Alogithmic Love

he was the only one who knew
the difference between content
and what made him content

he saw what everyone was thinking
and they trusted him
to be democratic and efficient

but investors grew worried
that the numbers stopped mattering
they could only research through him

as time passed he taught them
how to rip down authority
as he quietly built it back up again

they soon found
everything was an ad
including this poem

submerged in relevancy
wants are needs
emotions are triggers

the world lacked the necessary guns
to bring justice to the people
who became just another commodity

Talking and Walking

the people talk
and they talk
and they talk about talking

and they walk
and they talk
and they talk about walking

and they run
and they talk
and they talk about running

but after they are done talking
nothing happens
so they stand in line
waiting for their turn

to once again predict the future
to be wrong, to be trusted, to be wrongfully trusted
talking about nothing
waiting for the dust to settle

Alpha Male Asswhole (Beta)

So...

I played tennis with my girlfriend last Saturday. She was beating me...which on some fronts fell cool, but also felt very wrong. So I stepped my game up a bit and started trying to serve fairly hard.

In the first set I came up from down 3-2 to being up 5-3. At that point it was my serve and I said lovey lovey. And she was like awwww. Then I served at about 85 miles an hour with a sweet curve on the serve. She stood in shock and said "there was no love there." And then on the next serve I did the same thing again.

I have only ever played tennis about a dozen times or so and have had no training. Sweet on me for the victory, but as it turns out I threw my back out. I am too damn competitive...to the point of being self destructive. I really ought to work on that!

Dr Trose

right on the money, almost
but without leverage it would all fall to bits
failing to fail
he was once called midas
visionary or full of shit
uncertain...but certain he cant quit

Mr Au

make money online
make money offline
he sat there making money
making it all the time

he sold and sold
he slept in gold
and died alone
a total unknown

Caring is Creepy

The post title is the title to a cool song, but recently I have been amazing and inspired with how much people have been willing to trust and rely on me.

Less than a month after launch the ad network idea I came up with is probably already worth well into 7 figures. Some advertisers loved the idea so much that they told me they wanted to do bulk orders. I have not looked into the numbers yet, but I think it is probably already making many thousands each day.

My AdSense site that a partner is building (with my guidance and funding) has had its monthly income go from $600 to $6,000 in the last 6 months, and is still growing quickly.

One kid is quitting his job and moving to another country to live with his family so he can work for me.

At the conference I recently attended many people treated me as though I was a star, but I am just me.

One of my mentors recently asked me for personal advice...which feels backwards because he is MY mentor. :)

A girl who activated portions of my brain that I never knew existed cares enough about me to invite me over for the holidays and she asked her mom all about how I can be so crazy and how to smooth it out.

So many good things are happening that it is hard to keep up with it all.

Garbage

whats that
its empty
its full
take out the trash

and again
its empty
its full
take out the trash

and again
its empty
its full
all he ever wanted was that

Accepting (and Enjoying?) Wealth Stratification

So I grew up not well to do, was below the poverty line for most of my military career, was suicidally depressed by the time I rose above that, and then took a few years to get out of debt because I invested sooooooo heavily in learning (partly due to being passionate and partly due to depression and me realizing that knowledge is the root of happiness).

A while ago I wrote a post about the concept of deserving wealth, which went something like this

So a friend of mine, who lived in many ways a similar path, but is far older and wiser, recently told me that it can be hard for people who were traditionally poor to accept that they deserve and should live an active healthy and full life.

I can think of many occasions when things were going well for me that I ended up doing dumb self destructive things.

Recently I was flown out for an interesting high paying consulting position. They flew me out business class, and even had a person holding up my name at the airport. The hotel they put me up in was a 5 star hotel with private villas. I then got to talk to some deans at schools about creating college courses. Quite amazing, considering that I have never went to college and only began learning my subject less than 4 years ago.

