Justin Owings (Page 5)

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Exuberant Animal by Frank Forencich

Exuberant Animal by Frank Forencich I read Exuberant Animal by Frank Forencich

Constructive Living by David Reynolds

"The first step in changing reality is to recognize it as it is now. There is no need to wish it were otherwise. It simply is. Pleasant or not, it is. Then comes behavior that acts on the present reality. Behavior can change what is. We may have visions of what will be. We cannot (and need not) prev

Shoot first and ask questions later (And have kids even if you don't want to) (Updated, sorta)

In short, I liken parenthood to doing first and understanding later. This is a good rule of thumb to apply across almost all facets of life -- lots of iterations make for lots of experiments through which we can learn about and enjoy life. Not having kids is a choice to have a drastically less-inter

Cross-Pollinating Ideas via the Internet

I call these occurrences examples of the "cross-pollination" of ideas. It's a collaborative, unpredictable, uncoordinated, complex effort whereby ideas and information gleaned from disparate sources are examined in relation to one another. It is knowing the trees and seeing the forest. The goal is t

Birthday Shoes dot com

Five Fingers are just footwear: how great could this product be? Pretty extraordinary, actually. Why? Because they empower us modern hunter-gatherers to move about the earth and do things in accordance with our evolutionary design, which is to say, locomote a concrete, polluted and often trashy worl

Peter Thiel responds to Folk Activism

[T]here's one frontier that isn't being talked about, and that is the frontier of day-to-day life that transpires outside the purveyance of Big Brother. Indeed, that is most of our lives, so this frontier is immensely important. Indeed, many, many people live most of their lives incredibly freely be

On Nassim Taleb's Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world

"Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news."

Creating Communities (or Tribes)

I say “meaningful ways” because our enumerated causes are often incredibly shallow. I still have great friendships from my old days as a Christian (this was back in my teenage years) even though I am more an atheist or agnostic (whatever) today. Most Christians even within the same church body have

Patri Friedman on Folk Activism

I wonder if the search for the most functional and free government is a leprechaun we've no hope of catching. This could be because governments are inherently anti-freedom (After all, they are: monopoly of force is always anti-freedom), so their very existence unavoidably negates the goal. I'm not s

Giving up the Mouse: Use Hot Keys [Grind Skills]

Giving up the Mouse: Use Hot Keys [Grind Skills]

In our computer-driven age, quite possibly the greatest "Grind Skill&

Natto: Another fermented food I probably should be eating

Prior to Seth Roberts mentioning it on his blog (here), I had

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

Finished reading Stumbling on Happiness (SoH) by Daniel Gilbert last night, which weighs at about 240 pages and is an easy and informative discussion of the human mind, how we perceive the past and future, and our own ineptitude at understanding what makes us happy. It’s explicitly not a self-help b