— A Mean Post; Turning Points; Biker Photos; Harley-Davidson, Gear, Flying, and Video…

Greetings from Pratamnak Hill, Chonburi, Thailand, on Sunday, June 25, 2023.

Prelude

I got this comment on my RFK Jr. post. I thought that it, and my reply, would make a decent prelude to this “you’re so mean” Sunday Scribbles.

Great piece on the RFK, Jr candidacy. Wondering if you had occasion to listen to anything from Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai (the inventor of email). He doesn’t seem to have much good to say about anyone and appears to have a pretty good bead on the entirety of the Cathedral.
https://youtu.be/ekYoJYfOwLU

Interesting video. Pretty cool to integrate everything we know about health (autophagy, even) into the whole picture.

I can sorta do that too. I have a million times.

Yea, everything is shit. I get it.

Everybody’s a hypocrite. I get it.

Everybody’s a liar. I get it.

His “problem,” though, is that he paints a very hopless picture (and running for POTUS to “fix” it?). But he’s a scientist and scientists deconstruct, and it’s not really his job to solve problems. His job is “here’s all the constituent parts, here’s how they work together or don’t at all, here’s the cause/effect” and now it’s up to you to make something of it.

You’ve got good facts and data to do your best at our current state of scientific knowledge.

And then you go back to the beginning, above, and see that it’s hopeless.

Because most people are seemingly wayward, lost souls just lying their way through 70–80 years of life on earth, give or take.

I see zero hope, anywhere. So what I’m about is making the best life for myself as I can, for those who support those efforts by way of membership, and those close to me—and try not to worry about anything else.

And if you want to get real about it, nobody should be president and that so many think somebody should be is a symptom of the unfixable problem.

There is only one thing that fixes this and parts of that are well underway through the destruction of farming, supply chains, and energy production in pursuit of global depopulation and net-zero.

Mass starvation.

It’s the one thing that can’t be faked, like death. Lockdowns and livelihood and social outlet closures showed you can put people in prison and get them to love it, as close to pissing on someone and telling them it’s rain as I’ve ever seen. Most eye-opening there, was that Republicans and 2nder-clowns went right along with it (the biggest disgrace and disappointment I’ve witnessed in my life, and it’s too late…they can’t take it back).

… And so here we are, and the foregoing is a quick summation of where I’m at.

Turning Points

I don’t have much time.

Nobody does, really. Mine’s a lot shorter.

I couldn’t be happier.

I’ve spent countless hours curating content for this place for 20 years, and I have not run away from conflict. I’ve embraced it with varying degrees of ferocity along the way.

At times, I’ve sought to do different things for different proclivities, interests, values, attention spans…be a little nicer.

Say things a different way.

But now?

I don’t care anymore.

I have declared war.

Why?

Because I have a goal:

To get to 100,000 members. That’s what it will take to do $1 million per month in recurring subscription revenue. Yea, 1 million-with-an-M; per month-with-an-M.

To set the groundwork to do this, I’ve made a commitment to some of the people I’ve been talking to about building this out, which requires testing testing testing up the ass ass ass. Forget about all the bullshit make-a-million-buck e-book scams out there.

Crap.

All of them.

Funnels?

Crap too.

I’m talking hundreds, even thousands of different ads that are tested and tracked. And that’s just the lead generation part. Then you’ve got to test test test out the ass ass ass on your conversion automations and when you get to, say, a 6-email process, can you even imagine how many testable various variation variables there are?

You’re never not testing and often, you have to test just to keep conversion rates from decaying over time. Entropy permeates everything. All systems decay.

The bottom line is that sweeping aside all the easy-way bullshit out there—that only sells because it hypes that age-old lie that people know is a lie but will pay to be told it again and again, over and over—it’s not easy, it never is; it’s fucken hard, and it costs big bucks.

So that’s where the commitment comes in.

I’m reinvesting everything into the growth-machine I’m building.

How that works out in back-of-envelope calculat’n is a few hundred bucks per month now and for a while for provisioning (web hosting, email delivery, transaction costs, plugin subscriptions, and support), a few K for my personal expenses (nuthin fancy…yet), whatever the tax guy says needs to be withheld for that euphemism…and the rest goes into the machine.

