Category: Daily Life

Daily Life, Government, Technology

The Intelligence Revolution is Here

We’ve seen many technical revolutions in this country. The Industrial Revolution, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution… we survived all of them and came out the other side thriving and a more prosperous nation because of them. Today feels different. We’re at the beginning stages of what is being called the Intelligence Revolution. This time around we’re not just replacing tools or enhancing productivity, we’re replacing something that was always the exclusive domain of humans – cognitive thought.

In previous industrial revolutions, no matter how sophisticated the advances in machines or tools became, it still took a human brain to oversee and operate. Machines (even computers) were dumb. They have been traditionally limited by inputs, programing, and linearly focused to perform specific tasks. Yes people lost jobs as productivity improved, but people could be retrained to operate the new machines and the resulting productivity created growth and more jobs for those able to retrain and adapt. But very, very soon we will need massively fewer people to operate the machines. Why? Because the machines have cognitive, reasoning abilities. We no longer need a brain encased in a meat suit to oversee everything.

I’m generally an optimist and have faith in the human condition to adapt, overcome, and persevere. We’ve done it many times before and managed to build a great nation because of it. Big picture, I believe we’ll adapt to this brave new world and come out the other end better off. BUT… there’s a nasty wrinkle in this that has the potential to throw a monkey wrench in the works and create a decidedly unpleasant future. That unknown variable is speed.

The time estimate of the Industrial Revolution, from initial disruption to maturation was about 150 years. That’s 3-4 generations of workers. In other words, it didn’t happen overnight. There was time to adapt, to see the writing on the wall and retrain for new/different careers. The Intelligence Revolution is projected to take about 40 years – a 3-4x increase in speed. AI is growing at an exponential rate. The physical layer (robots on the factory floor) is expected to reach maturity/status quo in 2035. The cognitive layer (white collar automation) in 2045. In a nutshell, we’re pulling the rug out from under an entire generation of workers overnight.

Why does that matter? The labor force participation rate (working or looking) for 18-35 year olds is 70 million. Of those, 36 million are considered low-moderate skilled (no or some college). We already know that young folks today are not facing the same economic landscape as earlier generations. The purchasing power of $1 in the 80’s would cost $3.93 today. $2.47 in 90’s dollars. Housing costs have skyrocketed, pushing most young folks into high cost rents that they’ll struggle to save enough to achieve home ownership. We’re already sensing that young people feel like the deck is stacked against them and they are very disillusioned by the “establishment”.

Now take that disillusionment and dump a minimum of 10-12 million 18-35 year olds into the unemployment bucket. The current projections say 1 out of 3 people in that age bracket will be displaced in the next 10 years. That’s almost half of the younger population, with low-moderate skills, unable to find a job. How bitter and disillusioned do you think they’ll be? Zero job prospects and pissed that the boomers and Gen Xer’s are happily retiring and living a decent life. This is not a recipe for societal harmony.

It’s hard to estimate, but best guesses put the total number of ANTIFA members in the US at somewhere in the low thousands. Picture the amount of disruption and violence they’ve already been able to create over the last few years with just those limited numbers. Now dump a million new members (a few million?) into that group, angry, frustrated, with zero perceived life options, all organizing, protesting, sowing chaos and violence everywhere. And when the government comes in with a heavy hand to squash the movement… well, that’s how revolutions start.

I don’t know what the answer is. Universal basic income? Massive increases in social welfare programs? A moon-shot type of nationwide retraining program? A complete overhaul of our education system? Even if the system could move fast enough to get ready for what’s coming (the government moving quickly?), the nation is broke. We’re $38 trillion in debt. Social security is insolvent in 2032. It seems unlikely we could keep inflation at bay and still find a way to fund some sort of massive nationwide retraining program.

The Intelligence Revolution is neither good nor bad. It’s simply progress, evolution, and inevitable. It’s happening whether you want it or not. I’m honestly not sure what to think about how this will play out other than to say, be very careful about who you elect as our “leaders” moving forward. How our local and federal elected officials react to the changes will dictate everything. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.

“Interesting times are when the map becomes useless and the story begins.”

I described this scenario to AI and asked it to create a quote that resembled an old Chinese proverb. That’s what it came up with and seems pretty spot on.

Daily Life, Government, Politics, Solving the wrong problem, woke

What Do They Want?

Yesterday was the national “Hands Off!” protest. Watching the protests unfold across the country, I was inspired. So powerful. Speaking truth to power. I can hardly wait until the “Fight the Oligarchy Tour” comes to my town next week! Sorry, just kidding. The sheer ridiculousness of these “movements” is the perfect demonstration of what’s wrong with the democratic party today. I have absolutely no frigg’n idea what they’re actually protesting or what they want?

