Today my company decided to lay off 14% of its global workforce. The cuts went from VP level all the way down to the workers. I think the math works out to about 2200 families lost their primary income today. I was among the 86% that still have a job to go to. I expected this, and was prepared either way - but I have also been making moves over the past 2-3 years that would increase my chances of being chosen to stay. I expect there will be a lot of opportunities that arise over the next few months of reorganization. I'm also ready to take advantage of those. Don't be complacent. Fiat mining doesn't reward complacency. (In good news, my old nemesis, the boss of my former boss, got the axe. So did her boss. No fucks given here)

Today my 17yo stepson was put on Ozempic and metformin. This is after he failed to lose weight (I think he's roughly 300lbs, about 5'9', has been obese his whole life). His A1C was 5.8, so not horrible, but on the cutoff for T2D. He spent much of the last few months eating rice and chicken breasts, but also plenty of McDonalds. His mom (my wife) is trusting the dr's diet advice (lots of vegetables, limit red meat in favor of lean meats, low fat and fake sugar options), basically LFHC. There's glimmers of hope, they did cut back a little on UHP foods, but there's still a ton of crap (I won't call it food) in the house, and my wife won't give up pasta. He's in for a tough road. None of what they are trying will fix him, and they won't listen to me (basic response is, well, he's not you). They still trust the dr and the drugs will get them somewhere. I've told him (out of earshot of my wife) that when everyrhin you are trying fails, there is still hope, and I will be there to talk him through anything he wants to do about his diet. I've also asked him to at least watch some youtube on carnivore and keto, just to start his own research. He ends up using doordash at least several days of the week, because my wife, although a decent cook, is only up to cooking a dinner a few nights a week. Nobody wants my steaks, so my services are not requested. Apparently chewing meat hurts his teeth (which are in pretty poor shape, granted). All this is hard to watch, probably my deepest struggle with respect to diet. They may eventually come around to proper diet, but I'm thinking that may be years of struggle in the future, if ever. I'm working a lot more directly with my biological son, but can only do so much as I share custody with my ex. The best I can do is the best I can do to be an example. Results over time won't lie. In other news, getting close to being able to schedule my CAC score CT. I want to do that test at least three times, with at least a year between each test. I'm prepared for a bad first result, because that will be my starting point. As long as I stay the same or improve on future tests, I'll be validated. 60 more pounds to go (before I retest my lipid particle count and phenotype). Excited to start putting some muscle back on, though. I've resisted so far, as I want my focus elsewhere first. The cholesterol pattern B issue is more important than strong looking legs. GN. #carnivore #diet PS - started my bupropion protocol today to get back off the ciggies.

Is there a "home mining" solution that could be powered by a 30W solar panel? Obviously I don't expect it to hash much, bust just curious. I happen to have a 30W panel that I don't plan on using often.

If you want to dig deep into statins, cholesterol, heart disease, and related topics, this has been a very comprehensive article. This SubStack writer is worth checking out as well, overall.

The Great Cholesterol Scam and The Dangers of Statins

Exploring the Actual Causes and Treatments of Heart Disease

#health #carnivore #seedoil #statin #cholesterol

To continue a little further down the path of history of religions, the important question to ask is why? Religions are sustained (if not created) for a desired effect on a population. We can call this social engineering. They may be instituted to bring people together for economic reasons, for instance to serve a populace in agriculture or development/building projects. They may be adopted to generate wealth for the powerful. They may be used to incite people to violence on behalf of the state, or to divide people so as to distract them from the actions of the state. Religions are statist, make no mistake. This is not the same as saying beliefs are statist, but when those beliefs are manipulated by the state, for the benefit of the state, then we are once again dealing with statism. This is why I find it contradictory and hilarious that religions such as Christianity and Islam have such a strong following among bitcoin "sovereigns". The very nature and intent of those religions is statist. Whatever happened to don't trust, verify? Good luck out there, but all I see is a divergence that cannot be resolved without abandoning either bitcoin or religion.

I don't think I've found my people yet. I post random shit on here that's going through my skullbucket, all of which I'm more than happy to discuss, pull apart, reimagine, grind on for a bit, whatever. And this echo chamber is just crickets. If I say bitcoin or something, maybe I get a like or two. Maybe I'm not good at engaging discussion. Maybe I'm too cerebral, or posit my ideas too forcefully or something. I'm fine with it being me, but I'd want to work on that and be more conversational. Maybe it's because I'm not a dev, and couldn't care less about zaps. Or maybe I just haven't found my people. No worries, I'll keep following those who post content I find interesting, liking posts, and writing down my mental blather. At least this is a good place to diary thoughts, even if I am just leaving notes for myself. GN. Tick tock next note.

