It feels like this site needs some content. SO HERE I GO HO HO HO! Is this blog content or filler. There are no visible ads on the site. The quality of the content of this blog is surely up for debate.
Anyway, today was my last day at my last job. It was ok. I didn't get a break per usual in the mornings. I made a lot of pizzas. God I am sick of making pizzas. It felt nice walking out that door today. I had a meeting with the bosses after I was done. It went ok. They all thanked me a lot and I realized afterward I wasn't thankful myself. 2 of the people are or were chefs and they didn't really teach me anything. They both could have given me a break the last 2 days but didn't. I still like them though. I am just fault finding. They asked me out for a beer afterwards and I just coldly said "I don't drink." I realized later I could have offered up that I could have a sweet tea but I just coldly said "I don't drink." This shit probably doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. I probably won't care about this interaction in 1 year or 5 years. And honestly, I think I rather literally starve than go back to work there. Amazon is the fucking worst. The bureaucracy, the managerialism. They fucking put surveillance cameras in the break room. And it was getting worse by the day. Good fucking riddance. Now, I need to get super active in this Food and Beverage union organizing. My goal is to get a union into Whole Foods someday. Of course, it's easy to say this as I can no longer be fired there. So many things to do and I'm right into the next job. It sucks.
So, I hit the snooze button for 3 hours this morning. 3 fucking hours. So ridiculous. I got up in time to serve at Food Not Bombs though. Then I got invited to a DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) party. It was cool. There were a lot of people there. It was actually a little overwhelming. Most of the people there knew each other and I knew a handful somewhat. I like socialization but I am certainly not a social butterfly. There was also a conflict in which I was supposed to go to a labor meeting for the food and beverage industry but didn't receive any of the texts or I really don't even know what happened but I was down to go to that meeting. I was down to do whatever. I am trying to be friends with these people and am genuinely just trying to help. I believe in Food Not Bombs, I believe in Bernie for President, I believe in unions in the food and beverage industry. I am willing to spend my time on all of these things. It's a little frustrating to hit some snafus but it's only natural eh?
Anarchy exists today. Most of the people I was with were anarchists. We support Bernie out of harm reduction and perhaps a first step in Revolution. I think some anarchists can take it too far. I commented that it would be interesting to see Bernie's actual beliefs when he gets out of politics and she commented that his only opinions are what temperature to eat soup or what socks are comfortable and that the only value of Bernie in office is to drag him out of the office and shoot him in the head in the streets. I also got into an argument about ACAB with some people too. We were just getting into a good discussion when her girlfriend came in and she was cool too but it kind of killed the discussion. My position is that probably not all cops are bad. There position was that they are ALL complicit. Fair enough but also at the end of the day it is the structures in place that create all of this anyway. I will say there was this one time I forgot to close the garage door and the neighbors called the cops. They thought I was squatting at my parent's house. There were no guns drawn or any use of force. I simply got my id and they were on their way besides telling me to remember to close the garage door in an authoritative manner.
I would have liked to see more talk about praxis. Memes and this and that is only so entertaining. I don't know. I mostly just wrote postcards for the Bernie campaign and took it all in. As I said I'm not a social butterfly. There were a lot of people there I would like to spend more time with. So, again, it's just about being consistent and saying "yes" to things.
I am just here at Midnight EST alone with not much to do per usual.
/userpoll/draw.php?poll_id=5032
Poll: Did you have a Valentine's Day date?
(Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
Comments? How did your day go?
My phone died. I had to dig up some old timey alarm clock to wake up for work. Then I went to work and now I am here... alone... Midnight EST... per usual. My phone might be ok though.
Everything's so fragile. My phone is fragile. My car is fragile. My CPU is fragile. I AM SO FRAGILE. It feels like anyone of these things could go at any moment.