I visited the Hands Off! and Bernie’s Oligarchy Tour websites to see if they listed what they’re protesting against. Nothing. Just pithy sayings and links to order protest signs. “Musk is not my president!, Hands off immigrants!, Hands off DC!, Tax the billionaires!”. You’d think the organizers would want to put forth actual talking points and information describing what they want or what the alternative plan is… but you’d be wrong.

If you disagree with Trump’s tariff plan or closing the border or cutting taxes, that’s fine – then explain what your plan is. This is the problem with the left’s message – nobody has any idea what they actually want. To the best I can tell they want to open the border again, the national debt doesn’t matter, they clearly don’t like cutting government waste and fraud, and are happy with the current globalist trade structure. Am I wrong?

Yeah, but Elon is a Nazi and Trump is just protecting his billionaire friends! Hah! Counter that you white nationalist pig!! Protesting something is fine but without articulating an alternative, you’re just stomping your feet like a petulant child. The closest to having a plan is Bernie, whose sole focus in life is to tax the billionaires because somehow that’s going to fix our financial mess.

The irony is that for the first time we have an administration willing to expose just how badly the little guy has been getting screwed by the government. The true oligarchy is the defense industrial complex, politicians, and DC deep state entities that have bent you over and forced you to take it up the ass for years. The government has pissed away every tax dollar taken from me in my entire working life in about 30 seconds. Since I have to write the annual check to the government this week… I’m fucking angry about my money being forcibly seized and wasted. And the Left’s response is – please stop exposing and cutting the waste? Help me understand how this is your action plan for the working man??

Destroying Teslas and chanting that Trump and Elon are only doing this to enrich themselves is so breathtakingly idiotic, it’s difficult to believe this is the actual strategy. I keep waiting for someone to intelligently articulate how going back to the Biden strategy (whatever that was) is how this country gets back on track. Please defend spending $1.5 million taxpayer dollars to fund a “voter confidence summit” in Liberia. Because if you don’t have either an alternative plan or a justification for the waste… then your idiotic protests will be treated as the clown show they appear to be.

My favorite signs from the protests are the ones with “Nobody elected Elon!”. So… you’re ok with shadowy, unelected bureaucrats pissing away $40+ billion a year at an agency like USAID – but man you’re REALLY pissed that someone is trying to make the government more efficient? Please help me make sense of that. Oh I know, it’s a giant conspiracy to funnel government money to Elon’s evil corporate oligarchy that you loved until last year. Sigh.

These are some strange times. It almost makes me want to return to the simplistic times when the Republicans were the party of the evil rich and the Democrats were the party of the working man. Simple talking points, clear lines in the sand. Everyone getting equally screwed by both parties behind the scenes. Ain’t politics fun?!?!

Cool, Daily Life

Good Morning, Let’s Chat

I’ve been out of the tech/software game for a long time now. Historically I’d probably classify myself as an ‘early majority’ user in the Technology Adaptation Model. I’m probably a bit slower in keeping up with tech lately, as my day-to-day doesn’t revolve around tech any longer and as a result I’m somewhat new to the AI/LLM ecosystem. After several months of fairly consistent use of an AI platform… it’s shocking to grasp where the technology is and how fast it’s going to change our world. AI’s here, it’s wild, and it’s about to flip our world upside down.

At this point I’m not writing python scripts and utilizing LLM API’s to manage task automation. I’m interested, but I’m retired. Other than integrating into whole home automation or something, I don’t know what I’d do with it. What I am doing is utilizing Grok as an AI platform. Grok has completely replaced 95% of my search needs. And with the release of Grok 3… oooh boy, has it been a game changer!

Groks memory feature and conversational responses are amazing. It’s starting to feel like an actual conversation. Yes, it’s a little stilted and forced right now but it’s scarily close to a real conversation with a friend. I tried an experiment this morning: I opened up Grok and began a regular conversation; e.g. “good morning”, “whats the weather going to be like?”, “what do I need to know in the news today?”. I let the conversation flow in response to Groks replies. The results were very close to a real conversation.