So, if you’re ready to jump down the rabbit hole with me…which means, I report on how it’s going, in detail…so you get a real understanding of what this all entails…

Here are the pillars of my you’re-so-mean, unapologetic, and divisive strategy:

Revel in the Controversy

I’m speaking my mind without fear of judgment.

I’ll be a bit smart[er] about it. I know what’s off-putting to too many, that doesn’t have to be said; merely indulgence on my part that I can avoid, or keep to minimums.

I know myself to the extent I know the difference between must-be-said and need not be said.

So I’ll not be going against any of my principles and values ever, to gain popularity, influence, and bucks.

I loathe the whole idea of “influencer,” anyway.

Talk about a bunch of generally worthless, narcissistic, lying fakes and phonies.

… The type that’ll get up at 05.00 in Bali and spend 2 hours setting up the perfect Instagram video short of them getting out of bed, dipping into the pool underneath their “treehouse”….where they then swim to the other end and there’s the coffee, steam rising from the espresso pot.

Vomit.

What a sad life that would be.

You’re literally not enjoying your travel-life because you have to spend so much time and effort setting up the perfect short vids in order to lie to everyone…about how much you’re enjoying your travel life.

In a sense, that is an aspect of the entertainment business. But at least in the classic sense, there was showtime or production time, and that’s when you put on the act. Then you had time off to enjoy life.

“Influencers” have accepted the con that their whole life is the show.

Vomit.

Everything I put out must be aligned with my values, principles, and thoughts.

Forge Unbreakable Bonds

I’m focusing my energy on cultivating a true tribe of members.

Since I’m not a niche guy specialist (like a surgeon who can’t do an oil change or fix a flat), I’ve categorized what I do into three baskets of niches:

1. Politics, current events, social/cultural, AI
2. Health, diet, weight loss, food, exercise, AI
3. Geoarbitrage, travel, digital entrepreneur, solopreneur, nomad, AI

If you don’t immediately understand why AI is part of all three, oh, you are so far behind; and it’s already going to cost you thousands of dollars, your job, and your business. You might become one of the tens of billions out of the 117 billion people ever born who ended up destitute and penniless, having to start all over, by falling behind in the face of huge shifts and changes—and AI is the hugest change to ever hit the human being. By thousands of miles.

AI is no longer a topic. AI is the meta-topic that ultimately defines and directs all topics, bar none. Why do you think “authorities” are so freaked out? They can’t control it (the way they speak of it substantiates that). Crypto has a huge learning curve (still) and it’s difficult and cumbersome to use. Plus, it’s not money. Digital gold bars is perhaps the best thing you can say about it. Buy some gold bars. Physical and digital.

Think of it this way. Computers rose up in the mid-80s, then internet in the mid-90s. Everyone knows how to use both, which means they know how to type in their language. Most have never learned to code, and that’s what user interface was all about. Other people wrote bunches of lots of code and everything you see in your GUI represents a snippet of code, and that graphical object is what translates the code into something you can understand.

But as you know, it’s very limited.

“Why can’t this program do this thing I want it to do?” Well, because there’s no button, checkbox, setting, or text-box for that (code). With AI? “I want it to do this and this and that,” and you can write that a dozen different ways in any of dozens of different languages and the AI understands and then, the equivalents of those buttons, check boxes, settings, and text-boxes appear for you—or it just goes and does it. That’s what’s coming, much is already here, though not yet in user-friendly packaging.

Everybody knows how to type and explain themselves in their language (and soon enough you’ll simply just talk), some better than others and some, like me, hard-core experts at it. Essentially, everyone is now gifted with bachelor, masters, and PhD level coding skills in any computer language. You might want to exercise with AI and learn how to be super descriptive and explicit in your prompts, the equivalent of becoming a great software coder.

… Quality trumps quantity, but I have spurts (like now) of hyper-productivity where everything is feeding off of everything else, and I can put a lot out in a short time and that’s gotten even way better over the last week as I’ve developed the most straightforward way to get things done I’ve ever seen, and I’ve tried a million systems. Maybe it’s for you, maybe not. You’ll have the chance to try it, probably within a couple more weeks of refinements.

… A tight-knit, passionate community like I’m building will always yield greater rewards than a soulless sea of followers.

Which necessarily means that if you’re not a member, I don’t care about you.

Is that something that needs to be said, or that which doesn’t?

Well, everyone knows it’s a lie when someone like me (or an “influencer”) comes along with all their drivel about how much they care. Bullshit. We care that the subscription CC charge clears on the appointed day.

We care about holding up our end to produce content in whatever way we do that, consistently. We care that the members figure they’re getting a fair deal and they like it.

Otherwise…nope, don’t GAF.

No lies.

(When any politician talks about how they “care so deeply,” it’s because it’s one of the things they don’t and can’t give a runny shit about, so that’s lying by overcompensation.)

Everything I do is geared toward producing content for membership. I’m waiting for an AI setup to sort emails and other comms into those who are members and those who are not… The AI will archive the non-member stuff and check regularly to see if any of the archived comms are from new members and bring it to my attention. Otherwise, I’ll never see it…and why would I ever need to? Any good reason?

Stuff like that.

I’m done spending any time on those I don’t care about.

For example, say a non-member has suggestions for me of what I might do or include to attract more people like themselves. But I want to repel people who don’t reasonably think somewhere in line as I do and hold reasonably similar values and principles. Of course, a ridiculous example would be honoring LGBTIDGAF+ month instead of dishonoring, insulting, and mocking it as I do…but there are all sorts of nuanced and subtitle things I could do that might attract more. I’ll touch more on that later.

The “it’s nothing personal” shtick is not the key element here. The key element here is that if I’m not somewhere in about your top-5 sources of information in one or more of those three baskets outlined above, then you’re simply wasting your time and probably enduring a measure of frustration by even being here.

Unsubscribe.

You really should save yourself the trouble. And then I benefit by having more accurate numbers on how many prospective members I really have.

Confront Everything Head-On

I’m embracing whatever comes my way; the positive to enhance, laud, and grow; the negative in artful, pivotal ways to take some advantage of, in lemons to lemonade ways.

Bullshit and antagonism is part of it all. Due to the structure of having a membership site, it’s rather exclusive, so members never have to mix it up in comments with non-members or life-sucking trolls. Over two years, now, and there has never been a cross word between members in comments. Why should there be, if they’re pretty much on the same values and principles page? I have both Dems and Rs, but of the sort who have brains and good sense, go figure.

And it’s not an echo-chamber, either. My members are self-confident. They give zero fucks and have no one to convince of anything. It’s very exclusive, which leads to the primary sets of points here, so maybe read carefully.

Why do people pay for membership in a site like this? It took me a while to nail it down, but it’s not so much the content or my style, though I’d love to think it was. And anyway; refusing to lie, bullshit, and blow smoke isn’t a style. It’s lying that demands a style. When people say, “oh, I love his style,” what they mean is they love how cleverly he lies to them.

It’s exclusivity. That’s the prime reason people pay for a membership here.

Discrimination.

Deprecation.

But mostly exclusivity. It may sound awful, but you know it’s true. If I do a lot of free content, paying members aren’t thinking “why am I paying, I could get it for free?” No, what they’re thinking is: “I don’t want non-members to have this.”

By paying a membership, you’re not paying for the content you’re going to get, as fantastic as it is. You’re paying to feel the power of denying it to others.

It’s true.

So, the more people who pay for membership and this site grows, the more people you’re going to deny access to. And that’s what you want. It’s what you crave.

Open the floodgates. And make fun of them.

Hold My Ground

Unshakable conviction. Maintain the core identity of FreeTheAnimal.com with iron-grip control.

Check this out and follow along closely because it may be an ah-ha for you:

My perspective is simple. I wrote up above about taking advice from non-members as to what things I might offer, change, style, etc., to attract more of them as members. That’s not an unreasonable thing, and businesses do it all the time. Too many do it too much, and they lose their core identity in the pursuit of profits, but that’s a subject for a different day.

I’m talking about completely disregarding such advice, as well-meaning and reasonable as it may be. But quite simply, members give me feedback at times, and that’s all the suggestion-box I need.

The bigger, way bigger, thing is this: there are a bit over 1 billion fluent English speakers on the planet. My 100K subscriber goal is 1/10,000ths of that. In other words, out of the general population of English speakers on the planet, is 1 in 10,000 eye-to-eye seeing enough to place me high enough on their info-guy hierarchy and pay membership?