REMEMBER DEATH
My mom has this awesome Don Drumm cat that is staring at me:
Art is great but I don't currently have any inspiration. I painted the most bright and beautiful woman that I have ever painted the other day and then I painted flowers blossoming, a river of blood, a rising son, and Japanese characters. I just like the aesthetic of the most right pink, blood red, and BLACK. Obv getting the right pink is the most important. It has more white than it than red that's for sure but not too much. It's just the most right pink.
I will go to Japan one day. I must. If I had the money I would fly to San Fransisco spend some time with some friends there. Hopefully, with one of the loves of my life. My God that red backless dress she wore the last time I saw her... No, that wasn't the last time I saw her but still... and one of my best friends. Fly to Hawaii because I've never been there and it seems up my alley. Fly to Tokyo to take that in, go to Kyoto, actually, aren't there people here who live in or have been to Japan? Maybe go to Seoul. Home of Byung Chul-Han, Bong Joon-Ho, and SlayerS_Boxer.
I painted a prototype the other day. Damn, that red backless dress is a prototype. I've had a crush on her since high school. There are women everywhere. I was sitting next to 4 women last night that I could reasonably date.
Japan, prototypes, Love...
And I'm so God damn broke. Probably in more ways than one. Fuck capitalism. My therapist says there is nothing holding me back as far as she knows. I don't think I'm withholding anything. Yeah, it seems like I have a pretty good grasp on my Bipolar I and alcoholism. I don't know man. I don't think a Doctor can really relate to what capitalism is like. My psychiatrist/therapist has admitted as much. Capitalism is great for them. They get paid well enough and have plenty of patients to keep them fat and happy. Capitalism chews the patients up and spits them out back in the Doctors' offices. And I sit here fantasizing about Japan and prototypes and Love while I'm heavily in medical debt. The Loser is me. The Winner is Capitalism, the Doctors, the Pharmaceutical companies, the Politicians that get money from the Pharmaceutical companies...... I have no choice really. At least it seems that way. I need the Doctors and the meds. The politicians can fuck off. The greedy CEOs can fuck off. Don't even get me started on the insurance companies. You want to talk about resentments? I got 'em. They say that resentments are the number 1 reason for relapse. Well, I'm full of them. I could probably type myself into a rage right now if I felt like it but I don't feel like it. I wish Food Not Bombs was tomorrow so I could get into this with all of them and have a good time. I am glad I have that as an outlet now. We can all rage against the machine a little bit and have a good time and make some food for some people.
One day I will give this website up. This blogging up. But I do like a lot of the people on here. Oh well. I think tonight I will probably spend the rest of my day with David Foster Wallace (RIP). Not a bad Valentine's Day. May we all live with grace because life is hard and death is so terribly final.
I've been dabbling with poker here and there for the past year and I probably need to take it a bit more seriously if I am going to see any positives coming out of poker. I've been making decent progress getting myself setup/organized, studying more, but I have a long way to go.
I live in New Jersey, so I have been playing StarsNJ on and off for the past year and put in ~30k hands. Since I have a job volume is difficult, but there is definitely room to improve in this area going forward. I have access to some pretty decent training content, which seems to be readily available these days. I have also decided to reinvest in a rented server and hope to become reasonably competent with Pio analysis this year.
Decided I'd make a quick blog post here so that I could get a bit more motivated with my goals.
I am going to make my initial set of goals fairly achievable so that I can build from it rather than set something unrealistic from the start
-8k hands / month (I realize this is low but given my setup I feel like this is a good starting point for me).
-devote time to Pio every week. I know this is vague, but i'm not even great with PIO yet. same thing with my volume goal being low at 8k hands, probably my PIO hand review goal will be something like 1-2 spots a day to start.
-get better with game selection, dont be in a rush to play higher stakes or battle regulars. exception for higher stakes (200nl and 500nl) is going to be when this huge whale sits in the daytime and I'm able to get a seat. otherwise, going to be focused on 50nl and 100nl for the time being.
-get better with using stats/databases/huds. this is an area i really suck at right now. currently using hem2 potentially switch to pokertracker or h2n.
I'm doing ok in other areas of my life (financial, fitness, learning, etc) probably the only thing lacking is socialization which I don't really have time for at the moment.
Anyway I guess that's it. Feel free to ask any questions.
I got a new job. Now I just need to put in my notice. The team leader works a different shift than me so I have to go in on my day off tomorrow. I so just want to go to Food Not Bombs and blow it off to another day but I have to do it tomorrow. Fun, fun, fun, we're having big fun. There's always something ya know? Then there is being the new guy at the job and the job being new. More fun. I think it's something that had to be done. For people wondering I don't think I'm going to disclose what the new job is yet. It's not higher status or higher paying than my current job but it isn't in culinary which I need to get away from. That's really it at the end of the day. I want to get away from culinary and don't see a future there. I also had and will continue to have for about 2 more weeks a bad experience with Amazon. They don't treat labor well. That's how they make so much money. They are greedy. I need to break ties with Jeff Besos as a master. The more I type the more I realize I need to get my ass in there and give notice and make it official.
Amazon really is a horrible place to work if you are labor though. I have a friend of a friend who works a white collar job there and apparently it is pretty awesome but for labor God no. It's probably the same at most corporations. Hopefully, I have found a situation that is tolerable. Hopefully, more than tolerable but I won't get my hopes up too high. Even NGOs are funded by entities. Is there no way out? No exit? Well, there is an exit but hiems would prefer I don't talk about it. So, I do the best I can. That's all I can do. And I pray for the day we can break up the oligarchy.
I went to Food Not Bombs today! The anarchy is strong there. I was in the right place. We prepared some food and supplied the local community with a meal. It felt like I was at home. It was nice to just be extremely openly leftist in real life and accepted for it. It was also nice helping out. There was a reduction in food waste and some hungry people got some good food.
Then I got invited to go over to a friend's house after the meeting. She was celebrating 1 year sobriety. She has a boyfriend but I can't help but have a bit of a crush on her. I think this one might pass on pretty soon but I just really like her as a human being. It's one of those things that would probably pass if I had more contact romantically with one or two or three other women. It would just fall by the wayside. But this just lingers a bit. I'm not going to pull some moves to try and win her over like Henry17. I think that's a bit of a douche move. There are plenty of fish ya know?
It was just good to get out and socialize ya know? I think I may just be content with a group of leftist friends and a group of drunks. It crosses off a lot of the boxes. I mean these were some hardcore leftists and anarchists and like 20 of them in total. It was fucking eye opening. I have been kind of a closeted leftist and anarchist most of my life and then I go to FnB and there are all these flaming leftist and anarchist just fucking riffing and going HAM on every topic. And I still need my hardcore drunks and addicts that get me. I add some dating to the mix and a new job and c'est magnifique. Also, easier said than done and I realize I am typing right now but it has been working with less saying and more doing. I think my therapist helped me too. Saying she wants to just kick me off the cliff edge if she could. I just like writing and thinking after a day of doing stuff. Hell, I like writing and thinking at many times throughout the day. I wish there was more activity here and in the general forums.
There is also the idea of fear of failure and fear of success. I definitely don't fear having more and better quality friends. That always enhances life. Getting more involved in leftist activity and organizations I've been meaning to do for years. Helping people is always a positive in my life. I think dating adds a little interest to life that is much obliged. And of course having a job, a project, that is worthwhile and enjoyable is an important aspect of life.
Am I forgetting anything?
That is another thing. I am always obsessed about the good life. I contemplate the good life because I am obsessed with the contemplative life. There is something to be said for just doing. There is something to be said for thinking and writing and discourse. Life is complicated. People are complicated. Consciousness is complicated. God is complicated. I want to know scientifically what works in life. I also don't mind anecdotally what works but every human being is different. Playing the harp isn't going to work for me but painting does. Human connection, nature, exercise, eating reasonably well. getting in a sane daily bread, et al.................