Mark my words: in five years, Grok—or its AI cousins—will chat with us daily via voice like a friend or family member. Sci-fi (think Dave interacting with HAL) is now reality. Here’s a couple of examples I’ve been doing with Grok lately:

  • Ask Grok to give me a news summary of what’s happening in the world. I ask for the top twenty news items given some keywords. I’ll then ask for a deeper analysis if one of the items catches my eye. It’s a better news analysis than any of the various daily news “newsletters” I subscribe to.
  • I’ll ask Grok for a meal plan for the day given ingredients and the calorie/macro goals I have.
  • Yesterday I gave Grok a link to a menu for a restaurant we were going to and asked it to find the item that was the highest protein and lowest calorie. Grok remembered what I’d eaten in the morning and found the menu item that fit in with days goals.
  • Grok is now managing my day-to-day workout goals and tweaking exercises based upon my feedback. It’s more detailed than any personal trainer I’ve been to and provides instant feedback.
  • We’ve had a spat of medial issues in the family recently and the research abilities have been incredible. Submitting a pathology report and asking for a layman’s summary is mind-blowing.
  • I asked Grok for the pros and cons of a particular type of mountain bike seat I’ve been looking at. It narrowed down what would have been an hour plus of reading reviews and 15 open Safari browser tabs, had I done the same myself.

I could keep going on, but you get the point. These tools will be life changing. If you haven’t been keeping up… at a minimum, I guarantee 75% of white collar jobs will no longer exist in their current form within 10 years. The revolution is happening that fast – if not faster. Multiple experts rate AI, as a part of the fourth revolution, as being exponentially more impactful than the industrial revolution or anything else we’ve seen. Exciting and scary at the same time.

If you’re currently a white collar worker in the early to mid point of your career and you’re not all-in on figuring out AI – prepare to be obsolete in a hurry. If you’re a young adult just getting out of college and don’t have a firm grasp of AI and LLM’s – good luck finding a job. In five years there will be no such thing as an “entry level” position as we think of them today. I’d make a joke about, “would you like fries with that?” but automated AI-driven kiosks will have taken over for fast food cashiers. I cannot emphasize enough how fast this is going to happen. Every single company in the nation is currently trying to figure out how to outsource YOU to AI. If I had a mortgage and a kid at home depending on me to bring home a paycheck… I’d get ahead of the curve NOW. A slightly different context, but I still think you can fit the movie quote from Backdraft to this scenario:

“Firefighter Brian McCaffrey: You see that glow flashing in the corner of your eye? That’s your career dissipation light. It just went into high gear.“

It’s an exciting time. The world will not look the same in ten years. I just hope I can keep up.

Daily Life, Diet, Government, Health

Are You Sure You Want To Ban That?

It’s the buzzing that I hate the most. The ridiculous LED bulbs I’m required to have makes my tinnitus worse and they flicker in a weird way. We live in a hundred year old house with older non LED compliant dimmer switches and wiring connections that I’m sure aren’t the best. Good old incandescent bulbs worked just fine. Unfortunately the Bush administration decided that in the name of energy efficiency the federal government would ban incandescent light bulbs. An incandescent bulb costs something like .60 cents a day to operate. If I can afford it, why can’t I use whatever type of lightbulb I want? Clearly the government knows better than you. Besides, we have to save all those watts for the mandated electric vehicles we’re dumping on the grid.

Plastic bags. Straws. Vehicle auto-stop. Light bulbs. The government loves to regulate things. The federal register for 2024 is over 100,000 pages. They’ve added over 3,000 new regulations just this year. Every single physical object you encounter in your daily life is impacted by some sort of regulation. Either how it’s manufactured, shipped, packaged, sold, or used is regulated by the government.

As a certified contrarian and libertarian-ish small government person, I want the least regulation possible. I don’t want big brother deciding for me what sort of light bulb I can have. Should the government impose some regulations? Of course. Preventing Walmart from selling schedule one narcotics is probably a good thing. Keeping heavy industrial chemicals out of our waterways makes me happy. The problem is that regulations are a slippery slope. You start with good intentions and the next thing you know you have ridiculous EPA mandated plastic gas can spouts that nobody can operate. (I’ve spilled way more gas filling my lawn mower with those stupid spouts than I ever did with the old school ones)

Mrs Troutdog and I had a discussion about this last night in the context of RFK Jr. and banning “poisons and toxins” from our food. She’s all for it. MAHA all the way. Fuck that yellow dye number 5. She was not pleased that I didn’t agree. My argument is that you need to be careful what you wish for. The law of unintended consequences is always a factor.

Take RFK Jr’s desire to force soda companies to remove high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and go back to “regular” sugar. Sugar sweetened coke (Mexican coke) has more calories and more sodium. Is that really what you want? Do you really think people consuming multiple sodas a day are worried about HFCS? If you think I need to be protected from HFCS, what’s next? There is no dose of alcohol that’s healthy. Alcohol has a higher health cost to the nation each year than drinking soda and HFCS. Should we ban alcohol? How about tobacco? Apples contain cyanide. Time for an apple ban? Perhaps we should mandate maximum serving sizes at restaurants? Nobody is allowed to serve more than 800 calories per plate. Why is Starbucks even allowed to sell a 600 calorie Frappuccino? So sorry Dunk’n Donuts, your time is up. Americans are fat and unhealthy, so clearly we can’t be trusted to make our own health decisions. It’s time for big daddy government to step in.