Watching Ben Wehrman pod with Dr. Morales (thank you both by the way), and the Dr just put something together that I hadn't considered before. I'd heard about statins and dementia, but he mentioned a "transitory" dementia. Before I sought professional help for some mental health issues I may or may not have been facing, I went through a pretty dark time - this was fall, like October/November a few years ago. I got caught up in thinking that brain chemicals (including those affected by what we ingest) were having so much of an effect on my mind that I was having trouble trusting in my own decisions. This is something of an existential crisis, but really concerning for myself, as I value myself as a problem solver and decision maker. Calling that ability into question really threw me for a loop. I was also questioning whether or not I might be somewhat sociopathic, or at least have some kind of disaffective disorder, as I was experiencing what I believed was a lack of emotion and feeling. That was one factor in reaching out to a mental health professional to discuss my overall mental health. It was far from the only factor, but it was one place we started digging at. By the time I actually was able to start meeting with the counselor, most of that mental mistrust had cleared, though. I have since changed my perspective a lot on all of this, but even 6 months later, before really starting the process of evaluating my mental health, a lot of that had eased up. What had changed? I think that was around the time I quit taking my statin medication that I had been on for several years. I'd have to go back and check the dates on this to see if it really lines up as tightly as I am remembering, but I had never put the two occurrences together. I may have inadvertently healed myself! The miracle of the human body and mind, finding the offending toxin (statin) and eliminating it (by engendering a mistrust in any ingested chemicals) without even telling me that's what it did. I did have a great experience with counseling though; read a lot of books on various psychology subjects, found the importance of self-esteem (I had always assumed I had low self-esteem), and really discovered the importance of tuning into emotion, because of how much influence emotion has in every decision, and action we take, or even any memory we have. Contrary to a lack of emotion, I found I was just suppressing emotion behind a facade of logic and cognition. The emotion was definitely there, and putting it in a leading role in my life has given me incredible levels of peace and contentment. Did the statin cause my existential crisis, in some kind of dementia fog? Fuck if I know, but I wouldn't be surprised. I wasn't wrong about the brain chemicals, just had to learn the right way to control them - through diet and not poisoning myself.

Had some thoughts about the history of religions last night. Strap in, I guess - but I'll try not to make this long. What I was observing was that the values of religions that have lasted over long periods of time seem to have a lot to do with the socio-political climate in which they were initially instituted. Consider China. Dynastic rule for long periods of time. Not a huge amount of conquest or invasion. Typically a very collectivist population. What religions thrived there? Ones that helped further pacify the people, emphasis on group meditation and little or no materialism. Not much emphasis on the greatness or goodness or paternality of a god, don't really view the higher power as a savior. Then look at the Mediterranean region. Lots of wars, conquests, plenty of imperialism and conquests. Jewish tribes were beaten up by just about everyone that stopped by. Jewish religion reflects this by emphasizing a paternal god who will fight for them. Materialism is celebrated, as long as it is done for the temple. Victim mentality is literally bred in as original sin. I think Judaism is something of an offshoot of earlier Indus Valley religions (shares common roots with modern Hinduism) but was greatly changed and adapted to suit the cycle of conquering/conquered that defined the Jews. During one of the relatively stable periods, the semi-nomadic Essenes find a leader who takes on the existing corruption of the Jewish temple state, and this leader becomes the symbol of a new religion - which appeals to Romans for many reasons, and soon becomes institutionalized as Christianity. Christianity is more geared to making individualists (as opposed to collectivists) more servile, while through its message of spreading the "good news" also supports conquest and war. The people already believe they are flawed, which makes them easy to enslave, if they are not already slaves. Any materialism is still only focused on the Church, which becomes the State. As Rome itself falls, the Church carries on throughout Europe and central Asia, splitting off and adapting where needed. Then you have the Islamic story, which diverges early, in a war-torn and hotly contested area of the globe that had seen both wealth and poverty. It takes on similar characteristics to Christianity, but replaces a lot of the servile victim mentality with anger and aggression. War begets war, after all. In both Islam and Christianity there is a lot of focus on afterlife, salvation, a god that will kick ass and take names if it suits him - and it is definitely a him, for these cultures. Christianity gets a major change with Martin Luther, as it splits into Protestantism and Catholicism. Again, someone fed up with corruption takes on the institution and makes a big change. The new Protestantism is even more individualist, has a renewed interest in conquest, and mates up nicely with the age of exploration and empiricism that is underway. Luther doesn't become a mythical figure like Christ, although operationally was likely very similar. Then there is Hinduism - which also arose the Indus valley, but the leaders (Brahmas) soon took whatever ancient wisdom they had and made themselves untouchable by implementing castes and shrouding everything in superstition. Translations, retranslations, published notes, poems, and everything else done to the original Vedic lore created a solid mess, where almost anything could be justified by the religious leaders. However, once entrenched, they have been very good at staying in control, and Hindu values support that well. Once you release yourself from belief in dogma (any dogma), it becomes much easier to see the paths through history that various belief systems have taken, and why they might have been instituted as they were. Believe whatever gets you to sleep at night, but the human story is much longer than most religions can account for, punctuated by cycles of violence, conquest, peace, building, high society, etc., and I believe these cycles have a lot to do with the beliefs borne out of them. (above is extremely generalized, presented without appropriate nuance, and may be offensive to some. I could research and write chapters if not books on each region or belief system, and you probably wouldn't be any less offended.)

Gn nostr. But really, I'm having a though that I really want to note down. Important enough I'm ignoring my directive to not use my phone while in bed. I'm really hung up on this trinary math/computing thing. Been on that for a few nights, finally noted it here this morning I think. The general idea is that nature/reality isn't binary. More often, it is trinary instead. Energy moves in waves, not in ons and offs. A wave has a top and a bottom, but it also has the curvature between top and bottom. Even direct current electricity has an intermediate state between on and off; I think I learned that 25 years ago when looking at how computer memory is stored. So how hard would it be to build a computer running natively on trinary code? That was where tonight started. Then I moved on - why can't we build computers that are powered natively on AC instead of DC electricity? It seems we waste a lot of energy converting AC to DC in desktops and servers. It seems to me that binary computing is well suited to DC, as DC exists as on/off states. Trinary computing might be better suited to AC, which alternates (that's the A) which implies some kind of alternating wave form. Then this really started to spiral - if we are building to trinary, based on electricity wave forms, why limit this to electricity? Why not be able to "power" a computer with any energy wave form, like light, radiant energy, etc. This completely removes the need for AC power, or DC battery cells, I think. So, how to encode data in a waveform? We have to be able to manipulate the waveform. That is how radio is encoded, either through frequency modulation or amplitude modulation. Next, how to store waveform data? Now I'm getting almost ancient aliens on this, thinking that is what crystal skulls are supposed to be. Sheesh. I think it is all possible, and way more efficient. Like orders of magnitude more efficient. Matter is stabilized waveform energy, so matter itself could be a likely store of waveform encoded data. Some matter is probably better for this than other matter, maybe that is why the skulls are crystal. Does field energy work as well? Especially if the field undulates predictably? Could magnetic field (for example) be used to store data and/or power a computer build to natively use waveform energy? Ok, those are most of tonight's thoughts. One important last one... Why hasn't this been done already? I can't be the first one to think of these things, and likely someone more knowledgeable about electricity, waves, math, radiant energy, etc has to have tried this already. Yet here we are with DC powered, binary computing. Not sure what I'm missing.

Becoming more and more convinced that our digital tech could be much improved by moving from binary to trinary systems, accounting for on, off, and the state in between those poles in energy waveforms. Many if not most examples from nature support 3 states, not two. This could be a huge leap forward in tech, and science in general, while bringing ourselves closer to nature instead of furthering the current divergence from nature.

People are talking about politicians and bitcoins and blowjobs and things. Meanwhile I'm contemplating the shape and composition of space while synthesizing Vedic cosmology with more recent Vedantic wisdom and having an inner debate on the validity of the big bang theory. While stacking and eating steaks. We might not be the same. But dammit we're all on this ride together.

