the radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this, I don't know what is it, it's Sunday, Sunday night. I think you're all for joining me. I hope you're having a fantastic weekend, had a fantastic weekend, having a fantastic weekend, and looking forward to an amazing week next week. All right, so today we're gonna do one of my Iran's rules for life shows. We haven't done those in a long time. I figured I'd revisit some of the highlights from the series that I did last year. I encourage those of you who have not heard it or miss it, go back and listen to them. I think I've got a playlist on YouTube, playlist, on YouTube with all the Iran rules for life. If you're listening on a podcast, it should be pretty easy to go backwards and find those shows. I can't remember how many we did, 18, 19, something like that of Iran rules for life. I think we started in 2021 and did it through 2022. So hopefully, I know a lot of people enjoyed them, a lot of people loved them, and yeah, go back. Listen, catch up. And one of the reasons I wanted to do this is because we have a lot of turnover in the show. I don't know that we have more turnover than other shows, but a lot of new people show up. A lot of people are here. I know that because there are a lot of new names, there are a lot of new people putting up super chats, a lot of new people on Patreon and on PayPal that are contributing to the show. So there seems to be a constant flow of new people. And at the same time, lots of unsubscribers, but that's okay. People who unsubscribe are typically not the people who are also supporting the show. So I figured the new people, I'd give them a kind of introduction. We're visiting a broad overview of Iran's rules for life. And then if you wanna dig deeper, then there are those 18, 19 shows that you can go and find on the channel, again, either here or on the podcast or on the YouTube, wherever you happen to listen to the show. All right, as always, the super chat is open, open to any questions you have on pretty much anything, rules for life or anything else. And, yeah, feel free to ask any questions. Our goal is $650 as it always is on the evening shows and the longer shows. So hopefully you can partake in asking questions or supporting the show, value for value. It is interesting that we'll probably get fewer live listeners for the show, probably fewer listeners overall for the show because it is a positive kind of show. It was curious if yesterday's show, if I'd named yesterday's show AI pessimism, I would've got a lot more views, a lot more views. So I should've called Iran's rules for life a doomed planet or something like that, maybe. Iran's rules for life for the end of the world, Iran's rules for life for living in a crazy, unbelievable, completely devastated world, something like that. So, yeah, negativity sells if you haven't noticed. And we on the Iran Book Show here or I on the Iran Book Show here, do not, do not support the negativity. So we are going to, we're gonna stay positive. All right, yeah, one of the reason I thought it would be good to do a rules for life show and that is it's election season and I wanted to remind everybody, I wanted to just bring it around to kind of basic principles to what's important in life. I want to remind you of that. I know all of you know it, but remind you of that. We've got elections coming, every day there's some new crazy thing going on and the news about Trump or about Biden or about whatever, you know, who knows what we're gonna get. It's just gonna be one long next year and a half.  So we need some, I need to remind you not to pay too much attention to that. Also in the midst of a war we'll be talking a lot about this war and that's another reason to kind of try to find some positivity and not focus constantly on this. It's so easy to just get immersed in the negativity that inherently is a war. So and we'll be talking about a lot about this war, particularly in the news updates that we do on a daily basis. So yeah, lots of reasons to kind of take a breath, step back and revisit what's important in life, what's important. All right, so let's do that. Let's do that and I think the first thing that I encourage everybody to do is a war for life to go back to the real origins of Iran's rules for life, of any rules for life and that is to really revisit Iran's views and objectives views on morality, on ethics.  And to do that, the number one thing to do is to remember, to remember that the purpose of your life is you, it is your happiness, your success, your flourishing, your prosperity. That there are objective ways to achieve that happiness, that flourishing, that success and achievement. There are specific ways, objective ways to do that and the number one of those is, of course, to apply reason and rationality to all your decisions and to live a rational life or life guided by reason, by facts, by reality, by evidence. And of course, that is what Iran's moral code is all about. It's about being rational. It's about thinking, about using your mind. And so, the number one thing, we'll put it this way. One of the things we talked a lot about when I did the rules of life shows is to focus in on what you have control over. Focus on what you can change, focus on what you can do. There's nothing you can do about this election.  But at the end of the day, it is beyond your specific influence. You can change a mind here or change a mind there. And I encourage you to speak up. It's one of the ways in which I think it reduces the stress and reduces the, but always do it from the context of I'm busy living. I'm busy living, busy living. And I'm doing this, but I'm busy living, and I don't have a lot of time to do this. I'll do a little bit of it, but basically I'm gonna be living. And focus, so there are a lot of things.  The things that are just beyond our control and they're just gonna happen. They're man-made. They're not things you should just accept. They're things you should be angry about and generally support those who fight against it. You should devote some resources to speaking up against it, but you can't let those things even man-made that outside of your control dominate your life. So really focus your efforts on that which you control and what is the main thing you can control? What is the number one thing you can control? Well, the number one thing you can control is your character. It's your moral character.  No, that would be horrible. I'd rather debate politics. No, it means to focus your life on you, to be self-interested, to be rationally self-interested, to be rationally self-interested pursuing long-term values, your long-term happiness and success and flourishing. So what is in your control? What is in your control is that which is necessary to achieve that long-term success and that is your thinking, your actions, your behavior. What do you do with your life? And it all starts with, and that is basically the role of morality. The role of morality is to give you principles to help guide you and here I highly, highly recommend from, I know some of you, maybe even many of you have not read our event, highly, highly recommend reading The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand's book, particularly the essay on the objectives, Ethics, where she articulates this case. I also recommend Leonard Peacoff's, in objectives of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, his section on ethics and of course, all the lecture courses that Leonard Peacoff's given on morality and how to apply it and how to integrate it into your life and what it means. And that I recommend to everybody, even those of you who've read Ayn Rand who think you understand, there's always more to learn, particularly from Leonard Peacoff, there's always more to study. So go pick them up, it's all on YouTube for free, free. Use it. So focus on your moral character, focus on your thinking, focus on what you do, focus on what you act and how you act. Devote real effort, real time thinking, thinking about your life, thinking about what you're doing, thinking about why you're doing it, what your goals are, but really your values, are your values rational? Are your values oriented towards living a good life? Are your values objective? Or do they adhere to reality? Do they adhere to the requirements of a good life? Not all values do. People can have values for the wrong reasons, people can have values that are self-destructive, people can have values that are bad for them. One of the things you need to question, are your values and make sure that they're consistent with living a good life, pursuing your happiness and your success. And again, that is all in your control. Nobody can take that away from you as long as you have free will, as long as you have a mind, as long as you can think, you are in control of your mind, therefore you are in control of your life. And yes, there are all kinds of extenuating circumstances, there are all kinds of things that make it difficult, there are all kinds of things that make it harder for some people. All kinds of excuses you can make, but what's the point? You're not doing this for me or for anybody else, you're doing it for you.  I said this many, many times in the rules of life episodes, but it's worth repeating and I said a lot of my talks. You only have one life, one. It's short, relatively speaking, short.  Doesn't it make really sense, given that amazing opportunity, life is so amazing to make the most of it, to do the best that you can do? Yeah, there are going to be all kinds of circumstances that are bad and hard and difficult and people will piss you off and things that obstruct and disease and just accidents and horrible bosses and horrible employees and a million things that are external to you that can disrupt and but at the end of the day, you live here and you have control over the decisions you make and how you respond and what you take seriously and what you do and what you don't do.   And sometimes the actions you need to take in order to resolve the issues that you face are difficult, painful, hard, but it's not a sacrifice because you're doing it for the sake of you, for the sake of your life, for the sake of your values, for the sake of getting better, getting stronger, getting becoming more successful. All right, so orientation is always towards your life, your happiness, your success and everything else, everything else is just noise. This is what's important, your happiness, your success. And again, the best way to do that is really is to live the objectivist moral values, they're not gonna tell you what values, what concrete values to pursue, but they give you the framework, the guidelines, right? And, but it's your responsibility, your job and the effort you need to make to integrate them in and to do whatever work you need to do, psychological, philosophical, whatever you need to do to get rid of the garbage that we all have inside here, all of us, because we've grown up in an irrational society surrounded by irrational people that have done irrational things that have impacted us and we've come to certain conclusions and yeah, we all have garbage.  