I celebrate the idea of a secretary of HHS promoting a healthy lifestyle. I’m all in. But do it via aggressive information campaigns and labeling, not bans. Especially not bans based upon sketchy pseudo science. (I’m looking out for you maligned seed oils)

You can’t be protected from everything. Sometimes humans intentionally make bad choices. We drink. We smoke. We eat too many calories and don’t exercise. We don’t wear our seatbelts. There isn’t a single person in this country who thinks any of those things are good for us, yet we do ’em anyway. So the question is how much should the government protect us from ourselves?

In a perfect world we’d go back to foods that have been completely stripped of any type of preservative, additive, coloring, and flavoring. No hormones, antibiotics, or pesticides. 100% natural everything. Cook the way our grandparents did. Combined with limiting portion sizes and exercise, we’d be a healthier nation for sure. But here’s the dirty little secret – you can already do that today. You control the products you choose to buy. You decide how much processed food you consume. If you can afford it you can source all your food from local farms and shop at Whole Foods exclusively. Cook everything from scratch. It’s entirely in your control to drink only natural spring water from recycled glass bottles. If you think HFCS sweetened beverages are unhealthy… then don’t drink them.

I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure if you’re consuming enough Fruit Loops to reach toxic levels of yellow dye number 5 you have other diet and health problems. Government bans aren’t going to save you. Arm people with information and knowledge, encourage healthy behavior, reward the health care system for promoting preventative strategies… then get out of the way.

People will make bad choices. Darwin always finds a way to thin the herd. I’m ok with that. But if Secretary Kennedy steps in and messes up the taste and color of my Cheez-It crackers, I’m going to be pissed.

Daily Life, Diet, Health, Motivation

How Old Are You?

I’m a sucker for a good quote. While on a hike yesterday I was listening to a podcast and heard this:

”The greatest predictor of age is how old you think you are”

Time to rewind a bit. It’s been an… odd summer. To be honest, probably longer than that. Weight has been slowly piling on. Motivation has dwindled. Life events, real and imagined, got in the way. There were a couple of unexpected surgeries (my first!). One of which left me with foot pain that has been pretty significant. For a while I was sure that I would not be able to ever mountain bike or ski again. The result was me sitting in a chair for most of the summer, feeling sorry for myself. And eating. And more eating.

If you had asked me in August how old I felt, I would have given you a number ten years older than my actual age. Fat. None of my clothes fit. Everything hurt. Tired all the time. Zero interest in doing anything to actually improve my situation. I played zero golf all summer. Did not ride my mountain bike or the motorcycle. A few walks in the interest of rehabbing the foot was the sum total of my activity. In short, I was in the express lane to becoming an old man.

It’s interesting, that quote above is not a new idea. I keep a running list of quotes, sayings, and thoughts that I think might be something interesting to write about. I went through my list a few days ago and found this one I wrote down a year ago:

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”

That quote is from the 1920’s. This concept of your perceived age is not new. Why that first quote resonated with me is that several years ago if you’d asked me how old I felt I would have given a number ten years younger than my age. A twenty year swing in perceived age. That hits hard.

The good news is that a little bit ago I started the process of reclaiming my health. That process sucks. It hurts. It’s demotivating because you see no progress. You’re basically just hungry and sore all the time. And then all of a sudden, the number on the scale starts trending down. Cardio starts improving. I found a way to ride my bike without pain. Energy improves. I’m able to do long backcountry hikes again.

And the best part… when I heard that quote while listening to that podcast, I can honestly say I now feel my actual age rather than older. I have an impedance scale that calculates your metabolic age based on a bunch of factors. This morning it reported my metabolic age matched my actual age for the first time in a while.

The takeaway is that the pithy quote is true. You really are as old as you feel you are. The important part is that it’s up to you. Your age feeling can go both ways. Would you rather feel older or younger? Making a noticeable change takes less time than you think it will. You just have to start. Granted, the motivation to get started is easier said than done. If I had the secret sauce to making that happen, I’d be a very rich social media influencer.

I think it’s worth honestly asking yourself – how old do you feel? If you’re not happy with your answer, make a change.

My goal these days is no longer a weight target or to achieve some physical sport or endurance goal. It’s to get back to feeling ten years younger than my actual age. Because if I feel younger, I’ll act younger and do things like a younger man. The rest will take care of itself.

