I started BJJ this year after being a big fan of the sport for a while.

I can't express how fun it is to get your ass kicked repeatedly for weeks on end. I wish I could explain why it's this fun.

It helps that it's helping me get in great shape as well

Motivation has been hit or miss for me, because that's kinda how motivation is.

What I need is discipline. I've been working on that pretty hard this year.

I've got several startups and now an IRL tech community that I'm building and running on nights and weekends.

• Tursas - a visibility (and eventually security) platform for AI agents
• Scrollwise - a platform for using AI to help you with research. Not writing it for you, but using it like a research...

trippy

Do not wait for the ashes of the old to settle to start building the new world

the umpteenth Locking In

I go through these cycles where I lose focus on my goals, the startups I'm building and the things I want to accomplish in life and just let bullshit take over my attention. I'm really bad about getting motivated instead of disciplined, where I get a sprint of motivation for a week where I bang out code and then it falls off.

This works badly for things like hobbies, but I want to be a startup founder full time. I want to build very large things. I want to get really good at...

introducing hundomentals

In this blog I've decided to transition a lot of my long form research into a format that creates guides from the most fundamental, low-level topic in a niche up to the more abstract. From algebra up to LLM inference, from the history of the middle east to the tattoos on Pete Hegseth.

I explain a bit about why I'm going in that that direction, but the TL;DR of it is that it's unbelievably tempting and easy to...

It's not good... but it's mine lmao.

I'm taking another crack at learning blender for animation. This took... longer than I would have liked, but I learned a lot from it in terms of modeling, rigging, animating, etc.

The main thing I learned is that I have a lot of respect for 3D animators that create unbelievably complex models and animations and background environments....

self-critique: I'm not a creative person in part because I never developed the discipline to develop creative skills

I'm having a frustrating day where I find myself wishing I had a creative outlet. I've started 100 of them, I have two guitars, 1,000 sketchbooks, an Ableton license, multiple YouTube channels, multiple writing outlets. I have creative outlets "available" but I won't stick to them.

I've discovered why, through a good bit of introspection. I was trying to motivate myself to open up...

a southern baptist's introduction to Christian Gnosticism

I wrote a bit on why I started looking into Christian Gnosticism. It's less an introduction to the topic and more an "internal reasoning" of why I became interested in it. I have known a lot of exvangelicals and people turned away from religion or Christianity in my life, and I think this could be an interesting outlet or field of study for them.

It's crazy how blind you can end up if you never question your belief system.

I grew up in the US evangelical church. You did not question the belief system you were fed in that church, you did not question the belief system held by your parents, who did not question the belief system that was held by their parents.

Growing up, I rebelled against this a bit, but that rebellion more or less just looked like apathy toward organized religion, something that very nearly grew into atheism. Now, I am still a...

I’m on the tail end of the Dune books (book 5) and it’s probably been the most impactful series I’ve ever read.

Solid workday

Today I got a bunch of t-posts in the ground, dug the holes for some 4x4 posts for a gate and started building a brooder box for the chickens!

Going to like 10x my pepper production for homemade hot sauce and work on transitioning from shitty hobby gardener to borderline homesteader this year. I’m pretty late in the season already but a lot of the work I’m doing now will be super helpful for next year anyways.

And the chickens need a bigger box… they can jump pretty high already

Solarpunk as One of Many Answers

I have enjoyed Solarpunk for quite some time now. The idea of tech meshing with ecology, the idea that we don't have to be luddites to take care of the world and we don't have to be cruel to animals and nature to develop technology, these things have always felt important to me, in part because I love tech and I love nature. I hate the idea that these two things must be at odds.

Solarpunk offers a lot of really interesting fictional and near-fictional/science-fictional...