You know, whether, again, and don't be embarrassed and don't feel fear and don't feel, I don't know, guilt or anything else to seek help in doing that. That's what professionals are for, that's what psychologists are for, that's what the profession is for, to help you clear up the muck so that you can get oriented towards living the best life that you can live. So focus on what you can control first and foremost and really that's a big part of what rules for life. So the first thing that you can control and you need to focus on is just your morality, your character, your thoughts, your psychology, you focus on you, make yourself the healthiest, most rational being you can with the tools that you have and it's hard, not saying it's easy, it's hard. But every minute you spend, I don't know, analyzing your support to objection to the latest indictment of Trump or the latest statement of DeSantis or the latest woke nonsense coming out of the left, every minute you spend on that is a minute you could have spent on just being better. Minute you could have spent on focusing on yourself and figuring out how to be better. I'm not saying never do that, there's a time and a place for that, but depending on how old you are and depending on how much work you have to do on yourself, focus on that first, focus on that first. Seize control in your mind and your emotions and your actions. All right, so that's one, kind of seize control over that. Second, really spend the time that you need and this comes out of the morality, but really spend the time that you need and really focus on, you know, really focus on a career, focus on purpose, focus on purpose. And I think if you focus on rationality and purpose to cardinal values, then the third cardinal value, self-esteem, I won't say take care of himself, but it really is generated from finding a purpose and seeking a purpose and pursuing a purpose and doing it all rationally. So focus in on your career, figure out what you really love doing and what you're good at doing and where you add value, where you produce values, where you can be, where you're going to be compensated for those values.  So, you know, look for, look for a career that is really a challenge, that you enjoy, but joy doesn't mean every minute is like, yeah, isn't this fun? Joy means that you're enjoying the process, that you love the challenge, that it's hard, if it's easy, if it's easy, move on. If it's easy, move on. You want something that pushes you. Yeah, and find it, I think Lewis Philippino says, work for someone who values you. Yeah, work for somebody who values you. You should value the work and they should value you. Value for value. It's a trade. You know, if you're stuck in a job, where you're not enjoying it and you're not getting compensated the way you want to be compensated and that don't value you, then start looking, start looking to make a change. You know, one of the, one of the important rules for life that I articulated is, have the courage to change. Have the courage to take risks part of taking control of your life, part of, you know, managing your life, managing the things that you have control over, is taking risks. Nothing happens, nothing just happens. You've got to go and seek it out. You've got to push. You've got to push yourself and sometimes you'll fail. Sometimes you will fail and accept that and sense embrace that. Learn from failure. Get up, move on. Try again or try something different. But seek out a career that is challenging where you're taking risks and you know, I know for many of you it's hard. You've got, you've maybe already married, you've got kids. It's hard to change careers or to change jobs. And yes, you know, if you've got other people dependent on you who are committed, then be more risk-averse. But that doesn't mean stop. It doesn't mean stop. It means keep looking around. Keep looking for ways to make it better. Keep looking for ways maybe to get a different job, maybe looking for ways to change career that does not have to upset everything and put everything in jeopardy. All of us have different risk tolerances. But the worst is to be completely risk-averse if you're willing to take on any risks. Not a good position to be in life and not a way to advance in, you know, in finance where this concept of risk in return, the more risk you take, the more expected return you have. You're not going to get high returns if you're not willing to accept higher risk. And I think the same is true in life. You want to achieve an exciting life, take some risks.  All right, so morality, career, what else? Well, take control of what you do with the rest of your life that you have control of. There's a lot of time, you know, a lot of thought and a lot of effort should be devoted to career and to your job and to all of that. But there are other dimensions, other dimensions of life where it's important that you take the reins and you take control, your relationships. Again, we did a whole show on friendship, we did a show on love, so we've covered all this. But one is definitely relationships, one of the most important things that you can have in life, friends, loved ones, figure out who your real good friends are and cultivate that friendship. Don't just let it languish, don't just take it for granted, invest in it, focus on it, devote time, resources, thought, energy to making the friendship work, making the friendship as value for value as possible, making the friendship, expanding on it and don't settle just for some, you know, seek out new people, new friends. You know, one of the tragedies of modern American culture is that by every poll that you look at, almost all the polls and what you can see is people complaining about loneliness, people being lonely. And this is part of the reason you see what are called deaths of despair, suicides, overdoses, death from alcoholism, various diseases of alcoholism and so on. Deaths that are completely unnecessary, you know, can be prevented.   And one of those is people are lonely and people are lonely primarily because they don't take action to find friends and we'll get to love in a minute. They are, I don't know, too weak to lack confidence or self-esteem to go out there and really pursue. You know, one of the, you know, so it's something you have to, it's not just going to happen, particularly in a world where we get so much from our television and our phones, it's so easy to be self-contained, right? It's so easy not to go out there into the world and meet people and do things. It's so easy to just be self-contained that a lot of people fall into that trap. They start watching television and Netflix and this and binge-watching and whatever and they become passive and they stop pursuing, they stop moving. Maybe they have a hard job, they work all day and then they get home and plop in front of the television with a beer and that's it. Don't do that. You know, it would be great if we used our social media, like Facebook, to engage with our friends, to say, touch with our friends, to coordinate getting together with friends, to engage in, I don't know, conversation with our friends. But the fact is, so many of us, so many people use Facebook to get pissed off at the latest, I don't know, thing that's going on in the world. So, value your friends if they're real friends and we talked about what are real friends and what are not, value your friends, find new friends. If you don't have friends, find them. If your old friends are no longer your friends because you're so different philosophically then go seek out people who share your philosophy. I mean, one of the great things about Ocon, which is coming up in Miami and it's not too late to register by the way, but one of the great things about Ocon, one of the objectives conferences that's going to be in Miami in three weeks is, you know, the 4,500 people who are all kind of share the philosophy, you know, there's some crazy people there, some weird people there, but mostly it's kind of saying nice people who share your philosophy. And it's a great opportunity to go and meet people and befriend people and it's a great opportunity to be active, to pursue relationships, to pursue friendships and yeah. So again, active and take risks because sometimes friends can hurt you. Sometimes friends can stab you in the back and that can really, really hurt and a lot of people don't even pursue it because why take the risk, the emotional risk? As I said, without risk there's no reward. There's loss sometimes, there's failure sometimes. Take the risk, be brave, courage, courage, not a major, one of the major seven virtues was certainly a virtue under integrity. So friendship, pursue it. And everything I said about friendship is true of love. You know, there are men that have given up, men going their own way, they're incels. Again, they're all kind of different variations on the same kind of loneliness parameter. Right, on the loneliness parameter.  