A country not living on its knees where men are men, women are women, and babas are round.

Update: Like anywhere, Bulgaria is a changing, complicated, and nuanced place (which my year-1 impressions, articulated here, barely capture). But it's where I've found the beauty, meaning, decency, and freedom that I ultimately sought as a self-determined man, that's why it's where I live.

Hello, fellow red-pilled man! I'm here to tell you about this beautiful country that you may not have heard much about...

This is a compilation of charming and friendly sayings in various languages, that I learned while traveling in Central and South America.

For the sayings, you'll see the language, the spelling in that language, the phonetic spelling as it sounds to an English speaker along with the memory association I used to memorize it. You can borrow my memory associations or make up your own, just remember the more bizarre your memory associations are, the easier to remember they will be to recall.

Next to skydiving on a frigid winter morning over the Colorado Rockies, coconuts are an excellent solution to vanquishing hangovers.

Check out this funny video of me doing an exceptionally bad job of explaining this and showing how to open a coconut in three seconds...

Book Review: Why human nature is antithetical to human rights...

This book begins with a treatise on free speech by Quintus Curtius, he makes the point that we assume incorrectly that society will just get better and better. We assume that we will just become freer and freer, we see the tremendous improvement in human quality of life in the past hundred years of history recorded via grainy photographs, shaky newsreel, and newspaper clippings and we assume that it's just going to get better but Quintus warns that progress is not our birthright...

From How to Be Cross Eyed: Thriving Despite Your Physical Imperfection — a mémoire and lifehacking manifesto

A lifehack for meeting interesting and influential people is to travel to exotic places and network with other English speakers.

Sure you can easily find plenty of rowdy Australian backpackers to swill beer with. But if you want to network up try to connect with entrepreneurs in almost any cosmopolitan metropolis you can find on Facebook a local entrepreneurial group.

In just such a group I saw that a few acquaintances of mine were getting dinner with the eminent blogger and author Mark Manson (whose best-selling book I was less than impressed by) at a swanky restaurant in Medellin, Colombia. I sent a few private messages to get myself invited. I dressed sharply and headed out.

From How to Be Cross Eyed: Thriving Despite Your Physical Imperfection — a mémoire and lifehacking manifesto

Apparently, it’s more common that you’re born with strabismus, I’m a bit of a rare bird in that I was born more or less normal and became cross eyed over time. So I was keenly aware of how people began to treat me a little differently over time.

I lived in the motherland of truly great coffee for two years; Medellin, Colombia, where I had a passionate love affair with the anti-oxidizing dark nectar.

I frequently hung out at some of the best cafes in the world there, which served straight black coffee that was as smooth as wine going down, I got quite hooked on the stuff.

The story of how I met the disciple of the most hated man in the world is illustrative of how to (NOT) spend money on personal development.

I had just arrived in an exotic, new (to me) city.

I knew nobody there. I started by requesting to join the local Real Social Dynamics' wingman Facebook group. As I've explained elsewhere my lifehack to forming intimate relationships fast is devoting my time socializing to high-affinity groups with deeply shared values; RSD-trained pickup artists are actually one of the best such groups. In the Facebook group, a cool-looking local guy had posted that he was offering free introductory pickup artist boot camps, which is infield dating coaching. I've never taken a boot camp but have always been interested, if I had several thousand dollars just burning a hole in my pocket I would do a boot camp.

He had posted a couple of indicators that he knew what he was doing, and it was a novel application of the freemium model so I thought, why not? What do I have to lose? 
I contacted him and made what I thought was a generous offer of buying him dinner and then we could go out at night and do the free coaching.
If he turned out to be an effective coach I might purchase one of his coaching packages. If he sucked then at least I would have explored the city some and had a stimulating conversation over a succulent meal.

The traveler's trail is a boulevard of tragic stories of lost iPhones, Android devices that (like in their clever commercials) grew legs and ran away, pilfered ergonomic headphones, stolen laptops, absentee underwear, and most seriously, misplaced passports.

Losing your stuff while traveling sucks, not only because of the inconvenience, stress, and replacement costs but more importantly because of the time it takes that could be spent enjoying travel, doing cool things, and connecting with interesting people. This article will present some bizarre memory systems, life hacks, and uncommon yet practical solutions for not losing your valuable stuff while traveling.

My adventures and misadventures living in and ultimately getting kicked out of Colombia...
Traveling through the San Blas Islands
Getting robbed by a pig in Capurgana
The beautiful women of Medellin
Dating a politician's daughter
Overstaying a tourist VISA
Starting a digital nomad business
Skinny dipping at a "Finca" party in the mountains
Going to a no phone/no clothes swingers party
Jonathan on Ayahuasca (Yage in Colombia)
Meditation and Dual N-Back Pro
Personal development, travel, and procrastination?
Caballo the Smart Drug for Cognitive Capital