ERIC KIM

I find this important.

Because I love it!

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Beautiful body, beautiful mind:

I would not trust a skinny fat guy philosophizing about beauty, the human soul, or the body.

Why is this important? The body is real, the mind is not.

Also, what manifests as our “mind“, is simply an offshoot of our body.

The reason why this is such an important and radical idea is this: all of this talk about mental therapy, mental health, etc., is misguided. The focus should be bodily health, and physical health, not mental.

Or another words, if your bodily health is great, your mental health will also be great.

Besides myself, I don’t really know anybody who has good mental health, nor good physical health. Why is this? My theory is that it seems like other guys are too dependent on steroids, drugs, alcohol, marijuana, or other unnatural things, protein powder, creatine, pre-workout powder, etc.

Also, the problem is that the typical American is far too addicted to media, spends too much time indoors, and is typically an office slave.

This is where philosophy is important; what is the meaning of a beautiful body, or a beautiful soul?

The reason I cannot trust anybody as role models is that I don’t know whether they have taken steroids, or “cheated” or not. I can only trust myself in my own experiences. Because I cannot lie to myself.

For example, my successful 540 pound deadlift, at a body weight of around 160-165 pounds, and at a height of around 5 foot 10 to 5 foot 11. Also, doing it all fasted, not eating breakfast or lunch. Also, Not using protein powder, creatine, pre-workout powder, steroids, drugs, human growth hormone, etc. in my strength building. Just plain old black coffee, and meat.

I’m not gonna talk too much about female matters, because I am a man. I feel uneasy philosophizing too much about woman beauty, if I’m not a woman.

As a man, I could comment about male aesthetics, and male beauty. My first thought is what do we really seek as men? I think it is to become more sexy. Not necessarily to become more buff, or bigger.

For example, when it comes to women, it seems most women prefer more of the Brad Pitt physique in fight club, than the modern day bodybuilder look. In fact, it is only typically men who are more interested in becoming a super super massive, rather than being an attractive quality to women.

Why is this? My theory is that humans we know what is naturally proportional and what is not naturally proportional. Even me, I was naive for so long, but essentially I’ve learned that when it comes down to it, essentially everybody is on steroids, or some unnatural form of human growth hormone. This includes not only bodybuilders, but powerlifters, strong man, cross fitters, even the people in yoga and the natural “calisthenics” crowd.

My first thought is this: for man, to have less body fat, a.k.a. adipose tissue, is more attractive, sexy, and beautiful.

What is the ideal? You don’t want it to be too low, as when men dip into the single digits for body fat percentage, they often lack testosterone and vigor. I suppose a good ideal it’s just whether you could see your six pack abs or not.

Then it seems like the next thing is this: to increase your testosterone, which is the life force energ

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Clout — to ball up, amass.

Perhaps clout is actually more important than money.

The first simple thought is this: don’t be disingenuous. Everyone is honest in different ways; just stick to your own gut in terms of what feels right, and don’t do what you feel is “wrong“.

The tricky thing is this; there will be certain times, when you speak what are you personally believe in, and, others will hate you for it. In other words:

There will be times, in which you say something honestly, and are not disingenuous, yet you will be hated for it.

Why is this important? If you desire to build clout, you need to build deep trust with other person. The suspicion that everyone always has, especially when it comes to the Internet:

Why should I trust you?

I know for myself personally, when I hear somebody say something very very unpopular, or unorthodox, my ears perk up and I’m actually more prone to listen to the person. Why? A lot of people who are “nice“ are actually very disingenuous, and have hidden motives. Or in other words, put more trust in the asshole, than a nice guy. Why? It is impossible to fake being an asshole. It is very easy to fake being a nice guy. Similarly speaking, whenever you’re traveling, in the Middle East or in India, never trust anybody who says “my friend“.

Also, with our own personal relationships, real friends don’t call each other their friends; we just consider them as an extension of ourselves.

So, if someone tells you, “I am so happy that you’re my friend”, be very suspicious. They are more likely to use you as a dependency, rather than being a true friend.