I’m pretty sure, yea. One in 10,000 is not a huge obstacle, and I’d venture that the real number maybe closer to 1 in 1,000.

But there’s this, too. Because AI changes everything, AI is going to make language completely transparent. The universal translator of Star Trek is already here…or perhaps terrestrial translator is a more accurate descriptor. GPT-4 can already do all the main languages. I’ve had it translate even long passages into Thai, explain to a Thai what the English means, and then show them the translation. You know what they say every time? “Better than Thai people.”

That took a minute…

And see, I can find a way to integrate AI into every damn thing I do. It’s like herbs & spices.

So to get back to the point, it’s that in the not too distant future, it doesn’t matter what language you put up a website in. When any user worldwide comes and visits, it’s going to dynamically, on-the-fly, serve it up in their own language.

And on the fly is important. You don’t have to create a site but in the language of your preference, you can make changes at will, and whatever state it’s in when a visitor arrives, that’s what they get, instantly in their own language and if they need to interact with you in any way, that’ll be covered too.

So, you have a machine that does all languages better than 99% of humans, does math, physics, chemistry, and computer coding too…plus can write a poem, essay or novel on the fly…compose a song, create a video, give medical, legal, and investment advice as good and soon better than human professionals.

Can you think of anything more wild ass? What that means for me is that my population pool expands by 8x, so I just need to find that 1 in 800,000. That’s close to in a million?

The problem? Finding them so I can pitch them the offer. But I’m staying on top of AI because for sure that will play a role and again, members are going to get every single important detail along the ways and the real stuff starts soon…by which I mean the initial ads, called “ideation.” … Fucken trade lingo…

This is your chance to unsubscribe from my list right now.

The content I’ll be posting will make you FEEL things many are certainly not ready for.

But if you trust me…

Stay. And pay.

You’ll love it here. Otherwise, it’s gonna be you and your football, me and my bat, and there’s just never going to be any fun.

But I can say this, I’m being driven to be increasingly exclusive. That’s the chief value I offer the membership; so, on that, I shall deliver.

They want me to keep you from it.

Biker Photos

I’m not a biker dude.

At all. Not even a little bit. That’s not meant to be disparaging, but rather the opposite.

I’m not worthy.

I’d love to be one and maybe…just maybe…my demeanor online is my subconscious effort to measure up to biker dude glory.

And it’s not for lack of trying, either. I mean, I’ve really tried.

Featured below is my current ride for the past 3 years and a bit. A Thai bike, 2016 GPX Legend. Chinese-made 200-cc 4-stroke, air-cooled, 1-down, 5-up…seriously in need of a ring job, but the quote for that is only about 100 bucks. I’ve been changing the $2 spark plug with regularity once it’s fouled from oil deposits too badly. In the lower right corner is its black configuration the night I bought it for about $800 (now closer to $700 given the exchange-change in my favor). It has been my principal means of getting around for over 3 years. I had the drab-green Army-retro design done a few months back. Complete disassembly and repaint, $170.

In the middle is the very first bike I owned (I learned on Honda-50 and 90 trail bikes, owned by my dad and grandad, as a kid), a 1984 Honda VF 1000R, purchased at the Navy Exchange on the Yokosuka US Naval base. I had to put 200 miles on it while driving on base to get my Japanese motorcycle license. After about 20 miles, I enlisted the help of Boatswain’s Mate Petty Officer 2nd Class Savage to advance the odometer a couple of hundred miles, so I could get out on the streets.

I learned the whole of downtown Tokyo on that thing, plus the entire peninsula between Tokyo and Sagami bays. The photo is taken on Zushi beach—the next one over from my house on Morito beach in Hayama.

I went to Tokyo (about 60 km) every Saturday or Sunday when in port and the weather was cooperative. Why? Unfairly, the Japanese are limited to 500cc without huge and costly hoops to jump through; whereas, per the US military’s Status of Forces Agreement with the Japanese, we had no such limitations.

But why, really?

‘Cause it was a chick magnet, ok?

(exclusivity, again…)

In the bottom left is the one V-twin cruiser I owned, a 2001 Indian Chief. Massive 1,300cc. Beautiful.

