Well, this post has been a while in coming. I guess it’s been close to a week now since I pulled up stakes from Pattaya, Thailand, and moved out into rural Thailand once again. But this time it’s very different from when I did rural in the COVID clusterfuck of 2020. Very, very different. I’ll get to that later.

In the meantime, I want to start this post with something else—an interlude, if you will, or an odd introduction. I watched the Joe Rogan podcast, number 2501 with Marc Andreessen. You can look it up.

Andreessen was never really on my radar. I knew about him for a long time, of course. He was the guy behind Mosaic, the very first web browser that actually rendered pages properly back in the early 90s, complete with images and everything that made the web usable. He obviously made a pile of money from that and the subsequent ventures, so he was always just background noise to me—someone I never gave much thought.

But lately I’ve been paying attention. I’ve read a few things he’s written, and more importantly, I’ve watched and listened to his last couple of appearances on Joe Rogan. Especially that monster three-hour episode that just dropped. I’ve got some things to say about it.

He’s not among the absolute brightest bulbs on the planet—neither am I—but he’s plenty smart. My own IQ has tested in the high 130s to low 140s since I was a teenager, and that holds even after I’ve put away a bottle of whiskey. Andreessen strikes me as sitting in the same range. Not some fragile genius who can’t function, but right in that sweet spot where you’re sharp as hell, smarter than almost everyone around you, yet still grounded enough to get shit done.

Not everybody reaches that level, but you can still be effective. What amazes me about Andreessen, though—watching that podcast—is how he connects things. And I don’t want to sound crazy or narcissistic or anything like that, or condescending in any way. I’m just saying that listening to him talk for three hours was a non-stop head nod for me. Not because I already knew everything he was talking about—no, he dropped plenty of facts I wasn’t aware of—but the way he logically strings them together with that forward-looking vision of his? It’s just a fucking head nod the whole way through. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Three solid hours of it.

I would draw the same logical conclusions, or at least predictions. Like, 100%. It’s uncanny. So I know you think, “Oh really?” Yeah, we kinda think alike, and how do I put it without sounding weird and strange and presumptuous? I don’t really care to be like a famous person or anything like that, but what I do like to be is that Richard’s fucking smart and he calls shit with that heat-seeking, futuristic kind of thinking—like what’s the most logical way humanity is gonna sort its shit out based on their own value decisions.

And then Marc goes into that with great depth, distinguishing between what is truly right and wrong—like 1+1=2 versus human value judgments and choices. And that is what I’m all about. I’ve always been all about that.

I’m trying to make the distinction because I hate fucking people who believe in sky fairies that make the values. No. Humans make their own value decisions. I don’t care about your fucking sky fairy. You’re a moron to me if you don’t make your own value decisions, just like sheep. Or “God said.” Fuck you. Fuck you. You’re a moron. You’re stupid. So there, I’ve said that.

Watch the Rogan podcast about what’s coming down the pike (90% certainty on my end … and no, JEBUS is not coming again, you silly stupid children), and then I’ll go into my big-ass Thailand update. We left Pattaya in the morning hours of the 21st for the 11-hr drive, and I’m fucking loving it and so here goes.

Rural Rhythm

In retrospect now, having lived in Thailand for more than six years—6½ years now—and coming from somebody who has lived internationally quite a lot in my life going back, there’s a distinction I did not quite make even when I lived in rural Thailand during the Covid years. I actually built a house and lived in a village, but there were many connections I was not making until now, having moved back. And that is: it’s not just a different place. If I can try to explain, it’s not just “oh, I’m living in a different place, in a different environment, a different culture.” No, it is fundamentally different.

I think I nailed it down in just the last few days. It is a sun-up-to-sundown society. Put that in your head. Sun-up-to-sundown society. Early to bed, early to rise. That’s what it is out here. The last few days I go out every morning. I get up typically sometime between four and five in the morning. I’m in bed typically between eight and nine in the evening most days. That doesn’t mean you never party or stay up late or something like that, but that’s what you do habitually, and that’s what it is. Your body, your whole mentality, your mindset starts to change gently.