With Elon Musk, his success is at least 20 years plus. He has been building SpaceX and Tesla for a very very long time. It did not just happen overnight.

I wonder if I actually agree with Peter Thiel; rather than “iterate “your way forward, better to set an interesting and audacious 10+ year goal, and pursue it with great vigor and tenacity.

Why is it so difficult for people to think long-term? My theory is that it is just not that encouraged; also to think long-term is not natural. We see others right now with social media fame, and we want to emulate it. But if you think long-term, all social media platforms will soon die sooner or later.

Do you remember my space, Napster, Flickr, live journal? Blogger?

Even young kids, don’t use Facebook.

Even in the world of photography, when I started off, it was all about Flickr. Now, nobody uses Flickr, and it is all about Instagram. But, sooner or later, people forget what Instagram is as well. 

Whwb I was in middle school in high school, xanga was popular for blogging. But finally one day, they deceased their services, and all the content which was created on Xanga was deleted. 

I am very happy that about a decade ago, I created my own website. Erickimphotography.com, which was registered through 1and1.com, which is now rebranded as ionos.com

I am very happy that my website have us lasted until now. 

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My personal critique of living and life in America:

I feel like when it comes to life in America, 99.9% of the time we are thinking about buying a new car, getting that dream car, upgrading your car, upgrading your Apple devices, or iPhone, getting the new Tesla, or other random consumerist things. 

Why is this? My theory is that consumerism, capitalism, marketing, and advertising is so advanced in America, and we have access to too many choices and options. For example, toothpaste. As a kid growing up, I just knew one. Now as adult, I’m learning about all these new strange hippie toothpastes, without fluoride, as fluoride is supposed to somehow control your brain or whatever. Having to decide what type of toothpaste to buy is another distraction in my life. 

For myself, the thing I desire, the most, is philosophical introspection, focus on building my physical and muscular strength, my photography and art, writing, blogging and thinking. And also my health.

The difficult thing is that in America, it is very difficult to be healthy. Why is this? There is no really good city which allows you to walk around a lot, and live without a car. Even San Francisco is not really that walkable. Even in New York City, you’re stuck in the subway 90% of time. And no, I don’t like Brooklyn. It is essentially a suburb, and you have to still take the subway to get into the city. My thought is either you live on the island or off.

Europeans love to comment, and critique Americans for being so fat, lazy, and just driving their car everywhere. But have you ever tried to live in Orange County, Southern California, where there are literally no sidewalks? 

My thought is this: if I had the option of having the worlds most expensive hyper sports car, the most exotic Lamborghini or McLaren, or a Tesla model S plaid, or having the freedom to just walk around everywhere, I would choose the latter.

Why? Even if you’re in a Rolls-Royce, Bentley or a Hyundai genesis, etc., you’re just sitting on your butt all the time. No matter how comfortable the seat is or the car is, it is not good for your back or your health. Cars weaken you. And anything which weakens you is bad.

For me, the only real power is physiological power, physiological strength, and physiological well-being. For me power and strength is for the sake of lofty thoughts, thoughts, and a zest for a living, walking, playing with your kid, shooting photography and street photography, and attempting your one rep max in your deadlift and squat.

For me, power is not money, power is not territory, power is not political, power is not economic, nor social. For me, pure power is freedom to do what you want, when you want, and how you want. 

A funny thing is that in traditional Korean, you don’t ask people just “how are you“. You ask them how their digestion is. This might sound very strange to an American or westerner but Asians are all about digestion. In fact, health is to abstract of a notion. Digestion is concrete. in Asia and in the east, traditionally, digestion is health. 

Something I’ve noticed is that whenever I eat something country to my digestion, whether pork, Indian food, dairy products, coconut products, etc., it negatively affects my sleep, and my mood and well-being for the next day. When I have poor digestion, and I don’t sleep well, I feel a lot more weak

Why is there this bias that more is better? My thought is that actually, better is less.

For example, fewer repetitions and weight lifting is superior to more repetitions. Also, with design, more features and more functions is inferior.