Most of the people listening to this show are young men. Or men, some young, some not so. Number of women is small. Don't give up. Keep trying. It's worth it. There's very few values as precious as love in the world in which we live. There's very few relationships that you will get as much from as you will from a romantic relationship. And granted, it's one of the most painful things when it doesn't work out and it's one of the riskier things when you get rejected. But this is exactly where you have to build up the courage, build up the self-esteem, build up the confidence to go out there and try it. And it's hard, I know, I know. It's hard, maybe it's harder today than it was in the past because of technology, because of dating apps, because of the changing roles of men and women and the difficulty in, you know, calibrating it. Calibrating the relationship and calibrating the roles. But, you know, again, it's where you've got to put in effort, put in a lot of thought, find somebody you like and figure it out with them. Figure it out with them. There's no one way to have a relationship. There's not one way to divide up roles between men and women or whatever, two men, two women, whatever, living together. There's no one way to live. And you work it out, figure out what works for you and whoever your partner is. Jupiter Manus says dating is a numbers game, don't quit. I think in the world of internet dating, it certainly probably is a numbers game because I think you get a lot less information from that than meeting somebody in a workplace. Nobody goes to work anymore. Meeting somebody in the workplace or getting to an office romance is found upon. You know, in the past, you kind of met people socially work and I think you had more information about them before you ever got to, before you dated and I think maybe not. Maybe you just get these profiles on an app. I don't know how much info is there. I don't know how valuable it is. I don't know how people screen one another. But keep trying. Maybe it is a numbers game. I don't know. I have no advice on how to play the game. All I can tell you is do it because the risk of not doing it is too great. It's like AI, right? Doing it is much more risky and much more damaging to your life than doing it and taking on the risk, right? So, yeah, pursue romantic love, pursue romantic relationships and figure out how to calibrate your relationship with your family, not your chosen family, your unchosen family, correctly, your parents, your siblings, your cousins, your uncles, aunts, whatever. Remember that they are family in a sense by accident. You have a relationship with them by accident. It doesn't mean there's no values there. They usually are. And usually it's an important relationship but it doesn't have to be. Sometimes a sibling is just horrible and you don't want to have a relationship with them. That's okay. It's your life. Your life is the standard. Not theirs.   They come into your life to the extent that you love them and to the extent that you care about them. But there's so much pressure in our society to sacrifice for our family, to sacrifice for our parents, our siblings, our distant relatives, whether it's financially, whether it's time, whether it's taking care of. Again, you've got to be self-interested, rationally so, considering your values, considering what's important to you. So not irrational, not emotionally, but rationally. So calibrate that relationship correctly. Work on that. And what that really means is put it into the context of you living your life to the best of your ability, living the best life that you can. How does the family fit in? Figure it out. But it's not automatic that they are priority number one. It's rare that they would be priority number one. Yeah, family is very good, as Fang points out, and most are manipulation. Don't let them. Don't allow it. Reject it thoroughly. All right. I'm trying to think how long to go here we could go on for a while. But let me, let's do a few more things, right?  You have control certainly over your moral values and take those moral values seriously because they guide everything that you're going to do. And then you have control over your career, take control, take the reins, make it purposeful, thoughtful, focused on the long run. Take control of your relationships, friendships. And by the way, friendship is not a numbers game. Friendship is about quality, not quantity. You can have few friends that are fantastic, that are great, that inspire you and help you live the best life that you can. That's what's important. Not how many. Wow, Troy came in with 500 Australian dollars. Thank you, Troy. Really, really appreciate the support. Appreciate you being here and supporting what we're doing. I think Troy particularly likes the rules for life shows, you know, from last year. So, friendship, romance, family, relationships, calibrate them, get them right. Again, it takes work to get them right. It's not like there's a formula. There's no rationalistic answer. There's no, you just have to experience it. You have to focus on the things that matter to you. Okay, finally, maybe finally we'll see, focus on, again, in the realm of things that you can control, focus on your environment, on where you live, on how you live, on what you do with your time, beyond career. And here, I think in the rules for life episodes, we emphasize beauty and art, and engaging in those things. Making the environment something you control, your office, your room, your desk, your living space, however big, however small, whether it's at work or at home, make it something that you enjoy. Make it something that you feel passionate about, making something that you smile when you see it, because you see it pretty much every day.  So the little things, the pictures you have, the things you have on the wall, the ornaments, the decorations, the type of furniture you have, make it thoughtful. Think about what you're doing. Think about why you're doing it. Develop taste. I know a lot of, in the culture we live in today, this is not something people think about, but develop a taste. Develop an opinion, develop favorites, develop an aesthetic. What do I like what I don't like? What is pretty for me? What is not? You know, there's a question of why you could ask yourself, and I always challenge people to, even if they like this, challenge yourself to kind of try new things, aesthetically, so that when you come back to the thing you like, you have compared it, and maybe now you've exposed the new things that you like even more. Again, whether that's furniture, whether that's anything aesthetic. But yeah, flowers, you know, nice stuff. Not hard. Easy to do. It takes a few minutes. Organize the things around you and make them nice. I don't think I, you know, I historically have always had cluttered desks. And that's just the reality. My desks are cluttered. Lots of wires on this desk, lots of equipment on my desk here. But, you know, I have stuff around me that is beautiful, so desk is cluttered. That's fine. Find the right balance for you. And then, of course, the ultimate in aesthetics is go experience, go experience great art in every realm. And here, I've encouraged you many times to push yourself, push yourself. I've done a few shows on art.  Push yourself. Figure out why are the, why are the classics classics? Why does you want to talk about Caravaggio all the time? Or why do people talk about Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael and Michelangelo? What is it? Well, until you experience that, until you open yourself up to it and until you read up a little bit about it and try to figure out what's going on, you need to learn to appreciate great art. You might have grown up with rap or, I don't know, pop or whatever is on the radio. And that's what you love and everything. But there's so much more. There's so much more. Yeah, obviously, classic rock. But there's, there's classical music. There's jazz. There's great symphonies and operas and concertos and trios and chamber music. And there's just, I mean, God, discovering classical music is like, it's like a whole life there. You can spend your life just, just listening to everything that's available. And so much of it is beautiful and amazing. Open your mind up or, you know, be willing, be willing to try. Maybe you've, you've, you love the novels of Clancy and, I don't know, Ledlow or whatever, Born Identity or whatever the latest, greatest popular fiction is today. You should pick up a novel by Hugo. You should try some of the 19th century romantics. Even if it's something like, like the three musketeers, right? You get action and high quality literature, romantic literature. So experiment. And, and, you know, Lewis Filipino says, I love listening to heavy metal. That's great that you love listening to heavy metal. But you should try other stuff too. And it's going to be hard because it's different. It's a completely different mindset. It's a completely different aesthetic experience. But there's a reason, there really is a reason that classical music is classical. The classical music has survived as long as it has, hundreds of years in some cases, hundred years in other cases. So broaden your horizon. Give it a shot. Give it a try. Jennifer says 1930s movies. Absolutely. Try some black and white great movies that a lot of them I've given over the years. I've given many recommendations on the show for some of the classic movies from the 1930s. Give it a try. You'll find a different but immense value. And not just the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, you know. Old movies, classical movies. So surround yourself with beauty and immerse yourself in aesthetics and experience.  Watch movies. Watch good TV.  I've given some advice on how to approach a museum, how not to be overwhelmed in a museum. Go look at the paintings, the sculptures, the, you know, the read great novels, try something new in terms of your novels, and listen. Try out some classical music. Give it a shot. Give it a shot. All right. I think we'll call that a night. That is kind of an introduction. Again, we did 19 shows focused on each one of these things and many others. There's a playlist. Check out the playlist. I think you'll enjoy it. Those of you new to the show, you know, try it out.  Definitely check it out and share what you learn from them with the world. Absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, if we're going to change the world, we're going to change it by arguing politics. We're going to change the world. We're going to change it by who we vote for. We're going to change the world. We're going to change it by changing people's attitude towards morality, by changing fundamentally people's attitude towards their own life, by changing the way people live, by changing their values. If people become egoistic, if people pursue their own happiness, capitalism is, freedom is like easy to convince them of. That's where the real battle is. The real battle is not over this policy or that policy or this walk thing or that walk thing. The real battle is over ethics and morality and how to live and making the most of your life and what should life be about? That's what it's really about. And that's what I want you to share. My attitude is what I want you to share. Not just share in terms of clicking the button but share in terms of speaking. I want you first of all to live the best life that you can live.  