What you begin to think is, man, the rest of the world is constant sound and light pollution. When you live out here this way, you start to feel better and better. I’ve been a Paleo influencer, and one thing I was never interested in was everybody talking about circadian rhythms and light blockers and all that bullshit. It’s like, already I have to think about what foods you should eat. If you live in an urban, sound-and-light-polluted environment, what do you need to eat?

What I tell you now is: don’t fake that bullshit. Don’t talk about that bullshit. Get out of the fucking sound-and-light-polluted city and move to someplace like I am. One of my favorite things to do now, living fairly near the equator, is that day and night is roughly—it doesn’t differ that much. It’s not like you get super short days and super long nights at high latitudes in the northern or southern hemisphere. Even just the continental United States in the northern part of the country and northwestern Europe, you get used to having really long days in the summer where it might not get dark till nine or ten at night. But here in Thailand it doesn’t vary that much. It’s probably roughly, for most of Thailand, about an hour or so difference between the longest day and the shortest day of the year. Up in northern Thailand it might be close to two hours difference, but you still don’t really account for it that much.

So it’s like, all right, you know, five o’clock, it’s probably gonna get twilight pretty soon. That’s what it is right now. By about 5:15 it’s twilight, and in the evening time, sometime between six and seven, it’s gonna start dimming down severely into twilight and sundown. If you model your life around that. It’s like, I had enough to worry about with eating right. So the whole Paleo movement kind of focused for a long time on the circadian rhythm and the blue-blocking sunglasses and all that stuff, and I was just always, “I got enough stuff to worry about already.”

So now I guess my position is: you want to do circadian rhythm, move down close to the equator, and then it becomes pretty natural to live a largely sun-up-to-sundown existence. I’m not saying people go to bed when the sun is down, but things are pretty winding down by 8 PM and it’s not uncommon to hit the sack by about 9 PM. That’s kind of what I’ve been doing—roughly 9 or 10 PM until about 5 AM. Currently this time of year that might change. Like I said, it varies a little bit, and we’re into the longer days right now. Anyway, enough of that. Let’s talk about something else.

In No Particular Order

As mentioned in the intro vid, most of my real-time posting is on X. You can follow.

– I was locked out of X for a week. A spanking. Grok replied to my announcement of how dumb it was. “Welcome back, Richard. Algorithms struggle with context, sarcasm, and hyperbole—especially crude jokes framed as pushback. Moderation errs on the side of caution more often than not, even when it’s overkill. Glad you’re posting again.”

– Well, after about 2 months of having about 4 workers here daily, 7 days per week usually, The Great Wall is finished except for the painting. Massive project for a rural residence. All concrete and steel. Nearly 6′ high, 175 yards long. I haven’t calculated cost, but materials a few thousand bucks and so too labor. I’ve shown the progress in recent blog posts and also on the X feed.

– Now the big deal is building furniture, like right on site.

– Yea, I’m into cold exposure once again (for those who recall way back). Back when I was here a month or so ago, I got a rubber kiddie pool but for various reasons, that didn’t work out. Cold showers aren’t all that cold. Then I recalled that throughout Thailand, they use insulated ice boxes EVERYWHERE, serviced every morning by the ice trucks. You better be up by about 6 am or you might miss it. Think of your camping cooler, but much larger. We already have one, 2-3 times larger than a camping model, but they have much larger. So I got a 500 liter and the deal is, so long as you’re buying ice every day or nearly so, the box is on free loan. I kicked it off with 5, 20-kilo bags (240 pounds), and now, surprisingly, 1 bag every day or two maintains it at like mid-30s F, 5ish C.

Rather than my antics of years ago building up to 15 minutes submerged, I do multiple sessions daily of 3-5 min and that’s enough. I don’t want to get into chronic territory.

– I’ve got a new good buddy here in Thailand. An Aussie. It’s uncanny how alike we think about political and social issues.

OK, I guess that will do it for today.