Also, with life and lifestyle, having fewer options, is superior to having more options.

Spartan luxury is this: less is a luxury. For example, if you step in to a Ross or an H&M, there is a quadrillion options, which suffocates you. I far prefer going into a small Balenciaga store, where there is only a very few options.

This is the tricky thing; a lot of people strive towards having nothing. This is the big problem with too much emphasis on Zen or Buddhism; essentially you become a beggar. I would prefer to be instead, to look like or seem to be a billionaire beggar.

On the path to making better photos, show less. Feature fewer details and show less. I think this is also why black-and-white is superior to color; by shooting in black-and-white, you strip out options.

Also, the reason why I like very high contrast black-and-white is that it also strips away the midtones. I don’t like mid tones, as I don’t like middle or medium things.

For example, one thing Nasim Taleb says is avoid “medium risk” investments at all costs. Better to put 90% of your money in boring, cold hard cash in your savings account, and invest 10% and extremely risky speculative things, like cryptocurrency, where the value can go to zero. The reason why this is intelligent is this:

Rather than having a boring 3% return, year-over-year, it is better for your 10% investment to 1000X, or potentially go to zero.

For example, let us see you have $100,000 in savings. Or your net worth for your money totals $100,000 USD. Better to keep $90,000 of your money in a boring savings account, and keep it in liquid cash, and put the other 10% into a highly volatile and risky cryptocurrency investment. Because at worse, you lose 100% of your $10,000, but at best, your $10,000 investment could 1000x, netting you $10,000,000.

Or, if you are a solo bachelor and you have nothing to lose, just put 100% of your fiat currency into cryptocurrency. This is how I met a guy who is a whale, who invested his $50,000 life savings into Chainlink, when it was only at about three cents a Chainlink, and it made him so rich that apparently, he has to pay $10 million in taxes this year.

This is where I currently am, between the net worth of me and Cindy, I put 10% of our savings simply into Bitcoin. I plan to HODL (hold onto dear life), until Seneca becomes 18, and he could just do with it whatever he wants.

At worst, Bitcoin goes to zero, and we have only decimated our savings, which is only 10%.

This is apparently what the ancient Roman Empire Army used to do; if they lost a battle, in cowardice was suspected, they would at random kill 10% of a squad. Why 10%? If you lose 10% of your army, it is not enough to seriously injure you, but it is a strong enough motivator to keep your army from acting like a bunch of sissies.

Also, if you have a manager, or you are doing some sort of profit-sharing scheme, which I believe to be a good idea, b

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What can be sustained, what cannot?

My thoughts

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Something which has been very interesting, currently living here in Phnom Penh Cambodia, at this point, it seems that Cambodia is just a new colony of mainland China. For example, if you look into the Belt and Road Initiative, something I witnessed very interesting was a map of it, and Vietnam, Cambodia, Southeast Asia in general, we’re all painted in red. My point of thought that is that all of these countries which are bordering China, have essentially become assimilated into China.

Therefore my basic idea is this:

Can people in mainland China access your photography, website, and stuff via their Internet?

Or via baidu.com (their local Google)?

I believe the reason why open source is the key to maximize your impact and influence in the world is this:

Stuff is open source, it is more likely accessible by anyone on the planet.

And something else I’ve realized is this: maximizing your impact, notoriety, fame, and influence is more important than money or any other metric of success.

And one of my life goals was to become number one on Google for “Eric Kim”. Now that I have achieved that life goal, a simple thought:

If you search your first and last name on baidu.com, will you show up?

Something I really like about the new iOS beta is one of the default wallpapers is a GPS coordination of planet earth. It is a nice visual, as it has us to think bigger, more globally, at the earth scale, rather than our myopic and shortsighted view of our own locale.

For example, I like the Socrates quote — when somebody asked him where he was from, he said “I am a citizen of the world“. I believe this is an attitude we should all adopt.

Why is everyone so fearful of mainland China, and why do so many people disdain Chinese tourists?

Several thoughts: