Several years ago, an unusual set of events found me at Starbucks on a Saturday night. It had been a reasonably decent day, but somehow the pressures of the world – its parade of negativity – had had…

Sadly, I keep hearing stories about people slashing at each other for “cultural appropriation.” I had hoped this issue would die on its own, but evidently it hasn’t. And so I think it’s worth a brief…

The social contract is a description of “the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual.” The social contract asserts that all of us have consented to…

Last week we examined the “social contract” in some depth, to see if it passes as a legal concept. This week we’ll examine two follow-up issues: one that I didn’t mention and one that I mentioned, but…

The statement I’ll be making today is simple… very simple. Nonetheless, I think it’s of tremendous importance. It’s the type of thing that, if kept sufficiently in mind, can revise your mental universe. It’s the type of thing that makes me want to write,…

We’ve all heard the slogan, “United we stand, divided we fall” hundreds of times. It is portrayed as wisdom, but in fact it’s generally false. If you require a mass of bodies to charge another mass of…

(Originally published October 12, 2022.) I prefer to focus on building the good rather than identifying the bad. But there is also a place for understanding what is happening in the world. (“Wise as…

Free-Man's Perspective Classic: Populating The New Era The cultural norms imposed by the Western aristocracy over the past century have not only expired but are presently being ripped apart. A new era is being forged right now, and it’s our job to fill it…

Late last week, the US Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, released more than 100 pages of formerly-classified documents, showing that then-President of the United States, Barack Obama,…

(Originally published in October of 2022, and tragically still necessary.) This is not something I ever wanted to write or even imagined writing. And yet, here we are. I’ve been receiving a stream of…

Yes, I know that it seems the Internet has swallowed the world, but that isn’t quite true. What actually happened was the opposite: The world captured the Internet. If that still sounds backwards to…

A new study published by Flash reveals that the world’s 1.57 billion freelancers are losing $3.69 trillion each year to invoicing and payment-related fees.

I don’t recommend watching television, but I fell into one useful experience while watching it, some years ago: It was well after midnight and I found myself in front of a TV, attempting to unwind…

Over the past few years, huge numbers of people have come to see Bitcoin as an investment… like a stock. That’s because a significant percentage of the populace knows someone, at least a friend of a friend, who has done very well with Bitcoin. That’s the…

Humans are moral obsessives. Anywhere you go, you’ll find people speaking in moral terms: “He didn’t treat me right,” “She’s arrogant,” “That’s a man you can respect,” and so on. All of these are…

The existence of objective standards threatens power, and so it has been ridiculed and excluded from open consideration. Reality, however, cannot be changed, and the fact is that we all act for life and against death. So does every other living thing on this…

Going through the steps of computing Base58Check encoding in Python. Getting the hash and base58 encoding syntax correct.

People sometimes talk about freedom requiring morality and even religion. The famous quote along these lines is from John Adams, who wrote that the US constitution was made for “a moral and religious people,” going on to say that it’s unfit for any other…

Free CI/CD security audits for Erlang and Elixir projects, powered by SAFE and supported by Erlang Solutions.

Even if you’re not exactly sure what bourgeois means, you’ve almost certainly noticed that it refers to something bad or embarrassing. But before I explain its actual meaning, I want to turn the tables on it: I will maintain that bourgeois is good. For most…