Today I realized that my 3XL shirts fit different. For the last lots of years, I've worn a 3XL-T undershirt, tucked in, under any normal T, so my belly fat wouldn't roll out the bottom. Today, was warm, wanted to do some yard work. Didn't want the extra layer. Put on a 3XL longsleeve, that always seemed to fit me short. Didn't even try to tuck it in. It was fine, didn't show any skin at the beltline. Got done, took that off, put on a standard 3XL tee that I bought at the beach -4 years ago. Fit loose, tucked it in, didn't come untucked. The 3x shirts are fitting loose enough I may be able to go to a 2x soon. You don't know how many shirts I haven't bought because they didn't have a 3x option. Under 250 lbs (barely, but there) for the last two days. Last time for that was over a decade ago, and I was starving myself on salads. Felt weak, tired, and generally unwell, but I did it to see if my BP numbers would drop, since my dr said they were because I was overweight. The numbers stayed the same, and we agreed it was just genetic. Today, my BP numbers are about the same as when I was taking 3 drugs to regulate them - and I am taking no medications. Still got a ways to go before the doctors will agree my BP is no longer an issue, but being off the drugs means I will know when that time comes, and not risk going too low. Days like today give me hope. I am winning this. I feel fine, have had plenty of energy to do more chores than ever, without feeling wiped out after. Outside, in the sun. Not burnt, just happy and thriving. In bad news, I ate two boston creme donuts today. Not beating myself up about it, just being honest. I still have my vices, and I'm not perfect. Still a sugar addict. #carnivore

Today I tried something new. Added a small piece of beef liver to my power bowl (eggs, beef mince, a little cheddar, salt). Cooked it in with the beef. Tasted great. Yes, not as vitamin rich as raw liver, but I see myself eating it more regularly this way (I would say I only make power bowls occasionally, maybe 2x month, but I may be doing this more often as part of my effort to get my son on a healthier diet - he likes the power bowls) #carnivore

Got home from Montana. 4 days, 1500+ miles. Both my kids are here, steaks are being grilled, couldn't ask for anything more!

Today I rode my motorcycle. To Montana. 14 hours, 750 miles. That's the note.

Some thoughts around bitcoin. Almost through with Erik Cason's book, and it hit me that the entire work is written from a framework that I don't share. Erik comes from a generally Christian frame of understanding, where there is good and evil, original sin, a saviour (or messiah), and a single omnipotent god. What I initially took for anger is more angst, brought about by the need to resolve oneself against that framework, do good, be aligned with the presumptive ethos of the god figure, and hold out hope for a messiah to save oneself from an existence of evil and sin. So I apologize for that initial observation. But I look at things very differently, although I was raised in a Christian faith. I now see my reality as part of a triune, where there is what I can observe (matter/spacetime), what is unobservable (energy or light), and the intersection between the two (waves, or field energy). Yes, this is somewhat analogous to the Christian triune of god, Jesus, and spirit, but it is not the same. There is no messiah. There is no sin or hell, nothing to be saved from, and no angst involved in comparing oneself to the presumed ethic of a superior. So my take on the significance of bitcoin is much different. I would say the most important concept of bitcoin might be the nature of ownership, and how bitcoin changed that. The other most significant concept is the network - which aligns nicely with my concept of field energy. Then there is the lack of a physical object, meaning that bitcoin can only be observed in at a point in time, with the complete ledger record at that point. Then - tick tock next block, it changes. The timechain is an entire new perspective on time itself, a very different way of observing time. So no, I don't see it as messianic. I don't know that it will save us from some evil panopticon (and I'm dead sick of that word). But that is my take, and definitely a different book. I do think it defies the Abrahamic religious traditions, in many ways may change our thinking around what those traditions have been allowed to become - ultimately, fiat.

Science is not a hill I want to die on. Science is not fact. Science gets it wrong more than right. Science is just a process for learning how to interact with our reality in a way that appears to work, at least for now. GN. (Early, but trying to not be on the phone in the bedroom, and I just never know when I may be headed there)

I had to remind myself that poverty is the base case. Any time I am above poverty, I am playing on winnings. And those winnings were earned. So I wished to keep them. Thankfully 1 bitcoin still equalled 1 bitcoin, so job done. Hardest part has been denying urges to spend a little on the climb. Still might, but holding on for now, still doing my DCA. Almost 4 years in. No huge selloffs or losses. The times I have sold some were early stages of experimentation with testing the offramps and at one point trying to convert my entire check to bitcoin and live by selling only what I had to. Overall, I'm down about 10% from my top, but most of that was gifted to my family, so I can't really count that as lost. None of them have sold it, even though I offered to buy it back if any of them ever wanted to sell. Probably helps that I gave it to them around the bottom, so they've only seen it climb.