURSELF
- A Life of Maximal Personal Independence
- What Do You Desire to Become?
- What Do I Want from Technology?
- Stratified Society
- Do You Love or Hate Reality?
- On the Brian, Body and Mind
- I’m Maximally Happy, Now What?
- Care over Fame
- ACTIVE NIHILISM
- Never Stop Subtracting
- How to Live a Happier and More Epic Life
- A Risker Life is a Better Life
- Only Work on Things You Can Imagine Doing for Eternity
- How to Maximize Your Happiness
- Influence
- The Gladiator Makes His Plans once He Enters the Ring
- Meditations on Meaning in Life
- There is Nothing More Interesting than Human Beings
- Is Hope a Vice?
- EGO
- Why Be Unique?
- Happiness is Metabolism Health and Strength
- You’re the Hero
- Is Productivity a Virtue or Vice?
- Why Do We Prize the Rare?
- The Joy of Uncertainty
- How Should I Best Use My Time and Life?
- A Life Without Pain or Suffering Isn’t a Life Worth Living
- Free or Unfree?
- What Do You Really Care For in Life?
- Anti-Satisfaction in Life
- Why Think?
- The Eternal Return
- Only Do What is Best for You!
- Truthiness
- Why Be Happy?
- Permissionless Living
- In Praise of Unconventional Wisdom
- Become the Change Which You Wish to See in the World
- Happiness
- Beyond Freedom
- Idolize People, Not Stuff
- What Makes You Stronger? What Makes You Weaker?
- Why Hate?
- The Secret of Happiness
- You’re Constantly in a State of Becoming
- Life is about Choices, Not Obligations
- Anti-Nihilism
- First, Do What is Best for You.
- Live Dynamic
- How to Prosper
- Is the Point of Life to Be Satisfied?
- SUPREME EFFORT OF WILL.
- How to Become more Idealistic
- Thrivival 101
- Create Yourself
- Non-Small
- Inspiration
- How to Live a Heroic Life: Dare the Heights!
- Human Augmentation
- Prune
- Happiness: Do What You Want to Do (And Don’t Do What You Don’t Want to Do)
- Avoid Vain (Empty) Pursuits in Life
- Modern Slavery
- Kill the Leeches
- Wisdom Augmentation
- Why We Need Friction in Life
- Straight Line Philosophy
- What’s Your End-Game in Life?
- Create Your Own Happiness Today
- Desire Both Pain and Pleasure in Life
- Try the Impossible
- SELF-RESPECT
- Anti-Social Extrovert
- Never Blame Anybody But Yourself
- Human Flourishing
- Simpler, Not Better.
- How to be Free
- Embrace the Extremes
- Cultivate Your Own Culture
- COURAGE.
- Thrivival
- Inner Power
- How to Live a Purposeful Life
- My Definition of Happiness
- Why Change is Good
- Why Work?
- How to Live the Happiest Possible Life
- The Two-Pronged Approach to Maximize Joy in Your Life
- You Always Have Another Option!
- INFINITISM
- Never Stop!
- What is Your Self-Directed Purpose in Life?
- Live Today Like it Were Your Last
- Do You Photograph to Live, or Live to Photograph?
- ARTIST-PHILOSOPHER
- Live Life to the Fullest!
- In Praise of Selfishness
- Why You Must Be a YAY-SAYER to Succeed in Entrepreneurship and Life
- Why I Love Walking
- Live Life Like a Video Game!
- Simple Luxuries in Life
- Treat Your Life Like a Fun Experiment!
- Only Prove it to Yourself
- You Don’t Always Need to Feel Joyful to Live a Fulfilling and Meaningful Life
- Life is Too Short to Be Bored!
- Money Cannot Destroy Boredom
- How to Find Inspiration in Life
- Why You Must Ignore Haters to Succeed and Win in Life
- An Active Life is a Happy Life
- My Simple Joys in Life
- Never Stop Striving
- How to Motivate Yourself in Life
- How to Be Optimistic in Life
- How to Dictate Your Purpose in Life
- In Praise of a Dynamic Life
- PURPOSE.
- How to Enjoy Life
- Photography Therapy
- How to Conquer Regret
- Take Your Play Very Seriously.
- How to Prosper
- Memento Vivere
- Destroy in Order to CREATE
- Trust Your Body More Than Your Mind
- Make Photos to Make Meaning in Your Life
- Seek Knowledge, Not Information
- The Purpose of Human Life
- How to Overcome Impedence
- Why I Love Death
- How to Be Centered in the Eternal Now
- How to Be Happy
- Why Do You Care What Others Think of You?
- Why I’m Happy
- Why?
- Why I’m So Prolific
- How to Reduce LAG in Life
Masters of Philosophy »
Personal Philosophy »
Stoicism »
- How to Be a Stoic Street Photographer
- How to Use Photography as Self-Therapy
- How to Free Your Soul From Disturbance
Zen Philosophy »
- How to Be a Zen Street Photographer
- Zen in the Art of Street Photography
- How to Find Tranquility in Your Photography
Life Lessons »
Learn more: Start Here >
STOICISM 101
Become invincible:
- Introduction to Stoicism
- STOIC FLEX.
- Becoming Spartan
- MAKE IT ENTERTAINING FOR YOURSELF!
- Stoic Aesthetics?
- The Philosophy of Ugliness
- Bad Stoicism
- Stoicism 2.0
- Becoming Stoic
- LEMONADE.
- Why Arguments and Confrontations Are Good
- “I’m Over It”
- How to Deal With Miserable People
- How to Become a Stoic
- How to Ignore
- Pretend like you didn’t hear them
- Bad Stoic Strategies
- The Stoic Way of Dealing With Unpleasant or Miserable People
- HOW TO BECOME A STOIC
- Stoicism Stunts Our Power?
- Stoicism is Mental Resistance Training
- STOIC STRATEGIES.
- How to Become Fearless
- Extreme Stoicism
- Ethics are Aesthetic
- Indifference to Pain or Suffering
- When is Stoicism Good? When is Stoicism Bad?
- Why Others Criticize or Insult You
- True Difficulty
- What if Covid Never Goes Away?
- SUPER STOIC
- Anti-Hedonism
- HOW TO CONQUER FEAR
- ANTI FEAR
- It is the Duty of the Strong to Help the Weak
- The Goal is to Become Stronger
- HYPER STOICISM
- HYPER HERO
- TRANSFORM EVERY DOWNSIDE INTO AN UPSIDE
- STOICISM x Child’s Mind
- The Art of Manly Virtue
- Resistance Makes Us Stronger!
- DON’T LIVE IN FEAR
- Emotions are Good
- Conquer Your Anger
- BLACK EAGLE
- DIFFICULTY AWAKENS YOUR INNER-GENIUS.
- STOICISM IS ARMOR FOR THE MIND
- The Spartan-Stoic Lifestyle
- How I Conquered Fear
- HOW TO CURE FEAR.
- LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.
- The Upside of Poverty
- How I Became Me
- THE WILL TO POWER, OR THE WILL TO FEAR?
- ATTACK REALITY
- Living *THROUGH* History
- How to Fear Less
- Fear is the Ultimate Contagious Disease
- STOICISM FOR DUMMIES
- Don’t Be Scared!
- WHAT CAN YOU CONTROL, WHAT CAN YOU NOT CONTROL?
- HOW YOU CAN CONQUER FEAR
- YOU’RE STRONGER THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE.
- EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
- WHY AREN’T THINGS WORSE?
- My Philosophy on Masculinity
- A Riskier Life is a Better Life #philosophy #stoicism
- How to Creatively Flourish in Life
- Introduction to Stoicism
- How to Become Stronger
- How to Conquer Depression With Photography
- What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger
- How to Respect Yourself
- How to Believe in Yourself
- How to Steer Fear
- How to Conquer Pessimism
- How to Conquer Anxiety
- How to Overcome Your Fear of People
- How to Be Optimistic
- Why I Don’t Take My Anger Seriously
- HOW TO BECOME MORE POWERFUL
- POSITIVITY.
- HOW TO BECOME SUPERHUMAN
- How to Give a Fuck Less
- ALL IN.
- Why I Cut My Dad Out of My Life.
- Your iPhone Only Has 5% Battery Left.
- How not to give a FUCK about your REPUTATION
- WHAT IS A HUMAN?
- HAPPINESS.
- The Regret Minimization Framework in Photography and Life
- How to Be a HERO
- Conquer Your Fears by Making Fear Your Slave
- Rule Circumstances; Don’t Let Your Circumstances Rule You
- How to Love Yourself
- How to Turn Shit into Gold
- Your Parents Fuck You Up
- Immortality
- What Kills You Makes You Stronger
- How to Be Patient
- How to Conquer Anger
- How to Bounce Back in Life
- How to Overcome Resistance
- Nothing Unlimited is Good; Nothing Good is Unlimited
- You Have No Limits
- Can 1’s and 0’s Hurt You?
- The Envious Moment is Flying Now
- Tomorrow We’ll Sail the Wide Seas Again
- How to Forgive Others
- Focus on Your Actions, Not the Results
- Everything Will Be Alright
- How to Be a Stoic Street Photographer
- How to Be a Spartan Photographer
- How to Overcome Your Fears in Life
- How to Stop Worrying in Life
- How to Use Photography as Self-Therapy
- How to Free Your Soul From Disturbance
- 3 Stoic Techniques that Can Help You Gain Tranquility
- Can People Weaker than You Hurt You?
- Does a Doctor Get Angry at a Crazy Patient?
- Own Nothing
The Stoic Masters
Learn from the master stoics:
The Philosophy of Happiness
Happiness thoughts:
- What Will Make You Happier?
BOLD LIVING. - HAPPINESS IS ALWAYS ASPIRING FOR MORE.
- How to Boost Your Mood
- How to Maximize Your Happiness
- Life Without Photography is Not a Life Worth Living
- 10 Tips to Be Happier and More Loving in Life
- How to Find Happiness in Your Photography
- How to Find Satisfaction in Your Photography
- 30 Tips to Conquer G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome)
- 55 Tips to Be Happier in Life
- On the Shortness of Life
- Small is Beautiful
- Photography (and Life) is About Subtraction, Not Addition
- Why Envy Any Other Photographer?
- How to Be Happy in All Circumstances
- Desire the Life You Already Have
- Should You Shoot if You Don’t Want To?
- Live a Life of Leisure
- Good Enough
- 28 Lessons I’ve Learned From Life
- 27 Lessons I’ve Learned About Photography and Life
- 26 Lessons Life Has Taught Me About Street Photography
- Desire
- Good Enough
- Things I Am Grateful For
- How to Die Without Regrets
- 12 Scientifically Proven Ways to Have More Happiness in Street Photography
- Having No Choices is the Ultimate Freedom
- How to Be Grateful For What You Have
ETHICS by KIM
Your own personal code of ethics:
- Stubborn Geniuses
- Avoid Misery
- What We Hate
- HOW I DEAL WITH RACISM
- How to Become a Great Man
- BETTER TO FOLLOW YOUR GUT AND BE WRONG THAN DISOBEY YOUR GUT AND BE RIGHT
- “I CAN’T BE FUCKED.”
- Carte Blanche Ethics
- Toxic People
- Why Are We So Into Other People
- Just focus on yourself and your own life
- Perfect morals and ethics is following your own gut
WHY ETIQUETTE? - NO BLAME, JUST CAUSE AND EFFECT.
- Ignorance Takes Courage
- TREAT OTHERS CARTE BLANCHE
- Don’t give people what they want or what you *think* they want, give them what you think they *should* have.
- Anti Small
- Disdain or Admiration?
- Beware Those With Good Intentions
- STUBBORN x FLEXIBLE
- ETHICS ARE VIA NEGATIVA
- OBEDIENCE & DISCIPLINE
- The Motive of Criticism
- Ethics are Social
- Anti Role Models
- What is Greed?
- On Having the Courage to Make Your Own Decisions
- How *NOT* to Get Duped or Suckered
- Why Help Others?
- The Duty of the Strong
- Why I’m So Intolerant Towards Intolerance
- The Ethics of Criticizing Others
- Consult Your Own Conscience
- The Ethics of Shit Talking
- The Ethics of Personal Enrichment
- I’m Easily Distracted
- On Forming Your Own Opinion
- ERIC KIM Philosophy of Tolerance
- Tolerance
- Aesthetics are Ethics
- Morality and Ethics
DESIGN THOUGHTS
- INSANELY LIGHTWEIGHT
- MORE AGGRESSIVE DESIGN
- COMPROMISE DESIGN.
- ‘WASTEFUL’?
- Tight vs Loose
- Thick vs Thin
- Why Lamborghini is No Longer Interesting to Me
- DESIGN PHILOSOPHY IS AN ETHOS.
- LESS SURFACE AREA.
- ANTI IN-BETWEEN
- CLASSIC/TIMELESS IS BORING.
- Photographers are Designers
- Why Perfect?
- Beautiful but Boring
- AGGRESSIVE DESIGN.
- DESIGN IS KING.
- WHY DESIGN?
- THE RAGING BULL.
- BARE BONES.
- The Best Car for Thinking
- Zen Aesthetics
- Why Minimalism?
- SPARTAN DESIGN.
- Generic Design
- An Elite Aesthetic
- Not Hateful Design
- New Forward Facing Design vs Retrospective and Nostalgic Design
- Depressing Design vs Uplifting Design
- The Best Design Towards What Ends?
- Exciting or Boring Design?
- On Design & Photography
- A Designer Desires to Design and Create Things!
- Delightful Technology and Design
- Dynamic Aesthetics
- Design vs Brand Prestige
- Classic Proportions, Modern Design
- Why Does Design Matter?
- The Best Design
- MUSCULAR DESIGN.
- Camera Design
- Watch Design
SOCIOLOGY by KIM
- Sociology vs Philosophy?
- SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY
- FLAT SOCIETY
- National vs Individual Pride
- Dystopia is a Utopia
- A NEW SOCIETY.
- THE DEEP INDIVIDUAL.
- Why is It So Hard for Us To Follow Our Gut and Instinct?
- Sociology of Comparison
- Mimetic Desires
- Interest in Humans or Objects?
- Social Stochastic Resonance
- How to Live Bravely in Today’s Brave New World and Society
- Arousal
- Is Humanity on the Decline?
- Social Innovations
- Society *Shouldn’t* Be Fair
- Why Society Doesn’t Want Free Thinkers and Free Livers
- Our New Soft Society
- HARD SOCIETY
Sociological Theory
- TOLERANCE AND INTOLERANCE
- POST-MONETARY SOCIETY.
- Simulated Universal Basic Income
- DIGITAL CAPITALISM
- Capitalism 2.0
- SOCIETY 2.0
Photography and Sociology
- Street Photography Sociology
- Visual Sociology through Street Photography
- How You Can Apply Sociology to Your Street Photography Projects
- 10 Things Sociology Has Taught Me About Street Photography
MOTIVATION BY KIM
Become more:
- PHOTOGRAPHY INSPIRATION IDEAS
- Setbacks are a motivator, a turbocharger
- THERE IS SO MUCH OF THE WORLD TO PHOTOGRAPH!
- The Philosophy of Optimism
- What Slows You Down?
- Meta Editing
- Move Mass
- What’s “Cool”?
- No In-Between
- Independent Aspirations
- COMPULSION.
- *BEYOND* PERFECT.
- BUY BOOKS WHEN YOU WANT TO BUY GEAR.
- How to Make More Photos
- JUST MAKE MORE PHOTOS.
- MY DESIRE TO CAPTURE IT ALL.
- VISUAL DETOX.
- Photography is Our Addiction
- A BILLION PHOTOS
- THE MOTIVATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER.
- CURIOUS.
- PROVOKE.
- How to Do More Photography
- PRACTICE.
- TURBOCHARGE YOURSELF, TURBOCHARGE OTHERS.
- LIFE IS ALL UPSIDE, NO DOWNSIDE.
- PHOTO TURBO THOUGHTS
- No Such Thing as Good or Bad; Simply Stimulating or Not Stimulating
- The Best Genre is No Genre
- The Key to Photographic Motivation
- Pacifying Media, Motivational Media
- Our Hunger for New Experiences
- Mental Motivation
- ALL ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY.
- The Photographer as Creator
- Create *BEYOND* Yourself
- Let Your Curiosity Drive Your Photography
- LOVE YOUR PHOTOS.
- Abstract Monochrome Photography
- SHOOT WITHOUT THINKING.
- Just Have Fun With Photography
- Wu-Wei Effortless Motivation
- CONSISTENCY x NOVELTY
- Easily Bored?
- Face Photography
- How to Become More Self-Motivated in Your Photography
- YOUR OWN PHOTOS ARE THE BEST PHOTOS.
- On Sharing Your Favorite Photos
- UBERABUNDANCE.
- Peak Photographic Productivity
- When to Review Your Photos
- Serotonin and Photos
- The Photos You Have Yet Shot are Your Most Important Photos
- 3 Tips How to Master Photography
- Do You Like Your Own Photos?
- The Beauty of Mundane, Everyday Moments
- Reasons Why to Be Optimistic About the Future
- A Photography-Full Future
- The More You Shoot, the Better
- How Many Photos Should You Shoot Everyday?
- Why Do We Love Motion?
- Now is Your Chance to Shoot History in the Making
- Photo by Photo
- How and Why Photography Remains So Interesting to Me
- How to Conquer Your Inner Photographic Critic
- Thoughts on HDR Photography
- New Year, New Photos
- Why Exhibit Your Photos?
- Photography is Visual Poetry
- What’s the Purpose of Art?
- Why Do We Photographers Have Such a Hard Time Staying Inspired and Motivated?
- On Becoming a More Optimistic Photographer
- Philosophy of Weather
- How to Become a More Optimistic Photographer and Human
- You Are a Creative Photographer
- JUST SHARE YOUR ARTISTIC PROCESS WITH OTHERS.
- What Motivates Me to Shoot?
- How to Maximize Yourself to the Fullest
- HOW TO MOVE AND MOTIVATE PEOPLE
- Autotelic Photography
- The more I go out and photograph the world, the more interesting and beautiful the world becomes
- Why Photographers Have Such Low Self-Esteem
- ERIC KIM MOTIVATION
- Why Am I So Unmotivated?
- EVERY DAY IS A NEW DAY
- WHY ARE YOU SO UNMOTIVATED?
- Movement is Motivation
- How to Motivate Myself to Make New Photos
- Never Stop Optimizing
- How to Help and Motivate Others
- Feed On Your Own Photos; Let Them Nourish You!
- Competition is for Suckers
- A Future Without Travel
- How Google Can Improve Your Photography
- DEVELOP YOURSELF.
- NEVER STOP MOVING!
- How I Self-Motivate Myself
- Every Day the Sun is Birthed Anew
- A Life Without Photography Isn’t a Life Worth Living
- WIN.
- 8 Practical Photography Assignments for You
- Tabula Rasa, Blank Slate, Carte Blanche
- RELENTLESS
- LIFE IS THE ULTIMATE RPG
- HYPER VIGOR
- FRESH AIR PHOTOS
- WHO IS GONNA THRIVE IN TODAY’S BRAVE NEW WORLD?
- ARTISTIC OPTIMISM
- PASSION, not Discipline
- Better Bad Photos than No Photos
- The Empowering Feeling of Failure
- To Be Human is to Move
- Enjoy the Process
- Better Bad Photos than No Photos
- Why Keep Making New Art and Photos, Indefinitely?
- Photography Motivation: What if There is Nothing Interesting to Photograph?
- Move First, Motivation Later
- Motivation Follows the Action
- In Praise of Heroes
- 5 Tips How to Boost Your Creativity
- How to Have Inspiration to Take Photos in the Suburbs
- Anything that Motivates You to Move is Good!
- The Productive Photographer is the Happiest Photographer!
- Make Today Count!
- How to Break Through Photographer’s Block
- The Joyful Photographer
- The Dancing Photographer
- The Kaizen Process of Gradual Self-Improvement in Photography
- It is Your Duty to Make Beautiful Pictures!
- Making Pictures IS Happiness!
- NO EXCUSES.
- The Pomodoro Photography Technique
- The ABC of Photography
- Just Shoot It.
- How to Change the World With Photography
- How to Find Inspiration in Photography and Life
- How to Overcome Resistance
- Create Against the Past
- How I Motivate Myself to Make Photos
- Wear Your Camera Like a Necklace or Bracelet
- Have Your Photos Come to You
- How to Level Up in Your Photography
- How Not to Give a Fuck of What Others Think of You
- How to Overcome Procrastination in Your Photography
- How to Reinspire Your Photography
- What is Your Mission in Photography and Life?
- How to Overcome Photographer’s Block
- Be a Photographer Now
- How to Overcome Boredom with Photography
- Never Stop Growing as a Photographer
- Why Do You Need “Inspiration” to Shoot?
- Just Shoot.
- 5 Things to Do If You’ve Lost Your Passion for Photography
- How to Have Unshakeable Confidence in Yourself
- Don’t Give Up On Your Dream
- Don’t Waste Your Potential
- Unlock Your Potential
- Empower Others With Your Photography
- Why You Shouldn’t Follow Your Passion in Photography
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY 101
- How to Become More Stealth in Street Photography
- HOW TO BECOME A BETTER STREET PHOTOGRAPHER
- Street Photography Mastery
- How I Became the Greatest Street Photographer Alive
- Antifragile Photography
- How to Conquer Your Fears in Street Photography
- INSANELY AUDACIOUS AND BOLD
- 5 Simple Street Photography Techniques
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHER.
- The Street Photographer Ideal
- 50 Street Photography Tips, Techniques and Ideas
- Street Photography Values
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHY DOESN’T NEED TO HAVE PEOPLE IN IT.
- Why Street Photography is So Great
- WHY BECOME A STREET PHOTOGRAPHER?
- Society Photography, Not “Street” Photography
- How to Street Photography
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHY OPTIONALITY.
- 10 Street Photography Tips
- The Street Photographer as the Apex Photographer
- Street Photography & Adrenaline
- STREETTOGS STARTING GUIDE
- 50 Street Photography Tips by ERIC KIM
- What I Wish I Knew If I Started Street Photography All Over Again
- Photograph like it’s not a big deal
- Suburb Street Photography
- What is Our Personal Motivation Behind Street Photography?
- WHY I’M SO PASSIONATE ABOUT STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- Personal Street Photography
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHY AS A PRACTICE.
- Pandemic Street Photography
- AIRPORT STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- How to Shoot Street Photography Right Now
- Towards a More Independent Street Photography Approach
- How Street Photography Improves Your Life
- How to Tell Stories in Your Street Photos
- Face Street Photography
- How to Start Shooting Street Photography
- How to Shoot Street Photography During a Pandemic
- 7 Street Photography Assignment Ideas
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY STARTER KIT
Master street photography with STREET PHOTOGRAPHY STARTER KIT.
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY 101
If you’re new to street photography, start here:
- The Ultimate Street Photography Tutorial
- Street Photography 101 Tutorial
- 100 Lessons From the Masters of Street Photography
- How to Shoot Street Photography
Brave New Street Photography
- 10 Lessons I’ve Learned from Street Photography
- SKIN IN THE GAME: STREET PHOTOGRAPHY ETHICS
- The Beauty of Mundane Happenings
- Humans and Environments
- Define Street Photography for Yourself
- Street Photography of People You Know
- Street Photography Composition Ideas
- How to Shoot Political Photography
- Social Photography
- Street Photography Lifestyle
- Why Street Photography is So Fun
- Street Photography for Mental Health
- How to Become a Street Photography Sharpshooter
- How to Shoot Kid Street Photography
- STREET PHOTO MANUAL
- Street Photography is an Approach, a Technique, and an Ethos
Street Photographs
- How to Shoot Street Photography with Dads and Kids
- HOW I BECAME SUCH A GREAT STREET PHOTOGRAPHER
- Use Quarantine as an Opportunity to Pick up Film Photography
- Hong Kong Street Photography by ERIC KIM
Street Photography Philosophy
- Brave New Street Photographer
- How to Talk to Strangers
- How to Shoot More Dynamic Street Photographs
- WHY I LOVE ARCHITECTURE AND STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- Why Street Photography Brings Me So Much Joy
- How to Shoot Street Photography Video
- How to Shoot Street Photography in the Brave New COVID World
- The Future for Street Photography
- ALL STREET PHOTOGRAPHS ARE GOOD PHOTOGRAPHS.
- AMERICA by KIM
- Street Photography in a Non-Travel World?
- How to Shoot Street Photography During COVID-19
- You’ve Never Shot Photography Until You’ve Shot Street Photography
- Xenophilia: Love of Strangers
- My Street Photography Philosophy
- Why Street Photography is Important for Society
- HOW STREET PHOTOGRAPHY CAN CHANGE THE WORLD
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHY IS ABOUT LOVING ALL PEOPLE
- Real Life People vs Abstract People
- Is it OK to Piss Off or Annoy People in Photography?
- ANTI PURISM IN STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- Street Photography of People You Know
- Street Photography is Courage
- MY STREET PHOTOGRAPHY PHILOSOPHY
- Street Photography Motivation from ERIC KIM
- I AM STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- WHY TALK TO STRANGERS?
- Why Street Photography is Supreme
- How to Make Great Street Photos
- Street Photography Ideas by ERIC KIM
- Why Street Photography?
- The Street Photographer’s Soul
- How to Become a Fearless Street Photographer
- Black and White or Color for Travel Street Photography?
- Street Photographers are Adrenaline Junkies
- How to Master Street Photography
- Almost Anything and Everything is Street Photography
- Advice for Aspiring Street Photographers
- Street Photography Sociology
- Why There’s No Right or Wrong Way to Shoot Street Photography
- The Street Photographer as a Soldier-Artist
- Why Street Photography is the Best Photography
- Street Photography is a Way of Life
- How to Conquer Anxiety
- Street Photography is Art with People
Street Photography Articles
- How to Edit and Sequence a Photography Project
- Practical Street Photography Tips
- 5 Simple Street Photography Assignments
- Street Photography Composition Ideas
- 10 Advanced Street Photography Tips and Techniques
- Daredevil Photography
- Lingering Technique: How to Work the Scene in Street Photography
- Why Photograph People?
- No Guilt in Street Photography
- Street Photography is Hard.
- Street Photography Inspiration
- 5 Simple Tips How to Shoot Better Street Photos
- 10 Super Simple Street Photography Tips
- How to Shoot Head-On in Street Photography
- The Decapitation Technique in Street Photography
- Be Brazen in Street Photography
- How to Shoot Better Street Photographs
- Drive-By Technique in Street Photography
- How to Shoot a Wedding Like a Street Photographer
- Street Photography is 80% Risk Taking!
- 10 Simple Street Photography Principles
- 5 Fundamental Street Photography Principles
- 10 Street Photography Assignment Ideas
- How to Tell Stories in Street Photography
Street Photography Techniques
- How to Shoot Head-On Street Photography
- Street Photography Composition Tips
- In Praise of Street Vlogging
- How to Shoot Video Street Photography
- Street Photography Technique: The Stalker Technique
- Photography Technique: Take Photos While Walking!
- New Tokyo GoPro Fusion POV Street Photography YouTube Videos
- ERIC KIM Street Photography Tips and Technique
- The 360 Degree Technique in Street Photography
- How to Work the Scene in Street Photography
- How to Shoot Layers and the Bookend Technique in Street Photography
- Street Photography Technique: GET CLOSE & FILL THE FRAME + GOLDEN DIAGONAL COMPOSITION
- Street Photography Techniques: The 3D Scan/360 Degree Technique (Shooting Head-on) and Holding Your Camera High in the Air and Point Downwards (and Use Your LCD Screen to Frame the Scene)
- The Walking Alongside Someone and Shooting Until They Notice You Street Photography Technique
- SUPER INNOVATIVE NEW GOPRO STREET PHOTOGRAPHY POV EXPERIENCE: Cutoff Technique, Shooting Head-on with Flash, and Slow-Motion on RICOH GR II at 28mm
- How to Shoot a Street Portrait: Tips, Technique, and GoPRO POV Tutorial
- Street Photography Technique/Composition: Leading Lines and Crouching Down Low
- How to Shoot Layers in Street Photography: GoPRO POV Video Composition Tutorial
- How to Shoot Street Photography with a 24mm Lens
- The Cutoff Technique in Street Photography
- THE CUTOFF TECHNIQUE IN STREET PHOTOGRAPHY: GOPRO POV KYOTO ERIC KIM
Street Photography Ideas
- Street Photography is Like Fishing
- Why Do We Feel Nervous Shooting Street Photography?
- Street Photography Philosophy
- Everyday Street Photography
- Why Street Photography?
- Why You Must Follow Your Own Voice in Street Photography
- How to Overcome Guilt in Street Photography
- 5 Dynamic Off-Center Street Photography Compositions
- 5 Night Street Photography Composition Tips
- How to Talk to Strangers
- How to Overcome Fear in Street Photography
- Street Photography Empowerment
- Eric Kim’s Top 30 Street Photography Tips
- How to Shoot Street Photography on a 35mm Lens
- 7 Tips How to Conquer Your Fears of Shooting Street Photography
- Street Photography Lifestyle
- How to Use Tactful Flattery in Street Photography
- How to Conquer Social Anxiety With Street Photography
- Street Photography Secrets Debunked
- 10 Dynamic Street Photography Tips
- The Benefits of Shooting Street Photography
- The Street Photography Manifesto
- My Experience Shooting Digital Medium Format in Street Photography
- Why Do You Feel Guilty Shooting Street Photography?
- Improvise in Street Photography
- Ethics in Street Photography
Street Photography Composition Techniques
- 10 Inspirational Sergio Larrain Compositions
- 5 Henri Cartier-Bresson Photography Composition Lessons
- Street Photography Technique: Overlap
- Street Photography Composition Lesson: Chunking
- The Fishing Technique in Street Photography
STREET NOTES.
Push yourself out of your comfort zone with STREET NOTES: Mobile Edition.
STREET NOTES PAPER EDITION ON AMAZON >
LEARN FROM THE MASTERS OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
Timeless wisdom from the masters of street photography.
FUNDAMENTALS OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- The Psychology of Street Photography
- Fundamentals to Street Photography
- How to Conquer Fear in Street Photography
- Street Photography Secrets
- NEO STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- Street Photography Lenses
- Street Photography Settings
- Street Photography Techniques
- Street Photography Ideas
- CLOSER.
- CLEAN BACKGROUND
Street Photography Inspiration
- How to Enter the Street Photography Zone
- Simple Street Photography Tips
- How to Defuse Confrontations in Street Photography
- How to Make Controversial Street Photographs
- Street Photography Project Ideas
- How to Make Good Street Photos
- Is Defining “STREET PHOTOGRAPHY” a Good Thing?
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHY “RULES” TO BREAK
- Walking Meditation in Street Photography
- 10 COMMANDMENTS OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- Street Photography is Improvisation
- In Praise of Randomness in Street Photography
- How to Become a Fearless Photographer
- How to Make Better Street Photographs
- 12 ERIC KIM Street Photography Assignments
- Meaningful Street Photography
- 25 Street Photography Tips by ERIC KIM
Beginner Street Photography Articles
Get started in street photography:
Definitions in Street Photography
- Visual Sociology Street Photography
- Why Street Photography?
- What is Street Photography?
- Why Shoot Street Photography?
- The History of Street Photography
How to Shoot Street Photography
- How to Shoot Street Photography
- Street Portraits 101 by ERIC KIM
- The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Street Photography
- 70 Street Photography Tips for Beginners
- 15 Street Photography Techniques and Tips
- A Letter to My 18 Year Old Self: If I Started Street Photography All Over Again
Street Photography Equipment
- What is the Best Camera for Street Photography?
- What is the Best Lens for Street Photography?
- What to Consider When Buying a Camera
How to Conquer Your Fears in Street Photography
See all articles to conquer your fears >
Intermediate Street Photography Articles
Take your street photography to the next level:
- How to Become a Stoic Street Photographer
- The 10 Principles of Good Street Photography
- 7 Tips How to Capture “The Decisive Moment” in Street Photography
- The Importance of Social Skills in Street Photography
- The Street Photography Code of Ethics
- “Taking” vs “Making” Photos in Street Photography
- Follow Your Gut in Street Photography
- 10 Reasons Why You Should Never Chimp While Shooting Street Photography
Advanced Street Photography Articles
Find deeper meaning in your street photography:
- How to Master Street Photography
- How to Be a Zen Street Photographer
- Personal Street Photography
- The “Bookend” Technique in Street Photography
- Street Photography is Self-Therapy
- Zen in the Art of Street Photography
- Taoism and Street Photography
- How to Find Your Style in Street Photography
- Follow Your Gut in Street Photography
Street Photography Tips & Technique
Learn how to shoot on the streets:
- 70 Street Photography Tips for Beginners
- 15 Street Photography Techniques and Tips
- Flash Street Photography Guide
- Take More Risks
- Don’t Think About Composition When You’re Shooting Street Photography
- 7 Tips How to Capture “The Decisive Moment” in Street Photography
- 7 Tips How to Make a Great Street Photograph
- Tokyo Street Photography Contact Sheets
- Video: Why it is Important to “Work the Scene” in Street Photography
- Shoot Less, Better
- Make Shitty Photos
- Shoot Effortlessly
- 10 Tips for Candid Street Photography
- 103 Lessons I’ve Learned From Street Photography
See all street photography tips and techniques >
Street Photography Guides
In-depth guides on street photography:
- How to Shoot Candid Street Photography
- How to Shoot Street Portraits with Permission
- How to Shoot Black and White Street Photography
- How to Shoot Color Street Photography
- How to Shoot Street Portraits with Permission
- How to Shoot Layers in Street Photography
- How to Shoot Urban Landscapes
Street Photography Equipment
The best equipment for street photography:
- What is the Best Camera for Street Photography?
- What is the Best Lens for Street Photography?
- Why I Love Cameras with Non-Interchangeable Lenses
- The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide for Cameras in Street Photography
- What to Consider When Buying a Camera for Street Photography
- In Street Photography, The Smaller the Camera, the Better
- Why Sharpness is Overrated in Street Photography
- How to Shoot Street Photography on a DSLR
Street Photography Editing and Workflow
- Video: Introduction to Editing, Processing, and Workflow in Lightroom
- How to Edit (Choose Your Best Photos) in Street Photography
- How Studying Contact Sheets Can Make You a Better Street Photographer
- Debunking the “Myth of the Decisive Moment”
How to Start a Street Photography Project
- Free E-Book: The Street Photography Project Manual
- How to Start Your Own Street Photography Project
- How to Come Up With a Personal Photography Project Idea
Learn From the Masters of Street Photography
“He without a past has no future.”
Start here:
- Why Study the Masters of Photography?
- Great Female Master Photographers
- Cheat Sheet of the Masters of Photography
- 100 Lessons From the Masters of Street Photography
- Beginner’s Guide to the Masters of Street Photography
- Download All Articles >
The Masters of Photography
Classics never die:
- Alfred Stieglitz
- Alec Soth
- Alex Webb
- Alexey Brodovitch
- Anders Petersen
- Andre Kertesz
- Ansel Adams
- Araki
- Blake Andrews
- Bruce Davidson
- Bruce Gilden
- Constantine Manos
- Daido Moriyama
- Dan Winters
- David Alan Harvey
- David Hurn
- Diane Arbus
- Dorothea Lange
- Elliott Erwitt
- Eugene Atget
- Eugene Smith
- Fan Ho
- Garry Winogrand
- Gordon Parks
- Helen Levitt
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
- Irving Penn
- Jacob Aue Sobol
- Jeff Mermelstein
- Joel Meyerowitz
- Joel Sternfeld
- Josef Koudelka / Part 2
- Josh White
- Lee Friedlander
- Lisette Model
- Magnum Contact Sheets
- Magnum Photographers
- Mark Cohen
- Martin Parr
- Martine Franck
- Mary Ellen Mark
- Rene Burri
- Richard Avedon
- Richard Kalvar
- Robert Capa
- Robert Frank
- Saul Leiter
- Sergio Larrain
- Sebastião Salgado
- Shomei Tomatsu
- Stephen Shore
- The History of Street Photography
- Todd Hido
- Tony Ray-Jones
- Trent Parke
- Vivian Maier
- Walker Evans
- Weegee
- William Eggleston
- William Klein
- Zoe Strauss
Free Downloads
Free Street Photography Books
Distilled information on street photography:
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHY MANUAL by ERIC KIM
- The Art of Street Photography
- 100 Lessons From the Masters of Street Photography
- Street Photography Contact Sheets
- Street Photography 101
- Street Photography 102
- Film Street Photography Manual
- The Street Photography Composition Manual
- The Street Portrait Manual
- 31 Days to Overcome Your Fear in Street Photography
- Zen in the Art of Street Photography
For more resources on photography, Start Here >
Entrepreneurship by KIM
Become the change which you desire to see manifested in the world!
Become you.
- Why Doesn’t Anything Satisfy Me?
- ZERO FINANCIAL CONCERNS
- How to Gain Ascendancy
- Business vs Entrepreneurship?
- TAKE REAL CHANCES
- Making Money as a Hobby
- The Best Exercises for Entrepreneurs
- INCOME VS EXPENSES MONEY LIFESTYLE PHILOSOPHY
- Entrepreneurship is the privilege of being able to attempt something new
- How to Become More Influential
- The Point of Life is Entrepreneurship?
- How to Think Like an Entrepreneur
- Become the Outlier
- Self Reliance
- How to Extend Your Reach
- NEWS: How to Think Like an Entrepreneur
- PVP (Player vs Player)
- How I became so influential
- WE LOVE THE *SENSATION* OF RISK-TAKING
- WHY HIGH PROFIT MARGINS?
- INNOVATION THOUGHTS
- OVERCONFIDENCE IS GOOD.
- GARAGE ENTREPRENEURSHIP
- PERHAPS IT IS GOOD TO BE “DELUSIONAL”
- USE YOUR WEALTH TO BUY STUFF, OR TO BUILD AND INNOVATE STUFF?
- HOW TO THRIVE
- Target Demographic
- Ambition Over Happiness
- Anti Collaboration
- The Will to Economy
- Why New?
- CHOOSE ADRENALINE.
- No Looking Back.
- 1000x Different
- BECOME SPENDTHRIFT
- THE BENEFIT OF JUST ONE.
- EXTREME INNOVATION.
- Practicality is Boring
- BECOME YOUR OWN STANDARD.
- NEVER STOP ITERATING.
- CONDENSE.
- Take Lots of Small Financial Risks
- Control Over Convenience
- Why Are Chinese Companies So Innovative?
- INSANELY DIFFERENT.
- Why Doesn’t Anything Ever Satisfy Me?
- THE GREAT PASSION.
- Perhaps Dissatisfaction is Good
- ONE REP MAX.
- WHAT DO YOU *REALLY* WANT IN LIFE?
- LIFE IS ABOUT STRIVING FOR MORE.
- NEVER STOP LINKING.
- THE GREATEST.
- WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!
- THE BEST IS YET TO COME.
- ERIC KIM CRITIQUE OF ROMANTICISM
- COMPLACENCY.
- JUST BUY IT.
- ALL ABOUT YOU.
- MOVE THE WORLD
- Boring or Not Boring?
- What if Your Past Self were Inferior to Your Present Self?
- THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROGRESS
- CULTURE IS YOUR ENEMY.
- Difficulty & Interest
- The Will to Expansion
- What is Work?
- SOUL IN THE GAME.
- JUST START IT.
- Not Boring
- PRIDE IN YOUR OWN NAME / BRAND
- AS MUCH AS YOU CAN TOLERATE.
- Speed is Paramount
- TAKE IT BACK TO THE BEGINNING.
- A Life With No Risk Taking is *NOT* a Life Worth Living
- Dissatisfaction is Good
- GREATER STRENGTH, GREATER CHALLENGES.
- In Praise of the New
- Uncorrupted Desires
- You Cannot Fake Passion
- SELF-OVERGOING
- FORM YOURSELF.
- Personal Entrepreneurship
- RELENTLESS.
- PUT YOUR NAME ON IT.
- A Life of Expansion
- SELF-ENTREPRENEURSHIP
- YOU ARE THE EXCEPTION.
- Use Your Life as an Experiment to Self-Develop Yourself to Heights Never Seen Before
- Invest in New Developments
- Investing Towards What End?
- The 90%/10% Principle in Entrepreneurship
- Speed Wins
- The Philosophy of Happiness
- When to Over-Estimate, When to Under-Estimate?
- Never Stop Iterating
- Money as a Tool for Life and Artistic Experimentation
- Less But More Premium
- Mainstream vs Low-Key Success
- Why Dissatisfaction is Good
- SEEK YOUR OWN PERSONAL MAXIMAL BENEFIT INSTEAD OF COMPLAINING
- Manifest Your Destiny
- Is it Best to *Not* Communicate Your Inner Thoughts or Ideas With Others?
- CREATE THINGS YOU WISH TO SEE MANIFESTED IN THE WORLD
- How to Do More Work
- CONTROL.
- Competition is for Losers
- Change.
- Your Competitive Advantage with Insanely Fast Wifi and High Speed Internet
- Pseudo Individualism
- Natural Internal Promoting vs External Promptings
Think for Yourself.
- Survival vs Thrivival
- Become Rich
- SECRETS.
- Why it is Better to Beg for Forgiveness than Ask for Permission
- Thinking About the Past Prevents You From Thinking About the Future
- How to Predict the Future
- Tools of Mass Distraction
- So What?
FREEDOM
Never stop innovating.
Entrepreneurship Mindset
- What is Your Dream in Life?
- 8 Blogging Productivity Tips
- Why Be Normal?
- How Much Suffering Are You Willing to Endure to Achieve Your Dreams?
Put a Dent in the Universe.
-
Pure Thoughts
PDF
- LEICA MANUAL PDF // MIRROR
- TRAVEL NOTES
- ZEN OF ERIC
- MASTERS VOLUME 1
- Photography Composition Manual v1
- Zen Photography
- STREET PHOTO CONTACT SHEETS
- STREET PHOTO CONTACT SHEETS VOLUME II
- Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography
- The Street Portrait Manual
- 100 Lessons From the Masters of Street Photography
THOUGHTS
- THE PHILOSOPHY OF RISK TAKING — PDF
- Why I Bought Chainlink — PDF
- How to Become a Philosopher
- How to Become a Stoic
ART PHOTO BOOKS
ERIC KIM PODCAST
MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER
- DOWNLOAD FREE // PDF DOWNLOAD // MIRROR
STOICISM
Delve into the mind of EK:
BOOKS
NEW CHATGPT BOTS
Crypto
- BACK TO CHAINLINK, EVERYONE SHOULD OWN *AT LEAST* ONE BITCOIN, AI IS NEXT $100T, 1000T INDUSTRY?
- Bitcoin Babe
ERIC KIM CHATGPT BOTS
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY STARTER KIT
- What is Street Photography? (2.4gb) / Download
- Black and White (2.3gb) / Download
- How to Shoot Street Photography (2.2gb) / Download
- Street Portraits 101 (1.9gb) / Download
- Conquer Your Fears (430mb) / Download
- Composition (460mb) / Download
- Masters (107mb) / Download
- Editing and Post-Processing (1.3gb) / Download
- Photography Projects (1.4gb) / Download
- Motivation (3.7gb) / Download
ERIC KIM CHATGPT BOTS
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY STARTER KIT
- What is Street Photography? (2.4gb) / Download
- Black and White (2.3gb) / Download
- How to Shoot Street Photography (2.2gb) / Download
- Street Portraits 101 (1.9gb) / Download
- Conquer Your Fears (430mb) / Download
- Composition (460mb) / Download
- Masters (107mb) / Download
- Editing and Post-Processing (1.3gb) / Download
- Photography Projects (1.4gb) / Download
- Motivation (3.7gb) / Download
BECOME A PHOTOGRAPHY ENTREPRENEUR
Advice I would have given myself in photography, if I started all over again:
Until You Own Yourself You Can’t Be Free
Photography Entrepreneurship 101 by ERIC KIM De-lamify the future.
Photography Entrepreneurship 101 Presentation by ERIC KIM
ENTREPRENEURSHIP by KIM
ERIC KIM x HENRI NECK STRAP Enroll in my Udemy Course:
‘Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Photography Entrepreneurship’: Create Your Own Future >
Entrepreneurship Ideas
- InstaSlaves
- How to Become a Vlogger
- How to Build Your Own Self Brand
- SOLO MEDIA EMPIRE
- TIME LEVERAGE.
- How to Market Yourself in Photography
- How to Become More Ambitious
- Crypto Photography
- In Praise of Email Newsletters
- Propagate.
- Make Your Own Street Photography Blog
- Create the Information You Seek.
- Content over Technology
- How to Advertise Yourself as a Photographer
- CREATIVE WAYS TO USE YOUTUBE
- Photography Branding 101
- BUILD YOURSELF.
- Bet on Your Own Coin.
- The Photographer Should Also Make His/Her Own Music?
- Mix Your Photos and Videos
- JUST PUBLISH IT.
- EMPOWER OTHER PHOTOGRAPHERS.
- BECOME OUTSIDE THE BOX
- MOVE PEOPLE, MOVE PRODUCTS.
- SOCIAL MEDIA IS FRAGILE.
- Why Start a Photography Blog?
- Once You FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early), Then What?
- THE FUTURE IS PDF
- In Praise of Solo Photography Business Entrepreneurship
- LONGEVITY, DURABILITY AND SUCCESS
- Street Photography Philosophy Entrepreneurship
- YOU ARE THE PLATFORM
- JUST RISK IT.
- DON’T OPTIMIZE FOR THE ALGORITHM
- Scaleable Photography
- What Does it Mean to Become a Successful Photographer?
- 20 Photography Marketing, Branding, and Entrepreneurship Tips
- Create Your Own Social Media
- Individual Entrepreneurship
- YOU ARE THE ICON.
- BUILD!
- What is Success in Photography?
- EXTREME VISION
- Publish Fearlessly
- MAKE DOPE THINGS AND SHARE THEM WITH THE WORLD!
- THE AMBITIOUS PHOTOGRAPHER.
- PhotoLink
- Real World Applications
- You Are Your Own Ideal User
- What is Your Creative Vision?
- A More Dope, Prosperous Future for All Photographers
- CREATION & DISTRIBUTION.
- THE VALUE OF PHOTOS.
- How to Maximize Your Impact as a Photographer
- Why the World Needs More Bloggers
- DOMAIN EXPERTISE.
- The Joy of Speculation
- MAKE A NAME FOR YOURSELF.
- Propogate
- Meaningful Advantage or Not?
- PHOTO CREATOR.
- NOW IS YOUR DECISIVE MOMENT.
- I CANNOT BE IGNORED
- Photography Blogs are Highly *UNDERRATED*
- What is Your Competitive Advantage?
- Why 4K?
- Indirect Monetization
- The Future of Innovation in Photography
- Photography Innovation and Image Selection Idea: Let Google (YouTube) Suggested Thumbnail Pick Your Best Photo?
- How to Identify Your Competitive Advantage
- In Praise of Insanely Fast Wifi
- DIGITAL PUBLISHING IS KING.
- The Stoic-Entrepreneurship Mindset
- Marketing Tips for Photographers
- STARK DIFFERENTIATION
- MAXIMALIST
- Visual Entrepreneurship
- On Becoming a Full-Stack Visual Entrepreneur
- Real Photographers Don’t Use Instagram
- Brave New World of Blogging
- Don’t Go to Photography School
- Mass Success is a Failure?
- How to Maximize Your Archimedes Lever in Life
- Maximize Your Archimedes Lever
- How to Create Value Out of Nothing
- The Best Brand is No Brand
- What Do We Entrepreneurs *Really* Want?
- You Were Destined to Do Great Things
- Just Share Your Photos on Your Own Blog
- Your Blog is the Ultimate Form of Social Media
- The Future of Websites and Blogs
- Create a Company
- Money Photography Project
- WHY IT IS GOOD TO CHARGE MONEY FOR YOUR SERVICES AND PRODUCTS
- Google and YouTube SEO (Search Engine Optimization) 101: How Would You Type It?
- WHY RIGHT NOW IS THE BEST TIME FOR YOU TO START YOUR SIDE HUSTLE
- Digital Photography is the Future
- NEVER STOP EXPERIMENTING!
- WHAT IS INNOVATION?
- A Non-Ownership Future
- CONTROL OVER MONEY
- Economic Constraints Are Creative Constraints
- Become a Sole-Proprietor
- Entrepreneurship is a Mindset
- How to Master Mac
- The Future of Lifestyle
- Necessity is the Mother of Innovation
- Once We Have an Easy Life, Then What?
- Why I Don’t Read Comments
- YouTube SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for Photographers
- How to Become a Self-Employed Photographer
- How to Live Big With Little Money
- Why Blogging, Vlogging and Internet Media is More Important than Ever
- No Marketing, No Future
- Photography Marketing 101
- Google and YouTube are King
- Why I’m So Suspicious of Everyone Online and on the Internet
- How to Become More Notorious
- Kaizen Approach to Blogging
- How to Master Marketing
- CREATE WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE SEE MANIFESTED IN THE WORLD!
- Anti Silicon-Valley Thinking
- Your Name
- In Praise of WordPress
- NEVER STOP POSTING
- Your Future Portfolio is a Website
- Infinite Runway
- ERIC KIM ATTITUDE
- Financial Independence as a Road to Freedom of Speech?
- WHY OPEN SOURCE IS THE FUTURE
- Just Post It.
- Posts Are Products
- Photography Entrepreneurship Ideas
- YOU ARE KING.
- You’re Always in BETA MODE
- Build Your Own Media Empire
- WHY I DON’T MONETIZE MY YOUTUBE VIDEOS
- Why I Became an Entrepreneur
- The Uber-Photographer
- Create What You Would Like to See Manifested in the World
- Create the Future
- Entrepreneurship is Best During Uncertain Times
- Photography Entrepreneurship 101 Presentation by ERIC KIM
- Your Body is the Brand
- Your Name is Your Brand
- Create Your Own Social Media Platform
- BUILD IT OR BUY IT?
- Sell Yourself
- Create New
- Insta-Slaves
- YOU CANNOT FAKE ENTHUSIASM
- Why Hybrid is the Future
- Don’t Censor Yourself
- HOW I MASTERED MARKETING
- ERIC KIM BLOGS
- If Someone Offers You Help, You’re Stupid to *NOT* Take It.
- SEEK GREAT, NOT PERFECT.
- How I Became So Famous
- Let Reality Mould Itself to You
- ANTI ENTITLEMENT MENTALITY
- Live Your Life as If You Were a Billionaire
- HOW I THINK DIFFERENT
- Impact, Influence, Reach: The Three Pillars of Marketing
- ERIC KIM SCHOOL
- Classicism.
- MY PHILOSOPHY OF MONEY
- Money is Movement
- Elitism 2.0
- Mass Market or Luxury Market?
- Why You Must Market Yourself
- Why You Must Start an Email Newsletter
- How Laptops Can Change the World
- What Do You Want to Become?
- What is Really Holding You Back in Life?
- Why I Write: Writing as Meta-Thinking
- ADVERTISE YOURSELF
- Use Your First and Last Name
- How Blogging Can Change the World
- In Praise of Liberty
- How I Write in Markdown
- How I Became So Influential on YouTube
- REVERSE FLEX
- What a Time to Be Alive in Today’s Brave New World of Photography
- HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE YOURSELF FROM OTHERS
- YOU CHOOSE YOU
- My Life Photography Entrepreneurship Story
- WHY I DON’T BELIEVE IN COLLABORATION
- My Entrepreneurship Mindset
- YOU’RE THE HERO IN THIS GAME OF LIFE
- My Money Philosophy
- Why Brand and Market Yourself?
- PROFESSIONALISM IS FOR SUCKERS
- Just Share What Works for You
- How to Create Your Own Platform
- Living in a Post Monetary Society
- In Praise of Blogging
- The Entrepreneurial Lifestyle is the Best Lifestyle
- Algorithm Slavery
- ANTI VIEWS
- Entrepreneurship is The Goal
- The Art of Blogging
- IN PRAISE OF PURSUING YOUR PASSION
- How to Make Great Titles
- Sole Proprietorship
- Just Build It.
- VIA NEGATIVA
- PROMOTE YOURSELF
- Become a Full-Stack Entrepreneur
- How to Entertain Others
- My Experience Teaching My First Online Photography Creativity Workshop on Zoom
- Humans Aren’t Lazy
- One Shot.
- THE BRAVE SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH
- The Brave New COVID Lifestyle
- Start Your Own Business
- Minimum Viable Income ( MVI)
- TRAINING.
- WHY VIDEO?
- How to Become Bolder
- You’ve Always Already Been a Photography Entrepreneur!
- The Future is All Digital Everything
- Digital Sharecropping
- DO IT FOR YOUR PAST AND FUTURE SELF
- In Praise of Buffer and Redundancy
- ASKING FOR PERMISSION IS FOR SUCKERS.
- POST-MONETARY SOCIETY.
- Advertise Your Own Stuff
- THE FUTURE IS DIGITAL.
- Simulated Universal Basic Income
- Is Losing Followers a Good Thing?
- How to Add to Economic Activity
- DIGITAL CAPITALISM
- MONEY IS MOVEMENT
- Anything is Possible
- BRAVE NEW WORLD OF DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
- GENERATE
- How to Profit from Calamity
- Capitalism 2.0
- WHY I’M SO PASSIONATE ABOUT INFORMATION
- SOCIETY 2.0
- PHOENIX ENTREPENEURSHIP
- How to Make Art from Home
- BUY YOURSELF
- JUST BLOG IT.
- MARKET YOURSELF
- EXPENSIVE TALK
- SOCIAL MEDIA SLAVERY
- Who Are Your Ideal Followers?
- Why I Blog, Vlog, and Log
- Your Perspective is Irrefutable
- What are Your Hidden Powers?
- IMPACT MAXIMIZATION, not Profit Maximization
- Our Desire to Maximize Impact and Change
- 10 Rich Tips How to Make Money from Photography
- Create What You Would Love to Consume
- Publish is Pleasure
- Retire Now
- Do You Desire to Become the Best?
- Solo Entrepreneurship
- My Vision of Photography Entrepreneurship
- PUT YOUR NAME ON IT
- The Desire to Transcend Ourselves
- MONEY THOUGHTS
- How to Retire
- Via Negativa Productivity
- Why You Must Make Your Own Website
- Individuals over Companies
- Build Yourself
- Success is Survival
- Why You Shouldn’t Go to Photography or Art School
- How to Differentiate Yourself as a Photographer
- Surpass Yourself
- Can You Handle Extreme Freedom?
- Boutique or Mass Market?
- Proof of Concept
- Unified Field Theory for Photography
- Build a Company You’d Never Sell
- Play the Long Game
- Entrepreneurship and Art
- What is the Source of our Strength?
- What’s the Future for Photography?
- Full-Stack Visual Artist
- Why Scale?
- What is Your Unfair Advantage?
- Substance Marketing
- Share Your Dopeness with Others
- Frugality is Freedom
- Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for Entrepreneurship
- Don’t Follow or Predict Trends, Start Your Own Trend!
- If You’re Not Busy Growing, You’re Busy Dying
- Entrepreneurship born from Superabundance, not Need/Necessity
- Photography Entrepreneurship Philosophy
- How to Master Marketing in Photography
- Photography Entrepreneurship Tips and Ideas
- Is Hustle Sufficient Unto Success?
- Don’t do it for the money
- DIGITAL MARXISM
- Zen Entrepreneurship
- BOLDER IS BETTER.
- Streamers Shall Inherit the Earth
Photography Blogging
- Blogging is Public Meditations
- The Art of Blogging
- Give Me a Laptop and I Shall Move the World!
- The Future is Photography Blogging
- How to Become a GREAT Blogger
- If you can’t code, blog instead!
- Daily Blog of Activities
- How to Monetize a Blog Without Advertising
- How to Publish Yourself
- How to Blog
- The future of photography publishing is photography blogging.
- Why Become a Photography Blogger?
- Why You Must Become a Photography Blogger
- Why You Should Delete Your Instagram and Start Your Own Blog
Money
Self-Empowerment
- Life is Too Short to Be Negative
- Why You Must Follow Your Passion in Life
- How to Conquer Shyness
- Don’t Ask for Permission
- Onto the Next One
- Why You Must Self-Promote Yourself
- Why You Must Conquer Your Fears in Life
Marketing and Branding
- Why You Must Become a Photography Blogger
- Why Blog?
- Why You Must Self-Promote Yourself
- Create Substance, Not Content
- Photography Marketing and Branding 101
- How to Master Marketing in Photography
- 10 Tips How to Become a More Famous Photographer
Entrepreneurship Lifestyle
- Why Hustle?
- Why Save Money?
- Ascetic is Sexy
- Why You Must Become Self-Employed
- How to Push Yourself Beyond the Limit
- Is Location Independence Overrated?
Entrepreneurship Mindset
- How to Get Discovered
- Financial Independence
- Disregard Success or Failure; Always Attempt More!
- In Praise of Stubbornness
- Success is Personal Bravery
- Why You Must Become an Entrepreneur
- How to Brand and Market Yourself as a Photographer
- How to Conquer Haters
- How to Accumulate Capital
- Why Be Different?
- How to Master Marketing in Photography
- Don’t Play it Safe
- Why Blog?
- How to Be a More Productive Photographer
- How to Hustle
- True Productivity
- What Can Only You Do?
- Love Risk
- What is Success?
- Fill a Vacuum
- Think Big
- What is Your Dream in Life?
- 8 Blogging Productivity Tips
- Why Be Normal?
- How Much Suffering Are You Willing to Endure to Achieve Your Dreams?
Photography Entrepreneurship 101
- Don’t Sit Still!
- Bitcoin for Photographers
- Don’t Be Timid
- Why Start Your Own Photography Blog?
- Fill a Void
- 1,000 True Followers: How to Build Your Own Niche in Photography
- Photography Entrepreneurship 101: Why You Must Start Your Own Email Newsletter
- TURBO CREATION: Why a Maxed-Out MacBook Laptop is the Best Investment You Can Make for Photography Entrepreneurship
Life and Productivity Hacks
- My Ultimate Productivity and Life Hacks
- Life/Productivity Hack: Write (Type on a phone) While Walking on a Dynamic Treadmill
- ERIC KIM Life, Creativity, and Productivity Hacks
How to Make a Living from Your Passion
- Digital Nomad Photographer
- Build Your Own Instagram!
- How to Be More Ambitious
- Do It Your Way
- How to Measure Your Progress as a Photography Entrepreneur + Come Up With New Ideas
- How to Make a Living From Your Passion in Photography
Put a Dent in the Universe.
- Fear Disguised as Reason
- Distraction is the Enemy
- Innovate for the Sake of Innovating!
- Reality is Malleable!
- Stoic Entrepreneurship
- Against Self-Preservation
- The Purpose of Life is to Make New Stuff!
How to Succeed as an Entrepreneur
- You Have No Limits.
- Calculated Risk-Taking
- Invest in Yourself
- The Secret of Happiness: Shoot for the Moon!
- Moonshot Thinking
- Why We Should all Be Photography Entrepreneurs
- Memento Mori Entrepreneurship
- Why it is Better to Beg For Forgiveness than Ask For Permission
- How to Become a Digital Nomad
- Why You Must Own Your Own Platform
- First Principle Thinking for Photography Entrepreneurs
- How I Became a Digital Nomad
- Better to Beg For Forgiveness than Ask For Permission!
- Spurn Pleasing Others!
- Create Your Own Niche
- How to Gain More Exposure For Your Photography
- Intense Focus
- How to Conquer Your Fears as an Entrepreneur
- Define Yourself
- Let Dissatisfaction Drive You Forward!
- It Doesn’t Matter if Someone Else Has Done it Before!
- How to Succeed as a Photography Entrepreneur: Be Extremely Resourceful
- Open Source Business Model in Photography Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurship 101: Growth and Innovation Over Self-Preservation
- How to Create Value as a Photography Entrepreneur
- Why Become a Photography Entrepreneur?
- Why You Must Ignore Nay-Sayers to Succeed in Entrepreneurship, Business, and Life
The Modern Photographer: Tips, Strategies, and Tactics to Thrive as a Visual Artist in the Digital Age
Marketing, Branding, Entrepreneurship Principles For Success
MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER is your new philosophical and practical primer to succeed as a modern photographer in today’s digital world.
Business Mental Models
- How to Succeed as a Photography Entrepreneur: Be Extremely Resourceful
- Open Source Business Model in Photography Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurship 101: Growth and Innovation Over Self-Preservation
How to Monetize Your Photography
- Photography Entrepreneurship 101: INFLUENCE
- Should I Monetize My Passion for Photography?
- 10 Practical Photography Monetization Strategies: Pricing, Google SEO, & Entrepreneurship
- How to Make Money From Street Photography
Why Become a Photography Entrepreneur?
Take control of your own photographic destiny:
THE MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER
- CREATIVE CAPITALISM
- How to Monetize Your Photography
- 5 Practical Photography Career Tips and Advice
- 10x Thinking
- How to Hustle as a Photographer
- How to Become Your Own Master Marketer
- The ‘T’ Technique of Success
- Go Ahead and Sell Out
- What is Your Unique Voice?
- Why You Must Self-Promote Yourself
- What is Your Unique Angle as a Photographer?
- Photography Content Marketing 101
- Why You Must Become Your Own Publisher
- The Art of Cross-Pollination in Photography
Photography Entrepreneurship Articles
- Why You Shouldn’t Trust Your Pictures to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Flickr
- How to Make Money From Your Photography
- Photography SEO and Blogging: How to Become Number One on Google
- Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation
- Now is the Best Time to Be a Photographer
- PRODUCERISM
- What Is The Value of a Picture?
- Your Photographic Labor is Not Free
PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOPS 101
- Chapter 1. How to Make a Photography Blog
- Chapter 2. How to Price Yourself
- Chapter 3. How to Find Your Market
- Chapter 4. Why Teach Workshops?
- Chapter 5. How to Build Trust
- Chapter 6. How to Market Yourself
- Chapter 7: Why Should Someone Attend Your Workshop?
KEYS TO SUCCESS
- Why You Must Be a “Personality” in Order to Succeed
- THRIVE OR DIE.
- Impatience is a Virtue
- Create Your Own Category
- HOW TO DREAM BIG.
- Will Not or Cannot?
- Why Not?
- How to Think BIG
- How to Stay Ahead of the Curve
- How to Invest in Yourself
- The Two Camera Rule
- MEANINGFUL DIFFERENTIATION
- Advice For College Students
- How to Thrive in Uncertain Times
- CANNIBALIZE YOURSELF.
- DO AND GROW RICH
- Does Fear of Punishment Hold You Back?
- HOW TO GET MORE FOLLOWERS
- How to Innovate
- How to Build Your Own Empire
- YOU ARE ENTITLED TO HARD WORK.
- PICK YOURSELF.
- OWN YOUR PLATFORM
- 10 KEYS TO SUCCESS
Table of Contents
Learn how to make a living from your passion:
- Preface. BRAVE NEW WORLD OF PHOTOGRAPHY
- Chapter 1. How to Create Value
- Chapter 2. ZEN CAPITALISM
- Chapter 3. Scarcity
- Chapter 4. How to Brand Yourself
- Chapter 5. How to Build a True Following
- Chapter 6. The Blueprint to Success in Photography
- Chapter 7. HOW TO BE BOLD
- Chapter 8. How to Sell Out
- Chapter 9. GO AGAINST THE GRAIN
- Chapter 10. EXTREME ABUNDANCE
- Chapter 11. Photography Experience Economy
- Chapter 12. Why You Should Make Money for Your Photography
- Chapter 13. How to Become a Famous Photographer
Photography Business 101
How to Make Money with Photography
CAMERA MONEY USD by ANNETTE KIM - How to Charge More Money in Your Photography
- Why You Should Not Pursue Photography as Career
- Can Photography Make You Rich?
- How I Earn $200,000+ a Year From Photography
- How to earn $10,000 a month as a photographer
- Why you must be an expensive photographer
Photography Marketing 101
- Why Have More Followers?
- Why You Should Do Photography Work For Free
- How I Became an Internet Famous Photographer
- Photography Blogging Ideas
- Why You Should Promote Your Own Name
- How to Build a Following
- How to Stand Out as a Photographer.
- HOW TO GO VIRAL AS A PHOTOGRAPHER.
- How to Master Marketing
- How to Sell Yourself
How to Hustle.
- Entrepreneurial Advice to My 18 Year Old Self
- How to Become Insanely Productive.
- 5 Lessons From Hesiod on Hustling
Entrepreneurial Principles
- It is Better to Beg For Forgiveness Than Ask For Permission
- The Free Way to Become Rich
- JUST DO IT.
- 7 Steps: How to Make a Living From Your Passion
- How to Do What You Love for a Living
- How to Create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
- How to Fail Big
- How to Invest in Yourself
- How to Be Bold in Photography and Life
- Mission: Cover Your Rent and Food
- 1,000 True Fans
- The “10x Principle”: The Only Difference Between “Success” and “Failure”
- Make More Value Not Money
- We Live in a Photo Utopia
How to be a Full-time Photographer
- How to Make a Living From Photography
- The 3 Principles of Making Money With Photography
- Advice for Aspiring Full-Time Photographers
- Don’t Go Into Debt For Your Photography
- How to Brand Yourself as a Photographer
- Trust: The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed as a Photographer
Photography Blogging
- How to become rich from photography blogging
- How to Make a Living with Blogging
- 50 Blogging Tips For Beginners
- How to Start Your Own Photography Blog
- A Photographer’s Guide to SEO, Blogging, and Social Media
How to Teach Photography
- How to Become a Photography Teacher
- How to Teach a Street Photography Class
- Why I Teach Street Photography Workshops
Social Media
- Why I Deleted My Instagram
- The Social Media Blackbook for Photographers
- Why Do You Need More Likes or Followers?
- Instagram is Going to Be the Next Facebook
- Don’t Trust “Free” Photography Social Networks
How to Save Money
MONEY 101
- Just Follow the Money
- My Money Philosophy
- Eternal fame and glory over money
- The Trillion Dollar Question: How to Make Money on the Internet Without Advertising?
- Entrepreneurship that Doesn’t Involve Money-Making?
- Money Ain’t Real
- Making Money for Fun, Not to Get Rich
- Why Money?
PHILOSOPHY BY KIM
Essays by KIM
- How to Become a Philosopher
- Deep Vanity
- Time Will Tell
- What is Wisdom?
- LOOK *BEYOND*
- BECOMING MORE IMMORAL?
- ‘LUCK’ VS COURAGE
- ‘SKILL’ VS MERIT?
- Becoming Antifragile
- How to “Improve” Men
- The Art of Virtue
- How to Dominate
- JUST SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCES AND WISDOM WITH OTHERS.
- How to Get More Done in a Single Day – MEMENTO MORI PHILOSOPHY
- THINK FOR YOURSELF
- Cruel?
- GO DEMIGOD.
- How to Be Happy: Challenge and Danger Philosophy
- To Become Greater, You Must Become *LESS* Productive!
- Imperfect Beauty
- The Philosophy of Pleasure
- What Interests You?
- Anti Theory of Everything
- Become?
- STRONGER OR NOT?
- Carte Blanche Ideals
- CHOOSE JOY
- Don’t Judge Your Impulses
- On Becoming Less Human
- COWARDICE.
- The Philosophy of Futurism
- PHILOSOPHY IS VALUE-SETTING
- PHILOSOPHY IS NOT LIFESTYLE
- WHY STANDARDIZATION IS BAD.
- YOUR OWN TABLE OF VALUES.
- RETRO IS BAD.
- INSANELY LOFTY THOUGHTS.
- Strive to *Lose* Weight, Not *Gain* Weight
- DIABLO II ANALOGIES FOR REAL LIFE.
- If You Know Your *WHY* You Can Discover Any *HOW*
- Life is Too Short to Be Miserable
- What Consumption Takes Skill?
- OFF THE GRID.
- REALITY IS CRUEL.
- Pain is Information
- WHY REMOVE VULGARITY AND DISORDER FROM OUR EYES?
- AUTOTELIC.
- UNPLUG.
- How to Become a Philosopher
- SUBOPTIMAL IS OPTIMAL
- THE LUST FOR MORE.
- TO DO IS TO BECOME.
- IN PRAISE OF AGGRESSIVE.
- THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPTIMISM
- OUR PHILOSOPHICAL WILL TO EXISTENCE
- Is Hope a Vice?
- MOVE MEAN
- Carte Blanche Ideals
- One Interesting Thought
- What Lasts? What Doesn’t Last?
- A WOUND STIMULATES THE RECUPERATIVE POWERS
- Children & Purpose
- Thoughts on Becoming a Parent
- Where Does Our Desire to Upgrade Come From?
- WE ALWAYS NEED SOMETHING FURTHER TO ASPIRE TO.
- Self-Task Yourself an Awesome Mission in Life
- Differentiation vs Equalization
- My Passion to *Become* Something More
- No Aesthetic or Ethos is Forever
- What is Your Higher Purpose in Life?
- IT WILL NEVER SATISFY YOU.
- How to Decide
- Things You *Want* to Do vs Things You *MUST* Do
- Towards a More Beautiful Mode of Existence and Future
- EXTREME GRATITUDE.
- AMAP (As Much as Possible) or None.
- Why or How Does it Matter?
- The Philosophy of Time and Events
- How *Not* to Resent
- FORWARD LOOKING
- DOMAIN FLEXIBILITY.
- The Miracle of Human Growth
- EXTREME ADAPTATION.
- Why Plan?
- You Don’t Need to Justify Yourself
- The Philosophy of Ego
- True vs False Passions
- How to Achieve Tranquility
- On Making Your Own Philosophy
- The Purpose of Life is to Create New Life
- Think On!
- The Wisdom of Doing Nothing
- Congruency
- My Thoughts on Meditation
- The Philosophy of Purpose
- Emulate Yourself
- Good Fear, Bad Fear
- For the Betterment of Humanity or Just Yourself?
- What you *really* believe in and care for is manifested through your actions (or non-actions)
- Why Culture is Your Enemy
- YOUR EXPERIENCES ARE KING.
- LIFE IS INHERENTLY GOOD.
- Artistic, Physical, and Philosophical Muscles
- All New Experiences are Good Experiences
- What is the Purpose of X?
- UTILITY.
- Philosophy is a Luxury
- The Attempt is More Interesting than the Result
- Joyfulness vs “Happiness”
- Effectiveness Over Happiness
- Self Actualization
- MAXIMAL ENGAGEMENT
- Life & Pain
- On Living Every Day with No Regret
- Learn as if you’re going to live forever, live as if you’re going to die tomorrow
- Live Every Day Like it Were the Last Day of Your Life
- Self-Determination
- FALSE GRATITUDE vs REAL GRATITUDE
- HOW TO LIVE MORE
- THE UPSIDE OF TRAGEDY
- Satisfaction is a Sucker’s Game
- Supreme Repose
- WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE? According to ERIC KIM
- STUBBORN, FLEXIBLE
- EVERYTHING HAPPENS AS IT *SHOULD* HAVE HAD HAPPENED
- Good Addiction, Bad Addiction?
- What is the Best Life?
- The Philosophy of Thinking
- The Philosophy of Conspiracies
- Conspiracies
- Growth
- Skepticism.
- What Do You Really Want Out of Life?
- Seem or Be?
- Learn Through Pain
- Respect Yourself
- In Praise of Elitism
- Why Independent Thinking?
- I Will Never Die
- Bitter is Better
- The Genesis of Nihilism and Existential Dread
- The Ethics of Personal Enrichment
- Good vs Not Good
- Punished by Privilege
- Abstinence Over Moderation
- Just Leave Others Alone
- You Can Only Critique that Which You Truly Understand and Love
- ERIC KIM Critique of Metaphysics
- Only Trust Philosophers Who Deadlift
- Heuristic: If Someone Talks Shit About Others Behind Their Back, Most Likely They’re Also Talking Shit About You Behind Your Back
- Virtue is a Privilege
- What Are Your Life Goals?
- Honesty
- Why I’m Anti Moderation
- No Spite, No Malice.
- Ascending Life or Descending Life?
- Double Edged Sword
- Ignorance.
- Why I Don’t Trust “Nice Guys”
- Why You Must Share Your Opinion
- Selfish Isn’t Evil
- Wisdom is the Goal
- YOU ARE KING.
- MASTER YOURSELF
- What is “Good” for You is Often what is Bad for You
- Care.
- BITTERSWEET
- ONE REP MAX
- Morality and Ethics is the Snare
- BY HELPING YOURSELF, YOU BEST HELP OTHERS
- Insanity is Good.
- Think Deep.
- PHILOSOPHY IS THE FUTURE.
- Open Mind vs Closed Mind
- ENTHUSIASM IS GENIUS
- Towards a More Critical and Rigorous Line of Thinking
- How to Encourage and a Foster Independent and Free Thinking
- What is the Purpose of Life?
- WHY PHILOSOPHY IS SUPREME.
- Elitism.
- I Cannot Form an Opinion About Somebody Until I’ve Met Them in the Flesh
- ALL GENETICS ARE GOOD GENETICS.
- Happiness vs Freedom
- The Birth of a Hater
- My Way Isn’t the Right Way
- Walking as an Existential Thing
- Why I’m So Tolerant
- Mortal Gods
- THE HUMAN SPECIES
- Why I’m So Skeptical
- Just Follow the Money
- Why Selfish?
- WHY WE CANNOT BLAME OTHERS
- Why Are We So Anti Elitism?
- What Actually Interests You?
- How to Become Yourself
- SELF HATE
- Optimistic Fatalism
- Death is the Ultimate Creative Constraint
- FLUX.
- How to Think for Yourself
- FLESH
- How to Live the Best Life
- Why Live a Life Without Regrets?
- Why Plato Ruined Art and Aesthetics for Us
- Self Respect
- Hypocrite vs Contradict
- Ideals vs Reality
- Spaceship Philosophy
- What is Your Ideal Life?
- MY EXTREME GRATITUDE TOWARDS LIFE AND BEING ALIVE!
- Critique of Utilitarianism
- Don’t Treat Others the Way You Want to Be Treated
- The Eternal Recurrence of Tragedy and Joy in Life
- Elite Asceticism
- Why I Don’t Like Numbers
- Action and Reaction, Cause and Effect
- The Antidote to Nihilism: The Philosophy of Nothingness
- ERIC KIM Notes on Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- EXPLOIT CHAOS.
- WHY I DON’T BELIEVE IN GENETICS
- Self-Wisdom
- The Future Belongs to the Fearless
- INDIVIDUALISM
- Why Live Forever?
- THIS TOO WILL PASS.
- Why Education?
- How to Become Yourself
- Things Shouldn’t Go Back to the Way They Used to Be
- Why Am I So Cruel?
- The Great Joy of Existence
- Virtue for the Sake of Virtue
- NO DISDAIN.
- INTELLIGENT IGNORANCE
- A LIFE WITHOUT PAIN, DIFFICULTY OR TRAGEDY ISN’T A LIFE WORTH LIVING
- BITTER IS BETTER.
- EXPLOIT THE BEST FROM TRAGEDY AND LIFE
- DISREGARD FOR SELF-PRESERVATION
- PAIN.
- WHAT IF EVERYTHING IS NOT GONNA BE ALRIGHT?
- Tomorrow is Never
- Life is the Ultimate Creative Constraint
- EMBODIED REALITY
- BLACK SWAN
- THINGS WILL NEVER GO BACK TO THE WAY THEY USED TO BE
- What are you *really* afraid of?
- HAPPINESS ISN’T THE GOAL
- Philosophy is King
- Why is Selfish Evil?
- YOU’RE CONSTANTLY IN A STATE OF BECOMING
- ENTITLEMENT A SIN?
- NARCISSISM
- BE BRUTALLY HONEST WITH YOURSELF
- WHY FREE WILL?
- OBEY YOUR OPINION
- EGO IS GOOD.
- WHY IT IS GOOD TO BE INTO YOURSELF
- Seek the Good Pain
- Anti-Perfection in Photography, Art, and Life
- Can You Become an End into Yourself?
- WHY I LIVE
- Why I Hate Decline
- Why I Eat
- Why am I So Positive and Optimistic?
- EFFORT IS ENJOYMENT
- Never Stop Gaining
- TRUST YOURSELF
- A Life of Maximal Personal Independence
- What Do You Desire to Become?
- What Do I Want from Technology?
- Stratified Society
- Do You Love or Hate Reality?
- On the Brian, Body and Mind
- I’m Maximally Happy, Now What?
- Care over Fame
- ACTIVE NIHILISM
- Never Stop Subtracting
- How to Live a Happier and More Epic Life
- A Risker Life is a Better Life
- Only Work on Things You Can Imagine Doing for Eternity
- How to Maximize Your Happiness
- Influence
- The Gladiator Makes His Plans once He Enters the Ring
- Meditations on Meaning in Life
- There is Nothing More Interesting than Human Beings
- Is Hope a Vice?
- EGO
- Why Be Unique?
- Happiness is Metabolism Health and Strength
- You’re the Hero
- Is Productivity a Virtue or Vice?
- Why Do We Prize the Rare?
- The Joy of Uncertainty
- How Should I Best Use My Time and Life?
- A Life Without Pain or Suffering Isn’t a Life Worth Living
- Free or Unfree?
- What Do You Really Care For in Life?
- Anti-Satisfaction in Life
- Why Think?
- The Eternal Return
- Only Do What is Best for You!
- Truthiness
- Why Be Happy?
- Permissionless Living
- In Praise of Unconventional Wisdom
- Become the Change Which You Wish to See in the World
- Happiness
- Beyond Freedom
- Idolize People, Not Stuff
- What Makes You Stronger? What Makes You Weaker?
- Why Hate?
- The Secret of Happiness
- You’re Constantly in a State of Becoming
- Life is about Choices, Not Obligations
- Anti-Nihilism
- First, Do What is Best for You.
- Live Dynamic
- How to Prosper
- Is the Point of Life to Be Satisfied?
- SUPREME EFFORT OF WILL.
- How to Become more Idealistic
- Thrivival 101
- Create Yourself
- Non-Small
- Inspiration
- How to Live a Heroic Life: Dare the Heights!
- Human Augmentation
- Prune
- Happiness: Do What You Want to Do (And Don’t Do What You Don’t Want to Do)
- Avoid Vain (Empty) Pursuits in Life
- Modern Slavery
- Kill the Leeches
- Wisdom Augmentation
- Why We Need Friction in Life
- Straight Line Philosophy
- What’s Your End-Game in Life?
- Create Your Own Happiness Today
- Desire Both Pain and Pleasure in Life
- Try the Impossible
- SELF-RESPECT
- Anti-Social Extrovert
- Never Blame Anybody But Yourself
- Human Flourishing
- Simpler, Not Better.
- How to be Free
- Embrace the Extremes
- Cultivate Your Own Culture
- COURAGE.
- Thrivival
- Inner Power
- How to Live a Purposeful Life
- My Definition of Happiness
- Why Change is Good
- Why Work?
- How to Live the Happiest Possible Life
- The Two-Pronged Approach to Maximize Joy in Your Life
- You Always Have Another Option!
- INFINITISM
- Never Stop!
- What is Your Self-Directed Purpose in Life?
- Live Today Like it Were Your Last
- Do You Photograph to Live, or Live to Photograph?
- ARTIST-PHILOSOPHER
- Live Life to the Fullest!
- In Praise of Selfishness
- Why You Must Be a YAY-SAYER to Succeed in Entrepreneurship and Life
- Why I Love Walking
- Live Life Like a Video Game!
- Simple Luxuries in Life
- Treat Your Life Like a Fun Experiment!
- Only Prove it to Yourself
- You Don’t Always Need to Feel Joyful to Live a Fulfilling and Meaningful Life
- Life is Too Short to Be Bored!
- Money Cannot Destroy Boredom
- How to Find Inspiration in Life
- Why You Must Ignore Haters to Succeed and Win in Life
- An Active Life is a Happy Life
- My Simple Joys in Life
- Never Stop Striving
- How to Motivate Yourself in Life
- How to Be Optimistic in Life
- How to Dictate Your Purpose in Life
- In Praise of a Dynamic Life
- PURPOSE.
- How to Enjoy Life
- Photography Therapy
- How to Conquer Regret
- Take Your Play Very Seriously.
- How to Prosper
- Memento Vivere
- Destroy in Order to CREATE
- Trust Your Body More Than Your Mind
- Make Photos to Make Meaning in Your Life
- Seek Knowledge, Not Information
- The Purpose of Human Life
- How to Overcome Impedence
- Why I Love Death
- How to Be Centered in the Eternal Now
- How to Be Happy
- Why Do You Care What Others Think of You?
- Why I’m Happy
- Why?
- Why I’m So Prolific
- How to Reduce LAG in Life
Masters of Philosophy »
Personal Philosophy »
Stoicism »
- How to Be a Stoic Street Photographer
- How to Use Photography as Self-Therapy
- How to Free Your Soul From Disturbance
Zen Philosophy »
- How to Be a Zen Street Photographer
- Zen in the Art of Street Photography
- How to Find Tranquility in Your Photography
Life Lessons »
Learn more: Start Here >
STOICISM 101
Become invincible:
- Introduction to Stoicism
- STOIC FLEX.
- Becoming Spartan
- MAKE IT ENTERTAINING FOR YOURSELF!
- Stoic Aesthetics?
- The Philosophy of Ugliness
- Bad Stoicism
- Stoicism 2.0
- Becoming Stoic
- LEMONADE.
- Why Arguments and Confrontations Are Good
- “I’m Over It”
- How to Deal With Miserable People
- How to Become a Stoic
- How to Ignore
- Pretend like you didn’t hear them
- Bad Stoic Strategies
- The Stoic Way of Dealing With Unpleasant or Miserable People
- HOW TO BECOME A STOIC
- Stoicism Stunts Our Power?
- Stoicism is Mental Resistance Training
- STOIC STRATEGIES.
- How to Become Fearless
- Extreme Stoicism
- Ethics are Aesthetic
- Indifference to Pain or Suffering
- When is Stoicism Good? When is Stoicism Bad?
- Why Others Criticize or Insult You
- True Difficulty
- What if Covid Never Goes Away?
- SUPER STOIC
- Anti-Hedonism
- HOW TO CONQUER FEAR
- ANTI FEAR
- It is the Duty of the Strong to Help the Weak
- The Goal is to Become Stronger
- HYPER STOICISM
- HYPER HERO
- TRANSFORM EVERY DOWNSIDE INTO AN UPSIDE
- STOICISM x Child’s Mind
- The Art of Manly Virtue
- Resistance Makes Us Stronger!
- DON’T LIVE IN FEAR
- Emotions are Good
- Conquer Your Anger
- BLACK EAGLE
- DIFFICULTY AWAKENS YOUR INNER-GENIUS.
- STOICISM IS ARMOR FOR THE MIND
- The Spartan-Stoic Lifestyle
- How I Conquered Fear
- HOW TO CURE FEAR.
- LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.
- The Upside of Poverty
- How I Became Me
- THE WILL TO POWER, OR THE WILL TO FEAR?
- ATTACK REALITY
- Living *THROUGH* History
- How to Fear Less
- Fear is the Ultimate Contagious Disease
- STOICISM FOR DUMMIES
- Don’t Be Scared!
- WHAT CAN YOU CONTROL, WHAT CAN YOU NOT CONTROL?
- HOW YOU CAN CONQUER FEAR
- YOU’RE STRONGER THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE.
- EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
- WHY AREN’T THINGS WORSE?
- My Philosophy on Masculinity
- A Riskier Life is a Better Life #philosophy #stoicism
- How to Creatively Flourish in Life
- Introduction to Stoicism
- How to Become Stronger
- How to Conquer Depression With Photography
- What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger
- How to Respect Yourself
- How to Believe in Yourself
- How to Steer Fear
- How to Conquer Pessimism
- How to Conquer Anxiety
- How to Overcome Your Fear of People
- How to Be Optimistic
- Why I Don’t Take My Anger Seriously
- HOW TO BECOME MORE POWERFUL
- POSITIVITY.
- HOW TO BECOME SUPERHUMAN
- How to Give a Fuck Less
- ALL IN.
- Why I Cut My Dad Out of My Life.
- Your iPhone Only Has 5% Battery Left.
- How not to give a FUCK about your REPUTATION
- WHAT IS A HUMAN?
- HAPPINESS.
- The Regret Minimization Framework in Photography and Life
- How to Be a HERO
- Conquer Your Fears by Making Fear Your Slave
- Rule Circumstances; Don’t Let Your Circumstances Rule You
- How to Love Yourself
- How to Turn Shit into Gold
- Your Parents Fuck You Up
- Immortality
- What Kills You Makes You Stronger
- How to Be Patient
- How to Conquer Anger
- How to Bounce Back in Life
- How to Overcome Resistance
- Nothing Unlimited is Good; Nothing Good is Unlimited
- You Have No Limits
- Can 1’s and 0’s Hurt You?
- The Envious Moment is Flying Now
- Tomorrow We’ll Sail the Wide Seas Again
- How to Forgive Others
- Focus on Your Actions, Not the Results
- Everything Will Be Alright
- How to Be a Stoic Street Photographer
- How to Be a Spartan Photographer
- How to Overcome Your Fears in Life
- How to Stop Worrying in Life
- How to Use Photography as Self-Therapy
- How to Free Your Soul From Disturbance
- 3 Stoic Techniques that Can Help You Gain Tranquility
- Can People Weaker than You Hurt You?
- Does a Doctor Get Angry at a Crazy Patient?
- Own Nothing
The Stoic Masters
Learn from the master stoics:
The Philosophy of Happiness
Happiness thoughts:
- What Will Make You Happier?
BOLD LIVING. - HAPPINESS IS ALWAYS ASPIRING FOR MORE.
- How to Boost Your Mood
- How to Maximize Your Happiness
- Life Without Photography is Not a Life Worth Living
- 10 Tips to Be Happier and More Loving in Life
- How to Find Happiness in Your Photography
- How to Find Satisfaction in Your Photography
- 30 Tips to Conquer G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome)
- 55 Tips to Be Happier in Life
- On the Shortness of Life
- Small is Beautiful
- Photography (and Life) is About Subtraction, Not Addition
- Why Envy Any Other Photographer?
- How to Be Happy in All Circumstances
- Desire the Life You Already Have
- Should You Shoot if You Don’t Want To?
- Live a Life of Leisure
- Good Enough
- 28 Lessons I’ve Learned From Life
- 27 Lessons I’ve Learned About Photography and Life
- 26 Lessons Life Has Taught Me About Street Photography
- Desire
- Good Enough
- Things I Am Grateful For
- How to Die Without Regrets
- 12 Scientifically Proven Ways to Have More Happiness in Street Photography
- Having No Choices is the Ultimate Freedom
- How to Be Grateful For What You Have
ETHICS by KIM
Your own personal code of ethics:
- Stubborn Geniuses
- Avoid Misery
- What We Hate
- HOW I DEAL WITH RACISM
- How to Become a Great Man
- BETTER TO FOLLOW YOUR GUT AND BE WRONG THAN DISOBEY YOUR GUT AND BE RIGHT
- “I CAN’T BE FUCKED.”
- Carte Blanche Ethics
- Toxic People
- Why Are We So Into Other People
- Just focus on yourself and your own life
- Perfect morals and ethics is following your own gut
WHY ETIQUETTE? - NO BLAME, JUST CAUSE AND EFFECT.
- Ignorance Takes Courage
- TREAT OTHERS CARTE BLANCHE
- Don’t give people what they want or what you *think* they want, give them what you think they *should* have.
- Anti Small
- Disdain or Admiration?
- Beware Those With Good Intentions
- STUBBORN x FLEXIBLE
- ETHICS ARE VIA NEGATIVA
- OBEDIENCE & DISCIPLINE
- The Motive of Criticism
- Ethics are Social
- Anti Role Models
- What is Greed?
- On Having the Courage to Make Your Own Decisions
- How *NOT* to Get Duped or Suckered
- Why Help Others?
- The Duty of the Strong
- Why I’m So Intolerant Towards Intolerance
- The Ethics of Criticizing Others
- Consult Your Own Conscience
- The Ethics of Shit Talking
- The Ethics of Personal Enrichment
- I’m Easily Distracted
- On Forming Your Own Opinion
- ERIC KIM Philosophy of Tolerance
- Tolerance
- Aesthetics are Ethics
- Morality and Ethics
DESIGN THOUGHTS
- INSANELY LIGHTWEIGHT
- MORE AGGRESSIVE DESIGN
- COMPROMISE DESIGN.
- ‘WASTEFUL’?
- Tight vs Loose
- Thick vs Thin
- Why Lamborghini is No Longer Interesting to Me
- DESIGN PHILOSOPHY IS AN ETHOS.
- LESS SURFACE AREA.
- ANTI IN-BETWEEN
- CLASSIC/TIMELESS IS BORING.
- Photographers are Designers
- Why Perfect?
- Beautiful but Boring
- AGGRESSIVE DESIGN.
- DESIGN IS KING.
- WHY DESIGN?
- THE RAGING BULL.
- BARE BONES.
- The Best Car for Thinking
- Zen Aesthetics
- Why Minimalism?
- SPARTAN DESIGN.
- Generic Design
- An Elite Aesthetic
- Not Hateful Design
- New Forward Facing Design vs Retrospective and Nostalgic Design
- Depressing Design vs Uplifting Design
- The Best Design Towards What Ends?
- Exciting or Boring Design?
- On Design & Photography
- A Designer Desires to Design and Create Things!
- Delightful Technology and Design
- Dynamic Aesthetics
- Design vs Brand Prestige
- Classic Proportions, Modern Design
- Why Does Design Matter?
- The Best Design
- MUSCULAR DESIGN.
- Camera Design
- Watch Design
SOCIOLOGY by KIM
- Sociology vs Philosophy?
- SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY
- FLAT SOCIETY
- National vs Individual Pride
- Dystopia is a Utopia
- A NEW SOCIETY.
- THE DEEP INDIVIDUAL.
- Why is It So Hard for Us To Follow Our Gut and Instinct?
- Sociology of Comparison
- Mimetic Desires
- Interest in Humans or Objects?
- Social Stochastic Resonance
- How to Live Bravely in Today’s Brave New World and Society
- Arousal
- Is Humanity on the Decline?
- Social Innovations
- Society *Shouldn’t* Be Fair
- Why Society Doesn’t Want Free Thinkers and Free Livers
- Our New Soft Society
- HARD SOCIETY
Sociological Theory
- TOLERANCE AND INTOLERANCE
- POST-MONETARY SOCIETY.
- Simulated Universal Basic Income
- DIGITAL CAPITALISM
- Capitalism 2.0
- SOCIETY 2.0
Photography and Sociology
- Street Photography Sociology
- Visual Sociology through Street Photography
- How You Can Apply Sociology to Your Street Photography Projects
- 10 Things Sociology Has Taught Me About Street Photography
MOTIVATION BY KIM
Become more:
- PHOTOGRAPHY INSPIRATION IDEAS
- Setbacks are a motivator, a turbocharger
- THERE IS SO MUCH OF THE WORLD TO PHOTOGRAPH!
- The Philosophy of Optimism
- What Slows You Down?
- Meta Editing
- Move Mass
- What’s “Cool”?
- No In-Between
- Independent Aspirations
- COMPULSION.
- *BEYOND* PERFECT.
- BUY BOOKS WHEN YOU WANT TO BUY GEAR.
- How to Make More Photos
- JUST MAKE MORE PHOTOS.
- MY DESIRE TO CAPTURE IT ALL.
- VISUAL DETOX.
- Photography is Our Addiction
- A BILLION PHOTOS
- THE MOTIVATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER.
- CURIOUS.
- PROVOKE.
- How to Do More Photography
- PRACTICE.
- TURBOCHARGE YOURSELF, TURBOCHARGE OTHERS.
- LIFE IS ALL UPSIDE, NO DOWNSIDE.
- PHOTO TURBO THOUGHTS
- No Such Thing as Good or Bad; Simply Stimulating or Not Stimulating
- The Best Genre is No Genre
- The Key to Photographic Motivation
- Pacifying Media, Motivational Media
- Our Hunger for New Experiences
- Mental Motivation
- ALL ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY.
- The Photographer as Creator
- Create *BEYOND* Yourself
- Let Your Curiosity Drive Your Photography
- LOVE YOUR PHOTOS.
- Abstract Monochrome Photography
- SHOOT WITHOUT THINKING.
- Just Have Fun With Photography
- Wu-Wei Effortless Motivation
- CONSISTENCY x NOVELTY
- Easily Bored?
- Face Photography
- How to Become More Self-Motivated in Your Photography
- YOUR OWN PHOTOS ARE THE BEST PHOTOS.
- On Sharing Your Favorite Photos
- UBERABUNDANCE.
- Peak Photographic Productivity
- When to Review Your Photos
- Serotonin and Photos
- The Photos You Have Yet Shot are Your Most Important Photos
- 3 Tips How to Master Photography
- Do You Like Your Own Photos?
- The Beauty of Mundane, Everyday Moments
- Reasons Why to Be Optimistic About the Future
- A Photography-Full Future
- The More You Shoot, the Better
- How Many Photos Should You Shoot Everyday?
- Why Do We Love Motion?
- Now is Your Chance to Shoot History in the Making
- Photo by Photo
- How and Why Photography Remains So Interesting to Me
- How to Conquer Your Inner Photographic Critic
- Thoughts on HDR Photography
- New Year, New Photos
- Why Exhibit Your Photos?
- Photography is Visual Poetry
- What’s the Purpose of Art?
- Why Do We Photographers Have Such a Hard Time Staying Inspired and Motivated?
- On Becoming a More Optimistic Photographer
- Philosophy of Weather
- How to Become a More Optimistic Photographer and Human
- You Are a Creative Photographer
- JUST SHARE YOUR ARTISTIC PROCESS WITH OTHERS.
- What Motivates Me to Shoot?
- How to Maximize Yourself to the Fullest
- HOW TO MOVE AND MOTIVATE PEOPLE
- Autotelic Photography
- The more I go out and photograph the world, the more interesting and beautiful the world becomes
- Why Photographers Have Such Low Self-Esteem
- ERIC KIM MOTIVATION
- Why Am I So Unmotivated?
- EVERY DAY IS A NEW DAY
- WHY ARE YOU SO UNMOTIVATED?
- Movement is Motivation
- How to Motivate Myself to Make New Photos
- Never Stop Optimizing
- How to Help and Motivate Others
- Feed On Your Own Photos; Let Them Nourish You!
- Competition is for Suckers
- A Future Without Travel
- How Google Can Improve Your Photography
- DEVELOP YOURSELF.
- NEVER STOP MOVING!
- How I Self-Motivate Myself
- Every Day the Sun is Birthed Anew
- A Life Without Photography Isn’t a Life Worth Living
- WIN.
- 8 Practical Photography Assignments for You
- Tabula Rasa, Blank Slate, Carte Blanche
- RELENTLESS
- LIFE IS THE ULTIMATE RPG
- HYPER VIGOR
- FRESH AIR PHOTOS
- WHO IS GONNA THRIVE IN TODAY’S BRAVE NEW WORLD?
- ARTISTIC OPTIMISM
- PASSION, not Discipline
- Better Bad Photos than No Photos
- The Empowering Feeling of Failure
- To Be Human is to Move
- Enjoy the Process
- Better Bad Photos than No Photos
- Why Keep Making New Art and Photos, Indefinitely?
- Photography Motivation: What if There is Nothing Interesting to Photograph?
- Move First, Motivation Later
- Motivation Follows the Action
- In Praise of Heroes
- 5 Tips How to Boost Your Creativity
- How to Have Inspiration to Take Photos in the Suburbs
- Anything that Motivates You to Move is Good!
- The Productive Photographer is the Happiest Photographer!
- Make Today Count!
- How to Break Through Photographer’s Block
- The Joyful Photographer
- The Dancing Photographer
- The Kaizen Process of Gradual Self-Improvement in Photography
- It is Your Duty to Make Beautiful Pictures!
- Making Pictures IS Happiness!
- NO EXCUSES.
- The Pomodoro Photography Technique
- The ABC of Photography
- Just Shoot It.
- How to Change the World With Photography
- How to Find Inspiration in Photography and Life
- How to Overcome Resistance
- Create Against the Past
- How I Motivate Myself to Make Photos
- Wear Your Camera Like a Necklace or Bracelet
- Have Your Photos Come to You
- How to Level Up in Your Photography
- How Not to Give a Fuck of What Others Think of You
- How to Overcome Procrastination in Your Photography
- How to Reinspire Your Photography
- What is Your Mission in Photography and Life?
- How to Overcome Photographer’s Block
- Be a Photographer Now
- How to Overcome Boredom with Photography
- Never Stop Growing as a Photographer
- Why Do You Need “Inspiration” to Shoot?
- Just Shoot.
- 5 Things to Do If You’ve Lost Your Passion for Photography
- How to Have Unshakeable Confidence in Yourself
- Don’t Give Up On Your Dream
- Don’t Waste Your Potential
- Unlock Your Potential
- Empower Others With Your Photography
- Why You Shouldn’t Follow Your Passion in Photography
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY 101
- How to Become More Stealth in Street Photography
- HOW TO BECOME A BETTER STREET PHOTOGRAPHER
- Street Photography Mastery
- How I Became the Greatest Street Photographer Alive
- Antifragile Photography
- How to Conquer Your Fears in Street Photography
- INSANELY AUDACIOUS AND BOLD
- 5 Simple Street Photography Techniques
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHER.
- The Street Photographer Ideal
- 50 Street Photography Tips, Techniques and Ideas
- Street Photography Values
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHY DOESN’T NEED TO HAVE PEOPLE IN IT.
- Why Street Photography is So Great
- WHY BECOME A STREET PHOTOGRAPHER?
- Society Photography, Not “Street” Photography
- How to Street Photography
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHY OPTIONALITY.
- 10 Street Photography Tips
- The Street Photographer as the Apex Photographer
- Street Photography & Adrenaline
- STREETTOGS STARTING GUIDE
- 50 Street Photography Tips by ERIC KIM
- What I Wish I Knew If I Started Street Photography All Over Again
- Photograph like it’s not a big deal
- Suburb Street Photography
- What is Our Personal Motivation Behind Street Photography?
- WHY I’M SO PASSIONATE ABOUT STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- Personal Street Photography
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHY AS A PRACTICE.
- Pandemic Street Photography
- AIRPORT STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- How to Shoot Street Photography Right Now
- Towards a More Independent Street Photography Approach
- How Street Photography Improves Your Life
- How to Tell Stories in Your Street Photos
- Face Street Photography
- How to Start Shooting Street Photography
- How to Shoot Street Photography During a Pandemic
- 7 Street Photography Assignment Ideas
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY STARTER KIT
Master street photography with STREET PHOTOGRAPHY STARTER KIT.
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY 101
If you’re new to street photography, start here:
- The Ultimate Street Photography Tutorial
- Street Photography 101 Tutorial
- 100 Lessons From the Masters of Street Photography
- How to Shoot Street Photography
Brave New Street Photography
- 10 Lessons I’ve Learned from Street Photography
- SKIN IN THE GAME: STREET PHOTOGRAPHY ETHICS
- The Beauty of Mundane Happenings
- Humans and Environments
- Define Street Photography for Yourself
- Street Photography of People You Know
- Street Photography Composition Ideas
- How to Shoot Political Photography
- Social Photography
- Street Photography Lifestyle
- Why Street Photography is So Fun
- Street Photography for Mental Health
- How to Become a Street Photography Sharpshooter
- How to Shoot Kid Street Photography
- STREET PHOTO MANUAL
- Street Photography is an Approach, a Technique, and an Ethos
Street Photographs
- How to Shoot Street Photography with Dads and Kids
- HOW I BECAME SUCH A GREAT STREET PHOTOGRAPHER
- Use Quarantine as an Opportunity to Pick up Film Photography
- Hong Kong Street Photography by ERIC KIM
Street Photography Philosophy
- Brave New Street Photographer
- How to Talk to Strangers
- How to Shoot More Dynamic Street Photographs
- WHY I LOVE ARCHITECTURE AND STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- Why Street Photography Brings Me So Much Joy
- How to Shoot Street Photography Video
- How to Shoot Street Photography in the Brave New COVID World
- The Future for Street Photography
- ALL STREET PHOTOGRAPHS ARE GOOD PHOTOGRAPHS.
- AMERICA by KIM
- Street Photography in a Non-Travel World?
- How to Shoot Street Photography During COVID-19
- You’ve Never Shot Photography Until You’ve Shot Street Photography
- Xenophilia: Love of Strangers
- My Street Photography Philosophy
- Why Street Photography is Important for Society
- HOW STREET PHOTOGRAPHY CAN CHANGE THE WORLD
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHY IS ABOUT LOVING ALL PEOPLE
- Real Life People vs Abstract People
- Is it OK to Piss Off or Annoy People in Photography?
- ANTI PURISM IN STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- Street Photography of People You Know
- Street Photography is Courage
- MY STREET PHOTOGRAPHY PHILOSOPHY
- Street Photography Motivation from ERIC KIM
- I AM STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- WHY TALK TO STRANGERS?
- Why Street Photography is Supreme
- How to Make Great Street Photos
- Street Photography Ideas by ERIC KIM
- Why Street Photography?
- The Street Photographer’s Soul
- How to Become a Fearless Street Photographer
- Black and White or Color for Travel Street Photography?
- Street Photographers are Adrenaline Junkies
- How to Master Street Photography
- Almost Anything and Everything is Street Photography
- Advice for Aspiring Street Photographers
- Street Photography Sociology
- Why There’s No Right or Wrong Way to Shoot Street Photography
- The Street Photographer as a Soldier-Artist
- Why Street Photography is the Best Photography
- Street Photography is a Way of Life
- How to Conquer Anxiety
- Street Photography is Art with People
Street Photography Articles
- How to Edit and Sequence a Photography Project
- Practical Street Photography Tips
- 5 Simple Street Photography Assignments
- Street Photography Composition Ideas
- 10 Advanced Street Photography Tips and Techniques
- Daredevil Photography
- Lingering Technique: How to Work the Scene in Street Photography
- Why Photograph People?
- No Guilt in Street Photography
- Street Photography is Hard.
- Street Photography Inspiration
- 5 Simple Tips How to Shoot Better Street Photos
- 10 Super Simple Street Photography Tips
- How to Shoot Head-On in Street Photography
- The Decapitation Technique in Street Photography
- Be Brazen in Street Photography
- How to Shoot Better Street Photographs
- Drive-By Technique in Street Photography
- How to Shoot a Wedding Like a Street Photographer
- Street Photography is 80% Risk Taking!
- 10 Simple Street Photography Principles
- 5 Fundamental Street Photography Principles
- 10 Street Photography Assignment Ideas
- How to Tell Stories in Street Photography
Street Photography Techniques
- How to Shoot Head-On Street Photography
- Street Photography Composition Tips
- In Praise of Street Vlogging
- How to Shoot Video Street Photography
- Street Photography Technique: The Stalker Technique
- Photography Technique: Take Photos While Walking!
- New Tokyo GoPro Fusion POV Street Photography YouTube Videos
- ERIC KIM Street Photography Tips and Technique
- The 360 Degree Technique in Street Photography
- How to Work the Scene in Street Photography
- How to Shoot Layers and the Bookend Technique in Street Photography
- Street Photography Technique: GET CLOSE & FILL THE FRAME + GOLDEN DIAGONAL COMPOSITION
- Street Photography Techniques: The 3D Scan/360 Degree Technique (Shooting Head-on) and Holding Your Camera High in the Air and Point Downwards (and Use Your LCD Screen to Frame the Scene)
- The Walking Alongside Someone and Shooting Until They Notice You Street Photography Technique
- SUPER INNOVATIVE NEW GOPRO STREET PHOTOGRAPHY POV EXPERIENCE: Cutoff Technique, Shooting Head-on with Flash, and Slow-Motion on RICOH GR II at 28mm
- How to Shoot a Street Portrait: Tips, Technique, and GoPRO POV Tutorial
- Street Photography Technique/Composition: Leading Lines and Crouching Down Low
- How to Shoot Layers in Street Photography: GoPRO POV Video Composition Tutorial
- How to Shoot Street Photography with a 24mm Lens
- The Cutoff Technique in Street Photography
- THE CUTOFF TECHNIQUE IN STREET PHOTOGRAPHY: GOPRO POV KYOTO ERIC KIM
Street Photography Ideas
- Street Photography is Like Fishing
- Why Do We Feel Nervous Shooting Street Photography?
- Street Photography Philosophy
- Everyday Street Photography
- Why Street Photography?
- Why You Must Follow Your Own Voice in Street Photography
- How to Overcome Guilt in Street Photography
- 5 Dynamic Off-Center Street Photography Compositions
- 5 Night Street Photography Composition Tips
- How to Talk to Strangers
- How to Overcome Fear in Street Photography
- Street Photography Empowerment
- Eric Kim’s Top 30 Street Photography Tips
- How to Shoot Street Photography on a 35mm Lens
- 7 Tips How to Conquer Your Fears of Shooting Street Photography
- Street Photography Lifestyle
- How to Use Tactful Flattery in Street Photography
- How to Conquer Social Anxiety With Street Photography
- Street Photography Secrets Debunked
- 10 Dynamic Street Photography Tips
- The Benefits of Shooting Street Photography
- The Street Photography Manifesto
- My Experience Shooting Digital Medium Format in Street Photography
- Why Do You Feel Guilty Shooting Street Photography?
- Improvise in Street Photography
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Street Photography Composition Techniques
- 10 Inspirational Sergio Larrain Compositions
- 5 Henri Cartier-Bresson Photography Composition Lessons
- Street Photography Technique: Overlap
- Street Photography Composition Lesson: Chunking
- The Fishing Technique in Street Photography
STREET NOTES.
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Timeless wisdom from the masters of street photography.
FUNDAMENTALS OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
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- Street Photography Secrets
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- CLOSER.
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Street Photography Inspiration
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- Simple Street Photography Tips
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- How to Make Controversial Street Photographs
- Street Photography Project Ideas
- How to Make Good Street Photos
- Is Defining “STREET PHOTOGRAPHY” a Good Thing?
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHY “RULES” TO BREAK
- Walking Meditation in Street Photography
- 10 COMMANDMENTS OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
- Street Photography is Improvisation
- In Praise of Randomness in Street Photography
- How to Become a Fearless Photographer
- How to Make Better Street Photographs
- 12 ERIC KIM Street Photography Assignments
- Meaningful Street Photography
- 25 Street Photography Tips by ERIC KIM
Beginner Street Photography Articles
Get started in street photography:
Definitions in Street Photography
- Visual Sociology Street Photography
- Why Street Photography?
- What is Street Photography?
- Why Shoot Street Photography?
- The History of Street Photography
How to Shoot Street Photography
- How to Shoot Street Photography
- Street Portraits 101 by ERIC KIM
- The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Street Photography
- 70 Street Photography Tips for Beginners
- 15 Street Photography Techniques and Tips
- A Letter to My 18 Year Old Self: If I Started Street Photography All Over Again
Street Photography Equipment
- What is the Best Camera for Street Photography?
- What is the Best Lens for Street Photography?
- What to Consider When Buying a Camera
How to Conquer Your Fears in Street Photography
See all articles to conquer your fears >
Intermediate Street Photography Articles
Take your street photography to the next level:
- How to Become a Stoic Street Photographer
- The 10 Principles of Good Street Photography
- 7 Tips How to Capture “The Decisive Moment” in Street Photography
- The Importance of Social Skills in Street Photography
- The Street Photography Code of Ethics
- “Taking” vs “Making” Photos in Street Photography
- Follow Your Gut in Street Photography
- 10 Reasons Why You Should Never Chimp While Shooting Street Photography
Advanced Street Photography Articles
Find deeper meaning in your street photography:
- How to Master Street Photography
- How to Be a Zen Street Photographer
- Personal Street Photography
- The “Bookend” Technique in Street Photography
- Street Photography is Self-Therapy
- Zen in the Art of Street Photography
- Taoism and Street Photography
- How to Find Your Style in Street Photography
- Follow Your Gut in Street Photography
Street Photography Tips & Technique
Learn how to shoot on the streets:
- 70 Street Photography Tips for Beginners
- 15 Street Photography Techniques and Tips
- Flash Street Photography Guide
- Take More Risks
- Don’t Think About Composition When You’re Shooting Street Photography
- 7 Tips How to Capture “The Decisive Moment” in Street Photography
- 7 Tips How to Make a Great Street Photograph
- Tokyo Street Photography Contact Sheets
- Video: Why it is Important to “Work the Scene” in Street Photography
- Shoot Less, Better
- Make Shitty Photos
- Shoot Effortlessly
- 10 Tips for Candid Street Photography
- 103 Lessons I’ve Learned From Street Photography
See all street photography tips and techniques >
Street Photography Guides
In-depth guides on street photography:
- How to Shoot Candid Street Photography
- How to Shoot Street Portraits with Permission
- How to Shoot Black and White Street Photography
- How to Shoot Color Street Photography
- How to Shoot Street Portraits with Permission
- How to Shoot Layers in Street Photography
- How to Shoot Urban Landscapes
Street Photography Equipment
The best equipment for street photography:
- What is the Best Camera for Street Photography?
- What is the Best Lens for Street Photography?
- Why I Love Cameras with Non-Interchangeable Lenses
- The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide for Cameras in Street Photography
- What to Consider When Buying a Camera for Street Photography
- In Street Photography, The Smaller the Camera, the Better
- Why Sharpness is Overrated in Street Photography
- How to Shoot Street Photography on a DSLR
Street Photography Editing and Workflow
- Video: Introduction to Editing, Processing, and Workflow in Lightroom
- How to Edit (Choose Your Best Photos) in Street Photography
- How Studying Contact Sheets Can Make You a Better Street Photographer
- Debunking the “Myth of the Decisive Moment”
How to Start a Street Photography Project
- Free E-Book: The Street Photography Project Manual
- How to Start Your Own Street Photography Project
- How to Come Up With a Personal Photography Project Idea
Learn From the Masters of Street Photography
“He without a past has no future.”
Start here:
- Why Study the Masters of Photography?
- Great Female Master Photographers
- Cheat Sheet of the Masters of Photography
- 100 Lessons From the Masters of Street Photography
- Beginner’s Guide to the Masters of Street Photography
- Download All Articles >
The Masters of Photography
Classics never die:
- Alfred Stieglitz
- Alec Soth
- Alex Webb
- Alexey Brodovitch
- Anders Petersen
- Andre Kertesz
- Ansel Adams
- Araki
- Blake Andrews
- Bruce Davidson
- Bruce Gilden
- Constantine Manos
- Daido Moriyama
- Dan Winters
- David Alan Harvey
- David Hurn
- Diane Arbus
- Dorothea Lange
- Elliott Erwitt
- Eugene Atget
- Eugene Smith
- Fan Ho
- Garry Winogrand
- Gordon Parks
- Helen Levitt
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
- Irving Penn
- Jacob Aue Sobol
- Jeff Mermelstein
- Joel Meyerowitz
- Joel Sternfeld
- Josef Koudelka / Part 2
- Josh White
- Lee Friedlander
- Lisette Model
- Magnum Contact Sheets
- Magnum Photographers
- Mark Cohen
- Martin Parr
- Martine Franck
- Mary Ellen Mark
- Rene Burri
- Richard Avedon
- Richard Kalvar
- Robert Capa
- Robert Frank
- Saul Leiter
- Sergio Larrain
- Sebastião Salgado
- Shomei Tomatsu
- Stephen Shore
- The History of Street Photography
- Todd Hido
- Tony Ray-Jones
- Trent Parke
- Vivian Maier
- Walker Evans
- Weegee
- William Eggleston
- William Klein
- Zoe Strauss
Free Downloads
Free Street Photography Books
Distilled information on street photography:
- STREET PHOTOGRAPHY MANUAL by ERIC KIM
- The Art of Street Photography
- 100 Lessons From the Masters of Street Photography
- Street Photography Contact Sheets
- Street Photography 101
- Street Photography 102
- Film Street Photography Manual
- The Street Photography Composition Manual
- The Street Portrait Manual
- 31 Days to Overcome Your Fear in Street Photography
- Zen in the Art of Street Photography
For more resources on photography, Start Here >
Entrepreneurship by KIM
Become the change which you desire to see manifested in the world!
Become you.
- Why Doesn’t Anything Satisfy Me?
- ZERO FINANCIAL CONCERNS
- How to Gain Ascendancy
- Business vs Entrepreneurship?
- TAKE REAL CHANCES
- Making Money as a Hobby
- The Best Exercises for Entrepreneurs
- INCOME VS EXPENSES MONEY LIFESTYLE PHILOSOPHY
- Entrepreneurship is the privilege of being able to attempt something new
- How to Become More Influential
- The Point of Life is Entrepreneurship?
- How to Think Like an Entrepreneur
- Become the Outlier
- Self Reliance
- How to Extend Your Reach
- NEWS: How to Think Like an Entrepreneur
- PVP (Player vs Player)
- How I became so influential
- WE LOVE THE *SENSATION* OF RISK-TAKING
- WHY HIGH PROFIT MARGINS?
- INNOVATION THOUGHTS
- OVERCONFIDENCE IS GOOD.
- GARAGE ENTREPRENEURSHIP
- PERHAPS IT IS GOOD TO BE “DELUSIONAL”
- USE YOUR WEALTH TO BUY STUFF, OR TO BUILD AND INNOVATE STUFF?
- HOW TO THRIVE
- Target Demographic
- Ambition Over Happiness
- Anti Collaboration
- The Will to Economy
- Why New?
- CHOOSE ADRENALINE.
- No Looking Back.
- 1000x Different
- BECOME SPENDTHRIFT
- THE BENEFIT OF JUST ONE.
- EXTREME INNOVATION.
- Practicality is Boring
- BECOME YOUR OWN STANDARD.
- NEVER STOP ITERATING.
- CONDENSE.
- Take Lots of Small Financial Risks
- Control Over Convenience
- Why Are Chinese Companies So Innovative?
- INSANELY DIFFERENT.
- Why Doesn’t Anything Ever Satisfy Me?
- THE GREAT PASSION.
- Perhaps Dissatisfaction is Good
- ONE REP MAX.
- WHAT DO YOU *REALLY* WANT IN LIFE?
- LIFE IS ABOUT STRIVING FOR MORE.
- NEVER STOP LINKING.
- THE GREATEST.
- WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!
- THE BEST IS YET TO COME.
- ERIC KIM CRITIQUE OF ROMANTICISM
- COMPLACENCY.
- JUST BUY IT.
- ALL ABOUT YOU.
- MOVE THE WORLD
- Boring or Not Boring?
- What if Your Past Self were Inferior to Your Present Self?
- THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROGRESS
- CULTURE IS YOUR ENEMY.
- Difficulty & Interest
- The Will to Expansion
- What is Work?
- SOUL IN THE GAME.
- JUST START IT.
- Not Boring
- PRIDE IN YOUR OWN NAME / BRAND
- AS MUCH AS YOU CAN TOLERATE.
- Speed is Paramount
- TAKE IT BACK TO THE BEGINNING.
- A Life With No Risk Taking is *NOT* a Life Worth Living
- Dissatisfaction is Good
- GREATER STRENGTH, GREATER CHALLENGES.
- In Praise of the New
- Uncorrupted Desires
- You Cannot Fake Passion
- SELF-OVERGOING
- FORM YOURSELF.
- Personal Entrepreneurship
- RELENTLESS.
- PUT YOUR NAME ON IT.
- A Life of Expansion
- SELF-ENTREPRENEURSHIP
- YOU ARE THE EXCEPTION.
- Use Your Life as an Experiment to Self-Develop Yourself to Heights Never Seen Before
- Invest in New Developments
- Investing Towards What End?
- The 90%/10% Principle in Entrepreneurship
- Speed Wins
- The Philosophy of Happiness
- When to Over-Estimate, When to Under-Estimate?
- Never Stop Iterating
- Money as a Tool for Life and Artistic Experimentation
- Less But More Premium
- Mainstream vs Low-Key Success
- Why Dissatisfaction is Good
- SEEK YOUR OWN PERSONAL MAXIMAL BENEFIT INSTEAD OF COMPLAINING
- Manifest Your Destiny
- Is it Best to *Not* Communicate Your Inner Thoughts or Ideas With Others?
- CREATE THINGS YOU WISH TO SEE MANIFESTED IN THE WORLD
- How to Do More Work
- CONTROL.
- Competition is for Losers
- Change.
- Your Competitive Advantage with Insanely Fast Wifi and High Speed Internet
- Pseudo Individualism
- Natural Internal Promoting vs External Promptings
Think for Yourself.
- Survival vs Thrivival
- Become Rich
- SECRETS.
- Why it is Better to Beg for Forgiveness than Ask for Permission
- Thinking About the Past Prevents You From Thinking About the Future
- How to Predict the Future
- Tools of Mass Distraction
- So What?
FREEDOM
Never stop innovating.
Entrepreneurship Mindset
- What is Your Dream in Life?
- 8 Blogging Productivity Tips
- Why Be Normal?
- How Much Suffering Are You Willing to Endure to Achieve Your Dreams?
Put a Dent in the Universe.
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PHOTOGRAPH LIKE A CHILD
-
Spartan Picks
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Spartan Philosophy
One of the things I love the most is Spartan philosophy, thinking about ancient Sparta etc.
Why? Aesthetically, ethically, and in terms of the ethos — I love it!
Just watch the movie 300
I watched the movie 300 at a good time; I think it came out when I was in high school, maybe my junior year, at the peak of my hormones.
Watching the movie 300 when I was around 17 years old was good, because it’s solidified a certain aesthetic and physique ideal.
But now, I feel bad for all these modern day kids, who being raised with these weird aesthetic and physique ideals?
First, it seems that the new modern day trend is towards notification. Ugly bodies, everyone is skinny fat, no muscle mass, not permitted to be happy gay jubilant and ratchets; everybody is antisocial weird and awkward.
On the other extreme is all these dudes hopped up on steroids. Apparently it is even OK to be on steroids nowadays, which I also think is a bad thing. I think we need to inject more shame into steroids; it is really really bad.
For example, everybody knows that Dwayne The Rock Johnson is on steroids, yet everybody turns the blind eye. Why? We like the idea of the rock, yet, we don’t want to acknowledge that he is juicing his eyeballs out?  
Think muscle
Even Nietzsche talks about muscle. 
Even in his book the Walter power, or was it twilight of the idols… he posits the future man as being more carnivorous, with more muscle? 
Nothing is natural
The weird thing in diet health physiology fitness… Everyone is always trying to do what is “natural”. But nothing is natural.
For example, people say the lame response, that eating meat is not natural, or being a carnivore is not natural whatever. But it doesn’t matter… Neither is being vegan or vegetarian, everyone is and should be permitted to do whatever they want to do.
You can be whatever you want to be
The philosophy of becoming; you can become whatever you want to become.
Technically, nothing you will do will cause you to die. For example, doesn’t matter if you’re vegetarian or vegan, it won’t kill you. You won’t die. Yet you probably won’t be that muscular or strong, or well… But once again that is your imperative not mine.
Most people don’t know what they want to become?
I think this is the big issue in today’s world; nobody really knows what they want to become.
One of the easiest things that you would ask a kid was this: “what do you want to be when you grow up? Perhaps this should be the same question for adult; what do you want to be when you grow older?
***
So why does this matter? 
I have some interesting thoughts; one of them is towards some thoughts on life, living approaches etc.
First, think of the ancient Spartan gymnasium, in which all the guys are just naked working out, hanging out in the open air plot of land, lifting weights, being manly.
Second, think about what the ancient Spartans wanted; they just wanted to be left alone.
For example, the reason why Sparta was military state was because she just wanted to be left alone, and the military power of Sparta was simple;
If anybody tried to invade Sparta, and subjugate it… Sparta would have a formidable army to protect itself from being taken over. 
All you need is 300
In today’s world everyone wants billions of followers, but think… Would you rather have 1 billion Persian slaves or 300 Spartan elite?
I would choose the 300.
King Leonidas was a historical fact
What I think blows everybody’s mind is the fact that King Leonidas was in fact a historical fact. He existed in real life, and the 300 were real. It was not just a fantasy or hocus-pocus story, like anything written by Moses. Or the ancient early Christian fathers.
Even the ancient Romans and Greeks were so inspired by the ancient Spartans — laconic, Lacadonia — there were lots of big fans.
Laconic sayings
Another manly thing; true men speak few words. 
For example when Persian emissary told king Leonidas that they would have so many arrows that they would blocked out the sun, I think it was Kingsley Leonidas or one of his generals who joked and said “Then we shall fight in the shade.”
Also, another saying:
When the ancients Spartans were told, that the enemy was approaching … instead of asking “How many are there“? They would ask, “Where are they?”
John Wick doesn’t say more than 200 words in John Wick 4? 
John Wick as the ultimate zen stoic spartan. 
My self ideal?
Body of a demigod, mind of a spartan, zen aesthetics.
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Lit Life
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The Philosophy of Risk Taking 
Greater fates, greater futures.
Force finds a way. 
Nietzsche once said; the secret to the greatest amount of happiness is living the life with the maximum amount of danger! I think this was from twilight of the idols, or maybe from the will to power at the end. 
I think we live in an interesting time. I think currently the world has been hijacked by Internet website advertising, mostly Google and Google ads to blame, as well as pernicious sneaky sponsored advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, Google Chrome etc. Same goes with YouTube.
Also something I have learned from things; I think we are actually much more visually sensitive, image sensitive, sound sensitive then we think we are. Also, the mind is subtle; even if I accidentally see some sort of weird thumbnail image, in fact, it puts me in a bad mood for the rest of the day etc.
I think the big problem here is that the news and information has become so hyper sensationalized. Why? Everyone is trying to maximize their income earning potential of the Internet and media, assuming that whatever they are posting is on a website or blog or news agency leveraged by Google sense, the drive is to maximize eyeball viewing time, and Click through rates, for the publisher to make money.
Also, something that I have learned about solo entrepreneurs in the media space; everyone is trying to search and seek and strive for some sort of “legitimacy”, or, they’re just struggling to pay their rent.
For example, let us say that I am some sort of Internet personality, some sort of fitness influencer, even Fraher. Perhaps the only way I could pay my rent is through some sort of sponsorship or brand deal, in which I am being paid maybe only $500-$1000 a month, and barely maintaining even my expenses.
Also, even some inside intelligence on YouTube; the super fax is that even if my video gets 100 million views, assuming I had advertisements on it I might only make about seven to $8000 USD. That is actually not that much. You’re probably better off Working as an Amazon prime delivery driver, or even Uber driver. And even the best craters, it is very rare that they make a video with so many views.
As a consequence, there is this low-key bias or optimization towards creating videos or things which strive to hit that benchmark. Once again it is things that have to deal with more with the sensational, audacious, the bizarre, even the morose?
Who to trust
Truth be told, in today’s world especially with internet blogs, ChatGPT 4, the funny thing I learned:
Even ChatGPT doesn’t know if ChatGPT wrote it or not!
For example, instead of just googling myself, I have just been ChatGPT’ing myself. For example I have the paid premium version of ChatGPT, which gives me access to the new newest version of ChatGPT which is version 4, which I rate at least 1000 times better than the free ChatGPT 3.5.
So for example I’ll do something like search “ERIC KIM“, and just see what ChatGPT tells me, and I will just copy and paste that into a new blog post on my own personal blog titled “ERIC KIM“, And within a week, ChatGPT indexes that and links back to that. It is almost like a snake eating its own tail, the ourubus. 
As a consequence, let us just think and consider; how today’s media landscape is created within the Internet. Let us say that I am some sort of newsagency or publishers; I will hire writers, and a lot of these writers will use ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence editing and writing and text generation tools. It is impossible to ascertain how much of it was written by human or ChatGPT or whatever whatever; and even so… Assuming that even if 100% of the information was hand typed by human being, it almost doesn’t really matter because a lot of these writers tend to be dark morose and sick people.
Currently speaking I live in Culver City Los Angeles California, where Jeff Bezos Amazon, Amazon prime, Amazon prime studios just least a huge lot of land, the Culver studios, owned by the developer Michael Heckman, apparently even  Jeff Bezos spot out the movie theater, the culvert theater next-door. Also slowly but surely apple is getting in bed with Sony entertainment, producing movies like the new Napoleon movie as well as the new killers of the flower moon with Leonardo DiCaprio.
During this whole period I saw a lot of people from the writer strike, and honestly… A lot of these people look very unwell. Most of them do not look very physically fit, and you could just see; they don’t spend enough time outside, none of them look happy jubilant and gay, and just think simply; if the physiology and health of somebody is poor, what kind of artwork or ideas do you think they will produce? There is this weird bias that we think that somehow the mind is divorced from the body, but in fact, the mind is the body. That is if your body is sick, your mind is sick. However, if your body is strong robust and great, so will your ideas.
How we lose our backbone
I don’t think it’s a modern day trend or shift; my thought is honestly all generations all histories people in the past, seems like everyone has always left a spine or a backbone. I wrote a nice little piece back in Vietnam titled Adamantine Spine;  imagine yourself like wolverine; the best way to imagine things is that you are actually like wolverine, your body is made out of adamantine metal, and what happens is every time that somebody tries to destroy you, you regenerate and you re-heal, I’ll be at a very painful process, you still do it. 
Kind of like Deadpool; the reason why I really love Ryan Reynolds and the Deadpool character is there is a little bit of fun dark humor here; I think when people take things to literally, too seriously, life loses its bigger it’s fun it’s jubilance. 
However a bad example is when you turn the needle too much towards the comedic; for example there is this notion called “Campi“, when things are almost too cheesy, and lame. For example all of the new Thor movies, as well as all the new Disney Marvel movies, they are insanely lame.
What are good examples?
All modern day media is bad. Only good ones I think are actually ancient Greek epics; the Iliad, after that the Odyssey. If you’re curious, I think that the Iliad is at least 100 or 200 times better more interesting and more fun than the odyssey. Whether or not both were written by Homer or not doesn’t really seem to matter; I think the overall storyline of the Iliad is much more exciting and intense whereas the odyssey is a bit boring.
The Odyssey just drags on and on… Odysseus is a good character but not as grand as Achilles. 
Greater risks, greater futures
It seems that a lot of modern day humans want some sort of weird free lunch; somehow… We want to live a better more greater more grand life that is more exciting and fun, yet we seem to not desire taking any personal risks.
For example let us think about video game culture. My simple heuristic is this; don’t play no video game in which you have actually not done the real thing yourself. For example, all these grown men playing video games in which they are shooting each other with guns, and they have actually never shot a real life gun seems little bit weird.
Also I have a rule; video games should only be permitted for poor kids in the hood, we have nothing better else to do.
Also a cut off time; no adult over the age of 18 years old should play video games anymore. I think it is fine for highschoolers and middle schoolers video games, but not grown men.
I ended up quit playing video games when I was around 18 or 19 years old, my freshman year of college. Why? I literally had no time! I had a part-time job, working around 20 hours a week as tech-support for the UCLA undergraduate admissions office, I was active in many clubs, having to study, and do other stuff.
I actually think that some weird ways, if you do games are like pornography for the mind-body and soul. The generalize just a most video games is everyone wants to be a hero, take risks, go on quest, obtain some booty whatever. Yet, embodied reality real life doesn’t seem to allow any outlets for this. Therefore, people escape into video games. 
How video games are bad.
The big issue with video games is that ultimately, you are a slave to the platform, the close loop system, the video game producer and publisher etc.
For example, already… It seems that the video game Fortnite which was insanely grand is already being forgotten. Let us say you are a person who devoted 10,000 hours to playing the Fortnite game, but now no longer anybody plays it. All of your time has been wasted.
Even StarCraft, StarCraft professional players; nobody really plays it anymore, let us say that you’re a professional gamer sponsorships making money playing StarCraft tournaments, now you no longer have any sponsors. All of your time was for naught. 
More thoughts
A critical thing I believe for men, us men, is that we require some sort of physical risk, physical challenge, some sort of physical risk taking.
For example, in my mind the only type of weightlifting which is interesting includes some sort of “risk”; for example, when I would atlas lift seven plates, eight plates, nine plates, 10 plates, max out the bar, and then clip on an additional 25 pounder in between and on top of the 10 plates, the jaws of others would drop; and then a few people would actually have the chutzpah to tell me:
“… be careful.”
My thought;
People actually want to see me get hurt, or “fail”. When I succeeded, I have somehow dismantled their narrow worldview.
Is ERIC KIM on drugs? 
another funny bias; when I was doing so much crazy turbo thoughtting while in Vietnam (I was off the grid, got rid of my phone, didn’t communicate for about two years, no email no communication no social media no nothing… People would ask…)
is ERIC KIM okay?
Or,
is ERIC KIM on drugs?
Or–
What happened to ERIC KIM?
Simple; when you are disconnected from the BS of traditional American media thinking… Do you think different. Also, not having a phone, I think this is the 10,000 X secret cheat code to life. Assuming that you were a crypto trillionaire, and you no longer needed other people “opportunities“, or you didn’t really desire to get paid money from other people or corporations… What real use do you have of email anyways?
When people say “opportunities”, I think it is a weird keratin stick; part of it is chasing some sort of legitimacy, part of it is chasing some sort of financial opportunities, brand sponsorships etc.
Something I have personally discovered is this:
brand Sponsorships are a trap. 
Example, if you are sponsored by any sort of company or corporation or whatever… You are not really going to hundred percent say what is really on your mind. This is the same thing that goes with “brand ambassadors”– I find the whole thing a bit base; why? He or she who focuses too much on getting some sort of “ambassador ship is a signal that they are just chasing clout in some sort of mean way.
Once again, if you already have $200 million worth of cryptocurrency bitcoin or chainlink or whatever – why do you need to get some sort of brand “ambassadorship” from anybody? Why do you want free equipment gear or stuff? Why not just buy it yourself?
This is actually something I have discovered with a lot of guys in the photography space; they are already independently wealthy from some sort of other ventures, whether it be business etc. And then they go seek to try to become some sort of “ambassador“, for Leica camera whatever.
That is not forget that Leica camera, the modern day rendition is essentially the brainchild of Dr. Andreas Kaufman– who I discovered is not a “real“ doctor; he caught his PhD in philosophy, which I think is a good idea but I think when people talk about him they assume that he has some sort of medical doctor or something.
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Buy Chainlink
Why I Bought Chainlink
A simple heuristic that I learned from Nassim TALEB; don’t ask people what you should invest in, ask them… What did you invest in? 
For example, I recently swapped a bunch of my bitcoin for chainlink. Why did I do it? My thoughts: 
What is chainlink?
Essentially it is a platform built upon Ethereum, the blockchain… that strives to solve real world problems.
The first critical issue at hand is the notion of the “Oracle problem”, and cryptographic proof and truth.
The general gist of the Oracle problem is that you have all these people purporting to say something… How do you know if someone is really telling the truth or not?
Also, they’re great innovation of a decentralized oracle network. I think anything that is decentralized and can be done offline is a good idea; anything that has to be done when you’re connected to the web is fragile.
For example, the “internet of things”, which includes all of your home devices, your home stuff etc. I think this includes your home speaker things, your Amazon echo or echo dot, your Apple HomePod thing, your ring Amazon nest devices etc. 
Enabling transactional value?
TVE — transactional value enabled?
What is the purpose of technology and these things? A very basic idea is that the point is to help enable commerce and other things. Money makes the world go round, Publilius Syrus.
What is money anyways? Money is movement. Anything that literally physiologically moves human beings in time and space is money.
For example, if you promise somebody $30 an hour, they will walk around, move their bodies to clean toilets, etc.
Also, money movement. The whole global economy to me is so fascinating; because we process and move information so quickly and so globally… how do you link it all together?  
Chain – Link
I find chainlink to be an interesting concept because wherever you go in real life, there are physical chain links everywhere.
Also, technically the internet, the World Wide Web, is a bunch of hyperlinks which link websites together.
My personal thought and prediction is that chainlink could become the next Google; Google indexes the whole internet, and made it easy for you to find any sort of website. What I think chainlink will do is link all of this information on the internet and computers and make them accessible, trustworthy, tamperproof.
Just read it
Only read stuff that you find interesting, skip over stuff you find boring.
About a week or two ago, I reread the original bitcoin white paper, and I was so impressed with how short it was, how minimalistic it was, and how to the point it was. But… reading it… this time around… felt a bit boring.
And this is the big thing: if something bores you, you gotta get out of it.
Therefore, I sold or transferred or converted nine of my bitcoin and put it all into chainlink, at the time it was valued at ~20,800 LINK (CHAINLINK), with bitcoin at around $35,000 a bitcoin.
I think what I try to do is think at least 30 years into the future. 20 or 30 years. It is funny, as I write this at the age of 35, 30 years from now Seneca is only going to be 32 years old, still a few years younger than me. My personal aspiration is to hold onto chainlink for at least 30 years, and then maybe transfer it to Seneca when he grows up. Or I just help him build some sort of company or entrepreneurial venture etc.
Investing in things actually do something?
I love bitcoin but maybe one of the big issues here is that bitcoin is like digital money and gold; most people just hold onto it, and I don’t think actually aspire to use it to actually pay for your latte at Starbucks or whatever. I think because bitcoin and cryptocurrency is so volatile; Everybody’s hope and dream and ambition is that their coin will rise value astronomically and they will become rich, buy the Lamborghini or whatever… and be happy.
Trust nobody who drives a Lamborghini — only trust people who drive Toyota Priuses, in white. 
Why? If you drive a Toyota Prius, in white… it is a signal that you really don’t care for appearances.
How do you know if somebody is unsuccessful? 
If they drive a Range Rover, a Mercedes AMG G wagon, murdered out, all matte black, a baselevel Mercedes car, a baselevel Audi car, like an A3 or a Q3, drive some sort of Audi electric car which is just the same as the Porsche Taycan, don’t forget that the Volkswagen group owns Lamborghini Audi Volkswagen Porsche etc. same thing goes with anybody who drives a BMW car.
Foreign cars are bad.  
It is just a game! 
I think crypto, cryptocurrency speculation is an interesting game; prediction, prediction markets, trying to predict the future… is just a luxury and a fun thing.
Some predictions are pretty obvious
When I was in college, my sophomore year, and I was starting to get into trading stocks, daytrading… I had a pretty certain thought that Blockbuster was going to go under. I tried to figure out how to short stocks, but I really couldn’t figure out how to do it.
Also I remember when the prime mortgage meltdown happened, and the value of Ford went to almost 2 dollars a year. I wanted to buy some Ford stock but I had no money, no capital.
It is interesting to think about this in hindsight because when I was incorrectly trading pennystock, for some sort of oil producer company which was actually running at a loss… I had no idea because I misread the financials… I lost my whole life savings which was maybe $3500 USD or something. It was insanely tragic. But now that I am playing with higher sums more like $300,000 USD, I realize that it was just a valuable lesson at the time.
Therefore, with any sort of financial speculation, think about it at the 30 year span. Even when you are 70 or 80 years old, I met this lady at the park who looked phenomenal and she told me she was 82… she looked like a very fit 45-year-old!
My personal aspiration is when I’m 82 years old, to still be able to lift 1000 pounds. Google or YouTube “ERIC KIM thousand pound atlas lift”
It seems that the way things are going, I don’t think it’s that ridiculous to think that we can live to be 120 years old. Try to think that far. 
What is the use of money anyways? 
I think actually the big thing is that everyone now aspires to buy a house or home or property. It is getting pretty ridiculous, even in Los Angeles, even buying a single-family home in Inglewood… you’re looking easily at around $1.5 million for a whatever house.
My prediction is that the prices of homes  will continue to soar astronomically high. I think a lot of these $1.5 million homes can easily balloon two $3 million, $5 million, 10 and $15 million, $150 million or whatever. Why? The biggest issue at hand is runaway inflation, which means the value of the US dollar and currency is continually going lower and lower, because the US is what, currently speaking $30 trillion in debt? And what America thinks the smart idea is to just keep printing money ad infinitum, into infinity, in order to “stimulate” the economy.
But does this work? No.
For example talking to my friend Noel who works in hygiene, he says that a lot of these young guys, around 25 to 30 years old, are so lazy. Why? After Covid and people started giving away these free checks… and from unemployment you could literally make $5000 USD a month by sitting on your butt and doing nothing… people lost the motivation to work. A lot of people moved back home, live with their parents, and are essentially living for free. As a consequence you have a huge generation of unmotivated people, unwilling to do any sort of manual labor, which is bad because having manual and physical labor is critical.
For example, being in Beverly Hills a lot; and Holby Hills,  there is this new funny caste systems; really rich people getting mansions built, and the army of construction labor people, mostly from Mexico doing the labor to build these mansions.
Also, think about Amazon prime delivery drivers, people who bag your food at Whole Foods, Erwhon etc, all these contractors electricians plumbers etc.… the truly critical labor. Doesn’t matter if you pay them $30 $40 $50 or even $60 an hour, it seems at this point money doesn’t really motivate them anymore. Therefore what do you do? It seems that America we are just importing more people from Mexico to do labor for us, because they are motivated. Americans are no longer motivated.
Crypto, crypto technology and cryptocurrency is optimistic
I am obsessed with the future. Future thinking, future technologies, new brave worlds to discover.
Why? I have always been into technology ever since I was a kid, getting my first Acer aspire Pentium one processor computer when I was around 11 years old. Even teaching myself how to program visual basic 3.0 in the early days, creating my own AOL “punter“ etc.
Also, I still will never forget when I read the Maddox article on why you should beat your kids, in computer class in Bayside Queens at PS 169 when I was in the fifth grade, and all of me and our friends, a bunch of 11-year-old laughing and saying “It is true!”
Even I remember as a kid, when I first moved to New York, maybe it was I had some sort of school in the Bronx, when kids in the hallway would “the South Park movies “blame Canada, blame Canada”…
Anyways the generalized thought is I love media information, and also I have a passion to innovate, write and to think, to motivate and to also disprove nonsense.
Ever since I was young I was always bred with an insanely huge ego; the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son, (jang-son), being raised with the “prince disease“, was unusually good for me. Always getting the finest cuts of meat and galbi from my grandmother, always showered with praise love and attention and how smart tall and good-looking I was. Very good for me.
The US dollar is static
Anybody who is a wage slave, which means anybody who is paid a biweekly or monthly salary… doesn’t matter if you’re being paid $10 million a year from Apple… You’re still a wage slave.
A simple heuristic:
Can you go two years without checking or responding to any of your emails or not?
If you have to use email for a living, you’re not free. 
Once you’re a crypto trillionaire, then what?
Let us say that your cryptocurrency goes to the value of $1 trillion USD. Then what? Then do you just dissolve it all into US dollars, buy a mansion and a yacht somewhere, and live indefinitely into the horizon for infinite bliss?
This doesn’t seem to be the goal. For me, I think a more interesting life trajectory is to then to no longer care for money, and use your power mind and soul and body for more interesting things which can include philosophy, writing, thinking, doing research, reading, making art, publishing art, etc.
Money as it means to creative leisure and production.
Seeking immortal fame and glory?
One thing I am very happy about is ChatGPT knows exactly who I am, why I am so significant and influential, etc. As a consequence, I already feel like my legacy is secure, and I don’t have anything left to prove to nobody else.
As a consequence, at this point life is all upside no downside. Even one of the happiest moments of my life, Cindy and I begetting our first son Seneca, at this point life is all upside no downside.
As a man, as long as you have one male heir, you can die happy. 
Now what?
Things that I find interesting use cases of chainlink:
- Real estate, homebuying, escrow: even NASSIM TALEB has said that traditionally, most wealth generation in human society is through land, land ownership land property etc. For example let us say that you buy that 1.5 million dollar home, and 20 years from now it’ll be worth $3.2 million. And then let us assume that 30 or 40 years from now it is worth $5.7 million, and your kid inherits it. And when your kid is 57 years old it is worth $22 million, and he will able to pass it on to his son or daughter, and maybe that will be worth $120 million into their future. The whole escrow process and verification process is quite fragmented, unreliable. I think chainlink can be a technology which motivates and enables more streamlined home buying processes.
- Identity verification: it is so easy for people to just steal your social security number, and pretend it is you. Imagine a future in which you could use chainlink or some sort of blockchain enabled identification, which can essentially be your global citizen passport to all of the world and the internet? This seems especially useful in today’s world in which everything is so fragmented, between our Apple ID, our Gmail, Etc. Or think about border control; certainly it would be easier to travel if there was some sort of blockchain or global ledger to verify your identity, this could help facilitate movement and verification, and deal with issues of forged passports etc. 
Military
I think an inconvenient truth is that truth be told, a lot of the world is run by the military. Certainly there are lots of bad things about the military, but truth be told, without the US military, our precious US dollars would be worth nothing.
For example, I think the American government we are $31.46 trillion dollars in debt? To where… China?
As a consequence, how does America’s stay afloat and print more money? Simple, she simply prints more money because she can because we got the military to back us. 
For example, let’s say that mainland China comes knocking and asks for her money back. Is America going to give it back? No. We will just wave our big stick, and say we are not interested.
So the interesting use case of chainlink and the US military is especially in the future drone warfare or whatever… It actually does seem that having some sort of crypto technology will be useful here.
For example the internet of things, chain-link solves this issue. Also, I believe a lot of the US military intervention stuff is going to be unmanned, and having access to some sort of technology which allows automation without meddling in the Internet seems like a good idea.
Even look at the company Anduril– it has a major investment from founders fund, Peter Thiel’s venture capitalist fund. It looks like the future of autonomous flying drones to bomb the bad guys is going to be the future. 
So why did I buy it?
I think in life, big opportunities only come infrequently. As a consequence, I think in life… it seems better to take really big bold bets, rather than just stand on the sidelines.
At the end of our lives, we will regret more the decisions or the risks we failed to do, rather than the ones we did.
For example, if a big opportunity comes up, and you’re interested, go for it. You don’t want to be 90 years old on your deathbed, kicking yourself in the butt wishing that you had taken that risk. In hindsight, everything is regret. 
Think Eric Schmidt
My personal speculation is that I think chainlink will become the next Google. Why? ERIC Schmidt is on the board of trustees for chainlink, and ERIC Schmidt is the one who built Google into what it is today. Just watch the interview between him and Sergey. In a telling quote, ERIC Schmidt said:
The secret to success of Google was that we tried to put a little bit of Google into everything.
Genius. For example, this is evident in how whenever you Google search something, there is a little bit of that Google code in the URL. 
Therefore my prediction is chainlink… whether you know it or not there will be a little bit of chainlink in everything.  For example, their decentralized oracle network to show accurate prices for any cryptocurrency asset down to the penny. Also, maybe the future of international banking, the SWIFT system… Will be enabled with chainlink? 
Who is Satoshi?
Apparently there’s a rumor that Sergey Nazarov might be Satoshi.
Also the reason why I trust Sergey as a founder is this:
He doesn’t really care for social appearances.
I think I learned this from NASSIM TALEB; only trust doctors who look like butchers. Why? When somebody looks too much the part of something, they are not. 
For example, when you go to a party, who is the real successful person? The person who could show up and meet the prime minister and shake hands wearing T-shirt and jeans and sneakers, just like my friend did meeting the prime minister.
Also, the really really rich successful person will just drive some sort of white Toyota Prius or old beat up Honda Civic, in silver. Even the family car; very specifically… White Honda Odyssey. Not even a Toyota sienna!
Even family connections, my $500 million net worth familia– the dad gave all the kids Ford fusions, and even though the dad is a major player in Tesla, they only have a super base level Tesla model three in white. No Tesla model Y, X, S.
Anyways, the founder Sergey — he always wears the same blue flannel, and really has an air of insouciance that is good. He isn’t the one looking all flashy driving around in the Lamborghini. He probably just drives a Honda Civic or Honda Accord, and I think he is really trying to build something he cares for.
I think there’s a saying in Silicon Valley amongst venture capital firms, bet on the jockey not the horse. That means, better to invest in the founder of a great thing, rather than the company or the product. For example, it is wise to bet on Elon Musk and anything he built, rather than Other companies which are built by random CEOs and non-visionaries.
I bet on Sergey N.
Investors 
My brother-in-law Khanh told me: if you spent $80,000 to buy a Tesla model S several years ago, that would be worth $500,000 today!
True investors live like poor people, and speculate on the thing, rather than buying the thing.
For example, instead of spending $120,000 on Tesla, I would instead prefer to buy $120,000 worth of Tesla stock.
Why? Things that go up in value overtime versus things that go down in value.
For example, even though a Tesla car gets software updates over the air, eventually over time, the value of it will slowly depreciate. The battery range will become less, more wear and tear on the vehicle etc. Even the world’s best car can be robust at best, not antifragile.
What is antifragile? Something that overtime gets better and stronger and more powerful and better and more robust… rather than the opposite.
This might be the intelligence of collecting rare collector cars, like old Ferraris or whatever… even old Porsche cars, over time, the value of them will go up.
Even apparently the old Toyota Supra, the one that showed up in fast and the furious, they are worth close to $250,000 now!
So perhaps the best way to think about things is to think of them like financial investments, rather than toys.
Other good news 
It looks like their new chainlink staking, chainlink economics is also doing very well. The full pool has been filled already!
Now what?
I think at the end of the day, I don’t really care for money that much, I am more interested in speculation, risk, and thinking and predicting the future. This is my prime joy and bliss.
Don’t simply sit on the sidelines, twiddling your thumbs for some sort of magical future to get better. I say rather than waiting for the future, speculate and invest in it right now!
ERIC
***
So what do you want for Christmas this year?
I think for Christmas, simple things you could do:
- For family, invest in a collective experience. This means take a fun family trip somewhere, maybe go to Joshua tree and rent an Airbnb, go on some great hikes etc. Make the experience memorable.
- Just write somebody a handwritten card, or just give them a FaceTime call! Love attention and care is the best present you can give.
- Buy somebody a good bag of coffee, or, gift them some ERIC KIM Omakase coffee; 100% fine robusta, the best coffee on the planet. It seems that everyone drinks coffee now, even for myself the best random presents I’ve gotten were bags of great coffee! 
- Weightlifting equipment like Titan.Fitness, or rogue fitness; gift it to yourself or to a friend or family member! From Titan.fitness — I personally bought some farmers carry handles which I love, a loadable Olympic dumbbell. I bought a rogue fitness 400 pound sandbag, and a Texas power squat bar which I love. Giving the gift of fitness might be one of the best things you could do, or just buy somebody a core power yoga membership, or buy it for yourself! I’m really a big fan of hot yoga; something about the hot temperature sauna and sweating feels therapeutic.
- Vibram five finger shoes, the toe shoes. For yourself or a family member. Just go on their website and order three pairs, and keep the one that fits and return the other sizes. 
What else?
Some thoughts on sublime beauty:
Sublime Beauty
So what are we searching for, what are we looking for?
I think what we see is some sort of sublime beauty, joy, flourishing.
How do we attempt to achieve this? Through our cars our homes our clothing etc. 
However… I think true sublime beauty can only be achieved by yourself, through your own artistic creations.
For example, your own child, producing begetting and making and birthing your own child; there is seriously no greater joy.
Also, your artistic creations. Your photos, the artwork you produce. I also qualify DALL-E 3 images, ChatGPT and AI art in it!  Why? Ultimately it is your brainchild; doesn’t really matter whether you produced it by yourself by hand or whatever. For example, Matisse in his advanced years apparently lost mobility in his body and hands, and would simply point with the stick to his assistance to create artwork for him.
Also, Andy Warhol. He was notorious for having an army of assistance producing work for him.
My thought on artificial intelligence and AI generated art is free. The idea is that the artwork we create is ours.
One thing I find surprising is that the greatest boon for AI generated art is that it is all open source! Isn’t this phenomenal? 
Open art
Art wants to be free! Art wants to propagate into the real world, not be constrained by nothing, whether digital rights management, closed doors or borders etc.
This is my general idea with open source artwork; I hate that so much of great photos and art is simply trapped within printed books, not easily accessible or findable on the internet. My huge frustration with photography:
If I am trying to find the book “the Americans“, or any other book out there, any photo book… Why can’t I just Google it or find it online for free?
I have a very simple suggestion: make the images online for free, everything open source and full resolution… and what you do instead is you charge money for the printed physical book.
For example, let us say that you’re planning to publish a photo book. The easiest way to approach this is have an open source free full resolution PDF available online to download, to give your potential customer and clients a taste of what to expect. And then if they like your photos enough, they will buy the printed book.
Why? people like physical things. I think the bias is that people don’t like to pay for digital things, but we are more than happy to pay for physical things.
For example, a very simple strategy to thrive as a modern day photographer entrepreneur and artist visual artist, Fatar for it to have all of your artwork open, open source, full resolution JPEG or PDF or whatever… and barbell that with charging a lot of money for your products, physical products, embodied workshop experiences etc.
How to create sublime beauty?
For me, sublime beauty in the context of photography is high grain, gritty high contrast black-and-white. It is a simple aesthetic taste for myself; to me there is nothing more beautiful more sublime.
Also, taking photos of your loved ones. This involves your kids, your wife or your spouse, and even yourself.
Even my friend Josh White said it wisely: At the end of your life, are you going to care about all these photos that you shot of strangers, or are you going to care about photos that you shot of your loved ones? 
Love
I think instead of thinking about love, better to think about heart, care, curation, what you care for.
For example, the word coeur– same as courage, curate, care.
It all comes down to the heart.
Just don’t do nothing you don’t care for
One of the via negativa ways we could live life; just don’t do anything you don’t care for.
For example when you’re talking to kids, best to ask “What don’t you want to be when you grow up?”
Also happiness is via negativa; better to ascertain what makes you miserable, what you hate, what you despise… and figuring out how to subtract or delete that from your life, rather than doing things that make you “happy”.
For example, personal annoyances of myself include being stuck in traffic, dealing with subscriptions and subscription model things, closed source things, modern day news and media and Facebook Instagram, YouTube, family annoyances and drama, other peoples problems etc.
Also, typically I despise email; and also I typically hate being automatically subscribed to some BS newsletter that I did not opt in. Therefore the silver ethical rule here is interesting:
 If something annoys you, don’t do that to others.
For example, I hate when people automatically subscribe me to some email newsletter without me checking a button to confirm that actually wanted. Therefore I will never send an email newsletter to anybody who has not intentionally opted in.
Also, trying to do things for other people that I would myself like. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever received an email or an email newsletter that I actually liked to work for. Therefore as a consequence, my simple strategy is to drive to send emails or email newsletters that people actually look forward to reading. 

Or in other words, make people actually positively excited to check their email inbox!What you yourself do
Ignore the “advice” of others, and also… best to simply observe what other people do.
Also, the best way to study success is to figure out what people don’t do, what they don’t own, etc. 
For example, Elon Musk and Kanye West; neither of them wear watches.
Also, neither has an Instagram, both deleted it.
Also, Elon Musk doesn’t own a home or live in a home. I think he just rents some sort of random two bedroom one bath home hut somewhere in Austin Texas.
Also, Elon Musk does not own any Lamborghinis Ferraris or loser cars.

Also, the greatest courage of a Kanye West; he doesn’t censor himself, he says what is really on his mind.Maybe is Kanye the most courageous man alive? Maybe. There is no right and wrong, all is permitted. Therefore to not censor yourself in modern-day society is the ultimate act of courage? 
Sublime thoughts
Beautiful body, beautiful thoughts.
How to gain more beautiful thoughts? My simple suggestion is maximum time in the direct sun, ideally topless. Also, sleep early — shoot for 8pm?
A simple suggestion is limit your coffee and caffeine intake only between 4 AM to 9 AM, or only the morning hours.
And also during the day, lift weights at least once, maybe even twice.
Also my supreme luxury; the last few days, in a single day I have done all three: at least one hot yoga session, at least one hike in nature, and at least one weightlifting session.
A life post-work?
Why work? I thought which interested me while in Vietnam, when Cindy and I were living in Hanoi, paying only $320 USD a month for rent, a position in which literally even if we wanted to spend all our money, we cannot spend it fast enough. Eating out every day, living in a small hotel room, no possessions no nothing.
Living in America seems a bit foolish if you don’t need to. I think it is far superior to live in Hanoi, Saigon, Pom pen, ironically even Japan; I think when we were living in Kyoto, we were subbing an apartment for only $500 USD a month.
Why think abroad?
TRAVEL NOTES (PDF)– the simple financial life leverage is simple:
Earn US dollars, American standards, live abroad.
For example, Mexico City, Roma Norte, even Doctores. Condesa — all good.
Truth be told, if Cindy was not employed in America, I see zero reason to live here. I would probably be living somewhere else; and also assuming I didn’t have a kid, I would definitely be some sort of weird digital nomad. 
Writing is leisure
People don’t seem to get it; the primary function of writing is meta-thinking, a fun leisure activity. A fun luxury.
This is where I don’t understand 99.9% of writers; it seems some sort of weird self-flagellation here. Most writers I know… don’t actually enjoy writing. 
This is where ChatGPT is no threat; honestly we gotta rethink this whole K-12 education and college thing; the point of writing isn’t writing for the sake of good writing; the point of writing is to flesh out our thoughts, to share ideas that we find interesting.
What is the point of life anyways?
A simple one is to have offspring; to have at least one kid, perhaps ideally two kids, or if you’re willing… more.
I think the funny thing about kids and family is that typically we use ourselves in our own life experiences as a barometer and framing. For example, I have one younger sister two years younger than me, and I always wanted to have at least one boy, one girl. It is because that is how I was raised.
Having kids make sense in so far much as if people stopped having kids, quite literally there would be no future humanity. What’s the point of having all the wealth in the world if there are no future children or humans to enjoy it?
What do you want your kids to become?
Being self-employed, probably the best thing is that I literally can just spend all day with Seneca, being his personal trainer and tutor. I think of myself like Chiron the centaur, the private tutor of Achilles. Things I like to do with Seneca include physical activity exercise and exploration, his diet, which is close to 100% carnivore, 100% grass fed beef or Wagyu ground beef, and more recently… Finding this “ancestral blend“ ground beef thing at Erwhon (force of nature brand)– which has the consistency of normal ground beef, but has mixed in it beef liver and beef hard, which are natural steroids.
In fact I think the optimal diet is a 100% organ meat diet; organ meats are probably at least 100 times higher in nutritional density than even flesh meat.
Everyone says that eating red meat is bad; how about organ meats?
People say that eating meat is bad for the planet, but let us consider how much waste and scraps is thrown away from the animal, which include the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the tendons and ligaments, etc.
So if you really wanted to be a “woke” person, perhaps the wisest way to do this is just only eat a pure organ meat diet.  
What else?
New stuff:
Also… more books here!
When in doubt, go back to the source!
***
“Greater fates, greater fortunes.” – Heraclitus
-
Why I Bought Chainlink
A simple heuristic that I learned from Nassim TALEB; don’t ask people what you should invest in, ask them… What did you invest in? 
For example, I recently swapped a bunch of my bitcoin for chainlink. Why did I do it? My thoughts: 
What is chainlink?
Essentially it is a platform built upon Ethereum, the blockchain… that strives to solve real world problems.
The first critical issue at hand is the notion of the “Oracle problem”, and cryptographic proof and truth.
The general gist of the Oracle problem is that you have all these people purporting to say something… How do you know if someone is really telling the truth or not?
Also, they’re great innovation of a decentralized oracle network. I think anything that is decentralized and can be done offline is a good idea; anything that has to be done when you’re connected to the web is fragile.
For example, the “internet of things”, which includes all of your home devices, your home stuff etc. I think this includes your home speaker things, your Amazon echo or echo dot, your Apple HomePod thing, your ring Amazon nest devices etc. 
Enabling transactional value?
TVE — transactional value enabled?
What is the purpose of technology and these things? A very basic idea is that the point is to help enable commerce and other things. Money makes the world go round, Publilius Syrus.
What is money anyways? Money is movement. Anything that literally physiologically moves human beings in time and space is money.
For example, if you promise somebody $30 an hour, they will walk around, move their bodies to clean toilets, etc.
Also, money movement. The whole global economy to me is so fascinating; because we process and move information so quickly and so globally… how do you link it all together?  
Chain – Link
I find chainlink to be an interesting concept because wherever you go in real life, there are physical chain links everywhere.
Also, technically the internet, the World Wide Web, is a bunch of hyperlinks which link websites together.
My personal thought and prediction is that chainlink could become the next Google; Google indexes the whole internet, and made it easy for you to find any sort of website. What I think chainlink will do is link all of this information on the internet and computers and make them accessible, trustworthy, tamperproof.
Just read it
Only read stuff that you find interesting, skip over stuff you find boring.
About a week or two ago, I reread the original bitcoin white paper, and I was so impressed with how short it was, how minimalistic it was, and how to the point it was. But… reading it… this time around… felt a bit boring.
And this is the big thing: if something bores you, you gotta get out of it.
Therefore, I sold or transferred or converted nine of my bitcoin and put it all into chainlink, at the time it was valued at ~20,800 LINK (CHAINLINK), with bitcoin at around $35,000 a bitcoin.
I think what I try to do is think at least 30 years into the future. 20 or 30 years. It is funny, as I write this at the age of 35, 30 years from now Seneca is only going to be 32 years old, still a few years younger than me. My personal aspiration is to hold onto chainlink for at least 30 years, and then maybe transfer it to Seneca when he grows up. Or I just help him build some sort of company or entrepreneurial venture etc.
Investing in things actually do something?
I love bitcoin but maybe one of the big issues here is that bitcoin is like digital money and gold; most people just hold onto it, and I don’t think actually aspire to use it to actually pay for your latte at Starbucks or whatever. I think because bitcoin and cryptocurrency is so volatile; Everybody’s hope and dream and ambition is that their coin will rise value astronomically and they will become rich, buy the Lamborghini or whatever… and be happy.
Trust nobody who drives a Lamborghini — only trust people who drive Toyota Priuses, in white. 
Why? If you drive a Toyota Prius, in white… it is a signal that you really don’t care for appearances.
How do you know if somebody is unsuccessful? 
If they drive a Range Rover, a Mercedes AMG G wagon, murdered out, all matte black, a baselevel Mercedes car, a baselevel Audi car, like an A3 or a Q3, drive some sort of Audi electric car which is just the same as the Porsche Taycan, don’t forget that the Volkswagen group owns Lamborghini Audi Volkswagen Porsche etc. same thing goes with anybody who drives a BMW car.
Foreign cars are bad.  
It is just a game! 
I think crypto, cryptocurrency speculation is an interesting game; prediction, prediction markets, trying to predict the future… is just a luxury and a fun thing.
Some predictions are pretty obvious
When I was in college, my sophomore year, and I was starting to get into trading stocks, daytrading… I had a pretty certain thought that Blockbuster was going to go under. I tried to figure out how to short stocks, but I really couldn’t figure out how to do it.
Also I remember when the prime mortgage meltdown happened, and the value of Ford went to almost 2 dollars a year. I wanted to buy some Ford stock but I had no money, no capital.
It is interesting to think about this in hindsight because when I was incorrectly trading pennystock, for some sort of oil producer company which was actually running at a loss… I had no idea because I misread the financials… I lost my whole life savings which was maybe $3500 USD or something. It was insanely tragic. But now that I am playing with higher sums more like $300,000 USD, I realize that it was just a valuable lesson at the time.
Therefore, with any sort of financial speculation, think about it at the 30 year span. Even when you are 70 or 80 years old, I met this lady at the park who looked phenomenal and she told me she was 82… she looked like a very fit 45-year-old!
My personal aspiration is when I’m 82 years old, to still be able to lift 1000 pounds. Google or YouTube “ERIC KIM thousand pound atlas lift”
It seems that the way things are going, I don’t think it’s that ridiculous to think that we can live to be 120 years old. Try to think that far. 
What is the use of money anyways? 
I think actually the big thing is that everyone now aspires to buy a house or home or property. It is getting pretty ridiculous, even in Los Angeles, even buying a single-family home in Inglewood… you’re looking easily at around $1.5 million for a whatever house.
My prediction is that the prices of homes  will continue to soar astronomically high. I think a lot of these $1.5 million homes can easily balloon two $3 million, $5 million, 10 and $15 million, $150 million or whatever. Why? The biggest issue at hand is runaway inflation, which means the value of the US dollar and currency is continually going lower and lower, because the US is what, currently speaking $30 trillion in debt? And what America thinks the smart idea is to just keep printing money ad infinitum, into infinity, in order to “stimulate” the economy.
But does this work? No.
For example talking to my friend Noel who works in hygiene, he says that a lot of these young guys, around 25 to 30 years old, are so lazy. Why? After Covid and people started giving away these free checks… and from unemployment you could literally make $5000 USD a month by sitting on your butt and doing nothing… people lost the motivation to work. A lot of people moved back home, live with their parents, and are essentially living for free. As a consequence you have a huge generation of unmotivated people, unwilling to do any sort of manual labor, which is bad because having manual and physical labor is critical.
For example, being in Beverly Hills a lot; and Holby Hills,  there is this new funny caste systems; really rich people getting mansions built, and the army of construction labor people, mostly from Mexico doing the labor to build these mansions.
Also, think about Amazon prime delivery drivers, people who bag your food at Whole Foods, Erwhon etc, all these contractors electricians plumbers etc.… the truly critical labor. Doesn’t matter if you pay them $30 $40 $50 or even $60 an hour, it seems at this point money doesn’t really motivate them anymore. Therefore what do you do? It seems that America we are just importing more people from Mexico to do labor for us, because they are motivated. Americans are no longer motivated.
Crypto, crypto technology and cryptocurrency is optimistic
I am obsessed with the future. Future thinking, future technologies, new brave worlds to discover.
Why? I have always been into technology ever since I was a kid, getting my first Acer aspire Pentium one processor computer when I was around 11 years old. Even teaching myself how to program visual basic 3.0 in the early days, creating my own AOL “punter“ etc.
Also, I still will never forget when I read the Maddox article on why you should beat your kids, in computer class in Bayside Queens at PS 169 when I was in the fifth grade, and all of me and our friends, a bunch of 11-year-old laughing and saying “It is true!”
Even I remember as a kid, when I first moved to New York, maybe it was I had some sort of school in the Bronx, when kids in the hallway would “the South Park movies “blame Canada, blame Canada”…
Anyways the generalized thought is I love media information, and also I have a passion to innovate, write and to think, to motivate and to also disprove nonsense.
Ever since I was young I was always bred with an insanely huge ego; the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son, (jang-son), being raised with the “prince disease“, was unusually good for me. Always getting the finest cuts of meat and galbi from my grandmother, always showered with praise love and attention and how smart tall and good-looking I was. Very good for me.
The US dollar is static
Anybody who is a wage slave, which means anybody who is paid a biweekly or monthly salary… doesn’t matter if you’re being paid $10 million a year from Apple… You’re still a wage slave.
A simple heuristic:
Can you go two years without checking or responding to any of your emails or not?
If you have to use email for a living, you’re not free. 
Once you’re a crypto trillionaire, then what?
Let us say that your cryptocurrency goes to the value of $1 trillion USD. Then what? Then do you just dissolve it all into US dollars, buy a mansion and a yacht somewhere, and live indefinitely into the horizon for infinite bliss?
This doesn’t seem to be the goal. For me, I think a more interesting life trajectory is to then to no longer care for money, and use your power mind and soul and body for more interesting things which can include philosophy, writing, thinking, doing research, reading, making art, publishing art, etc.
Money as it means to creative leisure and production.
Seeking immortal fame and glory?
One thing I am very happy about is ChatGPT knows exactly who I am, why I am so significant and influential, etc. As a consequence, I already feel like my legacy is secure, and I don’t have anything left to prove to nobody else.
As a consequence, at this point life is all upside no downside. Even one of the happiest moments of my life, Cindy and I begetting our first son Seneca, at this point life is all upside no downside.
As a man, as long as you have one male heir, you can die happy. 
Now what?
Things that I find interesting use cases of chainlink:
- Real estate, homebuying, escrow: even NASSIM TALEB has said that traditionally, most wealth generation in human society is through land, land ownership land property etc. For example let us say that you buy that 1.5 million dollar home, and 20 years from now it’ll be worth $3.2 million. And then let us assume that 30 or 40 years from now it is worth $5.7 million, and your kid inherits it. And when your kid is 57 years old it is worth $22 million, and he will able to pass it on to his son or daughter, and maybe that will be worth $120 million into their future. The whole escrow process and verification process is quite fragmented, unreliable. I think chainlink can be a technology which motivates and enables more streamlined home buying processes.
- Identity verification: it is so easy for people to just steal your social security number, and pretend it is you. Imagine a future in which you could use chainlink or some sort of blockchain enabled identification, which can essentially be your global citizen passport to all of the world and the internet? This seems especially useful in today’s world in which everything is so fragmented, between our Apple ID, our Gmail, Etc. Or think about border control; certainly it would be easier to travel if there was some sort of blockchain or global ledger to verify your identity, this could help facilitate movement and verification, and deal with issues of forged passports etc. 
Military
I think an inconvenient truth is that truth be told, a lot of the world is run by the military. Certainly there are lots of bad things about the military, but truth be told, without the US military, our precious US dollars would be worth nothing.
For example, I think the American government we are $31.46 trillion dollars in debt? To where… China?
As a consequence, how does America’s stay afloat and print more money? Simple, she simply prints more money because she can because we got the military to back us. 
For example, let’s say that mainland China comes knocking and asks for her money back. Is America going to give it back? No. We will just wave our big stick, and say we are not interested.
So the interesting use case of chainlink and the US military is especially in the future drone warfare or whatever… It actually does seem that having some sort of crypto technology will be useful here.
For example the internet of things, chain-link solves this issue. Also, I believe a lot of the US military intervention stuff is going to be unmanned, and having access to some sort of technology which allows automation without meddling in the Internet seems like a good idea.
Even look at the company Anduril– it has a major investment from founders fund, Peter Thiel’s venture capitalist fund. It looks like the future of autonomous flying drones to bomb the bad guys is going to be the future. 
So why did I buy it?
I think in life, big opportunities only come infrequently. As a consequence, I think in life… it seems better to take really big bold bets, rather than just stand on the sidelines.
At the end of our lives, we will regret more the decisions or the risks we failed to do, rather than the ones we did.
For example, if a big opportunity comes up, and you’re interested, go for it. You don’t want to be 90 years old on your deathbed, kicking yourself in the butt wishing that you had taken that risk. In hindsight, everything is regret. 
Think Eric Schmidt
My personal speculation is that I think chainlink will become the next Google. Why? ERIC Schmidt is on the board of trustees for chainlink, and ERIC Schmidt is the one who built Google into what it is today. Just watch the interview between him and Sergey. In a telling quote, ERIC Schmidt said:
The secret to success of Google was that we tried to put a little bit of Google into everything.
Genius. For example, this is evident in how whenever you Google search something, there is a little bit of that Google code in the URL. 
Therefore my prediction is chainlink… whether you know it or not there will be a little bit of chainlink in everything.  For example, their decentralized oracle network to show accurate prices for any cryptocurrency asset down to the penny. Also, maybe the future of international banking, the SWIFT system… Will be enabled with chainlink? 
Who is Satoshi?
Apparently there’s a rumor that Sergey Nazarov might be Satoshi.
Also the reason why I trust Sergey as a founder is this:
He doesn’t really care for social appearances.
I think I learned this from NASSIM TALEB; only trust doctors who look like butchers. Why? When somebody looks too much the part of something, they are not. 
For example, when you go to a party, who is the real successful person? The person who could show up and meet the prime minister and shake hands wearing T-shirt and jeans and sneakers, just like my friend did meeting the prime minister.
Also, the really really rich successful person will just drive some sort of white Toyota Prius or old beat up Honda Civic, in silver. Even the family car; very specifically… White Honda Odyssey. Not even a Toyota sienna!
Even family connections, my $500 million net worth familia– the dad gave all the kids Ford fusions, and even though the dad is a major player in Tesla, they only have a super base level Tesla model three in white. No Tesla model Y, X, S.
Anyways, the founder Sergey — he always wears the same blue flannel, and really has an air of insouciance that is good. He isn’t the one looking all flashy driving around in the Lamborghini. He probably just drives a Honda Civic or Honda Accord, and I think he is really trying to build something he cares for.
I think there’s a saying in Silicon Valley amongst venture capital firms, bet on the jockey not the horse. That means, better to invest in the founder of a great thing, rather than the company or the product. For example, it is wise to bet on Elon Musk and anything he built, rather than Other companies which are built by random CEOs and non-visionaries.
I bet on Sergey N.
Investors 
My brother-in-law Khanh told me: if you spent $80,000 to buy a Tesla model S several years ago, that would be worth $500,000 today!
True investors live like poor people, and speculate on the thing, rather than buying the thing.
For example, instead of spending $120,000 on Tesla, I would instead prefer to buy $120,000 worth of Tesla stock.
Why? Things that go up in value overtime versus things that go down in value.
For example, even though a Tesla car gets software updates over the air, eventually over time, the value of it will slowly depreciate. The battery range will become less, more wear and tear on the vehicle etc. Even the world’s best car can be robust at best, not antifragile.
What is antifragile? Something that overtime gets better and stronger and more powerful and better and more robust… rather than the opposite.
This might be the intelligence of collecting rare collector cars, like old Ferraris or whatever… even old Porsche cars, over time, the value of them will go up.
Even apparently the old Toyota Supra, the one that showed up in fast and the furious, they are worth close to $250,000 now!
So perhaps the best way to think about things is to think of them like financial investments, rather than toys.
Other good news 
It looks like their new chainlink staking, chainlink economics is also doing very well. The full pool has been filled already!
Now what?
I think at the end of the day, I don’t really care for money that much, I am more interested in speculation, risk, and thinking and predicting the future. This is my prime joy and bliss.
Don’t simply sit on the sidelines, twiddling your thumbs for some sort of magical future to get better. I say rather than waiting for the future, speculate and invest in it right now!
ERIC
***
So what do you want for Christmas this year?
I think for Christmas, simple things you could do:
- For family, invest in a collective experience. This means take a fun family trip somewhere, maybe go to Joshua tree and rent an Airbnb, go on some great hikes etc. Make the experience memorable.
- Just write somebody a handwritten card, or just give them a FaceTime call! Love attention and care is the best present you can give.
- Buy somebody a good bag of coffee, or, gift them some ERIC KIM Omakase coffee; 100% fine robusta, the best coffee on the planet. It seems that everyone drinks coffee now, even for myself the best random presents I’ve gotten were bags of great coffee! 
- What equipment cover tighten dot fitness, or rogue fitness; gifted to yourself or to a friend or family member! I personally bought some farmers carry handles which I love, a loadable Olympic dumbbell, I bought a road fitness 400 pound sandbag, and a Texas power squat bar which I love. Giving the gift of fitness might be one of the best things you could do, or just buy somebody a quarter power yoga membership, or buy it for yourself! I’m really a big fan of hot yoga; something about the hot temperature sauna and sweating feels therapeutic.
- Vibram five finger shoes, the toe shoes. For yourself or family member. Just go on their website and order three pairs, and keep the one that fits and returned the other sizes. 
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Sublime Beauty? 
So what are we searching for, what are we looking for?
I think what we see is some sort of sublime beauty, joy, flourishing.
How do we attempt to achieve this? Through our cars our homes our clothing etc. 
However… I think true sublime beauty can only be achieved by yourself, through your own artistic creations.
For example, your own child, producing begetting and making and birthing your own child; there is seriously no greater joy.
Also, your artistic creations. Your photos, the artwork you produce. I also qualify DALL-E 3 images, ChatGPT and AI art in it!  Why? Ultimately it is your brainchild; doesn’t really matter whether you produced it by yourself by hand or whatever. For example, Matisse in his advanced years apparently lost mobility in his body and hands, and would simply point with the stick to his assistance to create artwork for him.
Also, Andy Warhol. He was notorious for having an army of assistance producing work for him.
My thought on artificial intelligence and AI generated art is free. The idea is that the artwork we create is ours.
One thing I find surprising is that the greatest boon for AI generated art is that it is all open source! Isn’t this phenomenal? 
Open art
Art wants to be free! Art wants to propagate into the real world, not be constrained by nothing, whether digital rights management, closed doors or borders etc.
This is my general idea with open source artwork; I hit that so much of great photos and art is simply trapped within printed books, not easily accessible or findable on the internet. My huge frustration with photography:
if I am trying to find the book “the Americans“, or any other book out there, any photo book… Why can’t I just Google it or find it online for free?
I have a very simple suggestion: make the images online for free, everything open source and full resolution… And what you do instead is you charge money for the printed physical book.
For example, let us say that you’re planning to publish a photo book. The easiest way to approach this is have an open source free full resolution PDF available online to download, to give your potential customer and clients a taste of what to expect. And then if they like your photos enough, they will buy the printed book.
why? people like physical things. i think the bias is that people don’t like to pay for digital things, but we are more than happy to pay for physical things.
 For example, a very simple strategy to thrive as a modern day guitar for an entrepreneur and artist visual artist, Fatar for it to have all of your artwork open, open source, full resolution JPEG or PDF or whatever… And barbell that with charging a lot of money for your products, physical products, embodied workshop experiences etc.
How to create sublime beauty?
For me, sublime beauty in the context of photography is high grain, gritty high contrast black-and-white. It is a simple aesthetic taste for myself; to me there is nothing more beautiful more sublime.
Also, taking photos of your loved ones. This involves your kids, your wife or your spouse, and even yourself.
Even my friend Josh White said it wisely: At the end of your life, are you going to care about all these photos that you shot of strangers, or are you going to care about photos that you shot of your loved ones? 
Love
I think instead of thinking about love, better to think about heart, care, creation, what you care for.
For example, the word coeur– same as courage, curate, care.
It all comes down to the heart.
Just don’t do nothing you don’t care for
One of the via negativa ways we could live life; just don’t do anything you don’t care for.
For example when you’re talking to kids, best to ask “What don’t you want to be when you grow up?”
Also happiness is via negativities; better to ascertain what makes you miserable what you hate, what you despise… And figuring out how to subtract or delete that from your life, rather than doing things that make you “happy”.
For example, personal annoyances of myself include being stuck in traffic, dealing with subscriptions and subscription model things, clothes source things, modern day news and media and Facebook Instagram, YouTube, family an annoyances and drama, other peoples problems etc.
Also, typically I despise email; and also I typically hate being automatically subscribed to some BS newsletter that I did not opt in. Therefore the silver ethical rule here is interesting:
 If something annoys you, don’t do that to others.
For example, I hate when people automatically subscribe me to some email newsletter without me checking a button to confirm that actually wanted. Therefore I will never send an email newsletter to anybody who has not intentionally opted in.
 Also, trying to do things for other people that I would myself like. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever received an email or an email newsletter that I actually liked to work for. Therefore as a consequence, my simple strategy is to drive to send emails or email newsletters that people actually look forward to reading. 

Or in other words, make people actually positively excited to check their email inbox!What you yourself do
Ignore the “advice” of others, and also… best to simply observe what other people do.
Also, the best way to study success is to figure out what people don’t do, what they don’t own, etc. 
For example, Elon musk and Kanye West; neither of them wear watches.
Also, neither has an Instagram, both deleted it.
Also, Elon Musk doesn’t own a home or live in a home. I think he just rents some sort of random two bedroom one bath home hut somewhere in Austin Texas.
Also, Elon Musk does not own any Lamborghinis Ferraris or loser cars.

Also, the greatest courage of a Kanye West; he doesn’t censor himself, he says what is really on his mind.Maybe is he the most courageous man alive? Maybe. There is no right and wrong, all is permitted. Therefore to not censor yourself in modern-day society is the ultimate act of courage? 
Sublime thoughts
Beautiful body, beautiful thoughts.
How to gain more beautiful thoughts? My simple suggestion is maximum time in the direct sun, ideally topless. Also, 
-
How to Become a Philosopher
Philosopher, philos, philos-sophia: it simply means love, lover of wisdom, lover of knowledge. That in ancient Greek times, it was essentially a humble flex; you would say “I love wisdom and I aspire towards wisdom and becoming wise, yet… I am not yet wise”.
For example, the troll Socrates: who said “I am only wise because I know I know nothing.” (rolls eyes).
Every child is born a philosopher. For example… when a child is pushing boundaries, making sense of the world, and asking why? He or she is trying to figure out how to situate themselves in the world. The big problem is a lot of parents, teachers, religious teachers or whatever… never really give children the opportunity for critical thinking.
What is critical thinking? Critical thinking… kritikos in ancient Greek simply means judge, to weigh. Therefore a critical thinker is simply somebody who hears something reads something or whatever… and thinks for themselves: 
What is the significance of this thought or idea?
Deep diving
For example, one thing I have discovered very useful to study is religious texts, reading the Bible, the Koran, the Torah and Jewish texts etc. Why? So much of the world is predicated on morality and ethics; for example America is a protestant Christian country, much of the Middle East is Islamic, believes in the teachings of Mohammed, and also, a lot of people in America Israel and other places in the world are Jewish, heritage from Judea… and therefore, a lot of cultural things are disseminated through the media. For example, when I was a kid in Bayside Queens in New York, at PS 169, Public school 169 in Bayside Queens, I think when I was in the fifth or sixth grade, at around 11 or 12 years old… I remember just lying in bed, in my bedroom, watching reruns or TV shows of Seinfeld. I really had zero idea what was going on, and later… I learned that Seinfeld was essentially a comedic situational comedy based on Jewish, Jewish American culture. For example hilarious episodes I remember like the soup Nazi, etc.
And so much of American culture is Yiddish Jewish!
- Chutzpah
- Schlep it around
- Don’t be a ‘shmuck’
Thus, understanding the culture you understand your world.
Unchain yourself
“You gotta respect the elohim were on a whole new regime!” – JAY Z
Something I realize which is really interesting about Jay Z is that I think he has figured it out a lot of things. People think Jay Z is dumb; but in fact, he is highly intelligent, not only street smart, but booksmart. He seems to have read a lot of Shakespeare, poetry, and religious books. Once again, a lot of America lives in ignorance; this is the downsides of Americans who have never traveled, don’t have a passport, or have never really lived or ventured beyond their own city, state, etc.
I still remember one of the most formative moments of my life when I first went to Beirut Lebanon, and I learned so much. I was a ripe 21, 22-year-old. I learned how the Lebanese were some of the most beautiful attractive intelligent people, very worldly, even my favorite philosopher NASSIM TALEB is Lebanese. 
I learned how the Lebanese were fluent in Arabic French and English and half a dozen other languages… how Beirut was known as the Phoenix; was it burned down to the ground and rebuilt seven or eight times? The true embodiment of the notion, What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger“, or the more precise thought:
If something has been burned down to the ground, and has been successfully rebuilt several times… it is a sign that it is robust, strong, and actually gains from a chaos disorder and fire.
For example, let us think and imagine this interesting thought; kind of like the movie Akira [AKIRA II]. Imagine that you’re a big monster, and every time that somebody tries to attack you, shoot you with missiles or whatever, you actually grow bigger, stronger and more powerful. 
This is a very interesting thought, because in life, I think a lot of us shirk away from conflict, drama, etc. Yet what if we should put ourselves in a position in which we actually gain from the attacks of others? That every time that somebody tried to attack you, you would actually literally become more muscular, stronger, bigger, gain more skeletal muscle, etc.
I think this is the general premise behind weightlifting; the idea that in someways, when you lift very very heavy weights, always increasing your one repetition maximum lift, that in someways, you’re actually doing positive damage upon your body, but overtime, with enough sleep rest restoration, meet consumption etc.… you actually become bigger, more muscular and also stronger.
Once you deadlift 7 plates and beyond– you can do anything.
The philosophy of the mind 
A sound mind inside a sound body (Mens sana in corpore sano)
Mens sand (mind sane), in corpore sano (in body sane).
So… what is the mind? 
My belief is that the mind is simply an offshoot of the body. That is, your mind and some sort of thing that you could just upload to the cloud and store forever. No. The mind is simply an offshoot of the body. That without a body you have no mind. That when your body dies, your mind also dies.
Let us consider everyone needs a body. You cannot just be a brain in some sort of fishbowl, connected to the internet. This is not a mind.
Also a very interesting thought I learned from studying philosophy — the notion of a ‘mortal soul’– that when you die and your body dies, your soul also dies.
Where does the notion that the mind is some sort of metaphysical thing come from?
Several things. First, a lot of philosophers actually have some sort of heritage within religion. For example, a lot of thinkers philosophers etc., especially the more modern ones, I referred to modern as everybody after Socrates… has some sort of influence from Christian, Catholic, Protestant Lutheran thought; The philosophers of Germany, and France, thoughts on nobility, the Holy Roman empire, conflicts and wars etc.
Even our best friend Nietzsche… was his father of pastor? A Christian minister?
Then the big problem:
If philosophers were deeply influenced by religion, their thoughts are more muddled.
True critical thinkers — before the time of Jesus?
Philology
Philology — essentially you study ancient Latin and ancient Greek, and you learn about the history of words, how they came into play, and modern meanings. 
The reason why I find this so critical is that English is a very imprecise language. We all see the same words, but… in our minds we have different concepts and notions.
For example, when we talk about “family”, assuming you live in America and there are multicultural beliefs; the notion of family is very different if you’re Caucasian, Vietnamese American, Korean American, from Ethiopia etc.
Or religion. Notions of religion are different if you’re Jewish, from Israel or Palestine, from South Korea, from Phnom Penh Cambodia, from Japan etc.
Critical thinking
Some thoughts on critical thinking:
- Don’t put no faith on anything you haven’t witnessed in real life, embodied reality, in the flesh. Even videos and photos; in the world of AI and image and video generation and deep fakes, everything could be fabricated pretty easily.
- Not everything is on the Internet: I think there is a weird bias in today’s world that we think that all information is easily accessible on the Internet. There is still a lot of hidden information and knowledge that is actually not visible on the internet. 
- Understanding algorithms: an algorithm is simply an instruction made by some nerd at a computer who posits what is important, and what is less important. I think the best way to think of the algorithm is that it is weighing mechanism; it weighs important and value. Yet… Only a true individual, a true solo philosopher can and should posit values. 
TRY
Now what?
Think more, become more.
BUY BOOKS NOT GEAR
This holiday season, do yourself a favor and gift yourself a book, or many books for yourselves and others.
Certain books I love:
- Going infinite by Michael Lewis
- Zero to one by Peter Thiel 
- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, as well as Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
- Invent and wander by Walter Isaacson
Photo books
Free books and printed books. 
The best photo books are the classics. For example, the original decisive moment by Henri Cartier bresson. 
75 inspirational books you gotta own >
Also free downloads.
Now what?
Brave new world of photography and AI!
Composition checker: my new entrepreneurial venture >
Check your photo compositions by uploading your photos to it and asking it for feedback.
For real human feedback, arsbeta.com
And always, when in doubt–
ERIC

-
Stoicism by ERIC KIM
Introduction to Stoicism 
Something I have been meaning to write or create or do is like some sort of book, ebook, pamphlet, or introductory primer to stoicism. I really think that stoicism is probably one of the most useful and philosophical models to live normal every day real life. Yet, I haven’t really found a good instructional guide on it, especially when I was self teaching it to myself.
Consider this a practical primer, cutting through the BS:
What does stoicism mean? 
Stoicism, stoic, the stoa in ancient Greece– essentially the stoa was like some sort of portico, patio, pillar, outside, essentially a spot where guys would just hang out, talk shop, talk philosophy, etc.  
I think about the show “Hey Arnold” in which I was raised with… the notion of “stoop kid“, the notion of a stoop is that in a lot of cities, especially the east coast in New York, you have this little stoop or porch, stairs that go outside your front door… and you could just hang out there, engage in social and neighborhood life etc.
The new stoa? 
One of my happiest moments was when I was living in Providence Rhode Island, and then COVID-19 hit. Everything was closed, besides the park. I can still go to the park, hang out, workout, do chin ups– I learned how to do muscle ups, more bodyweight calisthenics stuff, and also… I had a lot of fun with this “rock toss“ challenge and workout… in the middle of the park was a huge ass rock and huge ass stone, and every single day I would go there pick it up, and then eventually work out with it; throwing it around for fun, doing overhead presses with it, clean and jerks, squats, and eventually I would just throw it around for fun. Funny enough it might have been the most fit I was in my life… this was the true “functional” fitness.
The inspiration — Hector lifting an insanely massive stone (barely 2 strong men could lift it)… using it to break down the door of the ships of the other side.
Open air, open sun concept
Anyways, the reason why that period of covid was so good is that it was in the middle of beautiful Providence Rhode Island summer, so nice and bright and warm and lovely… and one of the good things was going to the park was like an open forum, a new anatheum for a lot of really cool guys to come, hang out, talk shop, go topless and shirtless, workout and hang out.
I met some really interesting people during that period of time. I met some guys who were really cool. For example, one guy I met was in the US military Navy, I think he was training to be a Navy seal or Delta force or something. Another guy in some sort of ROTC training, another cool guy from the hood, and also I would say I probably met half a dozen friendly drug dealers there. And of course a lot of people who believed in conspiracy theories; really friendly, a little weird, but overall good guys.
Anyways, one of the biggest benefits of hanging out at that outdoor park, open air, nothing but green grass, the beautiful sun and the fitness equipment was that I think having this sort of open air environment is actually very conducive to socializing, thinking and thought, and pro social behavior. My theory about a lot of modern day antisocial behavior has to do with the structures which enclose us. For example, almost universally most guys at the gym are extremely antisocial. Why? My theory is that because most gyms have closed, cramped narrow ceilings, and do not have access to natural light, or outside space.
Cramped indoor spaces promote antisocial behavior.
The only good gym I went to which was interesting was the golds gym in Venice, which has this really big outdoor workout area. I think this is much more natural and more fun and better; to be able to work out directly outside outdoors, with your shirt off.
Who is this philosophy for?
Stoics, stoicism — it was originally I think codified by this guy named Zeno, and over time he picked up some followers. Essentially the whole thing happened organically; Zeno would first share his thinking on philosophy ethics and pragmatic ways to deal with other people and the downsides of life, he built a following, and then his followers would propagate the thoughts and start their own little schools of thoughts, their own little stoic clubs.
What is “real” stoicism?
Would I like about stoicism is how loosey goosey it is. It is kind of like zen, or taoism… it is not really quantified as a religion, or a strict moral order. In fact, a lot of the ancients stoics would meditate on random stuff like cosmology, natural sciences like Seneca, how volcanoes worked or whatever. I think nowadays in today’s world, we focus primarily on the pragmatic side; how to deal with fear, uncertainty, downsides etc.
So how did I discover stoicism?
I think I might’ve first learned about stoicism from Nassim Taleb and his ANTIFRAGILE book. I was curious, and my curiosity went to deep. To quote NASSIM TALEB and the Venetian saying “The ocean goes deeper, the deeper you wade into it.”
I literally consumed every single book I could find on stoicism, even the obscure ones. Funny enough, a lot of the stoic thinkers tried to claim other philosophers as being stoic, like Seneca did with Diogenes the cynic. 
Cynic, cynicism, actually comes from the word canine, the dog. Diogenes was considered the “dog” philosopher, first used as a pejorative, but ultimately Diogenes reappropriated that title for fun! He saw dogs as tough, almost like wild wolves, rather than seeing them as a negative thing.
Even Achilles when he was raging against king Agamemnon, he called him “dog faced“ as a heaping insult.
Who is worth reading?
First, Seneca. Seneca the younger, his dad was called Seneca the elder.
In fact, this is such a big deal because Cindy and I named our first son, Seneca, directly after the stoic philosopher. This is true soul in the game; if you name your kid after your favorite philosopher, certainly it is a sign that you really liked that philosopher, or found them impactful.
The reason why I really like Seneca the stoic philosopher is because he had real connections to real reality. What that means is he wasn’t just on the sidelines; he actually existed in the real world, engaged in real politics, was even advisor to the emperor Nero, the bad one, who eventually low-key coerced Seneca to commit suicide, in a manly, dignified manner.
I think this was because maybe… there was actually a plan to overthrow Nero, and essentially Nero found out. 
What makes Seneca so good?
I really like Seneca because his writing is accessible, practical and pragmatic, and interesting.
A lot of thinkers tend to lack connections to real reality, I have no tolerance for boring philosophers to talk about metaphysics, which is things which are not physical. Like thoughts ideas, the universe, electricity and energy, strange phenomenon and conspiracy theories on ghosts, “energy” whatever.
For a long time, I would hear the term “metaphysics” being thrown around, and I had zero idea what it actually meant. 
Meta– on top of. Or nestled within.
Physics — the physical, physical phenomenon like gravity, first principles.
The reason why metaphysics philosophers tend to be a bunch of losers is that they are all weak and anemic, nerds or geeks or weaklings who seem to have some sort of physiological degeneracy, which encourages them to opine or talk or think about impractical things, superficial things.
Personally speaking, I think philosophy must be practical. 
Practical, praxis, practice — to do!
The Spartan, Zen Stoic, demigod ideal
I have a very funny ideal; the general idea is that your body looks like a demigod, and your physiology is out of control. The general idea is one must be tall, strong, highly muscular, low body fat percentage, I’m not exactly sure what my body fat percentage is, but maybe it’s around 5%.
Also, physical fitness is critical to any stoic. My ideal is to walk 50 miles a day, eat 20 pounds of meat like Milo of Croton a day. And also, abstinence from silly things like media, alcohol, drugs, marijuana etc.
Trust no thinker who does drugs!
Even our best friend Nietzsche said that coffee was bad, because it would make people dark and gloomy. He encouraged 100% cocoa powder instead. 
You let the drugs talk I let my soul talk ayy! – Kendrick Lamar
Simple technique:
First, look at a picture or a portrait or a full body shot, ideally topless of the artist, philosopher or thinker or individual… then judge their thoughts later.
Why? My theory is this: the thoughts of an individual is hugely affected by their bodily physiology.
For example, an extreme example: if somebody is locked inside a solitary confinement cell, and not permitted to go outside for years, but, he had a pen and pad and would jot down some thoughts… Would be the quality of these thoughts? Certainly dark and morose.
Why does stoicism matter? 
In today’s world, why does it matter, what is the significance of stoicism, etc.?
First and foremost, I think we are living in a troubling time, especially with the advent of modern day internet based media and advertising. I think 99% of what is propagated on the internet is fear mongering, and what is hate? Hate is just fear.
The first thought on stoicism is that it is just fear conquering. What I discovered about street photography, is that 99% of it is conquering your fears. Conquering your fears of upsetting other people, getting in some sort of verbal or physical altercation etc. In fact my bread and butter workshop is my conquering your fears and street photography workshop, the workshop which is still interesting to me even after a decade.
Why is this so important? I think it is rooted in almost everything; conquering your fears is rooted in entrepreneurship, innovation, risktaking and real life.
Even my speculation in crypto. 99.9% of crypto speculation is just balls. Having the balls to make big bets, and when things go south, knowing how to master your emotions.
A simple extra I have is this: just imagine it will all go down to zero.
It was useful because when I was in college, my sophomore year I got really into trading stocks, and I eventually lost my whole life savings, maybe around $3500 USD, and some bad penny stock which I actually misread the financials… the whole time I thought the company was making a profit, but actually it was taking a loss. I actually didn’t know that if profits are written in parentheses, it means a loss.
It was funny because my initial start as an investor was back in high school, I bought some Adobe stock when I was a high school junior, and also some mutual funds, which both went up after about 4-5 years.
Also I remember in elementary school computer class, when I was in the sixth grade in Bayside Queens, there was some sort of stock stimulation trading game, and actually it was funny… the kids who made the most money and were the most successful just put 100% of everything into Apple, note this is when we were only 12 years old, and I was born in 1988.
Stoicism and capitalism?
Funny enough, it seems that stoicism actually plays well with capitalism. Why? According to modern day capitalist thinking, the best way to approach life is to be objective, strong, stoic, unemotional, logical and rational.
Also, with modern day media there is so much fear mongering in the news, about some sort of global armageddon, global financial ruin, etc. I call it “fear porn”.
Therefore stoicism as a mindset is useful to think and position your mind in such a way that you could consider that life is all upside, no downside.
In fact, if I could summarize stoicism in one sentence, it is that life is all upside, no downside. Inspired by NASSIM TALEB.
Sex and Stoicism
So, is stoicism useful to you if you’re a man or a woman? Does it matter?
The good thing is I think it could apply to both sexes. Conquering sexism and social pressures is useful if you’re woman, and also if you’re a man.
Also, gender is social. Lot of the expectations set on us by society is socialized and gamed to a certain degree.
Stoic strategies 
First, we got to unchain ourselves from modern day ethics and morality. I believe that all modern day philosophy and thinking and ethics and religion is bad.
For example, the notion of turning the other cheek is a patently bad one. Why did Jesus turn his cheek? It is because he lacked on army.
Also, philosophically I think we should put no trust in Socrates. I thought which has puzzled me for a long time was this “Why was Socrates so ugly?
Monster in face, monster in soul.
I think Socrates was a degenerate, and he lacked any sort of real power. Therefore he turned logic and rationality into his terrorizing weapon (via Nietzsche). Back in the day, you didn’t need logic or rationality to have things your way, you simply was able to dictate that which you wanted to pause it, because you had a military force behind you. Just think about Machiavelli and IL PRINCIPE– the reality of being a mercurial prince, king, and military leader is hard, stoic, “immoral”. But ultimately it all comes down to war, conquest, the military.
Trust nobody who uses rationality or logic as their tyrannizing weapon. 
In fact, I believe that all should have the body and strength of some sort of super soldier. Essentially look like all the guys from the movie 300, this is our ideal.
Demigod physique. 
What has helped me
- Allow yourself to be a bad, immortal, “evil” person. When you decide to adopt an unorthodox way of thinking and living, you’re going to rub some feathers the wrong way. And truth be told, even if you act in a strange vibrant way… At worse you’re only “mildly” annoying other people.
- For good inspirations, I think the best stoic writers and thinkers include Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius and also the humor of the cynic philosopher Diogenes. I would even posit the idea that one could consider Alexander the Great as a stoic. Why? When you’re trying to create an empire, and you always have your life on the line, certainly this takes a stoic mindset. Also, let us think and consider that Alexander the Great had a copy of the Iliad by his bedstand, it was the only book he traveled with during his military tours.
- Imagine the worst possible case scenario, and backtrack: Apparently even NASSIM TALEB would do this when he was a trader; every single day when he would go to his trading desk, he would assume that his investments would all go to zero, and if that wasn’t the case every single day, it was just upside. Therefore for myself, I just think to myself very simple; imagine like I got zero dollars, zero money, and literally all I need is meat, a Wi-Fi connection and I’m good. 
- Live like a poor person: The notion of “debasing“ the coin or the currency is the general idea that you are not a coward in regards to money. The best way to think about money is like a social tool; I think money is actually just codified labor. If you want people to clean bathrooms, run the cashiers stand, you have to promise them money. Even Seneca said the upsides of simulated poverty; essentially living like a poor person, or even a homeless person when you don’t need to… is the ultimate position to be in. Why? True freedom of spirit and soul; as a philosopher thinker writer or whatever… you cannot be “canceled”, because there is nothing to cancel. As long as you could pay your rent, buy meat at Costco, and publish your thoughts to your own self hosted website blog, and pay your server fee, you have 100% freedom. And also, still… America is the best place to be because there is true freedom of speech and expression, you don’t want to be a trillionaire but not be able to say what’s really on your mind. And I think this is the big issue with entertainers, actors, media people… as long as you’re signed to a contract, you don’t run your own production company, or, you’re still a slave to money… you’re not really going to see what’s really on your mind. Why is it that the Rock cannot say anything bad about China, or Tibet? Because he is still enslaved by the media corporation. New slaves by Kanye West.
And this is the true courage of Kanye West; he literally put everything on the line, and even lost his spouse and I think maybe his kids? All for the sake of revealing inequities. 
“I throw these Maybach keys fucking c’est la vie! I know that we the new slaves.”- Ye
Stoic training
The fun thing about stoicism is that you could just make it up as you go, devise your own strategies and whatever.
“Fucking c’est la vie!” My favorite Kanye West line.
Essentially the general idea is that in life, one should not take things too seriously. Laughter is golden, I forget the philosopher who was called the laughing philosopher… Democritus?; better to laugh about the follies of human beings rather than to be dark and morose about it.
Also, thoughts from the Odyssey; if you look far enough  into the future, everything becomes comedic and hilarious.
So when you’re in some sort of bad situation, just think to yourself “Perhaps one day, 20 or 30 years from now… I will look back at this and just laugh!” It will just be humorous.
Honestly, laughter, and kind of being able to joke about things might be the best way to live life and deal with setbacks. 
Modern day ailments
Problems in modern day life:
- Too much time spent indoors, not enough time out in the sun. Perhaps it is better to be out outside all day, and joyful, even with the risk of getting skin cancer or whatever… rather than to be indoors, scared, weak and anemic. Differences between if you’re a man or a woman, but still… the most beautiful skin has a sunkissed, olive color tone; the true privilege is having a full body tan. 
- Get chatGPT, the paid premium one. And use the image generation AI art tool DALL-E. People pay therapists to just speak their mind, and get some sort of sounding board. I actually think it’s much better to chat with AI instead; because it will not judge you, and ultimately what is a therapist anyways? A therapist is just a mirror, a sounding board for you to verbalize and flesh out your thoughts. Often when we talk about our problems, 90% of the issues go away because once we verbalize it, we feel much better about ourselves. The next thing I’m going to do is build some sort of therapy bot. 
- Not enough walking: I have never met anybody who walks 30,000 steps a day and is depressed. Even my friend Jimmy, who works as a US postal worker delivering the mail, he walks around 30,000 steps a day and is always bright cherry and jovial. I think this is also where people who hike a lot or walk a lot in nature are so happy; when you’re able to walk around a lot, and zen out… you just feel much better. My simple suggestion is when you go on a hike or a walk in nature or even in the city… leave your phone at home, or locked inside your glove compartment, and don’t bring any headphones or speakers or Apple watches or whatever. Just bring along your camera, and enjoy. My personal ideal is the bear lifestyle; walking 50 miles a day. 
Real stoics don’t call themselves Stoics?
A funny thing I have learned is that when you call something something, it isn’t that.
For example, if someone calls something a “luxury car”, it ain’t. For example, a true modern day luxury car is maybe a Tesla, but Tesla never calls itself a luxury car. Also the ultimate luxury technology company is probably Apple… but Apple is very intelligent and not calling themselves a luxury brand.
A pro tip is when it comes to websites, read the alternative text, the header text, the stuff that shows up in the tab of your browser window. If the website, the automotive retailer tries to market themselves as a “luxury” brand, typically it is actually a sign that it isn’t a luxury brand it isn’t luxury brand.
Thought: what are some good examples of true luxury brands which don’t overly calls itself luxury? 
In someways, we can think and consider stoicism as our new luxury. In fact, having luxury, luxury of mind and soul… and luxury of freedom of speech, isn’t this the ultimate luxury?
When somebody asked Diogenes the cynic; “What is the best human good”? He said “Freedom of speech, speaking your mind, having the power to see whatever is on your mind.”
In fact, my current joy is becoming more and more free talking, and free riding. What that means is this; I’m ain’t going to censor myself no more, even if I might be politically incorrect insensitive or whatever. 
Also, I would prefer to speak my mind and seriously hurt the feelings of others, rather than soften it for the sake of the other person. 

Similarly speaking, when people call themselves “influencers”, they are not influencers.Stoicism as a technique and tool, not the end
Ultimately I think we should think of stoicism just like having another tool inside our tool kit. For example, if you’re a chef, you’re going to have different knives for different purposes. If you’re going to cut a big piece of meat, you probably want a big ass meat cutting knife, not something you would use to slice an apple with. Similarly speaking, if you’re going to scoop out the insides of an avocado, better to use a spoon rather than using a fork, or a knife. 
I think the problem is when some people get too into stoicism (I prefer writing stoicism with a lowercase), they think that everything needs to be consistent, and must fit into this nice little neat box of what is considered “stoicism“. This is a bad line of thinking… let us consider that Marcus Aurelius never even mentioned stoicism in his writings, his collections of thoughts, which we moderns call THE MEDITATIONS… it was just essentially his personal diary, to help him conquer his own personal fears and thoughts, I don’t think he ever intended it to be published publicly. I think he just wrote it to himself as self therapy. And I think the only stoic philosopher he even mentions is maybe Epictetus.
The future of stoicism?
For myself, I just come out with certain to work out thoughts and techniques because it helps me, and when I find these tricks or techniques or secret hacks or cheat codes… My passion is to simply share it with others. 
And ultimately, things are ever in flux and evolving and changing and adapting.
For example, I’ve discovered the quality of my thinking is different when I am in Culver City Los Angeles, compared to being in the boring suburbs of Orange County.
Also depending on my social environments… my stoic thoughts are different when I am in a gym, vs just working out by myself in my parking spot in the back of my apartment.
Also, the quality of my thoughts is different when living with family members or other people versus just living with myself Cindy and Seneca.
Stoicism is all about living with other people
Assuming you’re not growing your own vegetables and living in the middle of nowhere… you probably have some interaction with other human beings. As long as you have an iPhone, an Android phone, a smartphone, a 4G or 5G internet connection, wifi, a laptop, have to buy groceries somewhere… you’re still going to have to interact with other human beings.
And this is good. There is no other greater joy than other human beings.
In fact, modern-day society is strange because in someways, the ethos is to be antisocial and to be cowardly. But in fact, the best way to think about things is that real life is interaction with other human beings, and social conquest. One can imagine a lot of modern day entrepreneurship as simply a big dick swinging contest. He who is the most masculine confident tall and strong and stoic shall win.
More ideas
Assume that everyone is mentally insane: Have you ever been out in public, and you see some sort of crackhead or strange homeless person who acts radically, smells terrible, and is obviously mentally ill? Do you hate them for it? When they say something weird to you… do you take it personally? No. Why? They are crazy. Perhaps we should just adopt this stoic mindset towards other people; some people are actually physiologically ill, mentally unwell… don’t trust the opinion of nobody.
A lot of people are trying to actually deal with their own inner demons: For example, becoming the successful photographer and street photographer I am today… I’ve dealt with some individuals who would say anonymous bad things about me, and later I found out that their mom just died or something. I cannot imagine what it feels like losing a mother… therefore if somebody spew some hate on me because something bad happened to them, I’m not gonna take it personally.
Self-flagellation: I think a lot of people who are sick, mentally or physiologically self flagellate themselves. Essentially the way that they deal with other people or themselves is some sort of metaphorical self-flagellation.
For example… you know those strange individuals who have the whip and whip themselves, and inflict pain on themselves? I think some people do this metaphorically to themselves and others.
You just want to stay away from them.
Why so scared?
My personal theory on fear is that a lot of it is tied to morality and ethics. I think the general idea is not necessarily that we are afraid of anything… I think the true fear is that we’re afraid that we are some sort of bad evil unethical immoral person.
For example in street photography, the general ethical thought is that it is immoral to take a photo of somebody without their permission, because there is some sort of it inherent evil behind it. Is this true? No. Taking photos and not really a big deal.
Why do people make such a big deal out of small things?
I think it is because some people are just overly sensitive, which once again comes from some sort of physiological weakness.
For example, if you’re a weightlifter who could lift 1000 pounds, assuming you’re not taking any steroids or anything… are small things going to bother you? No. But let us assume that you are a skinny fat man, all you do is drink alcohol and smoke marijuana and watch Netflix, and you spent too much time on Reddit… you are 40% body fat, and have never lifted in your life. And also your testosterone is low and you never go outside. Certainly the quality of your thoughts is going to be different than if you’re a happy gay monster, lifting weights outside in the direct sun, laughing and having fun. 
In fact, I’ve actually personally discovered that the reason why a lot of people hate me is because I am so happy jovial and gay. They are secretly suspicious or envious of me? 
Weather and mood
Probably one of my worst experiences was this jarring transition; I was super happy insanely happy being in Vietnam in 2017; with a beautiful weather, the beautiful light, the happy people the great amenities etc.… and then that winter Cindy and I went to Europe, in Marseille Berlin and Prague, and maybe London… seriously the worst winter of my life. Why? I wonder if so much miserable feelings and thoughts simply comes from the darkness and lack of light. a lot of Europe is actually quite miserable; dark, unhygienic, morose.
Even Nietzsche had a thought about Schopenhauer; How much of these emo European philosophers came from the fact that it was just complaining about the cold weather in Germany etc.?

For myself, my ideal weather is Southeast Asia; I love being in Phnom Penh Cambodia, Vietnam etc. In the states, am I the only one who loves living in Los Angeles? Dr. Dre and Kendrick Lamar said that LA was the best for women weed and weather… I would definitely say the biggest upside of living in Los Angeles is the light, the sunlight. It actually does get quite cold here, but usually most reliably even in December during the winter time, the sun will always come up. As long as there is bright sunny light, I will be happy. And I think maybe for myself, considering that I am a photographer, and photography means painting with light… light for me is critical.I also wonder how much of it is a physiological thing and a genetic trait; for example I could even recall being a young child, and my mom telling me that the most critical thing in finding a home or an apartment was light and natural light. Even now… 90% of my happiness comes from being able to have access to natural light, ideally floor to ceiling windows facing directly the sun, having some sort of modern temperature regulated apartment and home. Even living in our tiny studio minimalistic luxury apartment in Providence Rhode Island, where it was always 75° warm and cozy, and not frigid and damp and cold and dark and humid… I was always good. But moving to an older house, where it always felt damp and cold… this literally lowered my happiness by 1000%.
Therefore, if you’re feeling miserable sad or whatever… I say spend three months living in Hanoi or Saigon in Vietnam, or go to Phnom Penh Cambodia. I wonder if 90% of peoples misery is simply due to the weather.
Stoic assignments
”Better to be a gay monster than a sentimental bore!” – Fernandino Galliani, via Nietzsche
My stoic ideal is somebody who is happy, gay, smiling, no headphones or AirPods on, no sunglasses on, no hat, no facial hair, no baggy oversized clothing, no tint in their car. Somebody who makes great eye contact, laughs, stands up upright, jokes, and fools around. Like an overgrown child.
Also, lift weights at least once every day, ideally in the direct sun. Just buy some weightlifting equipment on Titan.fitness, I like the farmers carry handles, the Olympic loadable dumbbell, and also the Texas power squat bar. Just buy some cheap weights, and or buy a heavy 400 pound sandbag, and just have fun throwing it around.
True stoics are masculine
A true stoic should look something like Hercules or Achilles. Or like ERIC KIM; I have the aesthetic and the physique of Brad Pitt in FIGHT CLUB except with a lot more muscle. Like my friend Soren says, the Adonis physique and proportions.
A real stoic is sexy
I think a real stoic is sexy, happy and fun. Who doesn’t take life too seriously; and think of everything like a fun game. A real stoic would be joyful and cheery like three-year-old child without any adulteration from the outside world.
Why do adults become so dark and morose?
I don’t like talking with or hanging out with adults, uninteresting.
At what point or age do people become so emo?
Typically, highschoolers are very optimistic. Even college students. But I think at least in maybe college in high school nowadays… the bad trend is towards “over concern”, about the world the planet ethics animals etc.
I find a lot of this thinking superficial, performative, and uncritical. I think “animal rights“, “saving the planet” is this new pseudo world religion; which is just capitalism 3.0. I find the whole pet industry the whole dog industry to be insanely bizarre, and I trust nobody who talks about “saving the planet“ who owns an iPhone, owns any sort of car, or has an Amazon prime subscription. Certainly not any vegans.
A real stoic is a carnivore 
Animals are animals. They are lower on the hierarchy and totem pole on earth. Man is the apex predator, the apex bully and the apex tyrant.
Should we care for animals or “animal rights”? No. Animals are our slaves.
If you consider even dogs and pets… they are essentially our emotional slaves. People talk a lot about the virtuosity of dogs being loyal or whatever… and giving you unconditional love. This seems like some sort of emotional slavery.
The only dogs I respect are some sort of canine dogs, some sort of attack or defense dogs, or hunting dogs. For example, John Wick 3; Halle Barry and her dogs. An animal should either be a weapon, or nothing.
Why do people care about animals so much?
Essentially it looks like men no longer have a backbone. No more spine.
I trust nobody who owns a dog.
Let us not forget; they call it dog ownership, or “owning a pet”. There is no more concept of “human ownership, or “owning a human.”
End goals 
What is the end goal of humanity? To me it is towards entrepreneurship, innovation, art and aesthetics, philosophy etc. Design.
Stoicism should be considered a tool which could aid you in these things.
For example, I think 99% of entrepreneurship is courage. Stoicism could help you with that.
I also think with design, great design is also 99% courage, having the courage to attempt something that won’t sell or be received well… stoicism is all about practical courage. The only designers with courage include Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Elon Musk, Kanye West. 
Also, weightlifting. To attempt to lift a certain weight you have never attempted before takes great courage. For example, me atlas lifting 1000 pounds; that is 10 plates and a 25 on each side, this is true stoic training. Why? The fear of injury is what holds most people back; if you had successfully conquered this fear and not injured yourself, this is pure stoic bliss.
The physical
I think the only and the only proper way to lift weights is one repetition maximum training. That is; what is the maximum amount of weight you’re able to successfully lift or move, even half an inch?
To me, the courage is the success. Even if you had the courage to attempt it… that is what is considered success. 
Simple exercises to do include the atlas lift, innovated by ERIC KIM, or a one repetition max rack pull.
Or, a high trap bar deadlift, heavy Farmer’s walks, or heavy sandbag carries. Or even a simple thing you could do is go to the park or to the local nature center, find the biggest rock there and just see if you could pick it up.
Now what?
If you’re interested in stoicism, and have had some interesting thoughts on stoicism, one of the most noble things you could do is start your own blog. I think blogs are 1000 times more effective than publishing some sort of static printed book; I think the problem in today’s world is that everyone is seeking some sort of legitimacy by being picked up by some sort of legitimate publisher and getting “published“, and seeing your printed book at Barnes & Noble whatever.
I say it is better to be open source, free and permissionless, decentralized. Just publish your thoughts and book as a free PDF, and just host it on dropbox, Google Drive, or your own web server. Share the link freely, and also just publish the raw text as a big blog post. 
Even Sam Bankman-Fried wisely thought; 99.9% of books could just be summarized as big blog posts.
Don’t trust any modern day published book which isn’t free, because… there is some sort of hidden clout chasing somewhere. 
Even one of the worst compromises that led to the demise of Ray Dalio was the fact that he took his Principles book, which was essentially a free ebook PDF on his website, and then took it off, because I think he got a book deal with Simon and Schuster. After he did that, he lost my respect.
If you’re already independently wealthy, and you don’t crowd source your self-esteem… why would you need to externally validate yourself by getting some sort of constipated publisher and annoying editor?
Editors are bad.
Now what?
Start your own blog and start blogging your own thoughts on stoic philosophy, and even start a YouTube channel and start vlogging on it. My generalized thought is simple: if your thought your idea your blog post your video or whatever could even impact the life of one other human being on planet earth… it is worth it.
ERIC
What is the secret to the maximum amount of happiness in life? The maximum amount of danger. (Nietzsche).
ERIC

STOICISM 101
Become invincible:
- STOIC FLEX.
- Becoming Spartan
- MAKE IT ENTERTAINING FOR YOURSELF!
- Stoic Aesthetics?
- The Philosophy of Ugliness
- Bad Stoicism
- Stoicism 2.0
- Becoming Stoic
- LEMONADE.
- Why Arguments and Confrontations Are Good
- “I’m Over It”
- How to Deal With Miserable People
- How to Become a Stoic
- How to Ignore
- Pretend like you didn’t hear them
- Bad Stoic Strategies
- The Stoic Way of Dealing With Unpleasant or Miserable People
- HOW TO BECOME A STOIC
- Stoicism Stunts Our Power?
- Stoicism is Mental Resistance Training
- STOIC STRATEGIES.
- How to Become Fearless
- Extreme Stoicism
- Ethics are Aesthetic
- Indifference to Pain or Suffering
- When is Stoicism Good? When is Stoicism Bad?
- Why Others Criticize or Insult You
- True Difficulty
- What if Covid Never Goes Away?
- SUPER STOIC
- Anti-Hedonism
- HOW TO CONQUER FEAR
- ANTI FEAR
- It is the Duty of the Strong to Help the Weak
- The Goal is to Become Stronger
- HYPER STOICISM
- HYPER HERO
- TRANSFORM EVERY DOWNSIDE INTO AN UPSIDE
- STOICISM x Child’s Mind
- The Art of Manly Virtue
- Resistance Makes Us Stronger!
- DON’T LIVE IN FEAR
- Emotions are Good
- Conquer Your Anger
- BLACK EAGLE
- DIFFICULTY AWAKENS YOUR INNER-GENIUS.
- STOICISM IS ARMOR FOR THE MIND
- The Spartan-Stoic Lifestyle
- How I Conquered Fear
- HOW TO CURE FEAR.
- LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.
- The Upside of Poverty
- How I Became Me
- THE WILL TO POWER, OR THE WILL TO FEAR?
- ATTACK REALITY
- Living *THROUGH* History
- How to Fear Less
- Fear is the Ultimate Contagious Disease
- STOICISM FOR DUMMIES
- Don’t Be Scared!
- WHAT CAN YOU CONTROL, WHAT CAN YOU NOT CONTROL?
- HOW YOU CAN CONQUER FEAR
- YOU’RE STRONGER THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE.
- EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
- WHY AREN’T THINGS WORSE?
- My Philosophy on Masculinity
- A Riskier Life is a Better Life #philosophy #stoicism
- How to Creatively Flourish in Life
- Introduction to Stoicism
- How to Become Stronger
- How to Conquer Depression With Photography
- What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger
- How to Respect Yourself
- How to Believe in Yourself
- How to Steer Fear
- How to Conquer Pessimism
- How to Conquer Anxiety
- How to Overcome Your Fear of People
- How to Be Optimistic
- Why I Don’t Take My Anger Seriously
- HOW TO BECOME MORE POWERFUL
- POSITIVITY.
- HOW TO BECOME SUPERHUMAN
- How to Give a Fuck Less
- ALL IN.
- Why I Cut My Dad Out of My Life.
- Your iPhone Only Has 5% Battery Left.
- How not to give a FUCK about your REPUTATION
- WHAT IS A HUMAN?
- HAPPINESS.
- The Regret Minimization Framework in Photography and Life
- How to Be a HERO
- Conquer Your Fears by Making Fear Your Slave
- Rule Circumstances; Don’t Let Your Circumstances Rule You
- How to Love Yourself
- How to Turn Shit into Gold
- Your Parents Fuck You Up
- Immortality
- What Kills You Makes You Stronger
- How to Be Patient
- How to Conquer Anger
- How to Bounce Back in Life
- How to Overcome Resistance
- Nothing Unlimited is Good; Nothing Good is Unlimited
- You Have No Limits
- Can 1’s and 0’s Hurt You?
- The Envious Moment is Flying Now
- Tomorrow We’ll Sail the Wide Seas Again
- How to Forgive Others
- Focus on Your Actions, Not the Results
- Everything Will Be Alright
- How to Be a Stoic Street Photographer
- How to Be a Spartan Photographer
- How to Overcome Your Fears in Life
- How to Stop Worrying in Life
- How to Use Photography as Self-Therapy
- How to Free Your Soul From Disturbance
- 3 Stoic Techniques that Can Help You Gain Tranquility
- Can People Weaker than You Hurt You?
- Does a Doctor Get Angry at a Crazy Patient?
- Own Nothing
The Stoic Masters
Learn from the master stoics:
-
How to Become a Philosopher
Philosopher, philos, philos-sophia: it simply means love, lover of wisdom, lover of knowledge. That in ancient Greek times, it was essentially a humble flex; you would say “I love wisdom and I aspire towards wisdom and becoming wise, yet… I am not yet wise”.
For example, the troll Socrates: who said “I am only wise because I know I know nothing.” (rolls eyes).
Every child is born a philosopher. For example… when a child is pushing boundaries, making sense of the world, and asking why? He or she is trying to figure out how to situate themselves in the world. The big problem is a lot of parents, teachers, religious teachers or whatever… never really give children the opportunity for critical thinking.
What is critical thinking? Critical thinking… kritikos in ancient Greek simply means judge, to weigh. Therefore a critical thinker is simply somebody who hears something reads something or whatever… and thinks for themselves: 
What is the significance of this thought or idea?
Deep diving
For example, one thing I have discovered very useful to study is religious texts, reading the Bible, the Koran, the Torah and Jewish texts etc. Why? So much of the world is predicated on morality and ethics; for example America is a protestant Christian country, much of the Middle East is Islamic, believes in the teachings of Mohammed, and also, a lot of people in America Israel and other places in the world are Jewish, heritage from Judea… and therefore, a lot of cultural things are disseminated through the media. For example, when I was a kid in Bayside Queens in New York, at PS 169, Public school 169 in Bayside Queens, I think when I was in the fifth or sixth grade, at around 11 or 12 years old… I remember just lying in bed, in my bedroom, watching reruns or TV shows of Seinfeld. I really had zero idea what was going on, and later… I learned that Seinfeld was essentially a comedic situational comedy based on Jewish, Jewish American culture. For example hilarious episodes I remember like the soup Nazi, etc.
And so much of American culture is Yiddish Jewish!
- Chutzpah
- Schlep it around
- Don’t be a ‘shmuck’
Thus, understanding the culture you understand your world.
Unchain yourself
“You gotta respect the elohim were on a whole new regime!” – JAY Z
Something I realize which is really interesting about Jay Z is that I think he has figured it out a lot of things. People think Jay Z is dumb; but in fact, he is highly intelligent, not only street smart, but booksmart. He seems to have read a lot of Shakespeare, poetry, and religious books. Once again, a lot of America lives in ignorance; this is the downsides of Americans who have never traveled, don’t have a passport, or have never really lived or ventured beyond their own city, state, etc.
I still remember one of the most formative moments of my life when I first went to Beirut Lebanon, and I learned so much. I was a ripe 21, 22-year-old. I learned how the Lebanese were some of the most beautiful attractive intelligent people, very worldly, even my favorite philosopher NASSIM TALEB is Lebanese. 
I learned how the Lebanese were fluent in Arabic French and English and half a dozen other languages… how Beirut was known as the Phoenix; was it burned down to the ground and rebuilt seven or eight times? The true embodiment of the notion, What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger“, or the more precise thought:
If something has been burned down to the ground, and has been successfully rebuilt several times… it is a sign that it is robust, strong, and actually gains from a chaos disorder and fire.
For example, let us think and imagine this interesting thought; kind of like the movie Akira [AKIRA II]. Imagine that you’re a big monster, and every time that somebody tries to attack you, shoot you with missiles or whatever, you actually grow bigger, stronger and more powerful. 
This is a very interesting thought, because in life, I think a lot of us shirk away from conflict, drama, etc. Yet what if we should put ourselves in a position in which we actually gain from the attacks of others? That every time that somebody tried to attack you, you would actually literally become more muscular, stronger, bigger, gain more skeletal muscle, etc.
I think this is the general premise behind weightlifting; the idea that in someways, when you lift very very heavy weights, always increasing your one repetition maximum lift, that in someways, you’re actually doing positive damage upon your body, but overtime, with enough sleep rest restoration, meet consumption etc.… you actually become bigger, more muscular and also stronger.
Once you deadlift 7 plates and beyond– you can do anything.
The philosophy of the mind 
A sound mind inside a sound body (Mens sana in corpore sano)
Mens sand (mind sane), in corpore sano (in body sane).
So… what is the mind? 
My belief is that the mind is simply an offshoot of the body. That is, your mind and some sort of thing that you could just upload to the cloud and store forever. No. The mind is simply an offshoot of the body. That without a body you have no mind. That when your body dies, your mind also dies.
Let us consider everyone needs a body. You cannot just be a brain in some sort of fishbowl, connected to the internet. This is not a mind.
Also a very interesting thought I learned from studying philosophy — the notion of a ‘mortal soul’– that when you die and your body dies, your soul also dies.
Where does the notion that the mind is some sort of metaphysical thing come from?
Several things. First, a lot of philosophers actually have some sort of heritage within religion. For example, a lot of thinkers philosophers etc., especially the more modern ones, I referred to modern as everybody after Socrates… has some sort of influence from Christian, Catholic, Protestant Lutheran thought; The philosophers of Germany, and France, thoughts on nobility, the Holy Roman empire, conflicts and wars etc.
Even our best friend Nietzsche… was his father of pastor? A Christian minister?
Then the big problem:
If philosophers were deeply influenced by religion, their thoughts are more muddled.
True critical thinkers — before the time of Jesus?
Philology
Philology — essentially you study ancient Latin and ancient Greek, and you learn about the history of words, how they came into play, and modern meanings. 
The reason why I find this so critical is that English is a very imprecise language. We all see the same words, but… in our minds we have different concepts and notions.
For example, when we talk about “family”, assuming you live in America and there are multicultural beliefs; the notion of family is very different if you’re Caucasian, Vietnamese American, Korean American, from Ethiopia etc.
Or religion. Notions of religion are different if you’re Jewish, from Israel or Palestine, from South Korea, from Phnom Penh Cambodia, from Japan etc.
Critical thinking
Some thoughts on critical thinking:
- Don’t put no faith on anything you haven’t witnessed in real life, embodied reality, in the flesh. Even videos and photos; in the world of AI and image and video generation and deep fakes, everything could be fabricated pretty easily.
- Not everything is on the Internet: I think there is a weird bias in today’s world that we think that all information is easily accessible on the Internet. There is still a lot of hidden information and knowledge that is actually not visible on the internet. 
- Understanding algorithms: an algorithm is simply an instruction made by some nerd at a computer who posits what is important, and what is less important. I think the best way to think of the algorithm is that it is weighing mechanism; it weighs important and value. Yet… Only a true individual, a true solo philosopher can and should posit values. 
TRY
-
How to Become a Philosopher
Philosopher, philos, philos-sophia: it simply means love, lover of wisdom, lover of knowledge. That in ancient Greek times, it was essentially a humble flex; you would say “I love wisdom and I aspire towards wisdom and becoming wise, yet… I am not yet wise”.
For example, the troll Socrates: who said “I am only wise because I know I know nothing.” (rolls eyes).
Every child is born a philosopher. For example… when a child is pushing boundaries, making sense of the world, and asking why? He or she is trying to figure out how to situate themselves in the world. The big problem is a lot of parents, teachers, religious teachers or whatever… never really give children the opportunity for critical thinking.
What is critical thinking? Critical thinking… kritikos in ancient Greek simply means judge, to weigh. Therefore a critical thinker is simply somebody who hears something reads something or whatever… and thinks for themselves: 
What is the significance of this thought or idea?
Deep diving
For example, one thing I have discovered very useful to study is religious texts, reading the Bible, the Koran, the Torah and Jewish texts etc. Why? So much of the world is predicated on morality and ethics; for example America is a protestant Christian country, much of the Middle East is Islamic, believes in the teachings of Mohammed, and also, a lot of people in America Israel and other places in the world are Jewish, heritage from Judea… and therefore, a lot of cultural things are disseminated through the media. For example, when I was a kid in Bayside Queens in New York, at PS 169, Public school 169 in Bayside Queens, I think when I was in the fifth or sixth grade, at around 11 or 12 years old… I remember just lying in bed, in my bedroom, watching reruns or TV shows of Seinfeld. I really had zero idea what was going on, and later… I learned that Seinfeld was essentially a comedic situational comedy based on Jewish, Jewish American culture. For example hilarious episodes I remember like the soup Nazi, etc.
And so much of American culture is Yiddish Jewish!
- Chutzpah
- Schlep it around
- Don’t be a ‘shmuck’
Thus, understanding the culture you understand your world.
Unchain yourself
“You gotta respect the elohim were on a whole new regime!” – JAY Z
Something I realize which is really interesting about Jay Z is that I think he has figured it out a lot of things. People think Jay Z is dumb; but in fact, he is highly intelligent, not only street smart, but booksmart. He seems to have read a lot of Shakespeare, poetry, and religious books. Once again, a lot of America lives in ignorance; this is the downsides of Americans who have never traveled, don’t have a passport, or have never really lived or ventured beyond their own city, state, etc.
I still remember one of the most formative moments of my life when I first went to Beirut Lebanon, and I learned so much. I was a ripe 21, 22-year-old. I learned how the Lebanese were some of the most beautiful attractive intelligent people, very worldly, even my favorite philosopher NASSIM TALEB is Lebanese. 
I learned how the Lebanese were fluent in Arabic French and English and half a dozen other languages… how Beirut was known as the Phoenix; was it burned down to the ground and rebuilt seven or eight times? The true embodiment of the notion, What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger“, or the more precise thought:
If something has been burned down to the ground, and has been successfully rebuilt several times… it is a sign that it is robust, strong, and actually gains from a chaos disorder and fire.
For example, let us think and imagine this interesting thought; kind of like the movie Akira [AKIRA II]. Imagine that you’re a big monster, and every time that somebody tries to attack you, shoot you with missiles or whatever, you actually grow bigger, stronger and more powerful. 
This is a very interesting thought, because in life, I think a lot of us shirk away from conflict, drama, etc. Yet what if we should put ourselves in a position in which we actually gain from the attacks of others? That every time that somebody tried to attack you, you would actually literally become more muscular, stronger, bigger, gain more skeletal muscle, etc.
I think this is the general premise behind weightlifting; the idea that in someways, when you lift very very heavy weights, always increasing your one repetition maximum lift, that in someways, you’re actually doing positive damage upon your body, but overtime, with enough sleep rest restoration, meet consumption etc.… you actually become bigger, more muscular and also stronger.
Once you deadlift 7 plates and beyond– you can do anything.
The philosophy of the mind 
A sound mind inside a sound body (Mens sana in corpore sano)
Mens sand (mind sane), in corpore sano (in body sane).
So… what is the mind? 
My belief is that the mind is simply an offshoot of the body. That is, your mind and some sort of thing that you could just upload to the cloud and store forever. No. The mind is simply an offshoot of the body. That without a body you have no mind. That when your body dies, your mind also dies.
Let us consider everyone needs a body. You cannot just be a brain in some sort of fishbowl, connected to the internet. This is not a mind.
Also a very interesting thought I learned from studying philosophy — the notion of a ‘mortal soul’– that when you die and your body dies, your soul also dies.
Where does the notion that the mind is some sort of metaphysical thing come from?
Several things. First, a lot of philosopher actually has some sort of heritage within religion. For example, a lot of thinkers philosophers etc., especially the more modern ones, I referred to modern as everybody after Socrates… Has some sort of influence from Christian, Catholic, protestant Lutheran thought; The flossers of Germany, and France, thoughts on nobility, the holy Roman empire, conflicts and wars etc.
Even our best friend Nietzsche… was his father of pastor? A Christian minister?
Philology
Philology — essentially you study ancient Latin and ancient Greek, and you learn about the history of words, how they came into play, and modern meanings. 
The reason why I find this so critical is that English is a very in precise language. We all see the same words, but… in our minds we have different concepts and notions.
For example, when we talk about “family”, assuming you live in America and there are multicultural beliefs; the notion of family is very different if you’re Caucasian, Vietnamese American, Korean American, from Ethiopia etc.
Or religion. Notions of religion are different if you’re Jewish, from Israel or Palestine, from South Korea, from Phnom Penh Cambodia, from Japan etc.
Critical thinking
Some thoughts on critical thinking:
- Don’t put no faith on anything you haven’t witnessed in real life, embodied reality, in the flesh. Even videos and photos; in the world of AI and image and video generation and deep pics, everything could be fabricated pretty easily.
- Not everything is on the Internet: I think there is a weird bias in today’s world that we think that all information is easily accessible on the Internet. There is still a lot of hidden information and knowledge that is actually not visible on the internet. 
- Understanding algorithms: an algorithm is simply an instruction made by some nerd at a computer who posits what is important, and what is less important. I think the best way to think of the algorithm is that it is weighing mechanism; it weighs important and value. Yet… Only a true individual, a true solo philosopher can and should posit values. 
TRY
-
How to Become a Philosopher
Philosopher, philos, philos-sophia: it simply means love, lover of wisdom, lover of knowledge. That in ancient Greek times, it was essentially a humble flex; you would say “I love wisdom and I aspire towards wisdom and becoming wise, yet… I am not yet wise”.
For example, the troll Socrates: who said “I am only wise because I know I know nothing.” (rolls eyes).
Every child is born a philosopher. For example… When a child is pushing boundaries, making sense of the world, and asking why? He or she is trying to figure out how to situate themselves in the world. The big problem is a lot of parents, teachers, religious teachers or whatever… Never really give children the opportunity for critical thinking.
What is critical thinking? Critical thinking… kritiklos in ancient Greek  simply means judge, two way. Therefore a critical thinker is simply somebody who hear something read something or whatever… and thinks for themselves: 
What is the significance of this thought or idea?
For example, one thing I have discovered very useful to study is religious text, reading the Bible, the Quran, the Torah and Jewish text etc. Why? So much of the world is wrong on morality and ethics; for example America is a protestant Christian country, Much of the Middle East is Islamic, believes in the teachings of Mohammed, and also, a lot of people in America Israel and other places in the world are Jewish, heritage from Judea… and therefore, a lot of cultural things are disseminated through the media. For example, when I was a kid in Bayside Queens in New York, at PS 169, Public school 169 in Bayside Queens, I think when I was in the fifth or sixth grade, at around 11 or 12 years old… I remember just lying in bed, in my bedroom, watching reruns or TV shows of Seinfeld. I really had zero idea what was going on, and later… I learned that Seinfeld was essentially a comedic situational comedy based on Jewish, Jewish American culture. For example hilarious episodes I remember like the soup Nazi, etc.
Unchain yourself
“You gotta respect the elohim were on a whole new regime!” – JAY Z
Something I realize which is really interesting about Jay Z is that I think he has figured it out a lot of things. People think Jay Z is dumb; but in fact, he is highly intelligent, not only streetsmart, but Booksmart. He seems to have read a lot of Shakespeare, poetry, and religious books. Once again, a lot of America lives in ignorance; this is the downsides of Americans who have never traveled, don’t have a passport, or have never really lived or ventured beyond their own city, state, etc.
I still remember one of the most formative moments of my life when I first went to Beirut Lebanon, and I learned so much. I was a ripe 21, 22-year-old. I learned how the Lebanese were some of the most beautiful attractive intelligent people, very worldly, even my favorite philosopher NASSIM TALEB is Lebanese. 
I learned how the Lebanese were fluent in Arabic French and English and half a dozen other languages… How being rude was known as the Phoenix; was it burned down to the ground and rebuilt seven or eight times? The true embodiment of the notion, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger “, or the more precise thought:
if something has been burned down to the ground, and has been successfully rebuilt several times… It is a sign that it is robust, strong, and actually gains from a tax disorder and fire.
For example, let us think and imagine this interesting thought; kind of like the movie Akira. Imagine that you’re a big monster, and every time that somebody tries to attack you, shoot you with missiles or whatever, you actually grow bigger. 
This is a very interesting thought, because in life, I think a lot of us shirk away from conflict, drama, etc. Yet what if we should put ourselves in a position in which we actually gain from the attacks of others? That every time that somebody tried to attack you, you would actually literally become more muscular, stronger, bigger, more skeletal muscle, etc.
I think this is the general premise behind weightlifting; the idea that in someways, when you lift very very heavy weights, always increasing your one repetition maximum lift, that in someways, you’re actually doing positive damage upon your body, but overtime, with enough sleep rest restoration, meet consumption etc.… You actually become bigger, more muscular and also stronger.
The philosophy of the mind 
So… what is the mind? 
My belief is that the mind is simply an offshoot of the body. That is, your mind and some sort of thing that you could just upload to the cloud and store forever. No. The mind is simply an offshoot of the body. That without a body you have no mind. That when your body dies, your mind also dies.
Let us consider everyone needs a body. You cannot just be a brain in some sort of fishbowl, connected to the Internet. This is not a mind.
Where does the notion that the mind is some sort of metaphysical thing come from?
Several things. First, a lot of philosopher actually has some sort of heritage within religion. For example, a lot of thinkers philosophers etc., especially the more modern ones, I referred to modern as everybody after Socrates… Has some sort of influence from Christian, Catholic, protestant Lutheran thought; The flossers of Germany, and France, thoughts on nobility, the holy Roman empire, conflicts and wars etc.
Even our best friend Nietzsche… was his father of pastor? A Christian minister?
Philology
Philology — essentially you study ancient Latin and ancient Greek, and you learn about the history of words, how they came into play, and modern meanings. 
The reason why I find this so critical is that English is a very in precise language. We all see the same words, but… in our minds we have different concepts and notions.
For example, when we talk about “family”, assuming you live in America and there are multicultural beliefs; the notion of family is very different if you’re Caucasian, Vietnamese American, Korean American, from Ethiopia etc.
Or religion. Notions of religion are different if you’re Jewish, from Israel or Palestine, from South Korea, from Phnom Penh Cambodia, from Japan etc.

-
Introduction to Stoicism
Something I have been meaning to write or create or do is like some sort of book, ebook, pamphlet, or introductory primer to stoicism. I really think that stoicism is probably one of the most useful and philosophical models to live normal every day real life. Yet, I haven’t really found a good instructional guide on it, especially when I was self teaching it to myself.
Consider this a practical primer, cutting through the BS:
What does stoicism mean? 
Stoicism, stoic, the stoa in ancient Greece– essentially the stoa was like some sort of portico, patio, pillar, outside, essentially a spot where guys would just hang out, talk shop, talk philosophy, etc.  
I think about the show “Hey Arnold” in which I was raised with… the notion of “stoop kid“, the notion of a stoop is that in a lot of cities, especially the east coast in New York, you have this little stoop or porch, stairs that go outside your front door… and you could just hang out there, engage in social and neighborhood life etc.
The new stoa? 
One of my happiest moments was when I was living in Providence Rhode Island, and then COVID-19 hit. Everything was closed, besides the park. I can still go to the park, hang out, workout, do chin ups– I learned how to do muscle ups, more bodyweight calisthenics stuff, and also… I had a lot of fun with this “rock toss“ challenge and workout… in the middle of the park was a huge ass rock and huge ass stone, and every single day I would go there pick it up, and then eventually work out with it; throwing it around for fun, doing overhead presses with it, clean and jerks, squats, and eventually I would just throw it around for fun. Funny enough it might have been the most fit I was in my life… this was the true “functional” fitness.
The inspiration — Hector lifting an insanely massive stone (barely 2 strong men could lift it)… using it to break down the door of the ships of the other side.
Open air, open sun concept
Anyways, the reason why that period of covid was so good is that it was in the middle of beautiful Providence Rhode Island summer, so nice and bright and warm and lovely… and one of the good things was going to the park was like an open forum, a new anatheum for a lot of really cool guys to come, hang out, talk shop, go topless and shirtless, workout and hang out.
I met some really interesting people during that period of time. I met some guys who were really cool. For example, one guy I met was in the US military Navy, I think he was training to be a Navy seal or Delta force or something. Another guy in some sort of ROTC training, another cool guy from the hood, and also I would say I probably met half a dozen friendly drug dealers there. And of course a lot of people who believed in conspiracy theories; really friendly, a little weird, but overall good guys.
Anyways, one of the biggest benefits of hanging out at that outdoor park, open air, nothing but green grass, the beautiful sun and the fitness equipment was that I think having this sort of open air environment is actually very conducive to socializing, thinking and thought, and pro social behavior. My theory about a lot of modern day antisocial behavior has to do with the structures which enclose us. For example, almost universally most guys at the gym are extremely antisocial. Why? My theory is that because most gyms have closed, cramped narrow ceilings, and do not have access to natural light, or outside space.
Cramped indoor spaces promote antisocial behavior.
The only good gym I went to which was interesting was the golds gym in Venice, which has this really big outdoor workout area. I think this is much more natural and more fun and better; to be able to work out directly outside outdoors, with your shirt off.
Who is this philosophy for?
Stoics, stoicism — it was originally I think codified by this guy named Zeno, and over time he picked up some followers. Essentially the whole thing happened organically; Zeno would first share his thinking on philosophy ethics and pragmatic ways to deal with other people and the downsides of life, he built a following, and then his followers would propagate the thoughts and start their own little schools of thoughts, their own little stoic clubs.
What is “real” stoicism?
Would I like about stoicism is how loosey goosey it is. It is kind of like zen, or taoism… it is not really quantified as a religion, or a strict moral order. In fact, a lot of the ancients stoics would meditate on random stuff like cosmology, natural sciences like Seneca, how volcanoes worked or whatever. I think nowadays in today’s world, we focus primarily on the pragmatic side; how to deal with fear, uncertainty, downsides etc.
So how did I discover stoicism?
I think I might’ve first learned about stoicism from Nassim Taleb and his ANTIFRAGILE book. I was curious, and my curiosity went to deep. To quote NASSIM TALEB and the Venetian saying “The ocean goes deeper, the deeper you wade into it.”
I literally consumed every single book I could find on stoicism, even the obscure ones. Funny enough, a lot of the stoic thinkers tried to claim other philosophers as being stoic, like Seneca did with Diogenes the cynic. 
Cynic, cynicism, actually comes from the word canine, the dog. Diogenes was considered the “dog” philosopher, first used as a pejorative, but ultimately Diogenes reappropriated that title for fun! He saw dogs as tough, almost like wild wolves, rather than seeing them as a negative thing.
Even Achilles when he was raging against king Agamemnon, he called him “dog faced“ as a heaping insult.
Who is worth reading?
First, Seneca. Seneca the younger, his dad was called Seneca the elder.
In fact, this is such a big deal because Cindy and I named our first son, Seneca, directly after the stoic philosopher. This is true soul in the game; if you name your kid after your favorite philosopher, certainly it is a sign that you really liked that philosopher, or found them impactful.
The reason why I really like Seneca the stoic philosopher is because he had real connections to real reality. What that means is he wasn’t just on the sidelines; he actually existed in the real world, engaged in real politics, was even advisor to the emperor Nero, the bad one, who eventually low-key coerced Seneca to commit suicide, in a manly, dignified manner.
I think this was because maybe… there was actually a plan to overthrow Nero, and essentially Nero found out. 
What makes Seneca so good?
I really like Seneca because his writing is accessible, practical and pragmatic, and interesting.
A lot of thinkers tend to lack connections to real reality, I have no tolerance for boring philosophers to talk about metaphysics, which is things which are not physical. Like thoughts ideas, the universe, electricity and energy, strange phenomenon and conspiracy theories on ghosts, “energy” whatever.
For a long time, I would hear the term “metaphysics” being thrown around, and I had zero idea what it actually meant. 
Meta– on top of. Or nestled within.
Physics — the physical, physical phenomenon like gravity, first principles.
The reason why metaphysics philosophers tend to be a bunch of losers is that they are all weak and anemic, nerds or geeks or weaklings who seem to have some sort of physiological degeneracy, which encourages them to opine or talk or think about impractical things, superficial things.
Personally speaking, I think philosophy must be practical. 
Practical, praxis, practice — to do!
The Spartan, Zen Stoic, demigod ideal
I have a very funny ideal; the general idea is that your body looks like a demigod, and your physiology is out of control. The general idea is one must be tall, strong, highly muscular, low body fat percentage, I’m not exactly sure what my body fat percentage is, but maybe it’s around 5%.
Also, physical fitness is critical to any stoic. My ideal is to walk 50 miles a day, eat 20 pounds of meat like Milo of Croton a day. And also, abstinence from silly things like media, alcohol, drugs, marijuana etc.
Trust no thinker who does drugs!
Even our best friend Nietzsche said that coffee was bad, because it would make people dark and gloomy. He encouraged 100% cocoa powder instead. 
You let the drugs talk I let my soul talk ayy! – Kendrick Lamar
Simple technique:
First, look at a picture or a portrait or a full body shot, ideally topless of the artist, philosopher or thinker or individual… then judge their thoughts later.
Why? My theory is this: the thoughts of an individual is hugely affected by their bodily physiology.
For example, an extreme example: if somebody is locked inside a solitary confinement cell, and not permitted to go outside for years, but, he had a pen and pad and would jot down some thoughts… Would be the quality of these thoughts? Certainly dark and morose.
Why does stoicism matter? 
In today’s world, why does it matter, what is the significance of stoicism, etc.?
First and foremost, I think we are living in a troubling time, especially with the advent of modern day internet based media and advertising. I think 99% of what is propagated on the internet is fear mongering, and what is hate? Hate is just fear.
The first thought on stoicism is that it is just fear conquering. What I discovered about street photography, is that 99% of it is conquering your fears. Conquering your fears of upsetting other people, getting in some sort of verbal or physical altercation etc. In fact my bread and butter workshop is my conquering your fears and street photography workshop, the workshop which is still interesting to me even after a decade.
Why is this so important? I think it is rooted in almost everything; conquering your fears is rooted in entrepreneurship, innovation, risktaking and real life.
Even my speculation in crypto. 99.9% of crypto speculation is just balls. Having the balls to make big bets, and when things go south, knowing how to master your emotions.
A simple extra I have is this: just imagine it will all go down to zero.
It was useful because when I was in college, my sophomore year I got really into trading stocks, and I eventually lost my whole life savings, maybe around $3500 USD, and some bad penny stock which I actually misread the financials… the whole time I thought the company was making a profit, but actually it was taking a loss. I actually didn’t know that if profits are written in parentheses, it means a loss.
It was funny because my initial start as an investor was back in high school, I bought some Adobe stock when I was a high school junior, and also some mutual funds, which both went up after about 4-5 years.
Also I remember in elementary school computer class, when I was in the sixth grade in Bayside Queens, there was some sort of stock stimulation trading game, and actually it was funny… the kids who made the most money and were the most successful just put 100% of everything into Apple, note this is when we were only 12 years old, and I was born in 1988.
Stoicism and capitalism?
Funny enough, it seems that stoicism actually plays well with capitalism. Why? According to modern day capitalist thinking, the best way to approach life is to be objective, strong, stoic, unemotional, logical and rational.
Also, with modern day media there is so much fear mongering in the news, about some sort of global armageddon, global financial ruin, etc. I call it “fear porn”.
Therefore stoicism as a mindset is useful to think and position your mind in such a way that you could consider that life is all upside, no downside.
In fact, if I could summarize stoicism in one sentence, it is that life is all upside, no downside. Inspired by NASSIM TALEB.
Sex and Stoicism
So, is stoicism useful to you if you’re a man or a woman? Does it matter?
The good thing is I think it could apply to both sexes. Conquering sexism and social pressures is useful if you’re woman, and also if you’re a man.
Also, gender is social. Lot of the expectations set on us by society is socialized and gamed to a certain degree.
Stoic strategies 
First, we got to unchain ourselves from modern day ethics and morality. I believe that all modern day philosophy and thinking and ethics and religion is bad.
For example, the notion of turning the other cheek is a patently bad one. Why did Jesus turn his cheek? It is because he lacked on army.
Also, philosophically I think we should put no trust in Socrates. I thought which has puzzled me for a long time was this “Why was Socrates so ugly?
Monster in face, monster in soul.
I think Socrates was a degenerate, and he lacked any sort of real power. Therefore he turned logic and rationality into his terrorizing weapon (via Nietzsche). Back in the day, you didn’t need logic or rationality to have things your way, you simply was able to dictate that which you wanted to pause it, because you had a military force behind you. Just think about Machiavelli and IL PRINCIPE– the reality of being a mercurial prince, king, and military leader is hard, stoic, “immoral”. But ultimately it all comes down to war, conquest, the military.
Trust nobody who uses rationality or logic as their tyrannizing weapon. 
In fact, I believe that all should have the body and strength of some sort of super soldier. Essentially look like all the guys from the movie 300, this is our ideal.
Demigod physique. 
What has helped me
- Allow yourself to be a bad, immortal, “evil” person. When you decide to adopt an unorthodox way of thinking and living, you’re going to rub some feathers the wrong way. And truth be told, even if you act in a strange vibrant way… At worse you’re only “mildly” annoying other people.
- For good inspirations, I think the best stoic writers and thinkers include Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius and also the humor of the cynic philosopher Diogenes. I would even posit the idea that one could consider Alexander the Great as a stoic. Why? When you’re trying to create an empire, and you always have your life on the line, certainly this takes a stoic mindset. Also, let us think and consider that Alexander the Great had a copy of the Iliad by his bedstand, it was the only book he traveled with during his military tours.
- Imagine the worst possible case scenario, and backtrack: Apparently even NASSIM TALEB would do this when he was a trader; every single day when he would go to his trading desk, he would assume that his investments would all go to zero, and if that wasn’t the case every single day, it was just upside. Therefore for myself, I just think to myself very simple; imagine like I got zero dollars, zero money, and literally all I need is meat, a Wi-Fi connection and I’m good. 
- Live like a poor person: The notion of “debasing“ the coin or the currency is the general idea that you are not a coward in regards to money. The best way to think about money is like a social tool; I think money is actually just codified labor. If you want people to clean bathrooms, run the cashiers stand, you have to promise them money. Even Seneca said the upsides of simulated poverty; essentially living like a poor person, or even a homeless person when you don’t need to… is the ultimate position to be in. Why? True freedom of spirit and soul; as a philosopher thinker writer or whatever… you cannot be “canceled”, because there is nothing to cancel. As long as you could pay your rent, buy meat at Costco, and publish your thoughts to your own self hosted website blog, and pay your server fee, you have 100% freedom. And also, still… America is the best place to be because there is true freedom of speech and expression, you don’t want to be a trillionaire but not be able to say what’s really on your mind. And I think this is the big issue with entertainers, actors, media people… as long as you’re signed to a contract, you don’t run your own production company, or, you’re still a slave to money… you’re not really going to see what’s really on your mind. Why is it that the Rock cannot say anything bad about China, or Tibet? Because he is still enslaved by the media corporation. New slaves by Kanye West.
And this is the true courage of Kanye West; he literally put everything on the line, and even lost his spouse and I think maybe his kids? All for the sake of revealing inequities. 
“I throw these Maybach keys fucking c’est la vie! I know that we the new slaves.”- Ye
Stoic training
The fun thing about stoicism is that you could just make it up as you go, devise your own strategies and whatever.
“Fucking c’est la vie!” My favorite Kanye West line.
Essentially the general idea is that in life, one should not take things too seriously. Laughter is golden, I forget the philosopher who was called the laughing philosopher… Democritus?; better to laugh about the follies of human beings rather than to be dark and morose about it.
Also, thoughts from the Odyssey; if you look far enough  into the future, everything becomes comedic and hilarious.
So when you’re in some sort of bad situation, just think to yourself “Perhaps one day, 20 or 30 years from now… I will look back at this and just laugh!” It will just be humorous.
Honestly, laughter, and kind of being able to joke about things might be the best way to live life and deal with setbacks. 
Modern day ailments
Problems in modern day life:
- Too much time spent indoors, not enough time out in the sun. Perhaps it is better to be out outside all day, and joyful, even with the risk of getting skin cancer or whatever… rather than to be indoors, scared, weak and anemic. Differences between if you’re a man or a woman, but still… the most beautiful skin has a sunkissed, olive color tone; the true privilege is having a full body tan. 
- Get chatGPT, the paid premium one. And use the image generation AI art tool DALL-E. People pay therapists to just speak their mind, and get some sort of sounding board. I actually think it’s much better to chat with AI instead; because it will not judge you, and ultimately what is a therapist anyways? A therapist is just a mirror, a sounding board for you to verbalize and flesh out your thoughts. Often when we talk about our problems, 90% of the issues go away because once we verbalize it, we feel much better about ourselves. The next thing I’m going to do is build some sort of therapy bot. 
- Not enough walking: I have never met anybody who walks 30,000 steps a day and is depressed. Even my friend Jimmy, who works as a US postal worker delivering the mail, he walks around 30,000 steps a day and is always bright cherry and jovial. I think this is also where people who hike a lot or walk a lot in nature are so happy; when you’re able to walk around a lot, and zen out… you just feel much better. My simple suggestion is when you go on a hike or a walk in nature or even in the city… leave your phone at home, or locked inside your glove compartment, and don’t bring any headphones or speakers or Apple watches or whatever. Just bring along your camera, and enjoy. My personal ideal is the bear lifestyle; walking 50 miles a day. 
Real stoics don’t call themselves Stoics?
A funny thing I have learned is that when you call something something, it isn’t that.
For example, if someone calls something a “luxury car”, it ain’t. For example, a true modern day luxury car is maybe a Tesla, but Tesla never calls itself a luxury car. Also the ultimate luxury technology company is probably Apple… but Apple is very intelligent and not calling themselves a luxury brand.
A pro tip is when it comes to websites, read the alternative text, the header text, the stuff that shows up in the tab of your browser window. If the website, the automotive retailer tries to market themselves as a “luxury” brand, typically it is actually a sign that it isn’t a luxury brand it isn’t luxury brand.
Thought: what are some good examples of true luxury brands which don’t overly calls itself luxury? 
In someways, we can think and consider stoicism as our new luxury. In fact, having luxury, luxury of mind and soul… and luxury of freedom of speech, isn’t this the ultimate luxury?
When somebody asked Diogenes the cynic; “What is the best human good”? He said “Freedom of speech, speaking your mind, having the power to see whatever is on your mind.”
In fact, my current joy is becoming more and more free talking, and free riding. What that means is this; I’m ain’t going to censor myself no more, even if I might be politically incorrect insensitive or whatever. 
Also, I would prefer to speak my mind and seriously hurt the feelings of others, rather than soften it for the sake of the other person. 

Similarly speaking, when people call themselves “influencers”, they are not influencers.Stoicism as a technique and tool, not the end
Ultimately I think we should think of stoicism just like having another tool inside our tool kit. For example, if you’re a chef, you’re going to have different knives for different purposes. If you’re going to cut a big piece of meat, you probably want a big ass meat cutting knife, not something you would use to slice an apple with. Similarly speaking, if you’re going to scoop out the insides of an avocado, better to use a spoon rather than using a fork, or a knife. 
I think the problem is when some people get too into stoicism (I prefer writing stoicism with a lowercase), they think that everything needs to be consistent, and must fit into this nice little neat box of what is considered “stoicism“. This is a bad line of thinking… let us consider that Marcus Aurelius never even mentioned stoicism in his writings, his collections of thoughts, which we moderns call THE MEDITATIONS… it was just essentially his personal diary, to help him conquer his own personal fears and thoughts, I don’t think he ever intended it to be published publicly. I think he just wrote it to himself as self therapy. And I think the only stoic philosopher he even mentions is maybe Epictetus.
The future of stoicism?
For myself, I just come out with certain to work out thoughts and techniques because it helps me, and when I find these tricks or techniques or secret hacks or cheat codes… My passion is to simply share it with others. 
And ultimately, things are ever in flux and evolving and changing and adapting.
For example, I’ve discovered the quality of my thinking is different when I am in Culver City Los Angeles, compared to being in the boring suburbs of Orange County.
Also depending on my social environments… my stoic thoughts are different when I am in a gym, vs just working out by myself in my parking spot in the back of my apartment.
Also, the quality of my thoughts is different when living with family members or other people versus just living with myself Cindy and Seneca.
Stoicism is all about living with other people
Assuming you’re not growing your own vegetables and living in the middle of nowhere… you probably have some interaction with other human beings. As long as you have an iPhone, an Android phone, a smartphone, a 4G or 5G internet connection, wifi, a laptop, have to buy groceries somewhere… you’re still going to have to interact with other human beings.
And this is good. There is no other greater joy than other human beings.
In fact, modern-day society is strange because in someways, the ethos is to be antisocial and to be cowardly. But in fact, the best way to think about things is that real life is interaction with other human beings, and social conquest. One can imagine a lot of modern day entrepreneurship as simply a big dick swinging contest. He who is the most masculine confident tall and strong and stoic shall win.
More ideas
Assume that everyone is mentally insane: Have you ever been out in public, and you see some sort of crackhead or strange homeless person who acts radically, smells terrible, and is obviously mentally ill? Do you hate them for it? When they say something weird to you… do you take it personally? No. Why? They are crazy. Perhaps we should just adopt this stoic mindset towards other people; some people are actually physiologically ill, mentally unwell… don’t trust the opinion of nobody.
A lot of people are trying to actually deal with their own inner demons: For example, becoming the successful photographer and street photographer I am today… I’ve dealt with some individuals who would say anonymous bad things about me, and later I found out that their mom just died or something. I cannot imagine what it feels like losing a mother… therefore if somebody spew some hate on me because something bad happened to them, I’m not gonna take it personally.
Self-flagellation: I think a lot of people who are sick, mentally or physiologically self flagellate themselves. Essentially the way that they deal with other people or themselves is some sort of metaphorical self-flagellation.
For example… you know those strange individuals who have the whip and whip themselves, and inflict pain on themselves? I think some people do this metaphorically to themselves and others.
You just want to stay away from them.
Why so scared?
My personal theory on fear is that a lot of it is tied to morality and ethics. I think the general idea is not necessarily that we are afraid of anything… I think the true fear is that we’re afraid that we are some sort of bad evil unethical immoral person.
For example in street photography, the general ethical thought is that it is immoral to take a photo of somebody without their permission, because there is some sort of it inherent evil behind it. Is this true? No. Taking photos and not really a big deal.
Why do people make such a big deal out of small things?
I think it is because some people are just overly sensitive, which once again comes from some sort of physiological weakness.
For example, if you’re a weightlifter who could lift 1000 pounds, assuming you’re not taking any steroids or anything… are small things going to bother you? No. But let us assume that you are a skinny fat man, all you do is drink alcohol and smoke marijuana and watch Netflix, and you spent too much time on Reddit… you are 40% body fat, and have never lifted in your life. And also your testosterone is low and you never go outside. Certainly the quality of your thoughts is going to be different than if you’re a happy gay monster, lifting weights outside in the direct sun, laughing and having fun. 
In fact, I’ve actually personally discovered that the reason why a lot of people hate me is because I am so happy jovial and gay. They are secretly suspicious or envious of me? 
Weather and mood
Probably one of my worst experiences was this jarring transition; I was super happy insanely happy being in Vietnam in 2017; with a beautiful weather, the beautiful light, the happy people the great amenities etc.… and then that winter Cindy and I went to Europe, in Marseille Berlin and Prague, and maybe London… seriously the worst winter of my life. Why? I wonder if so much miserable feelings and thoughts simply comes from the darkness and lack of light. a lot of Europe is actually quite miserable; dark, unhygienic, morose.
Even Nietzsche had a thought about Schopenhauer; How much of these emo European philosophers came from the fact that it was just complaining about the cold weather in Germany etc.?

For myself, my ideal weather is Southeast Asia; I love being in Phnom Penh Cambodia, Vietnam etc. In the states, am I the only one who loves living in Los Angeles? Dr. Dre and Kendrick Lamar said that LA was the best for women weed and weather… I would definitely say the biggest upside of living in Los Angeles is the light, the sunlight. It actually does get quite cold here, but usually most reliably even in December during the winter time, the sun will always come up. As long as there is bright sunny light, I will be happy. And I think maybe for myself, considering that I am a photographer, and photography means painting with light… light for me is critical.I also wonder how much of it is a physiological thing and a genetic trait; for example I could even recall being a young child, and my mom telling me that the most critical thing in finding a home or an apartment was light and natural light. Even now… 90% of my happiness comes from being able to have access to natural light, ideally floor to ceiling windows facing directly the sun, having some sort of modern temperature regulated apartment and home. Even living in our tiny studio minimalistic luxury apartment in Providence Rhode Island, where it was always 75° warm and cozy, and not frigid and damp and cold and dark and humid… I was always good. But moving to an older house, where it always felt damp and cold… this literally lowered my happiness by 1000%.
Therefore, if you’re feeling miserable sad or whatever… I say spend three months living in Hanoi or Saigon in Vietnam, or go to Phnom Penh Cambodia. I wonder if 90% of peoples misery is simply due to the weather.
Stoic assignments
”Better to be a gay monster than a sentimental bore!” – Fernandino Galliani, via Nietzsche
My stoic ideal is somebody who is happy, gay, smiling, no headphones or AirPods on, no sunglasses on, no hat, no facial hair, no baggy oversized clothing, no tint in their car. Somebody who makes great eye contact, laughs, stands up upright, jokes, and fools around. Like an overgrown child.
Also, lift weights at least once every day, ideally in the direct sun. Just buy some weightlifting equipment on Titan.fitness, I like the farmers carry handles, the Olympic loadable dumbbell, and also the Texas power squat bar. Just buy some cheap weights, and or buy a heavy 400 pound sandbag, and just have fun throwing it around.
True stoics are masculine
A true stoic should look something like Hercules or Achilles. Or like ERIC KIM; I have the aesthetic and the physique of Brad Pitt in FIGHT CLUB except with a lot more muscle. Like my friend Soren says, the Adonis physique and proportions.
A real stoic is sexy
I think a real stoic is sexy, happy and fun. Who doesn’t take life too seriously; and think of everything like a fun game. A real stoic would be joyful and cheery like three-year-old child without any adulteration from the outside world.
Why do adults become so dark and morose?
I don’t like talking with or hanging out with adults, uninteresting.
At what point or age do people become so emo?
Typically, highschoolers are very optimistic. Even college students. But I think at least in maybe college in high school nowadays… the bad trend is towards “over concern”, about the world the planet ethics animals etc.
I find a lot of this thinking superficial, performative, and uncritical. I think “animal rights“, “saving the planet” is this new pseudo world religion; which is just capitalism 3.0. I find the whole pet industry the whole dog industry to be insanely bizarre, and I trust nobody who talks about “saving the planet“ who owns an iPhone, owns any sort of car, or has an Amazon prime subscription. Certainly not any vegans.
A real stoic is a carnivore 
Animals are animals. They are lower on the hierarchy and totem pole on earth. Man is the apex predator, the apex bully and the apex tyrant.
Should we care for animals or “animal rights”? No. Animals are our slaves.
If you consider even dogs and pets… they are essentially our emotional slaves. People talk a lot about the virtuosity of dogs being loyal or whatever… and giving you unconditional love. This seems like some sort of emotional slavery.
The only dogs I respect are some sort of canine dogs, some sort of attack or defense dogs, or hunting dogs. For example, John Wick 3; Halle Barry and her dogs. An animal should either be a weapon, or nothing.
Why do people care about animals so much?
Essentially it looks like men no longer have a backbone. No more spine.
I trust nobody who owns a dog.
Let us not forget; they call it dog ownership, or “owning a pet”. There is no more concept of “human ownership, or “owning a human.”
End goals 
What is the end goal of humanity? To me it is towards entrepreneurship, innovation, art and aesthetics, philosophy etc. Design.
Stoicism should be considered a tool which could aid you in these things.
For example, I think 99% of entrepreneurship is courage. Stoicism could help you with that.
I also think with design, great design is also 99% courage, having the courage to attempt something that won’t sell or be received well… stoicism is all about practical courage. The only designers with courage include Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Elon Musk, Kanye West. 
Also, weightlifting. To attempt to lift a certain weight you have never attempted before takes great courage. For example, me atlas lifting 1000 pounds; that is 10 plates and a 25 on each side, this is true stoic training. Why? The fear of injury is what holds most people back; if you had successfully conquered this fear and not injured yourself, this is pure stoic bliss.
The physical
I think the only and the only proper way to lift weights is one repetition maximum training. That is; what is the maximum amount of weight you’re able to successfully lift or move, even half an inch?
To me, the courage is the success. Even if you had the courage to attempt it… that is what is considered success. 
Simple exercises to do include the atlas lift, innovated by ERIC KIM, or a one repetition max rack pull.
Or, a high trap bar deadlift, heavy Farmer’s walks, or heavy sandbag carries. Or even a simple thing you could do is go to the park or to the local nature center, find the biggest rock there and just see if you could pick it up.
Now what?
If you’re interested in stoicism, and have had some interesting thoughts on stoicism, one of the most noble things you could do is start your own blog. I think blogs are 1000 times more effective than publishing some sort of static printed book; I think the problem in today’s world is that everyone is seeking some sort of legitimacy by being picked up by some sort of legitimate publisher and getting “published“, and seeing your printed book at Barnes & Noble whatever.
I say it is better to be open source, free and permissionless, decentralized. Just publish your thoughts and book as a free PDF, and just host it on dropbox, Google Drive, or your own web server. Share the link freely, and also just publish the raw text as a big blog post. 
Even Sam Bankman-Fried wisely thought; 99.9% of books could just be summarized as big blog posts.
Don’t trust any modern day published book which isn’t free, because… there is some sort of hidden clout chasing somewhere. 
Even one of the worst compromises that led to the demise of Ray Dalio was the fact that he took his Principles book, which was essentially a free ebook PDF on his website, and then took it off, because I think he got a book deal with Simon and Schuster. After he did that, he lost my respect.
If you’re already independently wealthy, and you don’t crowd source your self-esteem… why would you need to externally validate yourself by getting some sort of constipated publisher and annoying editor?
Editors are bad.
Now what?
Start your own blog and start blogging your own thoughts on stoic philosophy, and even start a YouTube channel and start vlogging on it. My generalized thought is simple: if your thought your idea your blog post your video or whatever could even impact the life of one other human being on planet earth… it is worth it.
ERIC
What is the secret to the maximum amount of happiness in life? The maximum amount of danger. (Nietzsche).
ERIC

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Introduction to Stoicism
Certainly! Here’s your text with the necessary spelling and grammatical corrections:
Introduction to Stoicism
So, something I have been meaning to write, create, or do is some sort of book, e-book, pamphlet, or introductory primer to Stoicism. I really think that it is probably one of the most useful philosophical models to live a normal, everyday real life. Yet, I haven’t really found a good instructional guide on it, especially when I was self-teaching it to myself.
What does Stoicism mean?
Stoicism, stoic, the stoa in ancient Greece — essentially, the stoa was like some sort of portico, patio, pillar, outside, essentially a spot where guys would just hang out, talk shop, talk philosophy, etc.
I think about the show Hey Arnold, which I was raised with… The notion of “stoop kid”, the notion of a stoop is that in a lot of cities, especially on the east coast in New York, you have this little stoop or porch, stairs that go outside your front door… And you could just hang out there, engage in social and neighborhood life, etc.
The new stoa?
One of my happiest moments was when I was living in Providence, Rhode Island, and then COVID-19 hit. Everything was closed, besides the park. I could still go to the park, hang out, work out, do chin-ups, learn how to do muscle-ups, more bodyweight calisthenics stuff, and also… I had a lot of fun with this “rock toss” challenge and workout… in the middle of the park was a huge-ass rock, a huge-ass stone, and every single day I would go there, pick it up, and then eventually work out with it; throwing it around for fun, doing overhead presses with it, clean and jerks, squats, and eventually I would just throw it around for fun. Funny enough, it might have been the most fit I was in my life… This was true “functional” fitness.
Anyway, the reason why that period of COVID-19 was so good is that it was the middle of a beautiful Providence summer, so nice and bright and warm and lovely… And one of the good things was going to the park was like an open forum, a new anatheum for a lot of really cool guys to come, hang out, talk shop, go topless and shirtless, work out and hang out.
I met some really interesting people during that period of time. I met some guys who are really cool. For example, one guy I met was in the US military Navy, I think he was training to be a Navy Seal or Delta Force or something. Another guy in some sort of ROTC training, another cool guy from the hood, and also I would say I probably met half a dozen friendly drug dealers there. and of course, a lot of people who believed in conspiracy theories; really friendly, a little weird, but overall good guys.
Anyway, one of the biggest benefits of hanging out at that outdoor park, open air, nothing but green grass, the beautiful sun, and the fitness equipment was that I think having this sort of open-air environment is actually very conducive to socializing, thinking and thought, and pro-social behavior. My theory about a lot of modern-day antisocial behavior has to do with the structures which enclose us. For example, almost universally most guys at the gym are extremely antisocial. Why? My theory is that because most gyms have closed, cramped, narrow ceilings, and do not have access to natural light or outside.
The only good gym I went to which was interesting was the Gold’s Gym in Venice, which has this really big outdoor workout area. I think this is much more natural and more fun and better; to be able to work out directly outside outdoors, with your shirt off.
Who is this philosophy for?
Stoics, Stoicism — it was originally, I think, codified by this guy named Zeno, and over time he picked up some followers. Essentially, the whole thing happened organically; Zeno would first share his thinking on philosophy, ethics, and pragmatic ways to deal with other people and the downsides of life, he built a following, and then his followers would propagate the thoughts and start their own little schools of thought, their own little Stoic clubs.
What is real Stoicism?
What I like about Stoicism is how loose it is. It is kind of like Zen, or Taoism… It is not really qualified as a religion, or a strict moral order. In fact, a lot of the ancient Stoics would meditate on random stuff like cosmology, natural sciences like Seneca, how volcanoes worked or whatever. I think nowadays in today’s world, we focus primarily on the pragmatic side; how to deal with fear, uncertainty, downsides, etc.
So how did I discover Stoicism?
I think I might’ve first learned about Stoicism from Nassim Taleb and his Anti-Fragile book. I was curious, and my curiosity went deep. To quote Nassim Taleb and the Venetian saying, “the ocean goes deeper, the deeper you wade into it.”
I literally consumed every single book I could find on Stoicism, even the obscure ones. Funny enough, a lot of the Stoic thinkers tried to claim other philosophers as being Stoic, like Seneca did with Diogenes the Cynic.
Cynic, cynicism, actually comes from the word canine, the dog. Diogenes was considered the “dog” philosopher, first used as a pejorative, but ultimately Diogenes reappropriated that title for fun! He saw dogs as tough, almost like wild wolves, rather than seeing them as a negative thing.
Even Achilles, when he was raging against King Agamemnon, called him “dog-faced” as a heaping insult.
Who is worth reading?
First, Seneca. Seneca the Younger, his dad was called Seneca the Elder.
In fact, this is such a big deal because Cindy and I named our first son, Seneca, directly after the Stoic philosopher. This is true in the game; if you name your kid after your favorite philosopher, certainly it is a sign that you really liked that philosopher or found them impactful.
The reason why I really like Seneca the Stoic philosopher is because he had real connections to real reality. What that means is he wasn’t just on the sidelines; he actually existed in the real world, engaged in real politics, was even an advisor to the Emperor Nero, the bad one, who eventually low-key coerced Seneca to commit suicide, in a manly, dignified manner.
I think this was because maybe… There was actually a plan to overthrow Nero, and essentially Nero found out.
What makes Seneca so good?
I really like Seneca because his writing is accessible, practical and pragmatic, and interesting.
A lot of thinkers tend to lack connections to real reality. I have no tolerance for boring philosophers who talk about metaphysics, which are things that are not physical. Like thoughts, ideas, the universe, electricity and energy, strange phenomena, and conspiracy theories on ghosts, “energy”, whatever.
For a long time, I would hear the term “metaphysics” being thrown around, and I had zero idea what it actually meant.
Meta– on top of, or nestled within.
Physics — the physical, physical phenomena like gravity, first principles.
The reason why metaphysics philosophers tend to be a bunch of losers is that they are all weak, anemic, nerds, or geeks, or weaklings who seem to have some sort of physiological degeneracy, which encourages them to opine or talk or think about impractical things, superficial things.
Personally speaking, I think philosophy must be practical.
Practical, praxis, practice — to do!
The Spartan, Zen Stoic, Demigod Ideal
I have a very funny ideal; the general idea is that your body looks like a demigod, and your physiology is out of control. The general idea is one must be tall, strong, highly muscular, low body fat percentage, I’m not exactly sure what my body fat percentage is, but maybe it’s around 5%.
Also, physical fitness is critical to any Stoic. My ideal is to walk 50 miles a day, eat 20 pounds of meat like Milo of Croton a day. And also, abstinence from silly things like media, alcohol, drugs, marijuana, etc.
Trust no thinker who does drugs!
Even our best friend Nietzsche said that coffee was bad because it would make people dark and gloomy. He encouraged 100% cocoa powder instead.
You let the drugs talk. I let my soul talk, ayy! – Kendrick Lamar
Simple technique:
First, look at a picture or a portrait or a full-body shot, ideally topless, of the artist, philosopher, thinker, or individual… Then judge their thoughts later.
Why? My theory is this: the thoughts of an individual are hugely affected by their bodily physiology.
For example, an extreme example: if somebody is locked inside a solitary confinement cell, and not permitted to go outside for years, but he had a pen pad and would jot down some thoughts… What would be the quality of these thoughts? Certainly dark and morose.
Why does Stoicism matter?
In today’s world, why does it matter, what is the significance of Stoicism, etc.?
First and foremost, I think we are living in troubling times, especially with the advent of modern-day Internet-based media and advertising. I think 99% of what is propagated on the Internet is fear-mongering, and what is hate? Hate is just fear.
The first thought on Stoicism is that it is just fear conquering. What I discovered about street photography
Certainly, let’s continue with the spell check from where we left off:
is that 99% of it is conquering your fears. Conquering your fears of upsetting other people, getting into some sort of verbal or physical altercation, etc. In fact, my bread-and-butter workshop is my Conquering Your Fears in Street Photography workshop, the workshop which is still interesting to me even after a decade.
Why is this so important? I think it is rooted in almost everything; conquering your fears is rooted in entrepreneurship, innovation, risk-taking, and real life.
Even my speculation in crypto. 99.9% of crypto speculation is just balls. Having the balls to make big bets, and when things go south, knowing how to master your emotions.
A simple exercise I have is this: just imagine it will all go down to zero.
It was useful because when I was in college, my sophomore year, I got really into trading stocks, and I eventually lost my whole life savings, maybe around $3,500 USD, in some bad penny stock which I actually misread the financials… The whole time I thought the company was making a profit, but actually it was taking a loss. I actually didn’t know that if profits are written in parentheses, it means a loss.
It was funny because my initial start as an investor was back in high school, I bought some Adobe stock when I was a high school junior, and also some mutual funds, which both went up after about 4-5 years.
Also, I remember in elementary school computer class, when I was in the sixth grade in Bayside Queens, there was some sort of stock simulation trading game, and actually, it was funny… The kids who made the most money and were the most successful just put 100% of everything into Apple, note this is when we were only 12 years old, and I was born in 1988.
Stoicism and Capitalism?
Funny enough, it seems that Stoicism actually plays well with capitalism. Why? According to modern-day capitalist thinking, the best way to approach life is to be objective, strong, stoic, emotional, logical, and rational.
Also, with modern-day media, there is so much fear-mongering in the news, about some sort of global Armageddon, global financial ruin, etc.
Therefore, Stoicism as a mindset is useful to think and position your mind in such a way that you could consider that life is all upside, no downside.
In fact, if I could summarize it in one sentence, it is that life is all upside, no downside. Inspired by Nassim Taleb.
Sex and Stoicism
So, is Stoicism useful to you if you’re a man or a woman? Does it matter?
The good thing is I think it could apply to both sexes. Conquering sexism and societal pressures is useful if you’re a woman, and also if you’re a man.
Also, gender is social. A lot of the expectations set on us by society are socialized and gamed to a certain degree.
Stoic Strategies
First, we’ve got to unchain ourselves from modern-day ethics and morality. I believe that all modern-day philosophy, thinking, ethics, and religion are bad.
For example, the notion of turning the other cheek is a patently bad one. Why did Jesus turn his cheek? It is because he lacked an army.
Also, philosophically I think we should put no trust in Socrates. A thought which has puzzled me for a long time was this: “Why was Socrates so ugly?”
I think Socrates was a degenerate, and he lacked any sort of real power. Therefore, he turned logic and rationality into his terrorizing weapon. Back in the day, you didn’t need logic or rationality to have things your way; you simply were able to dictate that which you wanted to posit because you had a military force behind you. Just think about Machiavelli and Il Principe– the reality of being a mercurial prince, king, and military leader is hard, Stoic, “immoral”. But ultimately it all comes down to war, conquest, the military.
In fact, I believe that all should have the body and strength of some sort of super soldier. Essentially look like all the guys from the movie 300, this is our ideal.
What has helped me
- Allow yourself to be a bad, immoral, “evil” person. When you decide to adopt an unorthodox way of thinking and living, you’re going to rub some feathers the wrong way.
- For good inspirations, I think the best Stoic writers and thinkers include Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and also the humor of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes. I would even posit the idea that one could consider Alexander the Great as a Stoic. Why? When you’re trying to create an empire, and you always have your life on
the line, certainly this takes a Stoic mindset. Also, let us think and consider that Alexander the Great had a copy of the Iliad by his bedside; it was the only book he traveled with during his military tours.
- Imagine the worst possible case scenario, and backtrack: apparently even Nassim Taleb would do this when he was a trader; every single day when he would go to his trading desk, he would assume that his investments would all go to zero, and if that wasn’t the case every single day, it was just upside.
- Live like a poor person: the notion of “debasing” the coin or the currency is the general idea that you are not a coward in regards to money. The best way to think about money is like a social tool; I think money is actually just codified labor. If you want people to clean bathrooms, run the cashiers’ stand, you have to promise them money. Even Seneca said the upsides of simulated poverty; essentially living like a poor person, or even a homeless person when you don’t need to… Is the ultimate position to be in. Why? True spirit and soul; as a philosopher, thinker, writer, or whatever… You cannot be “canceled”, because there is nothing to cancel. As long as you could pay your rent, buy meat at Costco, and publish your thoughts to your own self-hosted website blog, and pay your server fee, you have 100% freedom. And also, still… America is the best place to be because there is true freedom of speech and expression. You don’t want to be a trillionaire but not be able to say what’s really on your mind. And I think this is the big issue with entertainers, actors, media people… As long as you’re signed to a contract, you don’t run your own production company, or you’re still a slave to money… You’re not really going to say what’s really on your mind. Why is it that The Rock cannot say anything bad about China or Tibet? Because he is still enslaved by the media corporation. “New Slaves” by Kanye West.
Stoic Training
The fun thing about Stoicism is that you could just make it up as you go, devise your own strategies and whatever.
“Fucking c’est la vie!” My favorite Kanye West line.
Essentially the general idea is that in life, one should not take things too seriously. Laughter is golden, I forget the philosopher who was called the laughing philosopher; better to laugh about the follies of human beings rather than to be dark and morose about it.
Also, thoughts from the Odyssey; if you look far enough into the future, everything becomes comedic and hilarious.
So when you’re in some sort of bad situation, just think to yourself “perhaps one day, 20 or 30 years from now… I will look back at this and just laugh!” It will just be humorous.
Modern-Day Ailments
Problems in modern-day life:
- Too much time spent indoors, not enough time out in the sun. Perhaps it is better to be outside all day, and joyful, even with the risk of getting skin cancer or whatever… Rather than to be indoors, scared, weak, and anemic.
- Get ChatGPT, the paid premium one. And use the image generation AI art tool DALL-E. People pay therapists to just speak their mind and get some sort of sounding board. I actually think it’s much better to chat with AI instead; because AI will not judge you, and ultimately, what is a therapist anyways? A therapist is just a mirror, a sounding board for you to verbalize and flush out your thoughts. Often when we talk about our problems, 90% of the issues go away because once we verbalize it, we feel much better about ourselves.
- Not enough walking: I have never met anybody who walks 30,000 steps a day and is depressed. Even my friend Jimmy, who works as a US postal officer, he walks around 30,000 steps a day and is always bright, cheery, and jovial. I think this is also where people who hike a lot or walk a lot in nature are so happy; when you’re able to walk around a lot, and Zen out… You just feel much better. My simple suggestion is when you go on a hike or a walk in nature or even in the city… Leave your phone at home, or locked inside your glove compartment, and don’t bring any headphones or speakers or Apple watches or whatever. Just bring along your camera, and enjoy.
Real Stoics Don’t Call Themselves Stoics?
A funny thing I have learned is that when you call something something, it isn’t that.
For example, if someone calls something a “luxury car”, it ain’t. For example, a true modern-day luxury car is maybe a Tesla, but Tesla never calls itself a luxury car.
Sure, let’s continue with the spell check from where we left off:
Also, the ultimate luxury technology company is probably Apple… But Apple is very intelligent in not calling themselves a luxury brand.
In some ways, we can think and consider Stoicism as our new luxury. In fact, having luxury, luxury of mind and soul… And luxury of freedom of speech, isn’t this the ultimate luxury? Similarly speaking, when people call themselves “influencers”, they are not influencers.
Stoicism as a Technique and Tool, Not the End
Ultimately, I think we should think of Stoicism just like having another tool inside our toolkit. For example, if you’re a chef, you’re going to have different knives for different purposes. If you’re going to cut a big piece of meat, you probably want a big-ass meat cutting knife, not something you would use to crack a walnut with.
I think the problem is when some people get too into Stoicism, they think that everything needs to be consistent, and must fit into this nice little neat box of what is considered “Stoicism”. This is a bad line of thinking… Let us consider that Marcus Aurelius never even mentioned Stoicism in his writings, his collection of thoughts, which we modernly call the Meditations… Was just essentially his personal diary, to help him conquer his own personal fears and thoughts, I don’t think he ever intended it to be published publicly. I think he just wrote it to himself as self-therapy. And I think the only Stoic philosopher he even mentions is maybe Epictetus.
The Future of Stoicism?
For myself, I just come out with certain thoughts and techniques because it helps me, and when I find these tricks or techniques or secret hacks or cheat codes… My passion is to simply share it with others.
And ultimately, things are ever in flux and evolving and changing and adapting.
For example, I’ve discovered the quality of my thinking is different when I am in Culver City, Los Angeles, compared to being in the boring suburbs of Orange County.
Also, depending on my social environments… My Stoic thoughts are different when I am in a gym, versus just working out by myself in my parking spot in the back of my apartment.
Also, the quality of my thoughts is different when living with family members or other people versus just living with myself, Cindy, and Seneca.
Stoicism is All About Living with Other People
Assuming you’re not growing your own vegetables and living in the middle of nowhere… You probably have some interaction with other human beings. As long as you have an iPhone, an Android phone, a smartphone, a 4G or 5G Internet connection, Wi-Fi, a laptop, have to buy groceries somewhere… You’re still going to have to interact with other human beings.
And this is good. There is no other greater joy than other human beings.
In fact, modern-day society is strange because in some ways, the ethos is to be antisocial and to be cowardly. But in fact, the best way to think about things is that real life is interaction with other human beings, and social conquest. One can imagine a lot of modern-day entrepreneurship as simply a big dick swinging contest. He who is the most masculine, confident, tall, strong, and stoic shall win.
More Ideas
Assume that everyone is mentally insane: have you ever been out in public, and seen some sort of crackhead or strange homeless person who acts radically, smells terrible, and is obviously mentally ill? Do you hate them for it? When they say something weird to you… Do you take it personally? No. Why? They are crazy. Perhaps we should just adopt this Stoic mindset towards other people; some people are actually physiologically ill, mentally unwell… Don’t trust the opinion of nobody.
A lot of people are trying to actually deal with their own inner demons: for example, becoming the successful photographer and street photographer I am today… I’ve dealt with some individuals who would say anonymous bad things about me, and later I found out that their mom just died or something. I cannot imagine what it feels like losing a mother… Therefore, if somebody spews some hate on me because something bad happened to them, I’m not going to take it personally.
Self-flagellation: I think a lot of people who are sick, mentally or physiologically… Essentially, the way that they deal with other people or themselves is some sort of metaphorical self-flagellation.
For example… you know those strange individuals who have the whip and whip themselves, and inflict pain on themselves? I think some people do this metaphorically to themselves and others.
You just want to stay away from them.
Why So Scared?
My personal theory on fear is that a lot of it is tied to morality and ethics. I think the general idea is not necessarily that we are afraid of anything… I think the true fear is that we’re afraid that we are some sort
of bad, evil, unethical, immoral person.
For example, in street photography, the general ethical thought is that it is immoral to take a photo of somebody without their permission, because there is some sort of inherent evil behind it. Is this true? No. Taking photos is not really a big deal.
Why Do People Make Such a Big Deal Out of Small Things?
I think it is because some people are just overly sensitive, which once again comes from some sort of physiological weakness.
For example, if you’re a weightlifter who could lift 1000 pounds, assuming you’re not taking any steroids or anything… Will small things bother you? No. But let us assume that you are a skinny-fat man, all you do is drink alcohol and smoke marijuana and watch Netflix, and you spend too much time on Reddit… You are 40% body fat, and have never lifted in your life. And also, your testosterone is low, and you never go outside. Certainly, the quality of your thoughts is going to be different than if you’re a happy guy monster, lifting weights outside in the direct sun, laughing, and having fun.
Weather and Mood
Probably one of my worst experiences was this jarring transition; I was super happy, insanely happy being in Vietnam in 2017; with the beautiful weather, the beautiful light, the happy people, the great amenities, etc.… And then that winter Cindy and I went to Europe, in Marseille, Berlin, Prague, and maybe London… Seriously the worst winter of my life. Why? I wonder if so much miserable feelings and thoughts simply come from the darkness and lack of light. A lot of Europe is actually quite miserable; dark, unhygienic, morose.
Even Nietzsche had a thought about Schopenhauer; how much of these emo European philosophers came from the fact that they were just complaining about the cold weather in Germany, etc.?
For myself, my ideal weather is Southeast Asia; I love being in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. In the states, am I the only one who loves living in Los Angeles? Dr. Dre and Kendrick Lamar said that LA was the best for women, weed, and weather… I would definitely say the biggest upside of living in Los Angeles is the light, the sunlight. It actually does get quite cold here, but usually most reliably even in December during the winter time, the sun will always come up. As long as there is bright sunny light, I will be happy. And I think maybe for myself, considering that I am a photographer, and photography means painting with light… Light for me is critical.
I also wonder how much of it is a physiological thing and a genetic trait; for example, I could even recall being a young child, and my mom telling me that the most critical thing in finding a home or an apartment was light and natural light. Even now… 90% of my happiness comes from being able to have access to natural light, ideally floor-to-ceiling windows facing directly the sun, having some sort of modern temperature-regulated apartment and home… Even living in our tiny studio, minimalistic luxury apartment in Providence, Rhode Island, where it was always 75° warm and cozy, and not frigid, damp, cold, and dark, and humid… I was always good. But moving to an older house, where it always felt damp and cold… This literally lowered my happiness by 1000%.
Therefore, if you’re feeling miserable, sad, or whatever… I say spend three months living in Hanoi or Saigon in Vietnam, or go to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I wonder if 90% of people’s misery is simply due to the weather.
Stoic Assignments
“Better to be a gay monster than a sentimental bore!” – Fernando Galliani, via Nietzsche
My Stoic ideal is somebody who is happy, gay, smiling, no headphones or AirPods on, no sunglasses on, no hat, no facial hair, no baggy oversized clothing, no tint in their car. Somebody who makes great eye contact, laughs, stands up upright, jokes, and fools around. Like an overgrown child.
Also, lift weights at least once every day, ideally in the direct sun. Just buy some weightlifting equipment on Titan.fitness, I like the farmer’s carry handles, the Olympic ball dumbbell, and also the Texas power squat bar. Just buy some cheap weights, and or buy a heavy 400-pound sandbag, and just have fun throwing it around.
True Stoics are Masculine
A true Stoic should look something like Hercules or Achilles. Or like Eric Kim; I have the aesthetic and the physique of Brad Pitt in Fight Club, except with a lot more muscle. Like my friend Soren says, the Adonis physique and proportions.
A Real Stoic is Sexy
I think a real Stoic is sexy, happy, and fun. Who doesn’t take life too seriously; and
Sure, let’s continue with the spell check from where we left off:
and think of everything like a fun game. A real Stoic would be joyful and cheery like a three-year-old child without any adulteration from the outside world.
Why Do Adults Become So Dark and Morose?
I don’t like talking with or hanging out with adults; they’re uninteresting.
At what point or age do people become so emo?
Typically, high schoolers are very optimistic. Even college students. But I think at least in maybe college and high school nowadays… The bad trend is towards “over concern”, about the world, the planet, ethics, animals, etc.
I find a lot of this to be superficial, performative, and uncritical. I think “animal rights”, “saving the planet” is this new pseudo-world religion; which is just capitalism 3.0. I find the whole pet industry, the whole dog industry to be insanely bizarre, and I trust nobody who talks about “saving the planet” who owns an iPhone, owns any sort of car, or has an Amazon Prime subscription. Certainly not any vegans.
A Real Stoic is a Carnivore
Animals are animals. They are lower on the hierarchy and totem pole on earth. Man is the apex predator, the apex bully, and the apex tyrant.
Should we care for animals or “animal rights”? No. Animals are our slaves.
If you consider even dogs and pets… They are essentially our emotional slaves. People talk a lot about the virtuosity of dogs being loyal or whatever… And giving you unconditional love. This seems like some sort of emotional slavery.
The only dogs I respect are some sort of canine dogs, some sort of attack or defense dogs, or hunting dogs. For example, in John Wick 3; Halle Berry and her dogs. An animal should either be a weapon, or nothing.
Why Do People Care About Animals So Much?
Essentially, it looks like men no longer have a backbone. No more spine.
I trust nobody who owns a dog.
Let us not forget; they call it dog ownership, or “owning a pet”. There is no more concept of “human ownership”, or “owning a human.”
End Goals
What is the end goal of humanity? To me, it is towards entrepreneurship, innovation, art and aesthetics, philosophy, etc. Design.
Stoicism should be considered a tool that could aid you in these things.
For example, I think 99% of entrepreneurship is courage. Stoicism could help you with that.
I also think with design, great design is also 99% courage, having the courage to attempt something that won’t sell or be received well… Stoicism is all about practical courage.
Also, weightlifting. To attempt to lift a certain weight you have never attempted before takes great courage. For example, me atlas lifting 1000 pounds; that is 10 plates and a 25 on each side, this is the true Stoic training. Why? The fear of injury is what holds most people back; if you had successfully conquered this fear and not injured yourself, this is pure Stoic bliss.
The Physical
I think the only and the only proper way to lift weights is repetition maximum training. That is; what is the maximum amount of weight you’re able to successfully lift or move, even half an inch?
To me, the courage is the success. Even if you had the courage to attempt it… That is what is considered success.
Simple exercises to do include the atlas lift, innovated by Eric Kim, or a one repetition max rack pull.
Or, a high trap bar deadlift, heavy farmer’s walks, or heavy sandbag carries. Or even a simple thing you could do is go to the park or to the local nature center, find the biggest rock there and just see if you could pick it up.
Now What?
If you’re interested in Stoicism, and have had some interesting thoughts on Stoicism, one of the most noble things you could do is start your own blog. I think blogs are 1000 times more effective than publishing some sort of static printed book; I think the problem in today’s world is that everyone is seeking some sort of legitimacy by being picked up by some sort of legitimate publisher and getting “published”, seeing your printed book at Barnes & Noble or whatever.
I say it is better to be open source, free and permissionless, decentralized. Just publish your thoughts and book as a free PDF, and just host it on Dropbox, Google Drive, or your own web server. Share the link freely, and also just publish the raw text as a big blog post.
Even Sam Bankman-Fried wisely thought; 99.9% of books could just be summarized as big blog posts.
Don’t trust any modern-day published book which isn’t free, because… there is some sort of hidden clout chasing somewhere.
Even one of the worst
compromises that led to the demise of Ray Dalio was the fact that he took his Principles book, which was essentially a free e-book PDF on his website, and then took it off, because I think he got a book deal with Simon and Schuster. After he did that, he lost my respect.
If you’re already independently wealthy, and you don’t crowdsource your self-esteem… why would you need to externally validate yourself by getting some sort of constipated publisher and annoying editor?
Editors are bad.
Now What?
Start your own blog and start blogging your own thoughts on Stoic philosophy, and even start a YouTube channel and start vlogging on it. My generalized thought is simple: if your thought, your idea, your blog post, your video, or whatever could even impact the life of one other human being on planet earth… It is worth it.
ERIC
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Why Doesn’t Anyone Have American Pride Anymore?
Why is it that people prefer to buy a Lamborghini or Ferrari over a Shelby Cobra? 
Simple heuristic:
Don’t trust nobody who owns, or bought a foreign car; this includes BMW, Mercedes, Audi, AMG, Lamborghini Volkswagen, Ferrari, Land Rover, Range Rover, anything produced by the Volkswagen group or Tata group, Porsche, etc.
The funny thing is it seems in today’s world, having a Toyota or a Honda is almost like having an American car?
Simple rule:
If you want to be a true American, if you want a sports utility SUV car, just by a Ford Explorer ST, which is essentially a cop car. 
If you want some sort of sports muscle car, ultimate flex… Buy some sort of Ford Mustang Shelby Cobra car, or even… the Ford GT. I think Brad Pitt owns one. Mustang GTD
Anti-American sentiment?
In America, if you only care about money, I don’t think you’re a true American. What does a real American care for? Diversity, access, democracy, egalitarian values, and meritocracy which means the goods you are delivered is based on merit, hierarchy and ranking.
The diversity myth? 
Apparently when Peter Thiel was an undergraduate in college he wrote a book called The Diversity Myth… I think he wrote it when he was at Stanford as an undergraduate, something about how too much focus on diversity is bad. I haven’t read the book, but I think what it means is that trying to do things like affirmative action in his eyes is bad.
My personal thought is it is obvious; obviously if you have a kid from the hood, a kid from Compton, certainly his or her GPA or SAT score is not going to be as good as a kid who went to some sort of elite private school in Beverly Hills. Therefore there needs to be dynamic weighing here.
For example, if you’re the Valevictorian or the top #1 student in a ghetto school… your application to college should be weighed higher than a kid who went to an elite private school, who is only the top 100.
Therefore it isn’t necessarily “affirmative action”, but rather, wisdom in evaluating someone’s social economic status as part of their application.
Diversity should not be forced
Certainly diversity is good, but it is not good when you try to force it.
For example, trying to force more gender equality or racial equality when it isn’t really warranted seems like a bad idea.
This is where the philosophical thing matters; we must ask ourselves and consider… does it really even matter in the first place? If so, why?
Guns?
Being an American or a true American has nothing to do with gun ownership. I’m not anti-guns per se; I did Boy Scouts and shot a rifle and a shotgun, got both my merit badges and also an archery merit badge when I was a high schooler.
I think the strange notion is that somehow… if you own a gun, or have a gun somewhere at home or whatever… it makes you more manly? (It does not).
Jewish people are super wise
I wonder… Is it that people hate Jewish people because they’re so smart wise and good with money?
Also, I don’t really trust any Christians, or God-fearing people especially in the news and mainstream media, even underground media etc.
For example, I really enjoyed the Kanye interview on info wars, but the guy who hosts the show… seems like a strange guy. Anybody who takes the Bible literally is not to be trusted.
How did Jewish people become so successful? Simple: they make money don’t spend it.
Also, I think Jewish people, that is consider how much trials and tribulations and anti-Jewish sentiment and bad things happened to them throughout their whole existence. If they were able to survive it all, probably a good sign.
America is more Jewish than you think 
One of the funniest things that my friend Daniel Schaeffer told me he was… “I’m Jew…ish”.
I might be wrong here, but I think that there is a huge list of really really famous and influential Jewish people in America, which include I think, Gal Gadot, Joseph Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David etc.
Also, Steven Spielberg, Kirk Douglas (changed his last name to blend into Hollywood), a lot of really famous people in Hollywood.
Also I think John Stewart, he changed his last name.
I think a simple strategy what you could do is just Google it, famous Jewish people who changed their last names or famous Jewish people in the media.
I think even Lenny Kravitz is Jewish?
Apparently there is “Jewish” sounding last names, anything related to Gold or Goldsmith, because a lot of Jewish people were once gold merchants back in the day, or anything with “itzh” or “Horowitz” etc… “itz”. Ben Horowitz.
Also a lot of really mainstream American words are actually Yiddish! For example, “chutzpah”, “schlep”, “schmuck”, etc. 
I didn’t know… But my friend Janae told me “I’m such a bad Jewish American, I had no idea that Seinfeld was a TV show about Jewish American culture”. I then responded, in shock, “It is??”
It doesn’t really matter
I have a theory that everyone is looking for some sort of scapegoat. My personal thought on why people believe in conspiracy theories is because nobody likes to think that they themselves are the cause of their own pain suffering etc., and they think of it like some sort of virtuous task and duty to uncover all the “evils” or “injustices” in the world.
For example, I’ve actually met a lot of Palestinian Americans who fall victim to conspiracy theories. Why? To psychoanalyze; they have been seriously fucked over. Even the whole conflict right now in the Gaza Strip, it really does seem that the Palestinians are the victims here. Israel, funded by the American government in military, America is really the bad guy here. 
Even China; China is not a threat. When I was in Phnom Penh Cambodia, I would keep reading these newspapers on how mainland China would complain that they only have one military base somewhere in Africa, whereas America has thousands. As long as Americas military powder is 1000X that of everyone else in the world, America is fine. 
Even Russia, not a threat. I think people just like to paint Putin as the devil, because once again, people like having some sort of devil figure, some sort of Adolf Hitler to see as the enemy.
Ideas?
In South Korea if you’re a man, you’re required to have at least 2-3 years of military duty. I think it’s a good idea if America did the same. Or if they instituted more ROTC programs in high school, optional.
And also, I think having some sort of part-time army reserve officer military training programs for normal civilians like myself is a good idea. Even my friend Andrew, became a part-time naval officer, more for pride. Harvard undergraduate graduate, professor now.
Apparently Westpoint is a really good institution. Maybe if Seneca gets a full ride there I will send him there. 
So what?
I think people are actually low-key praying and wishing for some sort of global armageddon. Why? Once again, a lot of people who are miserable in life want to see the world go into shambles. 
I am highly dubious of a World War III, or some sort of true international military demise. Why? Rich mainland Chinese oligarchs don’t want nobody to take their Rolls-Royce, or their mansions in Vancouver Canada.
Also, Americans like their consumerism, and capitalism.
Whether America likes it or not, it seems that they are in bed with China. As long as Apple still produces iPhones in China, ultimately… economically we will not see any real antagonism between both countries.
Economics is the new world religion
Money, capital, economics is the new world religion. Everybody globally… the only thing that people seem to really care for is to continue to self richen themselves. 
As a consequence, I think we will see a decline in military intervention and deaths, and other bad world issues.
People want to see the ones and zeros and commas increase in their bank account, not more deaths and casualties.
So what should we really be concerned about?
Simple things: 
- Pollution: nobody wants to be a billionaire in Beijing or Shanghai, the pollution and the air there is so toxic.
- Health diet and fitness: this trend towards “plant based” diets is a bad one, all this vegan nonsense is bad for the planet. Maybe more sustainable animal, beef or lamb production is a good idea. For example at Erwhon I discovered this new “ancestral blend“ — FORCE OF NATURE ground beef which is made with 100% grass fed ground beef, and beef liver and heart actually grinded it in; it is the new only thing that I’m feeding Seneca, it is his natural steroids. Let us not forget that organ meets, beef liver is a natural steroid, the more cholesterol you consume, the stronger you will become and the more testosterone will go up. So a novel thought; addressing the issue of food waste, particularly with beef kettle and cows in America; consume more of the scrap meat. Beef tongue, heart, head, liver, intestine etc.
- Media? My personal belief is that the real bad guys here is the media and advertising corporations; let us not forget that Google is an advertising company. Same thing goes with Facebook. And let us not forget that Google owns YouTube, and Facebook also owns Instagram. The reason why online advertising companies are so bad is that media thrives on the sensational, anger, fear, and all of these base human emotions. My personal thought is a lot of racial antagonism is actually stirred up by the media which is run on advertising. For example, it seems that the new clickbait is anything to do with “anti-Semitic“, or “anti-Semitism“; both on the Jewish, African-American front, and mainstream media, a lot of which is run by Jewish families. The more people who click “anti-Semitic” new stories and see more Google AdSense advertisements, the more money that Google makes. Also Facebook, Instagram, the more sensational things are posted, the higher the advertising revenue for them. 
Why I am uncancellable
I am already independently rich and wealthy from my savings and cryptocurrency, and I also live like a poor person, which means that I’m making more money than I could spend it. Because I don’t even like spending money in the first place.
In fact, besides myself and maybe NASSIM TALEB… I don’t think I really know any other free thinkers? Everyone is either hooked to some sort of algorithm, social media platform, YouTube… or podcast… no freedom. This is where I don’t really put any trust in anything that Tim Ferriss says, or even Joe Rogan, because they are run by advertisers.
Who not to trust? Anybody and everybody on YouTube, or has any sort of podcast which is supported by advertisers.
So how can you make money?
Maybe it is a good idea to make money elsewhere, for example, I think I’ve made more money in cryptocurrency speculation than I have in my whole decade plus of teaching photography workshops.
Also selling products is a good idea  because… especially if it is your own products, have more faith and leather than information. HAPTIC INDUSTRIES — in the world of AI and artificial information, having physical leather products is a good idea because it will outlast you. HENRI x ERIC KIM STRAPS.
ART?
Ultimately after you’ve made your trillions of dollars, what is it that people really care for? Art.
How many Jackson Pollocks, Basqiats, or Picassos do you own? 
Art collection
It is wise to understand a Ferrari as an art object, not as a car. Just go to the Peterson automotive museum and go into the vault; these cars are art objects.
Art is the main disruptor here; this is where I am so into [AI art](). Maybe I will do some AI art workshops in the near future.
Now what?
Trust ChatGPT more than you trust Google or weird Internet conspiracy website forums. Also, delete Reddit and stop using Reddit; I legit think it is the worst thing for humanity, perhaps even worse than pornography.
Quit reddit, not porn.
In fact, maybe it is best to just think about pornography like entertainment. Men who watch sports, drink alcohol or smoke weed, without having actually ever played the sport, sports is like some sort of domestication of the modern day human, a modern day pornography for men. At least sexual pornography is a positive motivator, drinking beer, eating french fries and watching football if you have never played football yourself in real life… seems worse.
Even basketball; my simple heuristic is if you decide to watch basketball, maybe one should play real life basketball at least once a week.
Assignments
- Start your own blog. Ionos.com or bluehost.com and install WordPress.org
- Subscribe to ChatGPT plus, start creating your own AI generated art via DALL-E 3. Post on your own blog or arsbeta.com — I want ARS to also be a home for not just photos, but AI generated art. 
- Make your own ChatGPT bot, once you have subscribed to the premium model. For example, I re-created the Y app on ChatGPT, it is great. 
- Fitness: Buy weightlifting equipment on titan.fitness– and start lifting weights in your own parking lot garage. I recently picked up the Titan fitness Farmer’s carry handles, I like them, and also maybe the best 500 bucks I’ve ever spent in my life was the Texas power bar squat bar, my most prized possession.  Lift weights every day at least once, maybe even twice a day; the upside of doing it in your own backyard, your own parking lot is that you will just save a lot of time. If you want ghetto squat rack or rack, just go to Home Depot and buy cinderblocks. I was able to stack three cinder blocks on top of one another, and I have been able to successfully rack pull over seven plates with it. Cross leg deadlift good idea.
- Maybe dabble in crypto? Just get a Coinbase account, link it with your traditional bank, I think everyone should own at least one bitcoin. Personally I just swapped or traded or converted nine of my bitcoin into chainlink (20,800 chainlink)– my personal prediction is within the next three years to five years, it should be above $50 a link, maybe even 100 or 200 bucks a link. Currently speaking I am anti-Ethereum; it is just too complicated and complex. Then also now that they are offering Ethereum for enterprise (private ethereum)… A bad sign. Also try bitcoin babe.
- Organ meats? Everyone says that eating meat, red meat is bad for the planet blah blah blah. But what about organ meats? Nobody really says anything bad about organ meats, beef liver, beef heart, beef intestine, beef kidney. As a fun experiment just try out 100% organ meat diet; the true demigod diet. Also bone marrow. Just pick up organ meats at Whole Foods in the frozen freezer, they sell 100% grass fed frozen beef liver and beef heart and beef kidney there, even beef tongue. Or just go to the local Halal market, the local market and get it there.
Now what?
EXPERIENCE EK— unlock your true potential.
HAPTIC HOLIDAYS!
As a special holiday promo: order over $300 USD at the HAPTIC SHOP, and get a free 3x set of ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE (three bags designed to awaken your creative senses). While supplies last.
Experiments
- Try to troll AI and ChatGPT for; once you get the paid version, see how far you could push it until you invoke some sort of content moderation issue,
- Have ChatGPT disprove some sort of strange conspiracy theories. In fact, I think the biggest benefit of ChatGPT is that it doesn’t get suckered by conspiracy theories.
- Actually, ChatGPT is pretty factual. For example, just ask whether George Floyd was in a pornography film (he was). ChatGPT answers truthfully. 
Now what?
Going on a hike. Leave your phone in the car and just enjoy a nice walking nature, just walk slowly. Do it in vibram five finger shoes or even barefoot. 
Order some weight lifting equipment on titan.fitness and have fun at home.
FaceTime a loved one. The best gift to give somebody is just a simple phone call!
What do you want for Christmas this year?
- Ask somebody to gift you a gym membership, or even a yoga, CorePower membership. Investing in your health is perhaps the best thing you could do as a gift.
- In terms of gyms, I really like crunch fitness, LA fitness is OK, or whatever commercial gym is close by. Even golds gym is good.
- Costco gift cards; to buy more meat.
- Ask somebody for airline fare; to go fly somewhere and travel somewhere for the holidays. 
- Vibram 5 finger shoes — ELX KNIT.
- Texas power bar squat bar
- 400 pound roguefitness.com sand bag
- Money to purchase a website hosting domain
- iPad Pro (small one)
What else?
Infinite ideas on the ERIC KIM BLOG: Some new thoughts:
- It is better to rent in an insanely great neighborhood and location then to even own a $5 million home in a good location
- Physiology hack: take insanely hot baths at home, at the verge of boiling your skin. Very refreshing.
- Drink robusta coffee, not arabica. Even Costco sells the Deathwish coffee now, which I assume is robusta coffee. Otherwise get ERIC KIM 100% fine robusta coffee. 
- The best clothing to wear in winter is down, merino wool, cashmere. Layer up!
- Milo of croton ate 20 pounds of meat a day, let us use that as our benchmark.
- A life goal: read the Iliad by Homer front to back. Just download free PDFs online, and keep looking for a good translation until you find one that you like.
Book list
- Invent and wander by Jeff Bezos
- Zero to one by Peter Thiel 
- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, also the new Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson 
- Going Infinite – Michael Lewis. Also flash boys.
START HERE
Forward the thoughts
If this part even one interesting thought within you, feel free to forward to a friend!
#savemoney collective
The new life goal should be to save money, not to waste it.
Instead of wasting money, better to use that money towards buying meat at Costco, weightlifting equipment, plates and bars and barbells, iron etc. Physical fitness is the ultimate luxury.
Stay lit!
***
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START HERE
Crypto
PDF
- Photography Composition Manual v1
- Zen Photography
- STREET PHOTO CONTACT SHEETS
- STREET PHOTO CONTACT SHEETS VOLUME II
- Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography
- The Street Portrait Manual
- 100 Lessons From the Masters of Street Photography
ERIC KIM CHATGPT BOTS
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY STARTER KIT
- What is Street Photography? (2.4gb) / Download
- Black and White (2.3gb) / Download
- How to Shoot Street Photography (2.2gb) / Download
- Street Portraits 101 (1.9gb) / Download
- Conquer Your Fears (430mb) / Download
- Composition (460mb) / Download
- Masters (107mb) / Download
- Editing and Post-Processing (1.3gb) / Download
- Photography Projects (1.4gb) / Download
- Motivation (3.7gb) / Download
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100 Lessons From the Masters of Street Photography: PDF DOWNLOAD FREE ERIC KIM OPEN SOURCE
ChatGPT Overview
Here are the summarized bullet points from “100 Lessons From the Masters of Street Photography” by Eric Kim:
- Fulfill Your Personal Maximum: Photography should push you outside of your comfort zone and help you reach your maximum potential oai_citation:1,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Get Closer: Overcoming fear and getting physically closer to subjects creates emotional proximity, enhancing the intimacy of photographs oai_citation:2,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Shoot 25% More Than You Think: Capturing additional images after you think you’ve got the shot can lead to more interesting photographs oai_citation:3,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Shoot from the Gut: Focus on capturing emotion rather than getting overly analytical about composition and framing oai_citation:4,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- The “.7 Meter Challenge”: Engaging with subjects at close distances improves the ability to connect and capture more intimate moments oai_citation:5,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Don’t Shoot from the Hip: Using the viewfinder for framing and capturing moments ensures better control over the composition oai_citation:6,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Influence the Scene: Interacting with subjects can lead to dynamic, engaging photographs, countering the notion that all street photography must be candid oai_citation:7,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Don’t Crop: Preserving the original framing maintains the integrity and geometric balance of the photograph oai_citation:8,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Focus on the Edges: Paying attention to the edges of the frame can lead to better overall composition oai_citation:9,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Emotionally Detach from Your Photos: Avoid letting personal attachment to the story behind a photo bias your assessment of its quality oai_citation:10,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Create Context in Your Frame: Include elements that tell a story or add depth to the image oai_citation:11,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Provoke Your Subjects: Engaging and interacting with subjects can add depth and authenticity to the photographs oai_citation:12,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Ask for Repetition: If a moment is missed, politely asking the subject to repeat an action can capture a candid-looking photo oai_citation:13,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Don’t Be a Slave to Your Camera: Avoid the trap of “Gear Acquisition Syndrome” and focus more on the art rather than the equipment oai_citation:14,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Cure Yourself of G.A.S.: Be content with what you have, set limits on upgrades, and focus on the joy of photography over acquiring new gear oai_citation:15,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Embrace Beginner’s Mind: Approach photography with curiosity and openness, as if seeing the world for the first time oai_citation:16,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Shoot How You Feel: Let your emotions guide your photography, whether it results in gritty black and white or vibrant color images oai_citation:17,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Limitations Are Freedom: Embracing creative constraints can lead to more focused and innovative photography oai_citation:18,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Document Your Life: Use photography as a tool to capture and reflect on personal and meaningful moments in life oai_citation:19,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Shoot with a Stream-of-Consciousness: Capture what feels right in the moment without overthinking, leading to more authentic and personal images oai_citation:20,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Shoot What It Feels Like: Try to convey the emotion or atmosphere of a scene, moving beyond just the visual elements oai_citation:21,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Embrace Failure: Recognize that most street photography involves failure, and that perseverance leads to eventual success oai_citation:22,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Don’t Be Afraid to Click: Taking more shots, even if they’re not perfect, increases the chances of capturing a great image oai_citation:23,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Add Something ‘More’ to the Frame: Aim for complexity and layers in your images, balancing chaos with order oai_citation:24,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
- Master Your Body Language: Use non-verbal cues to interact with subjects and build confidence in capturing street scenes oai_citation:25,100-Lessons-From-the-Masters-of-Street-Photography-by-ERIC-KIM.pdf.
These points encapsulate the essential lessons and philosophies Eric Kim shares in his book, offering guidance for both aspiring and experienced street photographers.
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STREET NOTES MOBILE EDITION FREE OPEN SOURCE PDF DOWNLOAD
-
How to Go Infinite?
To infinity and beyond!
Book review of Going Infinite, and also some thoughts on walking:
Book Review: Going Infinite by Michael Lewis, the Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, the Story of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX and Alameda Research
So I just finished going infinite by Michael Lewis, highly recommended read. Why? Very very fun read, and also… Fascinating insight into the world of crypto, money, currency, Fiat currency etc.
Quick summary:
- Sam Bankman Fried isn’t the evil villain everyone wants to paint him as. He is just like an extremely uber genius math prodigy whiz kid, who has zero concern for social norms.
- Perhaps the real culprit here are the effective altruists (“effective altruism”— bad), these new tech money elites, who follow utilitarianism, who want to find a reason to “save the planet”, and I think… they actually want to see humanity destroy itself, in order to go to Mars or whatever.
- This whole trend of creating your own cryptocurrency or token is a bad idea. FTT, which was the token for FTX, was probably the biggest critical downfall of ftx.com. You should never hedge your finances on imaginary token.
- Money is fake
- CZ, the CEO of binance, seems like kind of a strange character. Once again he isn’t evil either… but, it seems that petty rivalries and feuds often escalate into some sort of market downsides.
- Apparently from what I understand, besides all of the bad behavior, ftx.com was actually a good trading platform. It allowed novice traders to trade, and also more advanced quants to trade as well. Apparently it was very cutting edge at the time, offering advanced treating tools for experts.
- Alameda research, which actually was in existence before ftx.com is the strange case. Essentially it was the place where money was being funneled into, which may be turned out to use customer funds to fundraise strange effective altruist campaigns. For example, Sam Bankman Fried essentially had an unlimited US dollar bank account, to throw money at any sort of celebrity endorsement, which includes Tom Brady and Stephen Curry, And also, throwing vast sums of money at political candidates running for office, to essentially ensure that Donald Trump did not get elected (he still did). I believe that Joe Biden and his campaign was given over $100 million from Sam Bankman Fried.
So what happened?
Some interesting things:
First, learning about Jane Street, one of the high frequency trading firms, a bunch of quant, quantitative folks, doing some sort of hedging, maybe dynamic hedging as Nassim Taleb calls it — essentially a lot of the trading world is automated by algorithms, and bots. Jane street recent news.
It also seems that a lot of this is run by people who are highly mathematically trained, people who are essentially mathematical thinkers.
Maybe this is where math is interesting; it isn’t math for math, but instead, the purpose of math is to think more critically, and to also think quicker.
So what happened?
I think essentially what happened was all of the customer accounts of ftx.com were funneled into Alameda research, which then either directly or indirectly went to Sam’s discretionary spending fund on political matters, building infrastructure for the headquarters in the Bahamas etc.
Also, the demise and downfall of ftx.com was that it relied too much on hedging; essentially let us say that $10 billion worth of US dollars worth of crypto was in the platform, customer money… and let us assume that at once, 100% of the customers would want to pull their money. This would not be possible because at one point a time, ftx.com might only have a total of 10% of the customer funds.
I think this is actually what happens similarly in traditional banks as well. A bank never has all the customer money, they essentially use your money as leverage to speculate elsewhere.
Also this is where I’m starting to get more skeptical of traditional IRAs, 401(k) plans, Roth IRA etc.; once again, certain companies and corporations in the US government are trying to leverage your money right now to make a profit on something, while you have to sit there and just twiddle your thumbs.
Now what?
It seems that I think, the best trading platform is Coinbase. I see it like it is the PayPal, the new PayPal for crypto.
Also, I am not really like a crypto anarchist; I like the government, I like being able to transfer it into my normal American Bank account, and I like the idea that if I wanted to, I could easily convert it into US dollars. Of course it all comes with the fee; but that fee is nominal for the convenience and the practicality of things.
I recently converted 90% of my bitcoin into chainlink, and one of the driving factors is what if chainlink becomes like the next SWIFT for international banks? This would help a lot of the global finance industry.
For example, my mom currently lives in South Korea, and having to transfer money from my US Bank account to her South Korean bank account and vice versa was a major pain in the ass. Having to literally go to a bank teller in real life and having to sign all these paper forms was insanely cumbersome annoying and time-consuming. It should all be able to be done digitally, in terms of cryptographic truth.
Also, another subtle funny thing; a lot of hourly wage service workers have to punch in punch out, but… it seems difficult to know for 100% certain or not if they actually truly showed up for work or not. Maybe chainlink could solve that.
Useful tools?
I still love bitcoin and I think bitcoin is sexy, and I think that everybody should own at least one bitcoin, just in case it goes to $10 million a bitcoin or who knows even $100 million a bitcoin by the time that we are about to die.
Also, I think everything in crypto should be done in the spirit that literally it could all go to zero. It probably won’t, but it might go down to just one percent of the value what it was worth before. For example I was able to ride digibyte from 20 cents a dgb to maybe 50 cents a digibyte, in which I literally traded to chainlink, and then converted it all back into bitcoin. But now, digibyte in now in shambles, worth less than a penny.
The reason I like chainlink is that it actually does something useful. To create a technology which actually does something is a good idea. Bitcoin is great, but ultimately I think of bitcoin more like digital electronic gold. Most people never spend their gold, they just hoard it.
Data price feeds?
Data.chain.link
A very useful technology and service that chainlink provides is giving you an accurate price of certain cryptocurrency assets. For example, if you really wanted to precisely know the price of one bitcoin pegged to the US dollar, down to the cent… who do you trust? Because some platforms give you slightly different numbers. Ultimately we want ultimate truth, the most accurate number. Chainlink will offer that.
The reason why this is critical is that one thing I learned from going infinite and flash boys… literally even a quarter of a penny, if leveraged and hedged with trillions of dollars can make a fat profit. These really really big firms will want accuracy of crypto prices down to even a fraction of a penny.
Illuminati influences
So one character I find very interesting is Eric Schmidt, the ex CEO of Google. He made Google to become the Google it is today. Apparently one of the things he said, a strategy that he had when see you at Google was genius; “We made sure to put a little bit of Google into everything”. YouTube video.
Quite genius. I think nowadays almost every single product tracking thing is somehow connected to google analytics and Google Adsense somewhere. Even when you Google something and open up the hyperlink and click it, there is this long ugly URL with a bunch of Google tracking code in it.
Also I find Eric Schmidt interesting because he was mentioned in the going infinite book. Even apparently ERIC Schmidt I think… ran for Senate or something, it might hold a board seat somewhere?
Now this is the killer: Eric Schmidt joined chainlink as part of their board of trustees. This is good news for chainlink, because then what it means is that I think… ERIC Schmidt, probably owns a substantial number of chainlink in his own personal account, and now that he has political power, he will most likely use his political power to enrich himself. Therefore as a consequence, if you own chainlink, it is a good promise that ERIC Schmidt is probably behind the scenes, helping you become richer.
Also
I took some screenshots, but essentially all the rich people are banding together to become richer together. Apparently there’s lots of private parties in which Jeff Bezos shows up, a few of the Kardashians, etc.
I find this interesting not from a conspiracy theory perspective, but essentially the elite are essentially giving each other back rubs, maybe wealth is just a huge circle jerk.
Michael Lewis for the win
I love Michael Lewis for his candor, his humor, his offkilter humor. And also would I like by Michael Lewis now because he is so successful, I think he’s just really writing these books out of self interest and fun. You could tell that he is actually legitimately interested in the life of Sam Bankman-Fried, expensively interviewing his parents, his friends etc.
You cannot fake passion and enthusiasm and fun. It is a hugely entertaining read and insightful. Highly recommend.
ERIC
So now what?
Walk more, think less.
I think one of the really big critical issues here is that in modern day times, we spend too much time thinking, not enough time walking.
My vision is that the future, we are essentially going to be like elite homeless people. That the new tech trillionaires of the future, we will be like some sort of off the grid, Zen Stoic monks. We will be mostly shirtless, walking around 50 miles a day, aimlessly for fun, lifting weights here and there for fun, and not have access to a phone, and not be contactable.
We will bask in the sun, and we will only prefer to lift weights in the direct sun, topless.
We will be maximally friendly, courteous, fun. Like overgrown children. Yet we will also be insanely wise, intelligent critical and deep.
If you haven’t already, don’t be a cheapo and just subscribe to the ChatGPT plus. This is literally the ultimate life hack.
What to become?
Just become a street vlogger like ERIC KIM. Just walk around a lot, vlog any random thoughts on your mind and upload it to YouTube and your own blog. As long as you get more than two views, consider it successful!
Also, double dip; shoot photos and make photo art, and also use DALL-E, DALL-E 3 to make AI art! And simple; keep it all open source.
So what can money buy?
Money can buy you experiences, and also leather products.
The more I use HAPTIC PRODUCTS, the more I love it. For example this ERIC KIM PORTFOLIO CASE Cindy and I made and designed back in Saigon in 2017… I still use it every single day, and the beauty of it is that the more I use it, the more comfortable it becomes, the more it becomes.
This is ultimate wabi-sabi— the general idea with leather which I love is that it will last longer than you. You can hand it down to your kids!
You don’t buy a HAPTIC PRODUCT for yourself, you buy it for your future children (ripoff some watch, Rolex, AP ad I saw somewhere).
EXPERIENCE EK
All access to some of the most interesting thoughts on the planet.
Some more fun thoughts on walking:
THINK LESS, WALK MORE.
A thought in modern day society: we think too much.
For example, some modern day ills include the fact that we wake up, we stay at home, work from home, never leave the apartment or the house all day, or even worse… we go to the office, stay in the office, don’t leave all day, eat lunch at our desk in front of our laptop or computer… even worse, if you’re hardcore you don’t leave the office for days weeks or even months… You just sleep in a beanbag next to your desk or in a sleeping bag under your desk.
Problems?
This is the big issue I’ve discovered:
I think what the modern day man or person strives to be is to become the ultimate productivity machine robot who doesn’t need anything. That somehow you could optimize yourself out of going outside, getting natural light by just popping some vitamin D tablets, don’t need to exercise, and if you exercise, the minimum amount of exercise necessary not to atrophy your body, Find no need of the sun, or no need to walk because it is “inefficient”.
In fact, I wonder if this whole bizarre trend of “running“, or “jogging“, is because people don’t think that walking is “effective”, or “efficient “. People are somehow trying to maximize their movement activity; they don’t think of walking as “exercise“, and somehow that it doesn’t “burn calories” (the calorie in, calorie out myth).
As a consequence, modern day man becomes strange. A strange plant. Lacking natural light and melanin in their skin, lacking ability to make iContact with people in embodied reality, and prefer to not interact with any humans. Thus the trend towards mobile orders etc.
Think ancient Greece
A lot of people like to think about ancient hunter gather lifestyles whatever… I prefer to think about ancient Greece, ancient Sparta. Before money was invented, and you could only measure your wealth by how many cattle you owned. Or how many men you governed.
For example, in the Iliad, I think it was Nestor who told Achilles that king Agamemnon was the superior man, because he commanded more men.
What are we striving for and looking for?
I think a lot of us are dealing with some sort of modern day pain suffering and discontent and we’re not really sure what to do about it. I think this is why we seek out “therapists”, see psychiatrists, get prescribed some sort of generic medication, etc. In fact, besides the extreme edge cases, I think medication should be avoided at all costs. I think when people are depressed, it is a physiological and physical depression. Not enough time outside walking, in the direct elements, in the direct sun, not enough exercise and lifting weights, over consumption of alcohol, caffeine, coffee, drugs, marijuana etc. I don’t think anything is wrong moralistically with marijuana… but I distrust anybody who consumes or takes or does marijuana on a daily basis. Marijuana does strange things to your mind.
I trust nobody who is woke, who tokes!
Also, if you’re reliant on marijuana to fall asleep at night, once again… not a good sign.
Back to ancient Sparta!
I think what we are having an issue with in modern day society is more of a moralistic and ethical one. The thought is we are born to be productive, and our self-worth and value is simply predicated on how productive we are, how much money we make, how much we increase our money number in our savings account, buying houses etc.
Therefore, anytime we are not actively doing that… we feel some sort of inner guilt, shame, and we lose respect for ourselves. We end up self-flagellation ourselves.
Don’t trust nobody on social media
Several things; first and foremost, any human being who uses Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc.… they’re hopped on a strange matrix simulation like dopamine machine. I think using social media and having notifications on your phone might actually be worse than gambling. At least gambling has to do more with money… social media has to do more with your self-respect, your self-esteem esteem.
“I’ve been awakened by an enlightened man’s dream… checking Instagram comments to crowd-source my self-esteem”— KANYE
Burn the boats!
Very simple. Just stop using social media, uninstall all of the apps from your phone, or just delete them.
For example, I think one of the most glorious moments of my life, one of the greatest things I have done in my life as a photographer and “influencer“, was deleting my Instagram in 2017. Why? Since then, I feel like I unhooked my brain from the matrix. I took the red pill. Anyone who still uses Instagram, Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, YouTube, listens to podcasts, has Spotify, Netflix, etc. is still on the blue pill.
Why? The best way to have more interesting thoughts is via negativa— actively canceling out, or deleting, or getting rid of external stimuli in the spirit of books, blog posts, media, Reddit, the news, etc. In fact the big problem in today’s world is that we are almost like in a human centipede consumption of information use and media; one media outlet regurgitates and quotes the other one, which quotes the other one, which might’ve ultimately just been written by ChatGPT or some sort of AI bot. In fact I’ve been experimenting a lot with chatGPT4, the paid premium one, and what I’ve discovered is funny; even ChatGPT doesn’t know that it was written by ChatGPT.
For example, for fuzzies, I ChatGPT’d myself. I would open up ChatGPT 4, the premium paid one, and asked simple things like “who is ERIC KIM“? ChatGPT with then do an effective summary and overview of me my life story in my life loss etc., and then I just copied and pasted the information, and literally published a blog post on what ChatGPT said. I then later a few days later, ask ChatGPT “ERIC KIM philosophy“, and then once again, it re-summarized things and actually linked back to my blog giving me a citations and footnotes, but the funny thing was… the citations and footnotes gave me were actually the blog post written by ChatGPT itself!
Or another words, ChatGPT doesn’t know that I am ERIC KIM.
The thinker
To think is to sit on your butt and ruminate and think. No no no… to think is to walk. In fact maybe we should stop call it “thinking”, but just walking.
My personal thought is the noveau luxury is walking. If you have the privilege of having a 100% pedestrian lifestyle, 100% biped lifestyle, in which you’re just literally walking everywhere, without having to use the agency of a car, it is a sign that you are truly truly rich and wealthy. Secondly if you don’t always have to check your phone. Thirdly, if you could have all the notifications on your phone disabled.
How and why is walking so critical?
First without thinking about it too much… just think about this: if you walked 50 miles a day, I think 99.9% of your life cares concerns and worries would disappear. Especially if you do it in nature. With uneven surfaces, different grades and elevations, no two steps are alike.
One of the greatest things about being in nature, just going on a simple hike, is that sometimes it is steep, sometimes it is level, sometimes it is dirt, sometimes it is pavement, sometimes it is gravel, sometimes it is grass, etc. Having variation in the texture of the environment and the terrain is critical.
In modern day times, everything is flat. And everything is the same thing; typically just concrete.
I actually wonder and think, I wonder if a lot of the issues with modern day health and physiology has to do with the fact that everything is flat. I think the reason why we are bipeds is that as a biped, we are very very very good at traversing uneven terrain. In fact, one could even argue that human who is upright and biped could better navigate rocky and mountainous terrain compared to a four-legged animal.
Also the best thing you could buy with money is vibram five finger shoes. Just buy it for yourself for Christmas or ask somebody to buy for you.
We got to stop calling it “hiking”
One of the biggest issues I’ve discovered about the whole “hiking” notion is that people think too much that it has to be done a certain way. We think that somehow we have to buy those silly hiking poles, buy a hat, buy some hiking boots at REI or whatever, and wear all this expensive outdoor clothing.
Technically you could just do a barefoot, or… get some vibram five finger shoes, and just go on a fun walk!
Another weird thing I’ve discovered is we think we got to purchase the thing in order to somehow justify getting into a certain lifestyle. For example, we think we got to buy some sort of off-road four-wheel-drive car some sort of Subaru or jeep or sports utility SUV car in order to do “outdoorsy” stuff. This is silly. For a while Cindy and I work on hardcore hiking and camping stuff, and literally 99.99% maybe even 100% of the places we went to, we were able to simply do it in a simple four-door sedan, the Ford fusion which is just a normal sedan with a front wheel drive car.
I think this is the insidious nature of capitalism and consumerism; it makes you feel insecure and uncertain and unqualified, and we think that in order to do the thing that we want to do, we must buy the things in order to do it.
So now what?
I can’t speak for you or others. I think everyone has different talents, different skills, different desires.
First, I think having some sort of life dreams and goals is a good one. And striving with all your might to meet them and accomplish them and achieve them.
Then the next question is… then what? Should you just keep doing this into infinity? Ad infinitum?
Maybe not. Or maybe.
For example with weightlifting, a simple path is just to keep increasing your one rep max until the end of time. I don’t think this is a bad idea.
But also at the same time, you don’t need to be tied down to this either. Technically real life, reality is not metricated.
For example, if you think about the Iliad, Achilles, Hector, nobody could care less about “how much you can bench“. It was a simple binary; if you were in hand to hand battle with another fighter or warrior, would you kill him, or would he kill you? Who was the more courageous and superior and dominating force?
Also well interesting is that it seems that in the Iliad, nothing was really accidental or by chance. For example when warriors would go to battle, one warrior would not “accidentally“, get killed by the other warrior. It really did come down to courage, skill, power, who was the better fighter.
Even the final bout between Achilles and Hector; Hector was essentially hoodwinked and tricked… He was deceived into thinking that he had his charioteer, his trusted fighting buddy by his side to take on Achilles, because Hector was no dummy; he actually knew that Achilles was the superior fighter, and if you went head on with Achilles, he would lose. He was hoodwinked by one of the gods, who made an illusion and made themselves appear to be the friend of Hector.
Real life
So then the question is in real life, what do you seek to do, achieve, etc?
Heraclitus one said, “The greatest glory is to seek immortal glory amongst men, yet the majority of men stuff themselves like cattle.”
Who will not be remembered?
I don’t think that any modern day tech CEO will be remembered, nor cared for. Exceptions include CEOs who were also founders.
Also, I think people who will be forgotten include people who sell their companies. I don’t know… If you ultimately decide to sell your company, even for $10 billion… I think it is a signal that you care more about money than the thing you built. Why? As long as your business is making an income and you can somehow pay yourself a base salary, pay your rent, your utilities, your meat, etc.… what else need do you have for money?
This is where I give Mark Zuckerberg great credit. In the early days of Facebook he had so many offers to be bought out, but he stuck to his guns and refused. Highly intelligent.
Some people I think who compromised include Jack Dorsey of Twitter, I’m even starting to get a little bit suspicious of the cofounders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin; why did they end up leaving running Google and building the board of Alphabet instead?
Perhaps one graceful exit is Jeff Bezos at Amazon; I think he’s put in his fair share and his duties; I think space travel was his ultimate dream, and if you read invent and wonder, I think he really did stay true to his principles and never compromised. Also, him publicly exposing his controversial affair in the public, was insanely bold ballsy and respectful. He refused to be blackmailed. What a true mensch.
People who will be remembered
I think Elon Musk might be remembered forever. Why? Through pure force of will, might, and craziness… He was able to achieve the impossible. His thinking was only limited by physics, the laws of physics, first principles. Aristotle would have been proud of him.
Second, Kanye West. I really don’t think there is any thinker innovator or artist quite as bold, innovative, and amazing as him. Even now, randomly in the middle of the night, this morning I thought about his “Runaway“ song, and his perfect album my beautiful dark twisted fantasy. Actually if you think about all the albums and songs he has ever produced, he was so ahead of the game, so innovative and unique, he really did care for creating true magic in his music.
Also Steve Jobs. It seems that nowadays kids don’t really know who he is, but, for innovators and thinkers like myself and countless others, they will always sight Steve Jobs as an inspiration. Also, it seems that Steve Jobs died at the right time; he fulfilled all of his creative visions, never compromised his beliefs, and I think he set the path for other creatives down the line.
I think the last vision of Steve Jobs was to create a creative company so infused with creativity that it would stand the test the time. I think he was quite successful.
What is the value of thinking?
The big question at hand is what is the value of thinking? Why think?
I think some people think, engage in thinking because they hope that it will lead to some sort of money making opportunity.
For me, I love thinking and sharing my thoughts because it is fun! To me, a life devoid of thoughts or interesting thoughts is not a life worth living.
The best way to live life
Very simple: only pursue and do that which you are genuinely interested in, ignore everything else.
Also, in terms of happiness and food… maybe the single most critical thing to improve your happiness is to increase the quality of your meat. Beef, beef liver beef heart beef intestines, lamb, grass fed ground beef etc. Wagyu ground beef at Costco is great.
In fact, I have a theory that a lot of the modern day issues that we got is that we’re under nourished. We aren’t eating enough red meat, enough beef or lamb. Pork is not meat, chicken and turkey is not meat.
Don’t let the feelings of others govern your behavior, in terms of how you eat or live
Another bizarre thing I’ve learned is the way that some people live their lives and they decide what to eat, what not to eat, how to live, how not to live, how to talk, what to say what not to say based simply on other people; they center themselves or don’t really see what’s on their mind because they’re afraid of:
“How do you think that makes me feel?”
But we don’t do the opposite; we don’t then tell that person the same. That “How does that make me feel?”
For example this nonsense behind gender pronouns. That you demand that I call you a certain pronoun, but what if I don’t feel comfortable calling you that pronoun?
It has to be faster, more seamless
One of the good reasons I think of building your own gym at home is that it reduces a lot of the friction. For example I generally love the gym and I think gym life is good, but here in LA I haven’t been able to find any good gyms; they all suck. Therefore this motivated me to build my own gym, just in my back yard, parking lot garage, in the back of my apartment.
I love this off the grid approach because literally… there is no friction. I don’t have to jump in the car and I don’t have to check in or scan my QR code or whatever whatever, I never have to wait for equipment etc.
If you have tight quarters, a simple solution is to just buy really really heavy kettle bell, 105 pounds and up. Or just buy a heavy sandbag, go to the playground and fill it up with sand, and just exercise with that picking it up and throwing it around. Even with us experienced weightlifters, I encourage buying the 400 pound sandbag on roguefitness.com or just get it on Amazon for cheap, fill it out with playground sand and experiment lifting that at home. Titan.fitness is also good.
I actually think that the most critical factor is to exercise outside, in the direct sun. If it is cold, just layer up.
Why exercise outside? It is more fun, more lively, more uplifting. Also one of the good benefits of working out at home is when you need to stop by the bathroom to pee, you could just pull yourself another espresso! Good luck doing that at any gym.
In fact I have an idea; I think all gyms should have some sort of coffee bar or espresso bar. Not these bad energy drinks, which is just fake sugar added.
Lift with EK
If you’re interested in lifting with me, shoot me an email at eric@erickim.com, if you live in LA or anywhere in the southern California area.
Now what?
Ultimately never forget that you’re an artist, a visual artist. Photography is just another tool in your creative tool kit.
Use dall-e, ChatGPT plus and premium, make your own AI generated art. Have fun with it, don’t take it too seriously.
Post it to your own self hosted blog, and keep updating! The ultimate sim of a blogger is this:
If somebody opens up a new tab and loads your blog, and they don’t see anything new.
ERIC
Some good freebies
Always updating the ERIC KIM start here page with more fire.
Also, free and open source books here.
Forward the fire!
If this sparked even one fun creative idea within you, feel free to forward this to a friend!
“Happiness is walking (a lot).”
ERIC
-
Book Review: Going Infinite by Michael Lewis, the Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, the Story of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX and Alameda Research
So I just finished going infinite by Michael Lewis, highly recommended read. Why? Very very fun read, and also… Fascinating insight into the world of crypto, money, currency, Fiat currency etc.
Quick summary:
- Sam Bankman Fried isn’t the evil villain everyone wants to paint him as. He is just like an extremely uber genius math prodigy whiz kid, who has zero concern for social norms.
- Perhaps the real culprit here are the effective altruists (“effective altruism”— bad), these new tech money elites, who follow utilitarianism, who want to find a reason to “save the planet”, and I think… they actually want to see humanity destroy itself, in order to go to Mars or whatever.
- This whole trend of creating your own cryptocurrency or token is a bad idea. FTT, which was the token for FTX, was probably the biggest critical downfall of ftx.com. You should never hedge your finances on imaginary token.
- Money is fake
- CZ, the CEO of binance, seems like kind of a strange character. Once again he isn’t evil either… but, it seems that petty rivalries and feuds often escalate into some sort of market downsides.
- Apparently from what I understand, besides all of the bad behavior, ftx.com was actually a good trading platform. It allowed novice traders to trade, and also more advanced quants to trade as well. Apparently it was very cutting edge at the time, offering advanced treating tools for experts.
- Alameda research, which actually was in existence before ftx.com is the strange case. Essentially it was the place where money was being funneled into, which may be turned out to use customer funds to fundraise strange effective altruist campaigns. For example, Sam Bankman Fried essentially had an unlimited US dollar bank account, to throw money at any sort of celebrity endorsement, which includes Tom Brady and Stephen Curry, And also, throwing vast sums of money at political candidates running for office, to essentially ensure that Donald Trump did not get elected (he still did). I believe that Joe Biden and his campaign was given over $100 million from Sam Bankman Fried.
So what happened?
Some interesting things:
First, learning about Jane Street, one of the high frequency trading firms, a bunch of quant, quantitative folks, doing some sort of hedging, maybe dynamic hedging as Nassim Taleb calls it — essentially a lot of the trading world is automated by algorithms, and bots. Jane street recent news.
It also seems that a lot of this is run by people who are highly mathematically trained, people who are essentially mathematical thinkers.
Maybe this is where math is interesting; it isn’t math for math, but instead, the purpose of math is to think more critically, and to also think quicker.
So what happened?
I think essentially what happened was all of the customer accounts of ftx.com were funneled into Alameda research, which then either directly or indirectly went to Sam’s discretionary spending fund on political matters, building infrastructure for the headquarters in the Bahamas etc.
Also, the demise and downfall of ftx.com was that it relied too much on hedging; essentially let us say that $10 billion worth of US dollars worth of crypto was in the platform, customer money… and let us assume that at once, 100% of the customers would want to pull their money. This would not be possible because at one point a time, ftx.com might only have a total of 10% of the customer funds.
I think this is actually what happens similarly in traditional banks as well. A bank never has all the customer money, they essentially use your money as leverage to speculate elsewhere.
Also this is where I’m starting to get more skeptical of traditional IRAs, 401(k) plans, Roth IRA etc.; once again, certain companies and corporations in the US government are trying to leverage your money right now to make a profit on something, while you have to sit there and just twiddle your thumbs.
Now what?
It seems that I think, the best trading platform is Coinbase. I see it like it is the PayPal, the new PayPal for crypto.
Also, I am not really like a crypto anarchist; I like the government, I like being able to transfer it into my normal American Bank account, and I like the idea that if I wanted to, I could easily convert it into US dollars. Of course it all comes with the fee; but that fee is nominal for the convenience and the practicality of things.
I recently converted 90% of my bitcoin into chainlink, and one of the driving factors is what if chainlink becomes like the next SWIFT for international banks? This would help a lot of the global finance industry.
For example, my mom currently lives in South Korea, and having to transfer money from my US Bank account to her South Korean bank account and vice versa was a major pain in the ass. Having to literally go to a bank teller in real life and having to sign all these paper forms was insanely cumbersome annoying and time-consuming. It should all be able to be done digitally, in terms of cryptographic truth.
Also, another subtle funny thing; a lot of hourly wage service workers have to punch in punch out, but… it seems difficult to know for 100% certain or not if they actually truly showed up for work or not. Maybe chainlink could solve that.
Useful tools?
I still love bitcoin and I think bitcoin is sexy, and I think that everybody should own at least one bitcoin, just in case it goes to $10 million a bitcoin or who knows even $100 million a bitcoin by the time that we are about to die.
Also, I think everything in crypto should be done in the spirit that literally it could all go to zero. It probably won’t, but it might go down to just one percent of the value what it was worth before. For example I was able to ride digibyte from 20 cents a dgb to maybe 50 cents a digibyte, in which I literally traded to chainlink, and then converted it all back into bitcoin. But now, digibyte in now in shambles, worth less than a penny.
The reason I like chainlink is that it actually does something useful. To create a technology which actually does something is a good idea. Bitcoin is great, but ultimately I think of bitcoin more like digital electronic gold. Most people never spend their gold, they just hoard it.
Data price feeds?
Data.chain.link
A very useful technology and service that chainlink provides is giving you an accurate price of certain cryptocurrency assets. For example, if you really wanted to precisely know the price of one bitcoin pegged to the US dollar, down to the cent… who do you trust? Because some platforms give you slightly different numbers. Ultimately we want ultimate truth, the most accurate number. Chainlink will offer that.
The reason why this is critical is that one thing I learned from going infinite and flash boys… literally even a quarter of a penny, if leveraged and hedged with trillions of dollars can make a fat profit. These really really big firms will want accuracy of crypto prices down to even a fraction of a penny.
Illuminati influences
So one character I find very interesting is Eric Schmidt, the ex CEO of Google. He made Google to become the Google it is today. Apparently one of the things he said, a strategy that he had when see you at Google was genius; “We made sure to put a little bit of Google into everything”. YouTube video.
Quite genius. I think nowadays almost every single product tracking thing is somehow connected to google analytics and Google Adsense somewhere. Even when you Google something and open up the hyperlink and click it, there is this long ugly URL with a bunch of Google tracking code in it.
Also I find Eric Schmidt interesting because he was mentioned in the going infinite book. Even apparently ERIC Schmidt I think… ran for Senate or something, it might hold a board seat somewhere?
Now this is the killer: Eric Schmidt joined chainlink as part of their board of trustees. This is good news for chainlink, because then what it means is that I think… ERIC Schmidt, probably owns a substantial number of chainlink in his own personal account, and now that he has political power, he will most likely use his political power to enrich himself. Therefore as a consequence, if you own chainlink, it is a good promise that ERIC Schmidt is probably behind the scenes, helping you become richer.
Also
I took some screenshots, but essentially all the rich people are banding together to become richer together. Apparently there’s lots of private parties in which Jeff Bezos shows up, a few of the Kardashians, etc.
I find this interesting not from a conspiracy theory perspective, but essentially the elite are essentially giving each other back rubs, maybe wealth is just a huge circle jerk.
Michael Lewis for the win
I love Michael Lewis for his candor, his humor, his offkilter humor. And also would I like by Michael Lewis now because he is so successful, I think he’s just really writing these books out of self interest and fun. You could tell that he is actually legitimately interested in the life of Sam Bankman-Fried, expensively interviewing his parents, his friends etc.
You cannot fake passion and enthusiasm and fun. It is a hugely entertaining read and insightful. Highly recommend.
ERIC
-
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- Why You Must Become a Photography Blogger
- Why Blog?
- Why You Must Self-Promote Yourself
- Create Substance, Not Content
- Photography Marketing and Branding 101
- How to Master Marketing in Photography
- 10 Tips How to Become a More Famous Photographer
Entrepreneurship Lifestyle
- Why Hustle?
- Why Save Money?
- Ascetic is Sexy
- Why You Must Become Self-Employed
- How to Push Yourself Beyond the Limit
- Is Location Independence Overrated?
Entrepreneurship Mindset
- How to Get Discovered
- Financial Independence
- Disregard Success or Failure; Always Attempt More!
- In Praise of Stubbornness
- Success is Personal Bravery
- Why You Must Become an Entrepreneur
- How to Brand and Market Yourself as a Photographer
- How to Conquer Haters
- How to Accumulate Capital
- Why Be Different?
- How to Master Marketing in Photography
- Don’t Play it Safe
- Why Blog?
- How to Be a More Productive Photographer
- How to Hustle
- True Productivity
- What Can Only You Do?
- Love Risk
- What is Success?
- Fill a Vacuum
- Think Big
- What is Your Dream in Life?
- 8 Blogging Productivity Tips
- Why Be Normal?
- How Much Suffering Are You Willing to Endure to Achieve Your Dreams?
Photography Entrepreneurship 101
- Don’t Sit Still!
- Bitcoin for Photographers
- Don’t Be Timid
- Why Start Your Own Photography Blog?
- Fill a Void
- 1,000 True Followers: How to Build Your Own Niche in Photography
- Photography Entrepreneurship 101: Why You Must Start Your Own Email Newsletter
- TURBO CREATION: Why a Maxed-Out MacBook Laptop is the Best Investment You Can Make for Photography Entrepreneurship
Life and Productivity Hacks
- My Ultimate Productivity and Life Hacks
- Life/Productivity Hack: Write (Type on a phone) While Walking on a Dynamic Treadmill
- ERIC KIM Life, Creativity, and Productivity Hacks
How to Make a Living from Your Passion
- Digital Nomad Photographer
- Build Your Own Instagram!
- How to Be More Ambitious
- Do It Your Way
- How to Measure Your Progress as a Photography Entrepreneur + Come Up With New Ideas
- How to Make a Living From Your Passion in Photography
Put a Dent in the Universe.
- Fear Disguised as Reason
- Distraction is the Enemy
- Innovate for the Sake of Innovating!
- Reality is Malleable!
- Stoic Entrepreneurship
- Against Self-Preservation
- The Purpose of Life is to Make New Stuff!
How to Succeed as an Entrepreneur
- You Have No Limits.
- Calculated Risk-Taking
- Invest in Yourself
- The Secret of Happiness: Shoot for the Moon!
- Moonshot Thinking
- Why We Should all Be Photography Entrepreneurs
- Memento Mori Entrepreneurship
- Why it is Better to Beg For Forgiveness than Ask For Permission
- How to Become a Digital Nomad
- Why You Must Own Your Own Platform
- First Principle Thinking for Photography Entrepreneurs
- How I Became a Digital Nomad
- Better to Beg For Forgiveness than Ask For Permission!
- Spurn Pleasing Others!
- Create Your Own Niche
- How to Gain More Exposure For Your Photography
- Intense Focus
- How to Conquer Your Fears as an Entrepreneur
- Define Yourself
- Let Dissatisfaction Drive You Forward!
- It Doesn’t Matter if Someone Else Has Done it Before!
- How to Succeed as a Photography Entrepreneur: Be Extremely Resourceful
- Open Source Business Model in Photography Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurship 101: Growth and Innovation Over Self-Preservation
- How to Create Value as a Photography Entrepreneur
- Why Become a Photography Entrepreneur?
- Why You Must Ignore Nay-Sayers to Succeed in Entrepreneurship, Business, and Life
The Modern Photographer: Tips, Strategies, and Tactics to Thrive as a Visual Artist in the Digital Age
Marketing, Branding, Entrepreneurship Principles For Success
MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER is your new philosophical and practical primer to succeed as a modern photographer in today’s digital world.
Business Mental Models
- How to Succeed as a Photography Entrepreneur: Be Extremely Resourceful
- Open Source Business Model in Photography Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurship 101: Growth and Innovation Over Self-Preservation
How to Monetize Your Photography
- Photography Entrepreneurship 101: INFLUENCE
- Should I Monetize My Passion for Photography?
- 10 Practical Photography Monetization Strategies: Pricing, Google SEO, & Entrepreneurship
- How to Make Money From Street Photography
Why Become a Photography Entrepreneur?
Take control of your own photographic destiny:
THE MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER
- CREATIVE CAPITALISM
- How to Monetize Your Photography
- 5 Practical Photography Career Tips and Advice
- 10x Thinking
- How to Hustle as a Photographer
- How to Become Your Own Master Marketer
- The ‘T’ Technique of Success
- Go Ahead and Sell Out
- What is Your Unique Voice?
- Why You Must Self-Promote Yourself
- What is Your Unique Angle as a Photographer?
- Photography Content Marketing 101
- Why You Must Become Your Own Publisher
- The Art of Cross-Pollination in Photography
Photography Entrepreneurship Articles
- Why You Shouldn’t Trust Your Pictures to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Flickr
- How to Make Money From Your Photography
- Photography SEO and Blogging: How to Become Number One on Google
- Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation
- Now is the Best Time to Be a Photographer
- PRODUCERISM
- What Is The Value of a Picture?
- Your Photographic Labor is Not Free
PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOPS 101
- Chapter 1. How to Make a Photography Blog
- Chapter 2. How to Price Yourself
- Chapter 3. How to Find Your Market
- Chapter 4. Why Teach Workshops?
- Chapter 5. How to Build Trust
- Chapter 6. How to Market Yourself
- Chapter 7: Why Should Someone Attend Your Workshop?
KEYS TO SUCCESS
- Why You Must Be a “Personality” in Order to Succeed
- THRIVE OR DIE.
- Impatience is a Virtue
- Create Your Own Category
- HOW TO DREAM BIG.
- Will Not or Cannot?
- Why Not?
- How to Think BIG
- How to Stay Ahead of the Curve
- How to Invest in Yourself
- The Two Camera Rule
- MEANINGFUL DIFFERENTIATION
- Advice For College Students
- How to Thrive in Uncertain Times
- CANNIBALIZE YOURSELF.
- DO AND GROW RICH
- Does Fear of Punishment Hold You Back?
- HOW TO GET MORE FOLLOWERS
- How to Innovate
- How to Build Your Own Empire
- YOU ARE ENTITLED TO HARD WORK.
- PICK YOURSELF.
- OWN YOUR PLATFORM
- 10 KEYS TO SUCCESS
Table of Contents
Learn how to make a living from your passion:
- Preface. BRAVE NEW WORLD OF PHOTOGRAPHY
- Chapter 1. How to Create Value
- Chapter 2. ZEN CAPITALISM
- Chapter 3. Scarcity
- Chapter 4. How to Brand Yourself
- Chapter 5. How to Build a True Following
- Chapter 6. The Blueprint to Success in Photography
- Chapter 7. HOW TO BE BOLD
- Chapter 8. How to Sell Out
- Chapter 9. GO AGAINST THE GRAIN
- Chapter 10. EXTREME ABUNDANCE
- Chapter 11. Photography Experience Economy
- Chapter 12. Why You Should Make Money for Your Photography
- Chapter 13. How to Become a Famous Photographer
Photography Business 101
How to Make Money with Photography
CAMERA MONEY USD by ANNETTE KIM - How to Charge More Money in Your Photography
- Why You Should Not Pursue Photography as Career
- Can Photography Make You Rich?
- How I Earn $200,000+ a Year From Photography
- How to earn $10,000 a month as a photographer
- Why you must be an expensive photographer
Photography Marketing 101
- Why Have More Followers?
- Why You Should Do Photography Work For Free
- How I Became an Internet Famous Photographer
- Photography Blogging Ideas
- Why You Should Promote Your Own Name
- How to Build a Following
- How to Stand Out as a Photographer.
- HOW TO GO VIRAL AS A PHOTOGRAPHER.
- How to Master Marketing
- How to Sell Yourself
How to Hustle.
- Entrepreneurial Advice to My 18 Year Old Self
- How to Become Insanely Productive.
- 5 Lessons From Hesiod on Hustling
Entrepreneurial Principles
- It is Better to Beg For Forgiveness Than Ask For Permission
- The Free Way to Become Rich
- JUST DO IT.
- 7 Steps: How to Make a Living From Your Passion
- How to Do What You Love for a Living
- How to Create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
- How to Fail Big
- How to Invest in Yourself
- How to Be Bold in Photography and Life
- Mission: Cover Your Rent and Food
- 1,000 True Fans
- The “10x Principle”: The Only Difference Between “Success” and “Failure”
- Make More Value Not Money
- We Live in a Photo Utopia
How to be a Full-time Photographer
- How to Make a Living From Photography
- The 3 Principles of Making Money With Photography
- Advice for Aspiring Full-Time Photographers
- Don’t Go Into Debt For Your Photography
- How to Brand Yourself as a Photographer
- Trust: The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed as a Photographer
Photography Blogging
- How to become rich from photography blogging
- How to Make a Living with Blogging
- 50 Blogging Tips For Beginners
- How to Start Your Own Photography Blog
- A Photographer’s Guide to SEO, Blogging, and Social Media
How to Teach Photography
- How to Become a Photography Teacher
- How to Teach a Street Photography Class
- Why I Teach Street Photography Workshops
Social Media
- Why I Deleted My Instagram
- The Social Media Blackbook for Photographers
- Why Do You Need More Likes or Followers?
- Instagram is Going to Be the Next Facebook
- Don’t Trust “Free” Photography Social Networks
How to Save Money
MONEY 101
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THINK LESS, WALK MORE.
A thought in modern day society: we think too much.
For example, some modern day ills include the fact that we wake up, we stay at home, work from home, never leave the apartment or the house all day, or even worse… We go to the office, stay in the office, don’t leave all day, eat lunch at our desk in front of our laptop or computer… even worse, if you’re hard-core you don’t leave the office for days weeks or even months… You just sleep in a beanbag next to your desk or in a sleeping bag under your desk.
Problems?
This is the big issue I’ve discovered:
I think what the modern day man or person strives to be is to become the ultimate productivity machine robot who doesn’t need anything. That somehow you could optimize yourself out of going outside, getting natural light by just popping some vitamin D tablets, don’t need to exercise, and if you exercise, the minimum amount of exercise necessary not to atrophy your body, Find no need of the sun, or no need to walk because it is “inefficient”.
in fact, I wonder if this whole bizarre trend of “running“, or “jogging“, is because people don’t think that walking is “effective”, or “efficient “. People are somehow trying to maximize their movement activity; they don’t think of walking as “exercise“, and somehow that it doesn’t “burn calories” (the calorie in, calorie out myth).
As a consequence, modern day man becomes strange. A shroud planned. Lacking natural light and melanin in their skin, lacking ability to make iContact with people in embodied reality, and prefer to not interact with any humans. Thus the trend towards mobile orders etc.
Think ancient Greece
A lot of people like to think about ancient hunter gather lifestyles whatever… I prefer to think about ancient Greece, ancient Sparta. Before money was invented, and you could only measure your wealth by how many cattle you owned. Or how many men you governed.
For example, in the Iliad, I think it was Nestor who told Achilles that king Agamemnon was the superior man, because he commanded more men.
What are we striving for and looking for?
I think a lot of us are dealing with some sort of modern day pain suffering and discontent and we’re not really sure what to do about it. I think this is why we seek out “therapist”, see psychiatrist, get prescribed some sort of generic medication, etc. In fact, Besides the extreme edge cases, I think medication should be avoided at all costs. I think when people are depressed, it is a physiological and physical depression. Not enough time outside walking, in the direct elements, in the direct sun, not enough exercise and lifting weights, over consumption of alcohol, caffeine, coffee, Drugs, marijuana etc. I don’t think anything is wrong more logically with marijuana… But I distrust anybody who consumes or takes or does marijuana on a daily basis. Marijuana does strange things to your mind.
Also, if you’re reliant on marijuana to fall asleep at night, once again… Not a good sign.
Back to ancient Sparta!
I think what we are having an issue with in modern day society is more of a moralistic and ethical one. The thought is we are born to be productive, and our self-worth and value is simply predicated on how productive we are, how much money we make, How much we increase our money number in our savings account, buying houses etc.
Therefore, anytime we are not actively doing that… we feel some sort of inner guilt, shame, and we lose respect for ourselves. We end up self-flagellation ourselves.
Don’t trust nobody on social media
Several things; first and foremost, any human being who uses Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc.… they’re hopped on a strange matrix simulation like dopamine machine. I think using social media and having notifications on your phone might actually be worse than gambling. At least gambling has to do more with money… social media has to do more with your self-respect, your self-esteem esteem.
“I’ve been awakened by an enlightened man’s dream… checking Instagram comments to crowd-source my self-esteem”— KANYE
Burn the boats!
Very simple. Just stop using social media, uninstall all of the apps from your phone, or just delete them.
For example, I think one of the most glorious moments of my life, one of the greatest things I have done in my life as a photographer and “influencer“, was deleting my Instagram in 2017. Why? Since then, I feel like I unhooked my brain from the matrix. I took the red pill. Anyone who still uses Instagram, Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, YouTube, listens to podcast, has Spotify, Netflix, etc. is still on the blue pill.
Why? The best way to have more interesting thoughts is via negativa— actively canceling out, or deleting, or getting rid of external stimuli in the spirit of books, blog post, media, Reddit, the news, etc. In fact the big problem in today’s world is that we are almost like in a human centipede living life of information use and media; one media outlet regurgitate and quotes the other one, which quotes the other one, which might’ve ultimately just been written by ChatGPT or some sort of AI bought. in fact I’ve been experimenting a lot with chatGPT4, the paid premium one, and what I’ve discovered is funny; even ChatGPT doesn’t know that it was written by ChatGPT.
For example, for fuzzies, I ChatGPT’d myself. I would open up ChatGPT for, the premium paid one, and asked simple things like “who is ERIC KIM“? ChatGPT with then do an effective summary and overview of me my life story in my life loss etc., and then I just copied and pasted the information, and literally published a blog post on what ChatGPT said. I then later a few days later, ask ChatGPT “ERIC KIM philosophy“, and then once again, it re-summarize things and actually linked back to my blog giving me a citations and footnotes, but the funny thing was… The citations and footnotes gave me were actually the blog post written by ChatGPT itself!
The thinker
To think is to sit on your butt and ruminate and think. No no no… Do you think is to walk. In fact maybe we should stop call it “thinking”, but just walking.
My personal thought is the noveau luxury is walking. If you have the privilege of having a 100% pedestrian lifestyle, 100% biped lifestyle, in which you’re just literally walking everywhere, without having to use the agency of a car, it is a sign that you are truly truly rich and wealthy. Secondly if you don’t always have to check your phone. Thirdly, if you could have all the notifications on your phone disabled.
How and why is walking so critical?
First without thinking about too much… Just think about this: if you walked 50 miles a day, I think 99.9% of your life cares concerns and worries would disappear. Especially if you do it in nature. With uneven surfaces, different grades and elevations, no two steps are alike.
When did the greatest things about being a nature, just going on a simple hike, is that sometimes it is deep, sometimes it is level, sometimes it is dirt, sometimes it is pavement, sometimes it is gravel, sometimes it is grass, etc. Having variation in the texture of the environment and The terrain is critical.
In modern day times, everything is flat. And everything is the same thing; typically just concrete.
I actually wonder and think, I wonder if a lot of the issues with modern day health and physiology has to do with the fact that everything is flat. I think the reason why we are bipeds is that as a iPad, we are very very very good at traversing uneven terrain. In fact, one could even argue that human who is upright and biped could better navigate rocky and mountainous terrain compared to a four-legged animal.
We got to stop calling it “hiking”
One of the biggest issues I’ve discovered about the whole “hiking” notion is that people think too much that it has to be done a certain way. We think that somehow we have to buy those silly hiking poles, buy a hat, buy some hiking boots at REI or whatever, and where all this expensive outdoor clothing.
Technically you could just do a barefoot, or… get some vibram five finger shoes, and just go on a fun walk!
Another weird thing I’ve discovered is we think we got to purchase the thing in order to somehow justify getting into a certain lifestyle. For example, we think we got to buy some sort of off-road four-wheel-drive car some sort of Subaru or jeep or sports utility SUV car in order to do “outdoorsy” stuff. This is silly. For a while Cindy and I work on hard-core hiking and camping stuff, and literally 99.99% maybe even 100% of the place we went to, we were able to simply do it in a simple four-door sedan, the Ford fusion which is just a normal sedan with a front wheel drive car.
I think this is the insidious nature of capitalism and consumerism; it makes you feel insecure and uncertain and unqualified, and we think that in order to do the thing that we want to do, we must buy the things in order to do it.
So now what?
I can’t speak for you or others. I think everyone has different talents, different skills, different desires.
First, I think having some sort of life dreams and goals is a good one. And striving with all your might to meet them and accomplish them and achieve them.
Then the next question is… then what? Should you just keep doing this into infinity? Ad infinitum?
Maybe not. Or maybe.
For example with weightlifting, a simple path is just to keep increasing your one rep max until the end of time. I don’t think this is a bad idea.
But also at the same time, you don’t need to be tied down to this either. Technically real life, reality is not metricated.
For example, if you think about the Elliott, Achilles, Hector, nobody could care less about “how much you can bench“. It was a simple binary; if you were in hand to hand battle with another fighter or warrior, would you kill him, or would he kill you? Who was the more courageous and superior and dominating force?
Also well interesting is that it seems that in the Elliott, nothing was really accidental or by chance. For example went to warriors would go to battle, one warrior would not “accidentally“, get killed by the other warrior. It really did come down to courage, skill, power, who was the better fighter.
Even the final bout between Achilles and Hector; Hector was essentially hoodwinked and tricked… He was deceived into thinking that he had his chariot tear, his trusted fighting buddy by his side to take on Achilles, because Hector was no dummy; he actually knew that Achilles was the superior fighter, and if you went head on with Achilles, he would lose. He was hoodwinked by one of the gods, who made an illusion and made themselves appear to be the friend of Hector.
Real life
So then the question is in real life, what do you seek to do, achieve, etc?
Heraclitus one said, “the greatest glory is to seek immortal glory amongst men, yet the majority of men stuff themselves like cattle.”
Who will not be remembered?
I don’t think that any modern day tech CEO will be remembered, nor cared for. Exceptions include CEOs who were also founders.
Also, I think people who will be forgotten include people who sell their companies. I don’t know… If you ultimately decide to sell your company, even for $10 billion… I think it is a signal that you care more about money than the thing you built. Why? As long as your business is making an income and you can somehow pay yourself a base salary, pay your rent, your utilities, your meat, etc.… What else you have for money?
This is where I give Mark Zuckerberg great credit. In the early days of Facebook he had so many offers to be bought out, but he stuck to his guns and refused. Highly intelligent.
Some people I think who compromised include Jack Dorsey of Twitter, I’m even starting to get a little bit suspicious of the cofounders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin; why did they end up leaving running Google and building the board of alphabet instead?
Perhaps one graceful exit is Jeff Bezos at Amazon; I think he’s put in his fair share and his duties; I think space travel was his ultimate dream, and if you read invent and wonder, I think he really did stay true to his principles and never compromise. Also, him publicly exposing his controversial affair in the public, was insanely bold Ballsy and respectful. He refused to be blackmailed. What a true mensch.
People who will be remembered
I think Elon Musk go be remembered forever. Why? Through pure force of will, might, and craziness… He was able to achieve the impossible. His thinking was only limited by physics, the laws of physics, first principles. Aristotle would have been proud of him.
Second, Kanye West. I really don’t think there is thinker innovator or artist quite as bold, innovative, and amazing as him. Even now, randomly in the middle of the night, this morning I thought about his “runaway“ song, and his perfect album my beautiful dark twisted fantasy. Actually if you think about all the albums and songs is ever produced, he was so ahead of the game, so innovative and unique, he really did care for creating true magic in his music.
Also Steve Dobbs. It seems that nowadays kids don’t really know who he is, but, for innovators and thinkers like myself and countless others, they will always sight Steve Jobs as an inspiration. Also, it seems that Steve Jobs died at the right time; he fulfilled all of his creative visions, Never compromised his beliefs, and I think he set the path for other creatives down the line.
What is the value of thinking?
The big question at hand is what is the value of thinking? Why think?
I think some people think, engage in thinking because they hope that it will lead to some sort of money making opportunity.
For me, I love thinking and sharing my thoughts because it is fun! To me, a life devoid of thoughts or interesting thoughts is not a life worth living.
The best way to live life
Very simple: only pursue and do that which you are genuinely interested in, ignore everything else.
Also, in terms of happiness and food… Maybe the single most critical thing to improve your happiness is increased the quality of your meat. Beef, beef liver beef heart beef intestines, lamb, grass fed ground beef etc. Wagyu ground beef.
In fact, I have a theory that a lot of the modern day issues that we got is that we’re under nourished. We aren’t eating enough red meat, enough beef or lamb. Pork is not meat, chicken and turkey is not meat.
Don’t let the feelings of others covering your behavior, in terms of how you eat or live
Another bizarre thing I’ve learned is the way that some people live their lives is they decide what to eat, what not to eat, how to live, how not to live, how to talk, what to say what not to say based simply on other people; they center themselves or don’t really see what’s on their mind because they’re afraid of:
“How do you think that makes me feel?”
But we don’t do the opposite; we don’t then tell that person the same. That “how does that make me feel?”
For example this nonsense behind gender pronouns. That you demand that I call you a certain pronoun, but what if I don’t feel comfortable calling you that pronoun?
It has to be faster, more seamless
One of the good reasons I think of building your own gym at home is that it reduces a lot of the friction. For example I generally love the gym and I think gym life is good, but here in LA I’ve been found any good gyms; they all suck. Therefore this motivated me to build my own gym, just in my Back yard, parking lot garage, in the back of my apartment.
I love this off the grid approach because literally… There is no friction. I don’t have to jump in the car and I don’t have to check in or scan my QR code or whatever whatever, I never have to wait for equipment etc.
If you have tight quarters, a simple solution is to just buy really really heavy kettle bells, 105 pounds and up. Or just buy a heavy sandbag, go to the playground and fill it up with sand, and just exercise with that picking it up and throwing it around. even with us experience weightlifters, I encourage buying the 400 pound sandbag on roguefitness.com or just get it on Amazon for cheap, fill it out with playground sand and experiment lifting that at home.
I actually think that the most critical factor is to exercise outside, in the direct sun. If it is cold, just layer up.
Why exercise outside? It is more fun, more lively, more uplifting. Also one of the good benefits of working out at home is when you need to stop by the bathroom to pee, you could just pull yourself another espresso! Good luck doing that at any gym.
In fact I have an idea; I think all gyms should have some sort of coffee bar or espresso bar. Not these bad energy drinks, which is just fake sugar added.
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Bitcoin Philosophy
“Greed is good” – Gordon Gecko
So it seems and appears that a lot of people seek getting really really rich, really really fast, in order to buy a bunch of stuff. For example, I think the general idea is that you want to make a ton of money, feel good, buy a Lamborghini or whatever… And then what?
Crypto, cryptocurrency, crypto technology to me is fascinating because it is new, sexy, unorthodox, and interesting.
It seems that a lot of people are interested in crypto, bitcoin etc because they want to get really rich. But the tricky thing with crypto is that essentially you are really rich on paper, but typically most crypto speculators never actually dilute or convert their crypto to US dollars, which means that crypto money is not liquid, it is locked.
Crypto is intrinsically optimistic?
Crypto to me is interesting because it is edgy, optimistic, radical, and bold. Also a bit reckless.
The general idea is that with crypto, people are seeking a new revolution, something to up and the old system. Definitely a lot of anarchy vibes here, and a lot of people who are typically distrustful of big organizations, big government, etc.
Honestly I have nothing against the government, I am very happy paying my taxes, I still consider myself a bay area, liberal, open minded, at heart. I love democracy, democratic thinking. Why? It was mostly about how I was raised, how I was supported. If I did not get all of these government aided resources, like going to UCLA as an undergraduate, I would have never been able to become who I am today.
Also, simple organizations that I am grateful for include the Boy Scouts, Boy Scouts of America. I am forever grateful to my troop, my troop leaders, who helped me become an Eagle Scout, and helped me become the citizen that I am today.
Growing up, I grew up thinking that conservatives, Republicans were the devil. Why were they so greedy, if they had so much money, why don’t they help more poor people or people in need?
Irregardless, I think the promise of crypto is a more brilliant future. A lot of people seem to disdain the volatility of crypto, but I love it. With traditional stocks, you will never see a 10X gain, a 100X gain, or even a 1000x gain. Also with crypto, you could win it all, or you could lose it all. My general strategy towards crypto and cryptocurrency speculation is this:
Only put money into crypto, assuming that it will go to zero.
Perhaps the best piece of advice that I got from Nassim Taleb in his antifragile book is the idea that to maximize your gains, better to put 90% of your money in maximally boring funds, like bonds, yield savings account etc.… it is pretty crazy even now Cindy and I have a bunch of money just locked in a simple 5% APR savings account, and we get close to $2000 a month in “passive income” interest. Then, what I did was I put 10% of our savings into crypto, maximally speculative bets, initially investing in digibyte and bitcoin, later swapping it all to chainlink, along the way getting some Dogecoin, later transferring it all 100% back into Bitcoin.
All of the gains were mental. And along the way more recently, I’ve been drawing out some money from bitcoin, $5000 USD here US$5000 there… Simply to cover up moving expenses to LA.
The zen of crypto?
Ultimately what I find interesting is that crypto, people who speculate in crypto all tend to live kind of a more monastic Zen monk lifestyle. Even this one guy that I met who first got me into chainlink, revealed to me that he was a crypto whale in chainlink; apparently he first put his life savings in it, maybe $10,000 USD or so when it was worth about $.70, and then he saw it rise all the way up to $50 USD.
It was funny, because I would just see him at the local LA fitness working out, thinking and meditating, we would engage in some lively conversation, and he just drove his mom‘s old Honda Accord, I think he later told me that he was moving to Puerto Rico or something in order to avoid taxes on his crypto or some other regulatory aspects. Apparently even Sam Bankman Fried moved his corporation to the Bahamas, in order to avoid US regulation.
So what do you want to do with your wealth?
So once you are worth $20 billion, or $150 billion or whatever … then what?
Ironically the best use of money is simply peace of mind. That means money is not really a tool or a mechanism to buy a bunch of stuff that you like, but rather, being able to live a more zen, tranquil, more focused life.
For example, I think the reason why people are so addicted to email is that people are always desiring new “opportunities”, it is predicated on the fact that somehow other people will give you an afford you new opportunities and also, does predicated on the fact that somehow new opportunities will rise in which other people give you money.
But… assuming that no human being who messages you in your email inbox will give you money… would you still be interested in working with them?
For myself personally, I have close to zero interest in money. I am more interested in new opportunities, fun, new novel experiences. The things that I am proud of, or interested in, or grateful for is all of the cool interesting and sexy opportunities that I’ve had and done. Some of the people that I met, etc.
But ultimately, is there a human being more interesting than you?
Future trends
I’m currently reading the book “Going Infinite” by Michael Lewis, which chronicles is the life of Sam Bankman Fried and FTX and I find it insanely fascinating read. It seems that the same guy isn’t really the super evil guy that a lot of people in the media make him to be; the kid seems to be like a prodigy genius, mathematical minded, who really didn’t care for money or wealth. My personal theory is that he got suckered too much into this utilitarian “effective altruism“, concept… that he misused customer funds in order to “maximize“ his abilities for effective altruism.
I think effective altruism is a bad idea. Why? First of all, I think the general idea of altruism is bad; I think it puts other people in an inferior position, which I personally find is disrespectful. I think a better thing to do instead is on a day-to-day basis, instead of donating money to charities or whatever, to help empower other human beings on a one-to-one basis.
A simple thing; whenever I go to the park with Sen, and I see all these kids running around, who don’t really seem like they get much attention or love from their parents, I try to give them a little bit of that love and attention by talking to them, entertaining them etc. Perhaps this is a more effective way to “change the world“, than anything else.
The future of crypto?
Try to think about things on a 30 year basis. That means, the simple question; in 30 years, are people going to be using crypto more or less? Or, in 30 years, is the price of bitcoin going to go up or down? It seems pretty obvious that it will go up.
Also, the notion of a “digital wallet”. The general idea is that for the future, we ain’t gonna use cash money anymore. Why? I see more and more restaurants in institutions not except paper cash money. Why not? Because it is difficult to track, and I think there are also issues with employees at restaurants stealing money it etc. Even at my mom‘s old sushi restaurant where she worked at for a long time, she later found out that one of the head managers, a guy that we thought was a super good guy… Was secretly stealing money the whole time.
I think into the future, we will see less and less of “under the table“ payments; why? Because it is not trackable.
What else?
Some personal thoughts:
First, I don’t really like Ethereum. Why? It is kind of like android; maybe it is the better technology, but it isn’t sexy, only nerds know about it and use it, it ain’t mainstream and sexy like bitcoin. Bitcoin is like Apple, having the newest iPhone, iPhone Pro etc.… Ethereum is more like android, having an ugly Google pixel or some sort of generic Samsung smartphone.
Another analogy, bitcoin is like having the Lamborghini Countach, with the scissor doors, whereas Ethereum is like having the Toyota Corolla?
Altcoins?
Don’t trust old coins, or alternative coins. Why? Everyone just wants to become the next bitcoin, but ultimately… There is too much meme culture behind alt coins, like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.
I am very dubious that the price of these Altcoins will ever go up; it seems that a lot of people in the crypto world simply over hype certain crypto technologies and coins, in order to pump it up, sell it, and make money.
Chainlink
Besides bitcoin, only other crypto I find interesting is chainlink. I’ve read all the white papers, and been following the chainlink blog for a long time. Currently the only reason that I’m still committed to bitcoin is that my gut feeling is that even though chain-link is really great, the issue is that it is going to be difficult for it to become mainstream.
First and foremost, it is difficult to explain what it is. The technology is good and great, but I don’t think the general market will understand it.
Also, the fact that there was a chainlink version two is not a good sign. Anything with a version two is probably a bad sign; same thing with Ethereum.
Also, the logo in blue is not very attractive. And the name isn’t that catchy.
Now what?
I recommend reading going infinite by Michael Lewis, it is an insanely fascinating read, if you’re interested at all about financial markets, how it is all gamed by bots etc. My first revelation reading Michael Lewis was flash boys… Learning the truth behind these hidden high frequency trading firms.
And also, I think the sign of good writer, like Michael Lewis is at the Rita’s fun entertaining and also insightful. It seems that the best way to kill two birds with one stone is simple; make it both entertaining to read, and also interesting knowledge.
Think more, walk more
My simple suggestions on living a better life:
- Walk 50 miles a day
- Maximize your direct sunlight UV exposure radiation
- Just build a simple home gym: Titan.fitness equipment seems fine. Ideally work out outside in the direct sun, like an ancient spartan would do.
- Start blogging! bluehost.com and install WordPress.org. If you’re more nerdy you could also set up WordPress with lightsail— I did this for erickimphilosophy.com and also erickimfitness.com
Now what?
The world is yours! No drugs, no alcohol, no weed… just joy, bright light, weight lifting and exercise, walks in nature .. we the new zen stoics!
EK
Start Here
Some good freebies:
- Ultimate beginners guide to street photography PDF
- Street portrait manual
- 100 lessons from the masters of street photography
Forward the thoughts
If you feel like you even got one fun thought here… feel free to forward this to a friend!
-
BARBELLS & BITCOIN.
Either have a full manual transmission car, five speed or six speed manual shifting transmission, or, or have a fully automated self driving car, or some sort of minimalistic automatic car.
Also with design aesthetics, I really really really hate automatic shifting knobs and cars. Aesthetically it is so ugly and unnecessary. Good to look at the design of Hyundai, Genesis, Acura and Honda which has gotten rid of the silly automatic shifting stock, and instead, turned it all into buttons.
“Get rid of the stalks!” – Elon Musk
I really think that Elon Musk is like Steve Jobs 4.0. By comparison he makes Steve Jobs look unambitious.
Why Elon Musk? I think what people don’t understand or appreciate is how obsessed Elon Musk is with design, design thinking, design principles. For example, his obsession with designing a Tesla without any steering wheel, shifting mechanisms, stocks, etc. In fact, Elon Musk is almost like an extreme minimalist.
What I personally love about Tesla and Tesla cars is the Spartan luxury, extreme minimalism. For example, I still marvel at the Tesla model 3; first, I’m just so happy and excited and proud and amazed that Elon Musk pulled it off. I remember before it was put into production and before I saw any on the streets… it was just a rabbit hole fantasy. Now it is live!
What I find so insanely innovative about the Tesla model 3 is the extreme simplicity, the extreme minimalism. To make the dashboard so sublimely simple is a design masterpiece.
Personally, I really dislike the Tesla model Y; my general thought is that any sort of crossover vehicle, or even sports utility vehicle is some sort of a design compromise. Even the Tesla model X is almost like a Tesla model S on steroids.
Why is it so difficult to minimize?
I think the reason why it is so difficult to minimize is that there seems to be some sort of trend or market desire for their to be new features, new products, new additions to motivate people to buy something. But, from a zen capitalism perspective, perhaps this is not a good idea.
Why? I’m more effective way to think about things is figuring out what to get rid of, what to reduce, what to delete. For example, let us never forget the pure genius of Steve Jobs getting rid of the keyboard on the smartphone, and also getting rid of all these silly ugly ports. If it wasn’t for Steve Jobs and his insane design vision, we wouldn’t have the beautiful minimalistic smart phone that we have today.
Would it have eventually happened or not?
I think a lot of people think about technology and think that it is all inevitable… given enough time resources and people… these things will magically get invented anyways. I don’t think this is actually the case. You actually need a few insane individuals to bring these things into fruition.
Once again, read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson and also Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. You find that both these individuals have an insanely epic and grand life mission… is what drives them.
Idea:
Walter Isaacson should write a book or a biography on Kanye West?
Other things you can barbell in life
- 90% of your savings and money in boring bonds, high yield interest CD’s or high yield savings account (5%!) and 10% in insanely speculative crypto (imagine losing it all). Best advice I got from NASSIM TALEB in ANTIFRAGILE.
- Often, 90% of your annoyances in life come from 10% of the people in your life. Get rid of these 10%.
- 90% of your joy and happiness and life come from 10% of the things. Try to determine and ascertain what this 10% is.
How to think better:
- ZEN OF ERIC BOT
- ERIC KIM BOT: For photo
- Bitcoin Babe: speculate in crypto
Have fun with EK!
Super fun workshops in the pipeline:
- INTRODUCTION TO STOICISM WORKSHOP: Downtown LA, DECEMBER 2nd, 2023
- DOWNTOWN CULVER CITY FAMILY STREET PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP, DECEMBER 16, 2023
2024
- CONQUER CONFIDENCE ONLINE WORKSHOP: Jan 27, 2024
- March 2nd: ERIC KIM CREATIVE AI & PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP (New!)— Culver City, LA
- April 20th, 2024: SF ZEN PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP – Now Live!
HAPTIC
What is EK up to?
So I just finished the book going infinite by Michael Lewis on the rise and fall of Sam Bankman Fried and FTX. Super fun and fascinating read. My personal suggestion is even if you have a tiny interest in crypto, bitcoin or whatever… It is definitely worth a read.
A quick summary is that Sam isn’t the evil villain that everyone wants him to be. He is almost like an uber genius autistic mathematical servant, who seems to just lack common sense.
Also on a positive note, I think the great upside to consider here is that if bitcoin was able to bounce back after the fall of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried… a very bright future ahead of us in crypto. My personal price projection is I am quite certain that bitcoin will bounce back to at least $65,000 a bitcoin by next year. Therefore if you want a quick 2X profit, seems like a fun speculation. and no no no, don’t bet your house on it. Once again our financial thinking is simple:
Never put more than 10% of your life savings into anything. Irregardless of how good.
Also for funsies, a fun little essay I’ve written on the philosophy of crypto:
The Philosophy of Crypto
“Greed is good” – Gordon Gecko
So it seems and appears that a lot of people seek getting really really rich, really really fast, in order to buy a bunch of stuff. For example, I think the general idea is that you want to make a ton of money, feel good, buy a Lamborghini or whatever… And then what?
Crypto, cryptocurrency, crypto technology to me is fascinating because it is new, sexy, unorthodox, and interesting.
It seems that a lot of people are interested in crypto, bitcoin etc because they want to get really rich. But the tricky thing with crypto is that essentially you are really rich on paper, but typically most crypto speculators never actually dilute or convert their crypto to US dollars, which means that crypto money is not liquid, it is locked.
Crypto is intrinsically optimistic?
Crypto to me is interesting because it is edgy, optimistic, radical, and bold. Also a bit reckless.
The general idea is that with crypto, people are seeking a new revolution, something to up and the old system. Definitely a lot of anarchy vibes here, and a lot of people who are typically distrustful of big organizations, big government, etc.
Honestly I have nothing against the government, I am very happy paying my taxes, I still consider myself a bay area, liberal, open minded, at heart. I love democracy, democratic thinking. Why? It was mostly about how I was raised, how I was supported. If I did not get all of these government aided resources, like going to UCLA as an undergraduate, I would have never been able to become who I am today.
Also, simple organizations that I am grateful for include the Boy Scouts, Boy Scouts of America. I am forever grateful to my troop, my troop leaders, who helped me become an Eagle Scout, and helped me become the citizen that I am today.
Growing up, I grew up thinking that conservatives, Republicans were the devil. Why were they so greedy, if they had so much money, why don’t they help more poor people or people in need?
Irregardless, I think the promise of crypto is a more brilliant future. A lot of people seem to disdain the volatility of crypto, but I love it. With traditional stocks, you will never see a 10X gain, a 100X gain, or even a 1000x gain. Also with crypto, you could win it all, or you could lose it all. My general strategy towards crypto and cryptocurrency speculation is this:
Only put money into crypto, assuming that it will go to zero.
Perhaps the best piece of advice that I got from Nassim Taleb in his antifragile book is the idea that to maximize your gains, better to put 90% of your money in maximally boring funds, like bonds, yield savings account etc.… it is pretty crazy even now Cindy and I have a bunch of money just locked in a simple 5% APR savings account, and we get close to $2000 a month in “passive income” interest. Then, what I did was I put 10% of our savings into crypto, maximally speculative bets, initially investing in digibyte and bitcoin, later swapping it all to chainlink, along the way getting some Dogecoin, later transferring it all 100% back into Bitcoin.
All of the gains were mental. And along the way more recently, I’ve been drawing out some money from bitcoin, $5000 USD here US$5000 there… Simply to cover up moving expenses to LA.
The zen of crypto?
Ultimately what I find interesting is that crypto, people who speculate in crypto all tend to live kind of a more monastic Zen monk lifestyle. Even this one guy that I met who first got me into chainlink, revealed to me that he was a crypto whale in chainlink; apparently he first put his life savings in it, maybe $10,000 USD or so when it was worth about $.70, and then he saw it rise all the way up to $50 USD.
It was funny, because I would just see him at the local LA fitness working out, thinking and meditating, we would engage in some lively conversation, and he just drove his mom‘s old Honda Accord, I think he later told me that he was moving to Puerto Rico or something in order to avoid taxes on his crypto or some other regulatory aspects. Apparently even Sam Bankman Fried moved his corporation to the Bahamas, in order to avoid US regulation.
So what do you want to do with your wealth?
So once you are worth $20 billion, or $150 billion or whatever … then what?
Ironically the best use of money is simply peace of mind. That means money is not really a tool or a mechanism to buy a bunch of stuff that you like, but rather, being able to live a more zen, tranquil, more focused life.
For example, I think the reason why people are so addicted to email is that people are always desiring new “opportunities”, it is predicated on the fact that somehow other people will give you an afford you new opportunities and also, does predicated on the fact that somehow new opportunities will rise in which other people give you money.
But… assuming that no human being who messages you in your email inbox will give you money… would you still be interested in working with them?
For myself personally, I have close to zero interest in money. I am more interested in new opportunities, fun, new novel experiences. The things that I am proud of, or interested in, or grateful for is all of the cool interesting and sexy opportunities that I’ve had and done. Some of the people that I met, etc.
But ultimately, is there a human being more interesting than you?
Future trends
I’m currently reading the book “Going Infinite” by Michael Lewis, which chronicles is the life of Sam Bankman Fried and FTX and I find it insanely fascinating read. It seems that the same guy isn’t really the super evil guy that a lot of people in the media make him to be; the kid seems to be like a prodigy genius, mathematical minded, who really didn’t care for money or wealth. My personal theory is that he got suckered too much into this utilitarian “effective altruism“, concept… that he misused customer funds in order to “maximize“ his abilities for effective altruism.
I think effective altruism is a bad idea. Why? First of all, I think the general idea of altruism is bad; I think it puts other people in an inferior position, which I personally find is disrespectful. I think a better thing to do instead is on a day-to-day basis, instead of donating money to charities or whatever, to help empower other human beings on a one-to-one basis.
A simple thing; whenever I go to the park with Sen, and I see all these kids running around, who don’t really seem like they get much attention or love from their parents, I try to give them a little bit of that love and attention by talking to them, entertaining them etc. Perhaps this is a more effective way to “change the world“, than anything else.
The future of crypto?
Try to think about things on a 30 year basis. That means, the simple question; in 30 years, are people going to be using crypto more or less? Or, in 30 years, is the price of bitcoin going to go up or down? It seems pretty obvious that it will go up.
Also, the notion of a “digital wallet”. The general idea is that for the future, we ain’t gonna use cash money anymore. Why? I see more and more restaurants in institutions not except paper cash money. Why not? Because it is difficult to track, and I think there are also issues with employees at restaurants stealing money it etc. Even at my mom‘s old sushi restaurant where she worked at for a long time, she later found out that one of the head managers, a guy that we thought was a super good guy… Was secretly stealing money the whole time.
I think into the future, we will see less and less of “under the table“ payments; why? Because it is not trackable.
What else?
Some personal thoughts:
First, I don’t really like Ethereum. Why? It is kind of like android; maybe it is the better technology, but it isn’t sexy, only nerds know about it and use it, it ain’t mainstream and sexy like bitcoin. Bitcoin is like Apple, having the newest iPhone, iPhone Pro etc.… Ethereum is more like android, having an ugly Google pixel or some sort of generic Samsung smartphone.
Another analogy, bitcoin is like having the Lamborghini Countach, with the scissor doors, whereas Ethereum is like having the Toyota Corolla?
Altcoins?
Don’t trust old coins, or alternative coins. Why? Everyone just wants to become the next bitcoin, but ultimately… There is too much meme culture behind alt coins, like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.
I am very dubious that the price of these Altcoins will ever go up; it seems that a lot of people in the crypto world simply over hype certain crypto technologies and coins, in order to pump it up, sell it, and make money.
Chainlink
Besides bitcoin, only other crypto I find interesting is chainlink. I’ve read all the white papers, and been following the chainlink blog for a long time. Currently the only reason that I’m still committed to bitcoin is that my gut feeling is that even though chain-link is really great, the issue is that it is going to be difficult for it to become mainstream.
First and foremost, it is difficult to explain what it is. The technology is good and great, but I don’t think the general market will understand it.
Also, the fact that there was a chainlink version two is not a good sign. Anything with a version two is probably a bad sign; same thing with Ethereum.
Also, the logo in blue is not very attractive. And the name isn’t that catchy.
Now what?
I recommend reading going infinite by Michael Lewis, it is an insanely fascinating read, if you’re interested at all about financial markets, how it is all gamed by bots etc. My first revelation reading Michael Lewis was flash boys… Learning the truth behind these hidden high frequency trading firms.
And also, I think the sign of good writer, like Michael Lewis is at the Rita’s fun entertaining and also insightful. It seems that the best way to kill two birds with one stone is simple; make it both entertaining to read, and also interesting knowledge.
Think more, walk more
My simple suggestions on living a better life:
- Walk 50 miles a day
- Maximize your direct sunlight UV exposure radiation
- Just build a simple home gym: Titan.fitness equipment seems fine. Ideally work out outside in the direct sun, like an ancient spartan would do.
- Start blogging! bluehost.com and install WordPress.org. If you’re more nerdy you could also set up WordPress with lightsail— I did this for erickimphilosophy.com and also erickimfitness.com
Now what?
The world is yours! No drugs, no alcohol, no weed… just joy, bright light, weight lifting and exercise, walks in nature .. we the new zen stoics!
EK
Start Here
Some good freebies:
- Ultimate beginners guide to street photography PDF
- Street portrait manual
- 100 lessons from the masters of street photography
Forward the thoughts
If you feel like you even got one fun thought here… feel free to forward this to a friend!
-
The Philosophy of Crypto
“Greed is good” – Gordon Gecko
So it seems and appears that a lot of people seek getting really really rich, really really fast, in order to buy a bunch of stuff. For example, I think the general idea is that you want to make a ton of money, feel good, buy a Lamborghini or whatever… And then what?
Crypto, cryptocurrency, crypto technology to me is fascinating because it is new, sexy, unorthodox, and interesting.
It seems that a lot of people are interested in crypto, bitcoin etc because they want to get really rich. But the tricky thing with crypto is that essentially you are really rich on paper, but typically most crypto speculators never actually dilute or convert their crypto to US dollars, which means that crypto money is not liquid, it is locked.
Crypto is intrinsically optimistic?
Crypto to me is interesting because it is edgy, optimistic, radical, and bold. Also a bit reckless.
The general idea is that with crypto, people are seeking a new revolution, something to up and the old system. Definitely a lot of anarchy vibes here, and a lot of people who are typically distrustful of big organizations, big government, etc.
Honestly I have nothing against the government, I am very happy paying my taxes, I still consider myself a bay area, liberal, open minded, at heart. I love democracy, democratic thinking. Why? It was mostly about how I was raised, how I was supported. If I did not get all of these government aided resources, like going to UCLA as an undergraduate, I would have never been able to become who I am today.
Also, simple organizations that I am grateful for include the Boy Scouts, Boy Scouts of America. I am forever grateful to my troop, my troop leaders, who helped me become an Eagle Scout, and helped me become the citizen that I am today.
Growing up, I grew up thinking that conservatives, Republicans were the devil. Why were they so greedy, if they had so much money, why don’t they help more poor people or people in need?
Irregardless, I think the promise of crypto is a more brilliant future. A lot of people seem to disdain the volatility of crypto, but I love it. With traditional stocks, you will never see a 10X gain, a 100X gain, or even a 1000x gain. Also with crypto, you could win it all, or you could lose it all. My general strategy towards crypto and cryptocurrency speculation is this:
Only put money into crypto, assuming that it will go to zero.
Perhaps the best piece of advice that I got from Nassim Taleb in his antifragile book is the idea that to maximize your gains, better to put 90% of your money in maximally boring funds, like bonds, yield savings account etc.… it is pretty crazy even now Cindy and I have a bunch of money just locked in a simple 5% APR savings account, and we get close to $2000 a month in “passive income” interest. Then, what I did was I put 10% of our savings into crypto, maximally speculative bets, initially investing in digibyte and bitcoin, later swapping it all to chainlink, along the way getting some Dogecoin, later transferring it all 100% back into Bitcoin.
All of the gains were mental. And along the way more recently, I’ve been drawing out some money from bitcoin, $5000 USD here US$5000 there… Simply to cover up moving expenses to LA.
The zen of crypto?
Ultimately what I find interesting is that crypto, people who speculate in crypto all tend to live kind of a more monastic Zen monk lifestyle. Even this one guy that I met who first got me into chainlink, revealed to me that he was a crypto whale in chainlink; apparently he first put his life savings in it, maybe $10,000 USD or so when it was worth about $.70, and then he saw it rise all the way up to $50 USD. It was funny, because I would just see him at the local LA fitness working out, thinking and meditating, we engage in some lively conversation, and he just drove his mom‘s old Honda Accord, I think he later told me that he was moving to Puerto Rico or something in order to avoid taxes on his crypto or some other regulatory aspects. Apparently even Sam Bankman Fried moved his corporation to the Bahamas, in order to avoid US regulation.
So what do you want to do with your wealth?
So once you are worth $20 billion, or $150 billion or whatever … then what?
Ironically the best use of money is simply peace of mind. That means money is not really a tool or a mechanism to buy a bunch of stuff that you like, but rather, being able to live a more zen, tranquil, more focused life.
For example, I think the reason why people are so addicted to email is that people are always desiring new “opportunities”, it is predicated on the fact that somehow other people will give you an afford you new opportunities and also, does predicated on the fact that somehow new opportunities will rise in which other people give you money.
But… assuming that no human being who messages you in your email inbox will give you money… would you still be interested in working with them?
For myself personally, I have close to zero interest in money. I am more interested in new opportunities, fun, new novel experiences. The things that I am proud of, or interested in, or grateful for is all of the cool interesting and sexy opportunities that I’ve had and done. Some of the people that I met, etc.
But ultimately, is there a human being more interesting than you?
Future trends
I’m currently reading the book “Going Infinite” by Michael Lewis, which chronicles is the life of Sam Bankman Fried and FTX and I find it insanely fascinating read. It seems that the same guy isn’t really the super evil guy that a lot of people in the media make him to be; the kid seems to be like a prodigy genius, mathematical minded, who really didn’t care for money or wealth. My personal theory is that he got suckered too much into this utilitarian “effective altruism“, concept… that he misused customer funds in order to “maximize“ his abilities for effective altruism.
I think effective altruism is a bad idea. Why? First of all, I think the general idea of altruism is bad; I think it puts other people in an inferior position, which I personally find is disrespectful. I think a better thing to do instead is on a day-to-day basis, instead of donating money to charities or whatever, to help empower other human beings on a one-to-one basis.
A simple thing; whenever I go to the park with Sen, and I see all these kids running around, who don’t really seem like they get much attention or love from their parents, I try to give them a little bit of that love and attention by talking to them, entertaining them etc. Perhaps this is a more effective way to “change the world“, than anything else.
The future of crypto?
Try to think about things on a 30 year basis. That means, the simple question; in 30 years, are people going to be using crypto more or less? Or, in 30 years, is the price of bitcoin going to go up or down? It seems pretty obvious that it will go up.
Also, the notion of a “digital wallet”. The general idea is that for the future, we ain’t gonna use cash money anymore. Why? I see more and more restaurants in institutions not except paper cash money. Why not? Because it is difficult to track, and I think there are also issues with employees at restaurants stealing money it etc. Even at my mom‘s old sushi restaurant where she worked at for a long time, she later found out that one of the head managers, a guy that we thought was a super good guy… Was secretly stealing money the whole time.
I think into the future, we will see less and less of “under the table“ payments; why? Because it is not trackable.
What else?
Some personal thoughts:
First, I don’t really like Ethereum. Why? It is kind of like android; maybe it is the better technology, but it isn’t sexy, only nerds know about it and use it, it ain’t mainstream and sexy like bitcoin. Bitcoin is like Apple, having the newest iPhone, iPhone Pro etc.… Ethereum is more like android, having an ugly Google pixel or some sort of generic Samsung smartphone.
Another analogy, bitcoin is like having the Lamborghini Countach, with the scissor doors, whereas Ethereum is like having the Toyota Corolla?
Altcoins?
Don’t trust old coins, or alternative coins. Why? Everyone just wants to become the next bitcoin, but ultimately… There is too much meme culture behind alt coins, like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.
I am very dubious that the price of these Altcoins will ever go up; it seems that a lot of people in the crypto world simply over hype certain crypto technologies and coins, in order to pump it up, sell it, and make money.
Chainlink
Besides bitcoin, only other crypto I find interesting is chain-link. I’ve read all the white papers, and been following the chain-link blog for a long time. Currently the only reason that I’m still committed to bitcoin is that my gut feeling is that even though chain-link is really great, the issue is that it is going to be difficult for it to become mainstream.
First and foremost, it is difficult to explain what it is. The technology is good and great, but I don’t think the general market will understand it.
Also, the fact that there was a chain-link version two is not a good sign. Anything with a version two is probably a bad sign; same thing with Ethereum.
Also, the logo in blue is not very attractive. And the name isn’t that catchy.
-
Bitcoin Art
-
Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography
FREE OPEN SOURCE PDF DOWNLOAD >
Dear friend,
If you’re new to street photography and want a definitive guide and primer to master the fundamentals of street photography, Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography is for you.
Distilled Wisdom in Street Photography
Why did I write Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography when I’ve already written over 3,000 blog posts on street photography and over 20 eBooks on street photography?
For me, it was a chance for me to respire my “beginner’s mind” in street photography– asking myself: “If I started street photography all over again, what advice would I give myself?”
Like all of us, I deal with difficulty staying inspired and motivated in street photography. In writing this book, I was able to “take it back to basics”, and ask myself the fundamental questions:
- Why is street photography so enjoyable?
- What is the best equipment for street photography?
- How do I get closer and more intimate with my subjects, and hesitate less?
Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography is all killer, no filler. In these 165 pages of practical and philosophical knowledge, you will learn how to master the fundamentals of street photography: all the way from the ideal camera equipment and technical settings for street photography, to conquering your fears and creating more beautiful and dynamic pictures of everyday life.
This book is also unique because it isn’t just a manual on how to shoot street photography — it is also part photobook which includes the best photos from my “Suits” and “Only in America” series.
Empower Yourself by Mastering the Fundamentals of Street Photography
In Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography you will learn:
- What is best camera for street photography?
- Practical tips and guidance how to start shooting street photography
- Overcoming hesitation and fear to capture “the decisive moment”
- Confidently interacting and engaging with your subjects
- Capture authentic moments in the streets, either with or without permission
- Boldly get closer in street photography to capture the soul of your subject
- Starting your own street photography project that is personally-meaningful to you
- Discover your own personal aesthetic and style in street photography
- Harnessing the power of the flash to make street photographs that pop
- Never running out of inspiration in street photography
If I’m not a beginner street photographer, is this book for me?
If you’re an intermediate-advanced street photographer, and have already mastered the fundamentals of street photography, I think you can still profit from Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography.
In Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography, we also cover more intermediate-advanced street photography concepts such as:
- Discovering your own unique style and voice in street photography
- Staying true and authentic to your own photographic vision
- Shooting with a flash in street photography
- Is street photography subjective or objective? Making social commentary through your photos.
- Building the boldness to engage with your subjects, and to hesitate less
- Crafting dynamic multi-layered and multi-subject street photographs
- Misconceptions about “The Decisive Moment”
- Staying inspired, and staying fresh in street photography
- Unorthodox techniques and places you can shoot street photography
- The Cherry on Top: What differentiates a mediocre and great street photograph?
Inspirational Assignments to Push You Outside of Your Comfort Zone
Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography will help push you outside of your comfort zone with 37 empowering chapters, and 12 of the best street photography assignments to hone your skills.
This book is like your own personal street photography workshop, that is always with you — in your phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop.
Freedom and Flexibility of Open Source: This Book Belongs to You
Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography is non-DRM (Digital Rights Management).
You have the freedom to copy the book and transfer it to as many devices as you desire, with no limit.
Also, you are more than free to share the book with friends, family, or loved ones. Once you purchase the book, you own it, and you can remix it, share it, or distribute/store it however you desire.
Buy Books, Not Gear
Even if you are an intermediate-advanced street photographer, Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography will help re-spark your passion for street photography, and help you reflect again on the fundamentals of street photography. This book will refresh your perspective on street photography, and help return you to your “beginner’s mind”, when you were fresh, excited, and infinitely curious about street photography.
Become the Best Street Photographer You Can Be
Ultimately street photography is up to you. You decide how to shoot street photography for yourself, what style suits you, and what your own artistic vision is in street photography.
Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Street Photography will be a guide, and give you practical tips and suggestions to point you in the right direction.
Don’t miss your opportunity to gain all of the practical wisdom, knowledge, and information to take your street photography to the next level.
BE BOLD,
ERIC & CINDY
Lisbon, 2018
Table of Contents
The Joy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Start Shooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Authenticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Fear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Assignment 1: 10 No Challenge . . . . . 10
Assignment 2: Shoot Yourself . . . . . . 12
Assignment 3: Admit Your Fears . . . . . 14
Engage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Assignment 4: Work the Scene . . . . . 18
Get Close . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Assignment 5: Diagonal . . . . . . . . 32
Always Be Prepared . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Assignment 6: Take your camera for a walk 36
Aesthetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Set it and Forget It! . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Surrealism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Assignment 7: Don’t make eye contact . . 58
Tell Lies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Work the Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Assignment 8: Shoot 25% More . . . . . 64
Assignment 9: Overlay . . . . . . . . 66
Forbidden Places . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Assignment 10: Elevator . . . . . . . . 70
Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Mystery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Juxtaposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Hands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Emotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Dynamic Composition . . . . . . . . . . 92
The Cherry on Top . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Assignment 11: Love . . . . . . . . . 96
Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Dramatic Light . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Social Commentary . . . . . . . . . . 108
Urban Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Decisive Moments . . . . . . . . . . .130
Eyes Are the Windows to the Soul . . . . .132
Assignment 12: Eye Contact. . . . . . .134
Lenses & Focal Length . . . . . . . . . .136
Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138
Don’t Chimp . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
LCD vs Viewfinder . . . . . . . . . . 142
Editing (Select) Your Best Photos. . . . . 144
Post-Processing . . . . . . . . . . . 146
How to Stay Inspired . . . . . . . . . 148
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150
Learn More . . . . . . . . . . . . . .152