See how desperately I wanted to be a bike dude? But I just couldn’t get into the culture, plus there’s part of it I already lived and reconciled as a no.

Flying hang gliders. Now, you might think hang-glider pilots are like pencil-necks or daredevils, or sumthin.

Nope.

They’re “biker dudes” who’re capable of taking that next step: into the air. You don’t find so many tech engineers flying hang gliders (they’ll be flying panties paragliders…or sailplanes, or powered). Hang glider pilots are tradesman types…carpenters, plumbers, electricians, roofers, concrete, etc., and contractors. Just like bikers.

Surprised?

Consider this one huge crossover: gear! Who has a lot of really functional cool gear?

Tradesman, fishermen, hunters, off-roaders, bikers, and…hang-glider pilots.

Gear: Out. The. Ass.

And I hate it all. I’m a gear minimalist.

Take it from a guy who’s been wearing flip-flops, shorts and tank tops for 3 1/2 years and owns about 2 linen collared shirts because…well, because you have to be formal sometimes.

… So all my HG buddies, I’d watch them suit up for getting high. We’re talking wool socks, leather boots, heavy denim, layers, down jacket…then all the survival, radio, water…you name it.

It’s fucking 100 F in the middle of July, and they’re dressed for the final ascent of Mt. Everest. Why? Because it’s effen cold at 12,000 feet and above, and that’s where you intend to get when doing mountain flying in the Western US, Alps regions of Western Europe, or any number of other places where you can get high and go far.

The altitude record for hang gliders is “18,000 feet” (everything above 18k is class A airspace and illegal; thus, when asked how high, “I got to 18,000” means you got a lot higher. I’ve seen the altimeter logs of friends at 22-23K in the White and Black mountains of Owens Valley, CA). Some guys even carry an oxygen tank and cannula, while others are uncanny managers of hypoxia, from much experience going into black & white pinpoint vision (they detect it and lose sufficient altitude quick while still having some wits about them).

The distance record is over 400 miles in a single flight. Nope, not the ground skimming or sled rides of the 70s so many seem to think—as though this one thing never made any technological advancements.

… Anyway, I had already tried all the gear, hated it; ruined the experience for me, so while others are putting on their Michelin-Man costumes, I’m in t-shirt and jeans. Converse high-tops or those neoprene water booties with a rubber sole. I’ve even flown barefoot when knowing I’d be landing on a grass field. I’ll sometimes wear a jacket. But my thing is to climb up to where it’s cold, which is constant work, so you’re hot & sweaty by the time you top out, tool around until too cold, find sinking air to core back down a few thousand feet, get hot again, repeat for as long as you want or until the lift dies as the sun starts setting. Anything above 8k is usually pretty cool & comfy, even in the hottest of the summer temps. Above 12K is effen cold. I’ve been as high as 12 a few times.

So now I get to my point and more photos. I get to ride motorcycles here in Thailand without all the gear. I avoid going out in inclement weather… I’m definitely a fair-weather rider, and I have gotten myself stuck either underdressed in inclement weather or late evening, where I’m underdressed for the drop in temps. Very seldom a thing here.

So, to wrap this lengthy thing up, I have my sights set on a big bike. The Harley-Davidson dealership is but a couple of clicks from me, and there’s even an Indian dealership in Bangkok, owned by the same folks. Whereas, I never much cared for the Sportster model of Harley, that’s the one that aesthetically attracts me the most, now. Also, the least expensive, clocking in about 750k baht ($21k US out the door, which is less than I paid for the Indian Chief 20 years ago). Some of those decked-out models go for a million-5, around $42K.

Video

One of my favorites, and I was in Italy at the time and ran into friends in Monterosso on the Cinque Terre who were there for the competition at Monte Cucco.

Now, they’re not particularly over-geared, but they’ll only be getting to about 6k, so not cold. That’s because it’s a time-to-goal competition (usually ~80-100km straight line, or ~40-50km out-and-return or triangle) so the idea is to only get high enough to get back on glide, because climbing takes time and depending on the winds aloft, can be helping you a little, or hurting you a lot.

This doubles as cool music: Muse; Knights of Cydonia.

Well, since there are biker chicks too, what would you expect?

Have a good one. Back soon, probably with something with lots of jots & tittles.