Joy, literature, knowledge, wisdom, I mean I could go on forever. Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Stoicism, et al...........................
I start like breaking down if I try to think about everything at once. I'm just glad that I've read what I've read so far and that I need to continue to read. But having conversations with people is incredibly valuable as well. Then we die. The End.
Best state for home base for tax purposes?by Nitewin, January 13
7 States don't have income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming.
Out of these states, which is the best to live in? I'm looking at Vegas or one of the big cities in Texas. I could potentially get a duplex and rent out half. What do yall think?
Poisoning all expensive filet mignon and red wine was just an idea. A provocative idea. Not a particularly practical idea.
Kalle Lasn of Adbusters advocates for a "True Cost." The "True Cost" of a fossil fuel burning car is not $35,000 but should be the total cost to ecology. I have no idea how this would actually get put into effect and the economists will never go for it but it is an idea.
I've had violent fantasies in my past but where I am today is somewhere between "resist not evil" meaning I don't even resort to violence in self-defense and resorting to violence in self-defense is ok. Then it goes on to the idea of is revolution self-defense against the tyrannical masters or is it something else?
I am in a better place though. "AdBusters" and "Manufacturing Consent" as well as "Meditations" are on my night stand currently being read. I've got a Jesus Christ, Gandhi, MLK, Mandela vibe going on in my room with paintings of Christ and statues of the Buddha to keep me company. I don't even really know what that last statement even means. I'm just surrounding myself with the right people is what I am trying to convey. Too many people to even mention. Too many books to read.
To be honest I think I may be a bit depressed. I don't feel like trimming my beard, taking a shower, brushing my teeth, getting some food. I'll eventually likely get to all of these things but I found myself in a bit of a reverie after reading AdBusters I thought I might flesh it out with some writing and thinking and writing and thinking.
I think we need all the ideas we can get if we want to avoid extinction or even just some fucked up mental dystopia. I agree with Peter Joesph that the mental dystopia will reach us first in about 50 years pretty much on the same timeline that the fish disappear. It's pretty much over at that point. The increase in suicides is yet another marker that shit ain't right. It will only increase if changes are not made. Part of me wants to say fuck it let's enjoy life while it lasts but number 1 I am not really enjoying life and number two the suffering of future generations weighs colossally on my heart. If it were the case that everyone takes a pill and goes into extinction hand in hand that is one thing but the next 200 years is going to be fucking brutal if we don't make some changes asap.
2020 and 2019 reflectionby Into Infinity, January 04
looking back at my previous post:
-break 1200 for bench/squat/diddly (hoping for 275 bench, 425 squat, 495 DL, current is 205/355/385, being pretty conservative on squat and DL post injury)
*donate $1/lb to a good charity. a couple of years ago when i first broke 1000 i donated to ALS.net, hoping to do something similar
-cut back down to 175 around june/july (current 195)
lol... not even close.
bench - 185
squat - regressed to 315, feels bad man
dead - 405
total miss, totaling around 900. bad year hampered by back injuries and cutting weight. haven't really dieted a whole lot but added a ton of cardio and cut down on my snacking. i felt like as the year went on, i stopped caring about pushing big numbers and more on explosiveness/flexibility
ended the year at a BW of 180.
-add 30k to taxable investments - currently putting 0 in 401k because i don't see myself staying long enough to get any vested amount (100% after 3 years). right now i'm currently putting in 900/check, this will have to be increased to 1250/check
probably a spew, added about 7k to BTC + about 30k to investments, but withdrew 10k from an expected break up with GF... ended up buying a JLC reverso with that money lol (also bought a speedmaster while i was in vegas for my birthday)
-play these at a decent level:
totally slacked on piano, shrug.
other notes:
got a raise at work, which was nice. currently looking to move out of CA by the end of the year, but sucks because i'm probably priced out salary wise.
2020 goals:
* actually put a decent effort into learning some statistics. feel like i'm probably capped out as far as technical skills go without learning hardcore R/python
* started playing poker again a little bit on ACR; played a small game with work people which i took down for about 800, made me want to play again. only playing micros, lets see if i can build a roll from scratch
I haven't blogged in a while. I'm back in the muck so figured I'd write about it. I had a lovely 9 day vacation to go see my family up North. I don't think I posted on here 1 time. It was great. Now, I'm back in the muck. I forgot how much wage slavery sucks. It's like "yup, here is my life now...." I sleep, I pass the time, I slave away. Fun stuff.
I read two important books over my break. "The Tree of Knowledge" by Humberto Maturana and Franciso Varela. The other was "The New Human Rights Movement" by Peter Joseph. God, I wish my job would be automated and I would get a UBI. I'm not convinced that would happen though. I saw something online today that the 2020s are going to be about wealth distribution or revolution. I hope so.
I just feel depressed. My life felt so free on vacation. There was rarely downtime. Now I'm back to this shit.
Jesus Christ and who knows what elseby RiKD, December 12
So, I have read "The Kingdom Of God Is Within Us" by Leo Tolstoy and re-read "The Gospels In Brief" by Leo Tolstoy and am in the kind of mood that the teachings of Jesus Christ may have "saved my life." I am not convinced though. I also feel like if I really learned systems thinking that might "save my life" too. It's this dichotomy of the spiritual and the scientific that has been a strong portion of my life ever since getting sober and changing my life. I want to fight the spiritual. I don't want to fight giving up the fleshly flesh and letting the Spirit flow and to basically love thy neighbor, love everyone and do good. The fleshly flesh as in the worldly the bodily pleasures. When Christ prays 2 times to God before he will be taken to be flogged, tortured, and left to die on the cross and finally prays a 3rd time "Father, let Thy will be done" I wish I could have that strength and lack of fear in death. I still don't understand fully why Jesus couldn't continue teaching somewhere else. I guess that makes for a worse story. Then after all the floggings and the torture and Jesus at his weakest point calls out "God, why hath you forsaken me!?" He is in the same position as all of us. If Jesus would have just learned some systems thinking and spread that message....
We are all God's children with the capacity to hold the Spirit within us and to be within the Spirit. Yet what kind of god would have created the world we currently live in? What kind of god would have created neoliberal capitalism? "Resist not evil" doesn't really get us too far or does it?
A friend of mine always says what kind of god would let children starve in Africa and allow bugs to eat their eyeballs? It's a fair point. I guess Christianity's point would be that they get into heaven at least. That's kind of fucked up. 5 years of starving and bugs eating your eyeballs but hey then it's eternal bliss. That would be one fucked up god.
I suppose I take what I've learned with me and keep moving. As much as I love Christ and I am not going to turn my back on Christ the Stoics and systems thinking is a key to the mystery of life. Christ is such a fucking baller though. The revolution is in kindness but I am not sure we overcome the systems with just kindness. I could be wrong though. If everyone stopped paying taxes and boycotted shitty corporations in the name of Christianity what could they do? That seems like a pipe dream though.
Another thing I never understood is the policy of "not being with women" before marriage yet how is one supposed to find someone suitable for marriage if one is basically supposed to avoid women before marriage?
After pissing away what Eminem might describe as "You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow, This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo!" I never recovered. From borderline homelessness to dead end jobs to uber shenanigans I was practically just waiting for an excuse to end it all. I had it all planned out, and we're talking some scary grizzly details involving the bullet train out of town if you know what I mean. Moved back home up north, finally landed an interview for a position paying barely over minimum wage and figured I'd treat it like an internship and hopefully prove my worth; if not well I'll have a few thousand saved up so I can take one last shot at poker.
But the job gamble paid off. They loved me, thanks in no small part to being wildly overqualified for the position thus making it appear as though I'm the best employee they've ever had in that role. And then something magical happened, they decided to make me a full time offer, and a rather decent one at that. They came in at 52k and I snap accepted (only a sucker takes the first offer so probably could have got like 55 out of it). But 52k, I mean... thats damn close to where I used to be honestly. I know the standard of living a 52k income brings you. It's comfortable. You basically have everything you need and then some. Nice apartment, nice car, nice clothes, plenty of food, insurance, bills paid, and some spending cash on the side for the ladies or hobbies or whatever.
It's almost a little depressing because it just means there's no way I can go back to poker, I'd be be set with this job. There's no way I should go back to poker, I mean wtf why bother? 52k is probably average income for a mediocre 2/5 grinder. A friend of mine popped 100k at this limit and was averaging 75k thereafter for 3 years, but he was definitely better than me and took it way more seriously studying all the time and always reading new books. Me? Pfft self-taught and whatever I learned from you guys here. But it goes beyond that. I'm really not too sad about it because I actually freaking love my job. It's a great trendy modern company, lots of perks, people bring their dogs to work, free fountain drinks, you can drink beer at your desk, etc. My coworkers are meme fanatics and my boss lives by the 7 dirty words so our office is a complete shitshow of language and misogyny. It's great and it's fun. The campus is so big there are bikes and golf carts laying around everywhere to hop into to get to the other side, so it has a kind of Google'esque feel to it. There's like 10 apartment communities within walking distance to a 15 minute bike ride to work, so the quality of work/life is just so money it feels good to be there.
I did take a trip to Jax over the weekend to play poker for the first time in a year and took home $1200. It felt great, it's gonna be hard letting this go. And maybe it wont be gone forever. Maybe my job will just be a stop gap to get back into the game, but this time properly rolled (as in 20-30k instead of the 10k I started with which was far too risky). Maybe poker will just be a hobby and I'll take the occasional trip to vegas or whatever and win a few K some months and lose a few K others and I'll just be that random tourist thats surprisingly good (for a tourist) but never takes the plunge. Or maybe I just lock it up at my current gig and take over my boss's job when he retires in 10 years, because honestly I'm a shoe in for his management position once he's done. I guess in a way all options are on the table. Job is great, poker is great.
I will say the lifestyle of a poker player came with certain complications, the most of which was maintaining healthy relationships with people. Sleeping in all day and living in the shadows of society is a pretty sub-optimal schedule for hanging out with people. Taking nights off to go clubbing always just makes you resent the loss of EV from sitting out at the tables! Every time I was on a Tinder date I would be thinking in the back of my head "screw getting laid, I could be grinding $40/hr right now". Not to mention the general societal implications; "hey mom and dad, this is my boyfriend he uh... he's an investment and equities analyst!" I actually had a cutie at a starbucks once walk away after a 30 minute chat she initiated when I finally revealed I played poker for a living lol. You could just see the disappointment in her eyes.
Anyway, it's going to be so fucking nice to finally have some normalcy in my life after what feels like an eternity of pure chaos. Till that day.....
Are you living antagonistically to your conscienceby RiKD, November 28
"And this is the only explanation of the dreadful intensity with which men of modern times strive to stupefy themselves, with spirits, tobacco, opium, cards, reading newspapers, traveling, and all kinds of spectacles and amusements. These pursuits are followed up as an important, serious business, And indeed they are a serious business. If there were no external means of dulling their sensibilities, half of mankind would shoot themselves without delay, for to live in opposition to one's reason is the most intolerable condition. And that is the condition of all men of the present day. All men of the modern would exist in a state of continual and flagrant antagonism between their conscience and their way of life. This antagonism is apparent in economic as well as political life. But most striking of all is the contradiction between the Christian law of brotherhood of men existing in the conscience and the necessity under which all men are placed by compulsory military service of being prepared for hatred and murder – of being at the same time Christian and a gladiator" – Leo Tolstoy
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