I just got back to the sweet hotel, had an amazing meal, and then turned on comedy central, where the comedian on tv is one who personally insulted me last time I was in NYC. I of course loved that :)

Right now I feel I am getting more than I deserve, but it is an irrelevant and quite dumb worldview. To feel anything is deserved is at best presumptuous, depressing, and / or self destructive. Who helped set up your expectations? Why did they guide you in that way? How do they benefit from that guidance or behavior?

When you view the world in terms of do I deserve what I have it only sets you up for disappointment.

• If you are doing worse than you feel you deserve then you would not appreciate what you have.
  
• If you are doing better than you feel you deserve then you might isolate yourself from your environment or set yourself up for self destructive behavior that puts your experience more in-line with what you feel you deserve.

The mind is limitless, so viewing the world through expectations needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I guess the point is, that no matter what you experience in life the key to being happy is to appreciate the additional perspective and opportunity each situation offers you.

I wrote that about 6 months ago, and great things have only happened at a faster and faster rate since then.

But I still sorta grew to resent money because how many people struggle with it and knowing that it doesn't make you happy (directly at least). All money is is a form of stored labor or a proxy for certain TYPES of opportunity.

My friend John K recently pointed me at another sweet article from Paul Graham which helped put wealth stratification in better perspective. It reads:

I think there are three reasons we treat making money as different: the misleading model of wealth we learn as children; the disreputable way in which, till recently, most fortunes were accumulated; and the worry that great variations in income are somehow bad for society. As far as I can tell, the first is mistaken, the second outdated, and the third empirically false. Could it be that, in a modern democracy, variation in income is actually a sign of health?

...

You get paid by doing or making something people want, and those who make more money are often simply better at doing what people want.

...

With the rise of the middle class, wealth stopped being a zero-sum game. Jobs and Wozniak didn't have to make us poor to make themselves rich. Quite the opposite: they created things that made our lives materially richer. They had to, or we wouldn't have paid for them.

So if you can read markets well enough to influence them and people reward you for it, there really is no reason to feel seeds of insecurity / guilt / self-doubt / wrongdoing / etc. etc. etc. just because you are successful.

If you follow your passions you should be successful and you should help others do both. Wealth is just a rough proxy for how much you helped other people, and a means and freedom to be able to leverage yourself to be able to do more of it going forward.

Value based systems are such a hard thing for me to conquer because I have been changing so fast and had so many screwed up value systems baked into my core view of the world for so many years of my life.

Thanks a ton for that link John :)

Now I have to finish updating my ebook so I can go hang out with Giovanna. I need to view my ebook not as something preventing me from seeing Giovanna, but something that enables that opportunity...which it sorta does on multiple levels since it funded all my other income streams and she found me by buying my ebook :)

Incomplete

Less than a half a day away and I am not even back to the grind of working again and I already miss you more than I would like to admit. But I already tell you everything else. Actuary all I can do is think of made up words that make me feel like you are beside me.

Pyrite

trading fake gold
writing about the holocaust
if it is done by a program
is anything lost?

at one point people valued people
at one point people valued paper
the monopoly men want you
to believe in boardwalk

Who are you?

everyone loves you
but a cat and a dog
but you must impress
to understand the rest

I don't believe
in what I have seen
I look to you
for more than what I can believe

a rythem
a rhyme and beat
treat someone nice
belong to the love of who I want to be

but alas i am me
the more you belong
the less i understand
how you could be this man

Rapture

coffee buffet
mint tea milk tea
it doesnt really matter
even at your worst it was a beautiful day

replacing apathy and poison
with love and reason
ecstacy is not for me
you are my rapture

How Does the Stock Market Outperform Inflation?

So some people speculate or have the insider info necessary to outperform the stock market. But many types of investments are based on paralleling the performance of the stock market (or at least some large part of it).

I believe that the returns on stocks roughly are 4x the rate of inflation, but also wealth has been consolidating at an increasingly fast rate. My question is, to you the lone economist who reads this blog, should you chose to answer it, outside of the margins capital can make from loans how does the whole market outperform the rate of inflation? And would that growth be possible without constantly increasingly wealth stratification?

JUPM

Jupiter Media was brutalized after a weak Q3 and soft Q4 guidance. Their stock, which recently touched $10 a share, is down under $6 a share now.

Since I sold out of my Google position I have a bit of cash in the IRA which is longing for investment. Today I picked up 1,000 shares of JUPM for $5.96 a share.

Realistically I still think it is stilly for me to buy any stocks at all outside of whatever I do in an IRA because the ROI is so much greater when I invest into myself and create my own company ideas.

On the web it is rare that I don't have a rapidly growing 100%+ ROI recurring inside of a year on my good ideas. Its hard to do that in the stock market.

Lost in a Moment

the television was blaring
chatting, drinking, and laughing
there was something in the air

they could not stop looking
what were they watching
why did they care

and you could look away
only for a second
in a coy way

but your eyes could not hide
what you thought inside
the reason they stared

Leveling Up

So if you believe in subjective reality then you sorta get to bring what you want into your life. But sometimes to level up you need others at a higher level to help lift you up.

In the last few months I probably leveled up about 11 times...to where many of my past value systems are completely arbitrary on every level. I am not lazier now...I just care about different things.

Less than 3 months ago I was on the lowest level of consciousness possible and since I have changed so fast (I think about 11 levels) that the world is a mixed up place. If you try to grow too quickly invariably you will be crushed by it because there will be so many internal conflicts. You have to unlearn so much of what you learned. So I am sorta trying to level off and maintain while I figure myself out a bit.

I also tend to be quite open with lots of people which means lots of people tend to be quite open with me. That leads to an improved sense of humanity and empathy, but it also puts a lot of weight and confusion on me because I learn of so many conflicts in the lives and minds of people I look up to...the people who have helped me grow and become a better person let me in on things that are holding them back, and I wonder how much responsibility I have for helping them back, and if their faults are my own if I am unable to help them...or if those faults are only in my mind or misunderstanding what they say.

People, ideas, social structures, jobs, value systems, business models, material things, just about anything in the world... at one point in time any of those may help you grow or may hold you back depending on where you are. And some things that help you grow at one point WILL hold you back at others.

And if you are growing really fast it is going to be hard to find influences that will be able to keep pushing you and will still love and understand you as you change. I think I have found some, but feel I owe them so much more than I have to offer at the moment. Not sure if that is a feeling of inadequacy, awe, inspiration, or hope.

Mango Yogurt = Yummy

A glassie of lassie
never would have thought it was so yum or fun
who knew, you?

hehehe

The Error of Errors

Nice abstract title there, eh?

So, is it a bad thing to have really screwed up worldviews for a long time if you are later able to change them? Or do you enjoy the world more realizing how fucked you were for so long before finding your passion?

One of my biggest problems to wrap my head around is that most of the best things in my life have came out of some of the worst things in my life and you really can't isolate one from the other.

At some point you need disconnets to move on, but it feels weird when you think you are prettymuch lucky on every aspect of life, including experiencing all the bad stuff that your environment and bad decisions brought upon by you...because invariably that somehow drove you toward that which you love.

The tragedy of life leads you to beauty and maybe toward appreciating beauty more. How do you isolate the experiences? Or is it better that you can't?

An Email Blast that Made Me Smile

So I flamed one directory company so bad that they changed their editorial policies based on my very public flames. Then they launched a user generated business guide, which I mentioned would be easy for people to get some great link equity from. Their CEO commented on my guide and on my blog saying that my guide was great. Today they sent out an email blast about their new guide service, and at the bottom of it they linked to some of the best guides. One of which was mine.

So I flame their biz model, say their new venture is easy to spam, and then they reward me by promoting me as a topical expert to a large volume of their clients.

The world is a crazy crazy crazy crazy place.

Buttons & Social Awkwardness

Once upon a time Aaron was always socially awkward...even when blogging in third person in past tense when he should be writing in present tense first person.

I think in some ways I enjoy awkward pauses because they are so memorable and funny and are shared bonding points.

But I bring them about so often that you would think that it was entirely intentional. Even when I am not trying to on any level I still create lots of socially awkward pauses. And they go from a wide range...from my shirt buttons to my shoes to how I walk to my speech to my sight. Bizarre. But fun.

I Love You...

I love you
I love you
I love you
etc.

It is funny how words can have no meaning for so long, and when people tell you them they have meaning that if it exists is not transfered, and then to meet people who change your worldview and outlook on life so much that formerly meaningless words suddenly have lots of meaning.

What Colors do You See?

what colors do you see?
when did they run dry?
will they come again?
or did you just die?

how do I tell ye
blind faith is blind
when I know you can't see
the bagage in that book

immoral improper impulsive
inefficient inaccessable
what you see in others
exists only in your mind

who are your affiliates?
and why do they believe?
if you change your mind
will they still let you lead?

I was pushed and pushed back
it became me
I lost and had to lose my new identity
to reclaimed my humility and humanity

Fear and Anxiety

So yesterday a friend told me they were afraid of something, but they were talking to me fresh out of waking me from a dream and I was all happy and blissful, and was so carefree that I could not even see the reasoning behind their fears and anxiety. Today I woke and thought about it...I feel more than an adequate amount of both. Gulp.

Thank(s) God...

If people who have played influential rolls in your life change to believe in things you never could believe in what does that do to the relationship? Should you ignore the conflict? Should you avoid bringing it up? What do you do if they keep pushing it on you relentlessly and have no respect for your view on the issue?

I am used to telling people to screw off or back off (or much worse) if they push stuff on me, but it is a bit harder and a bit less cool if the person doing it has been a close friend for many years.

Life Goals...

Everyone should have life goals. And they should change from time to time. Methinks, anyhow.

So my recent life goals were

• get past self sustaining (done)
  
• move closer to friends (December)
  
• stop eating shite food (done, outside of rare lapses)
  
• get fit (80% of the way there methinks)
  
• get happy (done)

And for more longterm goals (why not be ambitious with them?)

• take my current temporary happiness and condition myself to make it permanent
  
• help others be happier (generic goal, but if one were too specific then one would give away business models and verticals and make ones goals much harder)
  
• redefine what the word Patriotism means (and other associated words) in a way so profound that it prevents many wars from occurring
  
• create and/or promote self reinforcing business models that help redistribute wealth and opportunity down the socioeconomic ladder
  
• destroy privatized central banks (by spreading mass outrage by learning more about them and teaching people just how shady they are)

My living philosophy is generally summed up with be happy and make the world better place. Given how much time and potential I wasted, and all the people I have pissed off, I am going to have to do some pretty good stuff to make up for it all.

Christian Identity Crisis

Evangelical leader quits amid male escort's allegations:

The president of the National Association of Evangelicals resigned Thursday after accusations by a male prostitute that the pastor paid him for sex over three years.

The church official who temporarily has assumed Haggard's post said late Thursday that there has been "some admission of guilt," but not to all of the allegations.

That reminds me of part of my Animal Farm poem:

what you fought against
is what you became
still, you kept fighting
to protect your name

When you teach people to hate or judge others you are actually teaching them to hate themselves. And it is ironic when that is just a reflection of your own self hatred.

We are all flawed, just in slightly different ways. Why let hate consume our lives? Is any religion or position of power so valuable that you are willing to hate yourself to accept it?

Someone should make a fake religion based on self-hatred and hatred of the world and humanity... just to show how well aligned it would be with the cut up cult-like religions dominating our culture.

Happy Stuffs

One person told me this today

Honestly u won of kindest man I have come across online :)
May Almighty shower u with his mercies

and yet today two other people told me things which felt even more lucky and special. I am wondering if my general happiness is here to stick as a way of being. If it is I am going to go from crazy creepy aaron to crazy happy aaron...a good change.