What's your secret? And then share these ideas. Share Ayn Rand's book. Share Ayn Rand's novel. Share the virtue of selfishness. Share. And as you evolve, as you grow in your friendships and your romantic relationships in the music and the art that you love and the beauty that surrounds yourself, again, more opportunities to share, more opportunities to have friends, have friends around music, have friends around your aesthetic values. So keep growing. Keep growing. And that's how we'll change the world. That is how we change the world. All right. Thanks, guys. Hopefully you enjoyed that and hopefully you benefited from it. Just to give you a quick update on the Super Chat, we've raised about $510. So $140 short. So $720 questions will get us there. Not that hard. So $720 questions or a few $50 questions. So let me jump in with the questions. All right. I don't see any $20 questions really on topic, so I will just jump in with not your average algorithm. You said yesterday we have direct observation that we have free will. But you can't have direct observation to something conceptual. You have to think about it. Direct observation is only for physical things. That's not true. For example, you have a direct observation of your emotions. You don't have to think about your emotions. I'm afraid right now. I can directly feel that. It's a direct observation. I don't observe it through my senses, but I'm still observing it. It's still as real as anything that I can see. If I come and tell you, no, no, no, you're not feeling fear right now. What are you talking about? That's nonsense. There's nothing to be afraid of, so you're not feeling fear.  You directly observe your emotions. You don't have to think about them. And in the same way you directly observe you making a choice. And fundamentally, you making a choice of, I'm going to focus now. I'm going to be attentive to the world. I'm going to be engaged. I'm going to turn it on. Turn my mind on. That's what free will is. Turning your mind on.  It's this choice.  You know that then when you start to wake up in the morning and you have to, oh, here I am. I could just stay drowsy and unalert and drifting. Or I can really sharpen my, and I observe that. I observe the fact that I do that, I bring up certain energy to allow for the focused app. And again, the observation is not only physical things. You can observe states of consciousness. You can observe emotions. You can observe your own thinking, right? You can observe your own choosing. Happy to take any follow-up, not your average algorithm. Adam says, regarding the AI show, I recommend listening to Miyako Kaku, physicist, talk about quantum computing another level above current AI. He's positive of human ability to reason it's optimistic about the future. That's exciting. It's great to hear somebody like that. Quantum computing is, if they can make it work, it's a whole level up. I've also listened to this guy in England. It's an Oxford, a Cambridge, I can't remember. Who is designed a chemical computer that uses chemical processes to compute. And who claims, and this guy seems, I mean, he's real. He's got the credentials and he's got all that and he's got papers and everything. But it seems like he's got a chemical computer that's as fast as the quantum computer and as faster than anything we have in silicone. And of course that allows for bigger and greater AI. Knowledge is growing and people's ability to use technology and people's ability to take the material of the world and rearrange it in ways that benefit humanity and achieve values, benefit individual humans and achieve values is truly striking. And quantum computing, chemical computing, AI, I mean, the future is amazing. And this is why it's so gross. Gross is, I think, the appropriate technical term. It's so gross to be consumed by all the nonsense out there.   And one of the great mysteries is how can we be, on the one hand, considering Donald Trump to be president of the United States and on the other hand, building quantum computers. How does that compute? How do you fit in the same universe? And I'm not just picking on Donald Trump, make it Joe Biden and make it all the losers up in Washington. How are these people important? Any of them, the politicians in Washington DC, how are they important? I mean, given what human beings are capable of. And they're the important people. People building quantum computers and AI and I don't know, nuclear fusion and fission and everything else. Those are the people who count. Those are the people who are going to move civilization forward. Those are the people that need to be supported and those are the people we need to be excited about. And instead, we obsess about the latest and greatest travesty coming out of Washington DC. All right, just a reminder to everybody, please like the show before you go. We've got 77 people watching live. We've got 52 likes. We should have a lot more likes than that. We've had people coming in and out. We've had 200 people probably easily, maybe 300 people watching the show over the last hour. So please consider giving it a like if you like the show. Don't like it if you don't like it, but it just takes a moment to press that button whether it's on your phone or your iPad or your computer. Just press that button like and it helps the algorithm. And Fred Harper says that if we get to 75 likes, he'll contribute another $20. So you get, I get rewarded financially if you guys can get that up to 75 likes. Thank you, Fred Harper, for challenging them. We went for 52 to 53 likes because of that spiel. I'm not very convincing, obviously. All right, it's ticking up a little bit now. People like to find the like button. But it's there and it really helps the algorithm. It's part of what YouTube determines, your engagement, including the likes, your engagement is part of what YouTube decides whether to promote the show or not to promote the show. So it really, really does help. Andrew says if the sexes are growing increasingly alienated from each other, one of the reasons is the increasing assertiveness of women. How should men respond to that phenomena so as not to feel insecure? Well, don't feel insecure. I don't know. I mean, why would women be more sort of be a bad thing? You think it was a good thing? It means that women have, they have more value, not less value. When I say take your life seriously, it means they're taking their life seriously. It means they're being more egoistic. They know what their values are and they're pursuing them. So as a man, you should think of it as I want an assertive woman. I want a woman who stands for something that believes in something that has values and is willing to fight for those values. I want a woman of substance. I don't want just a woman who makes me dinner when I come home, like Matt Walsh. I don't want to be Matt Walsh. I don't want a 50s family. I want something more exciting and more thrilling and more sexier and more interesting than that. More challenging than that. So to men, I say challenge yourself. Challenge yourself to be good enough to be strong enough to have enough self-esteem to deal with an assertive woman. You should be assertive. As a man, as a human being, rise to the challenge. I think it's a beautiful thing that women are becoming more assertive. I think it's a beautiful thing that women are working. I think it's a beautiful thing that women sometimes make more money than the man. I think all that is fantastic. She has a career. Live up to it. It's a challenge. Again, challenge yourself. Push yourself. That's what life is about. Alright, Adam. Adam is here with 50 bucks. Thank you, Adam. I wish everyone that listened to sermons today had instead listened to this show. That's right. Today's Sunday. I forgot. Thank you for your intro to objectivism and its principles. Not always easy, but it's motivating and absolutely leads to a better and more fulfilling life. Thank you, Adam. Really, really appreciate that and appreciate all the support you provided me over the last year. One more. Thomas Schubert says, I'm looking forward to playing cello this week at ARI donor events in Seattle and Portland. Oh, fun. Hey, how come I wasn't invited? I guess because I don't live anywhere near Seattle or Portland. So much more enjoyable than beating politics. Absolutely. And as you know, Thomas, some of you don't know, I love the cello. The cello in many respects is, I don't know if it's my favorite instrument, but it's up there in top two, three. It just has this amazing warmth. It's almost like a human voice. It's just so moving and so emotional. It can convey emotion so effectively in some ways more than a violin because it's more, it's got those, it's more human. It's more like a human voice than a, than the highs of a violin. Anyway, I love the cello. Some of my favorite pieces are for the cello. So all of you in Seattle and Portland, go see Thomas Schubert and play the cello and enjoy which dress code requires a tie. What dress code requires a tie? Maybe that's why I wasn't invited. Noel says, always enjoy your rules of life. Thank you, Noel. Really appreciate the support. Schubert says, the usual naysayers aren't here today. That must mean they agree with you on this topic. You think? You think? They don't show up for the positive shows. They only show up for the negative shows. Or if Trump was in the title, they'd all be here. Jupiter Manor says, great overview tonight. Thanks. Thank you, Jupiter. Appreciate it. All right. That's all the $20 questions and we are only $18 short of a goal. So one $20 question and we are there. So please consider doing that. Or if we can get a 75 likes, we're still 13 short. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. We're still close with the algorithm. But 13 more likes and Finn Hopper solves the problem. Was it Finn Hopper? I think it was Finn Hopper. Who said he would contribute $20. Yeah, it was Finn Hopper. There it is. Adam just pushed us over the limit. Thank you, Adam. Adam says, regarding the empowered women comment. It's worth another $20 to hear you trash Matt Walsh. Imagine not being attracted to the mind of Dagny Tucker. Exactly. That's a great example. You know, Dagny. I mean, how are you not attracted to Dagny Taggart? How are you not attracted to this courageous, assertive, strong, powerful woman who knows exactly what she wants and goes out to get it, who achieves and succeeds and feels. I mean, remember the scenes of her listening to music. How sexy are those? I mean, Dagny should be the standard. And you should want to love a Dagny at whatever level you can. I mean, there are very few Dagny's in the world.  Christopher says Dagny would punch Matt Walsh in the face and then plead guilty in court. And the judge would like, I get it. She'd give one of those court speeches that gets her off as in Iron Man's. Yeah. Absolutely.  He's such a nobody. He's so weak and he's such a, he's not a man. Not in the false sense of that word. He's crippled his own mind. He devotes his life to what? Yeah, not a role model at all. At all. Can't really think and, you know, once weakness, wants to surround himself with weakness. But he's a man. So he's weak. So he wants people who are weaker than him. He wants people weaker than him. That's, that's what makes him a man feeling stronger than the people around him. So he finds people around him that are weaker. Matt is contemptible. He's awful. All right, Andrew. Many conceptualize individualism as a political concept. It's main characteristic is fighting against others control. How do you conceive of individualism and the positives? Individualism is living your life for your own sake using your own mind. And that's what individualism is. It's pursuing your values. And it's the political system that allows you to do that. It's not about fighting against others control. It's not about coercion. It's about you living your life and figuring out the best political system. The best political system possible to achieve your values. And that's capitalism. But you see, individualism and capitalism, these are positive terms, not negatives. It's not about stopping coercion. It's not about not letting other people control you. It's about living. It's about positive energy. It's about going out then and living your life and, you know, pursuing your values and using your mind and living by your judgment. And yet to do that, I need the absence of coercion. But the fundamental of individual rights and the fundamental of individualism is you using your mind, your judgment in pursuit of your values in order to achieve your happiness. It's a positive concept. Someone's here is defending Matt Walsh. He has made the most successful documentary I've ever made.  It's badly done. Yes, it plays to the lowest common denominator to a very low denominator.  He can't conceive of a positive US sex. And he can't conceive of a strong positive image of a woman. He's defining women, yes, as a biological thing, but he doesn't even get what that means and what that implies and what that leads to. See, yeah, he makes fun of leftists. Easiest thing in the world, make fun of leftists.   But that's not hard. Does he have a positive conception of what a woman is? What a woman is? No, it's pretty pathetic that that is the most successful documentary I've ever made, if it is, if that's what it is. Pretty pathetic that that's what Elon Musk chose to highlight. So something about the superficiality there. Oh, by the way, oh, let me wait. By the way, do you see Elon Musk today? Somebody posted something about, oh, two things by Elon Musk today were a little scary. But I can't remember what they are. I had it. I had it in my thought. One was about AI. I remember that one. Mark Adresin put up a thing we talked about yesterday about Mark Adresin's essay. His positive view of AI. And he put up a thing today saying, look, any questions you have about my essay, about my perspective on AI, ask them here on Twitter and I will answer them. And Elon Musk says, are there any negatives? Because Elon Musk, of course, has this negative view of AI. And then he had something else that was really, even more awful, really awful in terms of what he wrote. Anyway, I'll remember it and I'll share it with you another time. Kalman's Operator, this is Stephen Harper. Kalman's Operator, Arizona Lady, will be performed at Ohio Light Opera with several performances in Worcester, Ohio. God, Worcester, Ohio is in the middle of nowhere, I think. Anyway, it's far from where I am. But yes, Kalman, Enric Kalman, one of the, maybe the greatest, is the greatest opera-rata composer ever. A favorite of Avain Granz and a favorite of Lena Peacops. Although I don't know that they particularly like Arizona Lady, Kalman generally, they loved Arizona Lady is the one he wrote about America. But yeah, if you have an opportunity to see a Kalman Operator, go see a Kalman Operator. Oh, thank you, Kirk, yes. Here's the horrible thing. I mean, I can't believe that Elon Musk said this. Every few months you have to completely recalibrate your opinion of Elon Musk. So Ted Kacinski died, committed suicide, it looks like, in his jail cell. And there was a quote on Twitter of a Ted Kacinski quote that says something about how the industrial revolution was horrible to mankind and resulted in this horrible condition of mankind. And then Elon Musk, which is a quote from Ted Kacinski, and then Elon Musk says, he might be right. What a negative view of mankind, particularly by one of the great innovators of the world in which we live.    Yeah, very confusing. All right, Michael says, do you think businessmen have an easier time challenging altruism than intellectuals, businessmen, maybe most guilt-ridden members of our society? I think they have chosen explicitly not to live by that ideology. The challenge they have is they don't have an alternative. And then what happens to them is they do feel the guilt because they know they don't have an alternative. They know this is what morality means. They know this is what they're supposed to do. And yet they don't live it. And yeah, they definitely feel guilty as a consequence. Are they the most guilty? I don't know.  And it's sad because they're also the people who create, build, make the society what it is. They are the greatest contributors to human well-being in all of human history. And yet they never allow themselves to enjoy that fact. James Taylor, instead of leaving all your money in a stock portfolio, would you ever consider purchasing a small apartment complex to live off rental income? The return is typically much higher than the stock market. Not for me, I mean, but I understand why people would want to do it. I have no problem doing it for people to do that. It requires maintenance. It requires energy. It requires time. It requires effort. Real estate prices can also come down. And I know people who've done this and lost. So as with all things, it's not risk-free. I'm not convinced that the return is typically greater than a stock market over the long run. I don't know. My guess is it's not. But it's probably about the same or risk-adjusted about the same. So I have no philosophical qualms or problems with doing that. It's partially whether you want to do the work necessary to maintain it and to collect the rent and to do all that and so on. But I know a lot of people do very well with renting out apartment complexes and have made a lot of money doing it. That's when a lot of people became unbelievably rich by investing in the stock market. So it really depends on your particular preferences. My point is generally, generally, diversify. Don't put all your money in one asset class. So yeah, buy a smaller part complex. But with your rest of your savings, buy a diversified portfolio as well. So diversify. Okay, Jacob says, headed to Milan, East Milan at the end of the summer for work. Any must-do things in the area besides art, looking for great experiences. Milan, I mean, Milan is art. I mean, there is a lot of art there. So you said besides art, so I won't mention art. But what else is there to do in Milan? Yeah, I don't know. There's Modena, South of Milan. There's the Ferrari factory, which is fun. There's also some of the, you know, the area around Milan, not so much in the city, but in the surrounding parts of Italy. Some of the best restaurants in the world out there. So that's worth experiencing.  It's a nice city. It's a modern, buzzing city, famous for fashion. Liam, I feel like people with anger management issues aren't nihilistic. They want values in life and are just frustrated. Not achieving them real nihilists are largely passive in nature. Yeah, I don't know. Anger management issues could be caused by lots of different things. I'm not a psychologist, so I wouldn't. I've never said, and I wouldn't say that people who have anger management issues are nihilists. Real nihilists are largely passive in nature.  So in that sense, many of them are passive. Oh, yes. Of course, Thomas Schubert said La Scala. But La Scala is art. He said no art. It's like, can't mention La Scala. Go see an opera in La Scala. There you go. That's what I would do in Milan. Also, the cemetery in Milan is one of the best places in the whole world for sculpture. And of course, Leonardo da Vinci's La Sapa is in Milan as there's an unfinished... Yeah, the La Sapa, there's a lot of good art in the museums in Milan. So art, there's a lot. Hopper Campbell says, people will call it holding grudges. I call it, I saw who you are and I'm not unseeing it. Yeah, good for you, Hopper. Absolutely. I believe in judging people and holding that judgment until you get new evidence. Clark says, what is the difference between loyalty and duty? Duty is something you must do for no rational reason. It's your duty to do it. Why? Because it's written in a book because the king said so because this is what you're supposed to do. This is a morality that is filled with duty. Iron Man talks about duty. Duty is a very bad thing. It's unchosen. Loyalty can be a virtue. It's not one of the top virtues but it is. Loyalty is, I think, a sub-virtue under justice and under integrity. It's about staying true to your values. It's about staying true to your friends, staying true to the things you believe in. It's not unconditional just as... Your friendship is not unconditional just as your... Love is not unconditional just as your... Nothing's unconditional. You have to know the conditions. Loyalty is a minor virtue. It's about being just with the people around you and not betraying the people that you value and the things that you value. It's chosen. It's not like duty which is unchosen. Michael says, why do you think people turn to narcissism as a mechanism for overriding altruism? Well, because they don't know any better because it's all they have. All they have is emotions. All they want to focus on themselves. They reject the idea of sacrifice but they don't know what to do with that. They don't know how and they think it's outside of morality and usually it's driven by an emotion and that drives them towards a superficial narcissistic view of life. Michael asks, do you see any signs that Germany philosophy is being rejected? It amazes me. It held on after the two world wars it caused. Well, but nobody thinks it caused it. Nobody knows it caused it other than objectivists and maybe a few others. It's still absolutely strong. It dominates the culture. In its most perverse incarnations, whether it's postmodernism on the left or whether it's the duty-bound notions on the right, whether it's the nationalism on the right, there are lots of variations on German philosophy that are still strong in the culture and it won't go away until it's replaced with something better and there is no something better other than I think objectivism. So it requires a victory of objectivism for it to go away. Jacob says, for the value of travel and the rules of life episode, I love new experiences, skiing new mountains, eating new food and meeting new people. Yeah, I love travel too. It was certainly one of the shows I did on Rules for Life was on the value of travel. Should all travel?  Matt Walsh is quoted as saying, I have no self-esteem. Thank you, Coke. I remember him saying that because he believed self-esteem doesn't exist. There's no such thing as self-esteem.  Michael asks, is Trump finished? I don't know. I doubt it. Trump never seems to be finished. He always seems to somehow survive. So I'm not going to argue that Trump is finished. Trump is finished. He just has this ability to resurrect himself constantly.  Ah, not true.  That's just not true. There are some empowered women, empowered in quotes, that that will happen to, but most of them will have successful careers, will do amazing things in their lives, and will find strong men to have romantic relationships with. And why are we against empowered? What is it? What is we reject by empowered? Seems weird. Seems strange. Come on, Harper. The ones who are surrounded by empty wine bottles and cats are not empowered. If you're empowered, you don't surround yourself with cats and wine bottles. All right, I think we're done. Oh, friend Harper just jumped in. I get the impression that loyalty is only a rational value if it's loyalty to reason and rational principles like a loyalty to justice and not to people. Is that a reasonable formulation in your opinion? I think it can be loyalty to people. That is, I think to a friend and to be loyal to him, to stick by him, it doesn't mean to violate your other principles. It doesn't mean to do things that are wrong or you wouldn't do otherwise, but it means to stand up for your friends, to stand up for the people you value, to people you love, to people that are important to you, and not to sell them out, not because of lack of energy or laziness or lack of courage. Not be willing to stand with those people. So, yes, loyalty is a rational value when it's loyalty to reason or rational principles or good people, good friends, good loved ones. So, people who are a value because of justice. So, it's a loyalty to justice, but in the context of specific concretes, the people. Justice is an abstraction. What you really love, too, is this person as an act of justice. Shazmit says, if self-esteem doesn't exist, then what is the difference between an Olympic gold medal winner and a basement dweller? Well, I don't know what Matt Walsh would say. One is a success and the other isn't, but it's not like they... I don't know what he would say. It's so mind-boggling that somebody would say there's no system of self-esteem and it doesn't exist, but he has a whole PragerU video, PragerU. Prager University, that amazing place where you can learn all about life. And where he says self-esteem doesn't exist. Now, of course, he straw-mans it by using self-esteem the way the left, you know, giving everybody a ribbon and telling everybody to have self-esteem and patting everybody in the back.  He could conceive, and there are lots of people who talk about different conceptions of self-esteem that don't involve that anti-self-esteem attitude. Instead, he rejects the whole concept, which is typical because it's associated with pride and Christians cannot have pride. Pride is a vice. A vice, one of the deadly vices. One of the deadly sins is pride. They can't have self-esteem because self-esteem is associated with pride. Veni vidi vechi. Veni vidi vechi. I am struggling with embracing AI because I see many examples of AI being used as a tool to avoid using one's mind and thought. Do you find this also? How to balance this new tech with principles? No, I actually don't see people using it in order to avoid thought.  That is, it is what it is focused on eliminating are the simple stuff, like going and doing research. You can do research for me, so I can actually use my mind to integrate things and to go deeper and to find new angles. But it can bring me the information. So no, I think it is a thought multiplier. It is a way to leverage your thought. It is a way to get the simple, easy, boring aspects. Well, not even, not boring because thinking is not boring, but, you know, the easy routine, the stuff that just requires, yeah, and it condenses them. It provides you, it speeds it up for you, and it gives you more time to do more deep thinking. So, you know, I think it is a tool, like any other tool. And what it does is makes you stronger, makes you stronger, makes your mind better because you now have time to think about what is important and let it do what is not important. I mean, in a sense, Adam Campbell says, a calculator is AI too. Yeah, in a sense a calculator is. In a calculator, I don't multiply. I don't remember the multiplication table anymore because I use a calculator. So what? That allows me to a huge shortcut, less energy consumed. I can focus my mind on thinking about other things. All right, everybody, thank you to all the Super Chatters. Thank you, Troy, for really getting us, getting us a long way towards our goal. We blew away the goal. So thank you guys all for helping. I will see you tomorrow morning with a news roundup. So we're back to the political nonsense and what's going on in the world. But, you know, we'll have an update on the war in Ukraine and we'll have updates on what's going on all around us. And again, I'll try to inject as many positive things into the news roundups as we move forward. All right, everybody, have a great rest of your night. Have a great week.


The problem is not out there. Sadness is just a form or a version of depression. And what Jesus has to say about depression is He says depression comes from a sense of being deprived of something you want and do not have. And then He says, remember, you are deprived of nothing except by your own decisions and decide otherwise. You know, it's like, wow, that makes it real simple. So depression or sadness comes from a sense of being deprived of something you want and do not have. So it's easy for the mind to make an association even with a place or a group of people or even a process that seems to be going on here. Even if you say, well, it's not so much the place or the people, but there's a vibe of openness and joy and clarity and whatever. And what the ego will do is it will take that feeling and it will project it out in terms of a specific form. So that's a little bit like one of the early questions we had about whenever there's a sense of... I think Kathy was talking about leaving this place or leaving a conference or we talked about that yesterday. There can be a sense, oh, I wish it could be always this easy. Why isn't it this easy elsewhere? There's associations that are made in the mind with various memories and various images. And we do it with people and places and even processes that we go through. So that's where the sense of loss or sadness can come in. It's in a sense that in some very, very subtle way there's been some kind of an ego association. And another way to look at that is too, like with prayer, for example, it's never the things in this world that bring us the experience. They're more the reflectors. Like we actually call upon in our consciousness and our awareness for a specific experience and we receive it. And then whatever seems to be going on in the script, it's tempting to associate that feeling and that experience with what's going on. It's very subtle. Like you might have a certain kind of feeling when you are just in this free flow and it seems to be coming out as only dancing. Just dancing and dancing and dancing. There's a movement with it, the body's involved with it. Maybe it involves the body in a particular location, like your bare feet on the grass or the bare feet on the sand. There's always some kind of a phenomenal association of images that go with the experience. But the phenomenal images never are the source or the cause of the experience. The experience is coming from within our consciousness and that's just the way that it looks. People have that experience sometimes with certain drugs that they ingest. They take ecstasy or LSD or some marijuana or something and all of a sudden they start to feel some kind of an expansion in their consciousness in some way. And it's quite easy to then associate the experience of that expansiveness with the ecstasy or the LSD or the marijuana. It's the same thing with around sexuality. It seems to involve bodies and body parts and positions and all kinds of things, touch and so forth and that seems to be part of the whole thing. But even in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know, I remember Ramtha talking in there about it's totally coming from inside and that all the decisions and all the choices are being made in consciousness and then even that is being reflected in terms of the body and the peptides and the neurotransmitters and everything that's going on even chemically in the body is not cause, it's effect of what's going on in consciousness. So the feeling of even thought like, well, leaving in two days, oh gosh, it can be like, wow, I'm just getting going here or I'm just at the beginning of a nice long swim and you're just taking your first strokes and it's like, get out of the pool. I was like, what? I'm just getting going here. I'm in a free stroke. I'm really getting my stride down here and you're saying get out of the pool. But it's more just starting to see everything is working together for good and everything is really a choice in consciousness and that's what all the mind training will do. That's the point of taking all these steps is to become so empowered to see that the power of decision is my own. That's actually a workbook lesson in A Course in Miracles, the power of decision is my own. I think it's like 152. And what it is, he says that everything that you experience in this world and really the whole cosmos, the whole universe is the result of your decision and he says you may feel that this is too all inclusive to be the truth. It just seems like you might tell that to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist might write down on the tablet, delusions of grandeur. My every decision I make influences the whole universe. Delusions of grandeur. But it's actually true and Jesus says you may believe that this is too all encompassing to be the truth but then he goes on to say but truth has no exceptions so there are no exceptions to this magnitude, to this glory. You may have pushed it out of awareness and you may have unconscious beliefs that are telling you it's different than that but it doesn't change the truth of the power of the mind, of the magnitude. And so I think that's very, very common on the spiritual journey that when there's a sense of time and still a sense of leaving it's very common for a sense of loss or sadness to come up. There's a sense of we call it even sentimentality like sometimes we have such a great experience and then we associate it with a particular person or place and then when we go it's like oh so long I will remember you but it's very sentimental and I have to say that the holy instant in the present moment is not sentimental at all it's just glory, glory, glory there's no sentimental, nothing like the end of the Carol Burnett show everybody watch the Carol Burnett show I'm so glad we had this time together just to share a laugh and sing a song seems before we know it seems the time we have to say so long but see the holy instant never says so long it's just saying I'm here, I'm here I love you, I am you there's nothing else but us in this moment you know it's so happy and joyful because there are no goodbyes in the holy instant there are no transitions in the holy instant it's only linear time this belief in time that teaches us that we we have to greet and say hello we have to say goodbye I mean the Holy Spirit saying through the Beatles I don't know why you say goodbye I say hello, hello, hello I don't know why you say goodbye I say hello, hello, hello hello you know the Beatles are channeling the Holy Spirit it's that welcoming hello of the spirit that's what I was just saying the spirit's like saying I'm here hello it's always calling our attention back to the joy of the moment like I am with you I am with you always I can never leave you you are me and I am you we are one you know that's that presence and the whole spiritual journey is just getting more into that to really feel that experience and we're meeting with the facilitators and Christian was saying that the topic of time came up and Christian was saying that the first movie that was shown when he first came here to the monastery was that movie Next with who was it Nicholas Cage, yeah and it was all about he had a little two minute window on seeing the future and we got, it was a whole session on time and I think I had to actually leave at the end of it I think the whole thing just shut down and I went, oh, and gotta go after I had just spoken on time and undoing time and the part of undoing the sadness is undoing this association with linear time which is where all the comings and goings come on and all the sentimentality comes in that comes back full circle to it the first thing I mentioned about guidance you know, we're really getting away from the do's and the don'ts and the shoulds and the shouldns the typical things in families and even in religious paths where it's like this is the form this is the formula to reach God and you've gotta plug into the formula we're getting into this intuitive guidance even so much as, okay I'm to get up and leave the movie and just go up and I don't know what's next oh, dance and then dancing maybe you were whirling dervish in the past life and it's like oh yeah, get back into the dance you know, you see there's got to be that spontaneity and that permission really to follow guidance and that was also something I mentioned the very first day when we had the orientation that I said nothing is required here in form all these sessions are optional including the movie session and that if you feel something strongly comes in follow it and go with it because it's getting away from rituals and getting away from several forms of people pleasing and when you get a strong feeling to go with it and the joy that you feel by just following is glorious that's why with this whole sense of a spiritual pathway in the end you do have to leave the concept of a path behind what you studied, what you did and another part of the story as well you just want to be so into that spontaneous listen and follow and flow that there's nothing else the whole world disappears in that and that's exactly how the world will disappear only through that through listen to the small still voice within and follow and then the spirit will unify perceptions so perfectly that the world will then disappear because it has no longer any meaning or purpose there's all these parts of the Course that talks about the body and the purpose of the body and the Holy Spirit's use of the body and then at one point it was only one point in the Course Jesus just slips it in there in the text the body has no purpose He just throws one of them in there I was like, what? you put that in here after all the other references to communication device and all these things but you gotta figure he's gonna slip one of those in there slip a Mickey in there slip it in there I mean because if God didn't create the body and the body is an invention of the ego and there's no body in heaven then you better believe he's gonna slip one of those in there I'm like, what? and the ego's like, wow so that does take a full circle back to that guidance that's really what you're honing in with it's not from the negative perspective it would be like, wow what can I do about this sadness and really you're just saying I just want to just have full awareness that it's a decision in mind and that I can decide otherwise and I am empowered to decide otherwise that's really all that you're really asking and what I'm saying is yeah, it's like giving yourself full permission to go deep and it sounds like that's exactly where it was going reading cause and effect section on cause and effect that's like getting right to the root of it all thank you, Melody


That can only be possibly adjusted via hard work a couple of times a year, at best, knows even less. So, the really optimal policy is very rarely just either a price or quantity limit, but depending on, like, basically, the way that the social...


Please give him a warm welcome so It's quite weird to hear himself.  He's a member of the deface crew He's a nerd and you might know him from the batch. He did quite a lot of that in coding style This is runs back. He's a defaced Nordic south west south Holland member.  We are not native English speakers. So Dutch isms and dunglish will be present in this talk Also, we might slip up a bit, but please assume good faith Also, this talk might contain penises. I will contain penises. So if you're squeamish when seeing like Penises you can leave now Nobody nice So how does this journey start? As a member of the batch project, I entered the talk in frappe for the batch and Later on cartoffel our team lead asked me well, I would like to do this talk So can you remove it from frappe? I tried but there's no delete button in frappe So then I entered dick pics for privacy ethical trolling of security agencies Blah blah blah blah blah at the end comment for moderators There is no delete button in frappe Yes, so what happens next a couple of months later I walk into Walter and he says well I had to lobby a bit within the content team But it is now okay. You can do your talk and I'm like what talk?  I was okay. What did you do? Yeah, I was no delete button. I entered that. Did you know you said you said next to me when that happened? Yes, we had a good laugh.  So he had it mummified Yes That's amazing So let's start with prehistory I don't know what this hunter is doing with this bison here, but assume good faith Also, these are according to archaeologists our art objects. They might also have had a different function and In pictures there where males were depicted It was very important to have a big penis and also a direct one it seems to indicate health Then in Greek times The civilized Greek people were depicted with small penises small penises were a sign of civilization of culture on the other hand the more promiscuous and What is the word the more promiscuous and less logical people Actually were depicted with the big penises It was not that the people with small penises didn't have a lot of sex in Greek times But the people with big penises got really got distracted and got irrational got emotional And so the big penis in Greek times was actually connected to people with lower standing Less civilized less cultures for instance the Priapus the Fortility guards from the Greeks here was thrown off Mount Olympus because he was just Irrational not that the rest of the Greeks were rational on the Mount Olympus, but okay. He was really irrational so in Roman times Penises were both used to Direct the way to a brothel, but also as a symbol of power The might of the Roman armies was mostly depicted for example in this case as a flying eagle penis That is holding even more penises as a symbol of the might of the Roman army Yes, and the symbol also Relates to the Roman soldiers that were male and healthy and powerful and could get things done In Roman times they didn't have political correctness. So that was how they depicted that It was like the male symbol and also I looked at this and I thought the American bold eagle. They might have copied that so rich wealthy and Powerful people were also known to wear rings with penises and this well the fashists It just is the earliest recorded dick, but so we had to include it in this presentation Then we get to the medieval times in the medieval times Christianity took over and Penises were seen more as something naughty something Hidden something. Yeah, naughty.   It's called stroker and It's still played at demo scene parties Even in addition for but you can see it still it's made from character art There's not a lot of effort put into it And it's still something naughty something. Yeah, it's still middle ages in that sense. Although it's in 8-bit So yeah, nothing really changed in the meantime, but then modern times Yes Yes, so Yeah, it does times they had statues and they had to put in quite a lot of time to create their things Other objects of art, but these days everybody has a digital camera So it's way more easy to make dick pics and I think that is why we currently see more dick pics than ever Yes, but what about art and culture? Yes does modern art still contain? Dicks Answer is yes a very big. Yes We've tried for two hours to find the artist, but we couldn't No, and Yeah So artist unknown, but yes, yes There are three main categories in art in modern art art with penises art made with penises and art about penises Let's start with art with penises This for instance is a guy that has a blog on tumblr and it's called did things my penis does of things my dick does actually and It's quite hilarious. We have another example for you This actually spoiled my childhood memories of the caribers.  Yes quite traumatic But then there's penises and politics at first we found this picture without any Comments beneath below it. So we thought is it the Dutch politician Geert Wilders? Is it Boris Johnson or is this Trump? Make America hard again. Yes, it's Trump The next one will limit our Countries where we can have a holiday if this got streamed This is from the series dictators of history and friends also by dickter Galaxy at gallery, sorry and yeah, I don't think we can go there on holiday anymore No, North Korea would know This would definitely get a get a gets us to a labor camp. Yes.  Yep And there's the more advanced art with penises This guy actually uses the temple method to create the pictures you see in the background and he Mostly fills in the details. Although there you have to Google quite well to find that But but the most details you see in the background are all painted with his penis and then there's the more Performance artists artists this person every couple of weeks He goes onto a stage and paints something with his penis and I do think the details in the bull are pretty Striking yes, it's a good bull Then art about penises This artist unknown. We tried for two hours, etc Made a very nice leapfrog artwork out of penises or at least about penises. Yes And there's the dirty mind of the internet Where people thought like it's a nice butterfly or a flamingo would be great, but yeah Things happen. What has been seen cannot be unseen. I guess And of course last but not least modern art It's called out in the world and we think it might be the challenger taking off or Something like that. At least it's sticking out in the world. Yes, but it's modern art Think of it what you want and most people say art is just for their high culture for cultured people and that more common people Have a different way of entertainment. Yeah, they just take to the media mostly the mainstream media And how are dickpicks? Well mentioned in the mainstream media some accidental actually, this is Fox news coming to us from Seattle guys Or that's another photo. You can see the smoke billowing up next to the Space Neil there that iconic image in Seattle man, so that's Edward Scissorhands, so we'll just ignore that And so you know a lot of people obviously You know follow Yep, it's still seen as a bit naughty. I think yeah, especially for right-wing Americans Quite accidental and very funny But there's also Penises dickpicks in mainstream media. That's that's yeah on purpose And even with a very good message you might have seen the John Oliver last week tonight episode where he talks to Edward Snowden about how to relay the privacy concerns of the internet to people and There's long stories nobody gets it and then they come to the to the Yeah, to the point where the NSA might see people's dickpicks and that's where I took a small clip From that episode. So let me help you out there You mentioned in an interview that the NSA was passing around naked photos of people Yeah, this is something where it's it's not actually seen as a big deal in the culture of NSA Because you've seen naked pictures all of the time that Terrifies people because when we ask people about that, this is the response you get The government should not be able to look at dick pictures if the government was looking at a picture of Gordon's penis I definitely feel it would be an invasion of my privacy Yes, the government was looking at pictures of my penis that would upset me They should never ever the US government have a picture of my dick Yes So it's quite an effective way to move people. We'll come back to that later. But for now social media on Facebook and Twitter well on Facebook mostly and LinkedIn.  Yes. He's actually taking free selfies with his third hand. Yeah That guy is a boss It's awesome So this is where our internet Yeah, do any kind of ends and we go to the privacy system a part of our social research. Yes Privacy, yeah, it's in our title and And We think if you have dickpicks on your system that might incentivize you to actually care about security you don't want those leaked on the internet and sent to your future employer and When you use passwords to authenticate to your systems it might also incentivize you to not share those passwords on other systems or with people and What about authenticating with dickpicks? Is that a possibility? Yes, now like we saw in the video with John Oliver and Snowden It's a quite a good way to make people aware about privacy on the bottom You see a picture of a picture a scan that was taken with the airport security x-ray scattering background back Scatter back scatter scanners and the possibility that a dick might be visible was a huge outcry So, yeah, the effectiveness is kind of proven there as well But there's also a thing That if you fill your system up with dickpicks, you can demotivate attackers every time they try to crack something or get some information Yes, we're in penis everywhere. Penises. Yes And it's great fun thinking of the eye bleach people will need to get rid of this of the images you've shown them then Authentication well your fingerprints you leave them around everywhere every time you pick up a glass or something You leave your fingerprints your irises are always visible Yep, and what about your most private key in most countries by law you are required to keep it hidden So there are some concerns though with public transport. There might be a Hygienic concern as well with ATMs and getting money.  We also had someone try this and apparently the bullsack is a better way of Authenticating people than a penis. Yes the wrinkles and stuff here. We have a great need out of chicken with you over chip card So dick pics are very useful.   So this only applies to about half of the population and A good thing is it can also be done with an analog camera with some free-edit benefits when you pick up Developed film.  We didn't do it manually Yes wrote a script for it But as you can see for example in this case the size or position of the hand is something that's variable also Being circumcised or not is variable, but on the other hand these are the most popular positions for penises on reddit. Yes, unfortunately his rig crashed and during the event we didn't have time to create a Flask server that can generate dick pics for people who want them, but we at least we tried yep And finnair drivers don't like colonel upgrades.     I think these pictures will still be censored. Although they are generated Then there's stagronography How do you died?  Of course, you want to fill your system up for security with them But they shouldn't be obvious because people could evade them There are many ways of doing that you can hide them in pictures and use lowest bit methods We have one example where we use a audio file You can also go either way with it You can hide your penises inside other pictures or you can use your penises to hide sensitive data Yep There we go so now you all have a penis in your ear and This is the way where you encode a picture in a in an audio file and Does anybody recognize the penis? No, it's from Fight Club. So it's quite famous actually Let's see the next stuff we did some googling on psychology.  Sorry people with dicks Some according to psychology today some people with penises Might use it as a sort of pre-approval to get the rejection out of the way So you don't have to invest in your building a relationship also They love the idea of or at least like looking at nudes and would love to sometimes receive them from random people They are interested in so they assume the other people do as well projection. Yes So people without penises, of course, I have one so I had to read this one and Context matters a lot.  Yes So there is a big difference in perspective on this matter So that kind of causes a dissonance.  No At least according to psychology. There might be some exceptions to that.  There's many ways easiest way is to just not reply There's also the option of Just making a funny reply. For example, this one says hey there little guy.  I say hmm I saw one better yesterday So that brings us to what to take away Obviously a bag of dicks You may send us one. We're at the Defeys village. Yes But what you could take away from this is that dick pics have a very long history At least not in the picture form, of course, but in the form of statues and paintings and all that kind of stuff So it's nothing new also unsolicited dick pics won't get you anywhere yeah, no and That's solicited dick pics if requested could actually Heighten the awareness of people of privacy on the internet because they actually do feel they have something to hide as we saw in the John Oliver Episode of last week tonight. So dick pics do have a use This brings me to the end and to the questions Does anybody have any questions? so Given a sufficiently large training data set, do you think it would be possible for your tensor flow application to generate a representation of a platonic ideal Whoa, yeah, well, yes. Yes, I do But the only problem with that idea is that then you only get the narcissistic people So you get a perfect depiction of the average narcissistic person. Yes Regarding the computer aspect of it. Have you found some ascii ascii art? Yes, we did We had a previous slide deck that was 80 slides long. So we could fill one and a half hours the problem was we had to cut it short because we only have half an hour and That one didn't make it in but it would have been great to use in the lowest bit hiding in BMP files and stuff So if people found like hidden data, it would have been dick pic art ascii art And the cool thing is if you have certain characters, it even contains smileys. Yes Any other questions? No, cool. Okay. Thank you a warm hand To anus and ransack Sorry. Yeah, we had a question example question here.  Yes some at the six Sundays we spent to actually plan this talk We googled some quite ridiculous things you can imagine the Advertising I get now on websites. Yeah, my Google history is fucked.  It was very interesting. Yeah, so the answer is yes Yes, use more sunscreen if you want details the first time you turn it it stings a little but it gets better over time That was the description over there Okay, that was it then Cool. Oh another question. Ah Hello Well, you can use the microphone over there. Hello. Hello. I'm who's the speaker? We both are anus walk. I'm sorry. I missed your talk Yeah, I want to have this but I have one question first. Could you summarize your talk in one word? Penises. Thank you And it's about DJ right It's about DJing it said on the on the script something about DJ DJ. No, no Well, we can DJ it But then you have to take the generated sound of the penis and then use that in some sort of composition Okay, may I introduce myself? I'm Eric from Heidelberg and I host naked tango events. When is the next one? When is the next one in November? You're all invited. Thank you. I'll try All right


November 3rd 2017. I'm excited. I just got my first three hits at 2040 yards. My first time over 2000. So I'm not sure. I'm wondering if two of them were with a seven-rem mag and one was with a 6.5 Creedmoor, or maybe they were all with a seven-rem mag. Got one here, two at the bottom, and 57 minutes of angle with a seven-millimeter-rem mag shooting 195 grain burger hunter. And hey, it worked. Big thanks to Don Baldwin and to Mark for doing the reloading and to Max Gunwerks for building the rifle.