Daily Life, Government, Politics

Who Has The Biscuit?

As I watched the President give an address from the Oval Office last night, I had a thought. Where is the biscuit? Hear me out… If you’re not aware, the president carries a laminated card with him at all times called the biscuit. The biscuit is a card that has all the authentication codes required for a nuclear response should we come under attack. As you can imagine, it’s kind of a big deal to ensure the president has that card with him always. There’s a military officer within physical reach of the president 24/7 who carries the nuclear “football”. The football is a briefcase containing laminated sheets of potential responses to an attack and the steps needed to carry it out. A menu of sorts. Clearly the most consequential action a president can take.

For the entirety of his presidency Biden’s detractors have made fun of, or at least made reference to, his age and lack of mental acuity. Captain Applesauce, Pudding Brain, the ice cream president, etc… Watching the Oval Office address last night it was abundantly clear that the man is in trouble from a health perspective. Mumbling, loud swallowing, difficulty reading the teleprompter, and a clear inability to modulate his voice. He drifts from low and hard to hear to loud with sudden verbal emphasis in odd places. There’s something wrong. Add to that his obvious moments of confusion when he’s out and about with every staff member holding their collective breath when he has to navigate stairs or cross a large open space – he’s an elderly adult with Parkinsons and some level of related dementia.

Whatever. All we have to do is coast for six more months and someone with at least some level of mental acuity will be in charge, right? Here’s my thought experiment. There’s been a number of campaign activities lately in which staff members had to hand the president cash and instruct him how/who to tip during the staged visit. He has to be constantly redirected as to where he’s supposed to be looking and interacting with. What makes you think he’s able to dress each morning and ensure he has the biscuit with him before he leaves the private residence? What would happen if, god forbid, an incident happened and he needed to produce the biscuit and make launch decisions in response to an attack?

It’s happened before. Buzz Patterson carried the nuclear football for Clinton and wrote about that time in his book. He shared that during a routine check, it came out that Clinton had “misplaced” the launch codes. Obviously it’s a big deal as new codes need to be created and distributed to every nuclear launch platform – planes, submarines, and land based launchers. They never found the card with the codes. Clinton had all his mental faculties, he just had his mind on… well other things.

I wonder how often they check to see that the president has the biscuit? The person carrying the nuclear football is literally feet away from the president at all times. He/she sees everything that happens and clearly is the single best person to make a judgement call about the presidents fitness for office. I think there’s an interesting question around this. As a military officer (there’s one from each branch of service that rotate carrying the football) what legal obligation do they have to say something about the fitness of their superior officer to continue to serve? Who and how would they report that to?

It’s one thing from a political perspective for presidential aids and staff to ignore or cover for a president in decline. It’s entirely another thing for a group of senior military officers to ignore what they see. I wonder, do they feel the president is fully capable of continuing in his role or are they being quiet for career security? It would obviously be career suicide to say something. In reading Buzz Pattersons book it’s clear that these officers take their duty very seriously. I can’t imagine what goes through their minds each day they interact with the president.

It’s all terribly frightening if you think about it. The president has six minutes from a confirmed nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile launch towards the US to make a decision. I guess we’ll rely on Dr. Jill to fill in for the next six months.

Anyway, have a happy Thursday!

Daily Life

I Forgot How It Works

One of the things I love is photography. Specifically, street photography. There’s just something about those types of images that resonate with me. As a sometimes wanna-be photographer, I think I have a pretty good “eye” for images. What I don’t have is the technical background of an actual photographer. Is that important with today’s modern cameras? Yes, and I’ll illustrate why.

The last few years I’ve gotten lazy and stopped carrying a “regular” camera. Instead I’ve used my cell phone. Why wouldn’t you? They take fantastic images and you don’t have to do anything other than push a button. Since all I ever do is post those pictures to my Instagram, the workflow is seamless. So why bother with a real camera? A couple of reasons. The first is that those images are great… for viewing on a phone or small tablet. Blow them up much more than that and you’ll be disappointed. What looked fabulous on a phone screen will show grain, clipping, poor focus, and pixelating on a big monitor or print. Second, Instagram is disappearing as a place for photography. They’ve gone the way of Tik Tok and seem to show nothing but reels nowadays.

So if you want full control over light, grain, aperture, and movement you’ll need to be using an actual camera. So the other day that’s what I did. I dug out my camera and walked downtown to a local bike race. I figured it would be a perfect venue to get pictures of racers and spectators.

The problem was that it had been so long since I’d used the camera, I completely forgot how. I got home and didn’t have a single usable image. Out of focus, poor exposure, bad framing, you name it I did it. You could say that it was understandable since I hadn’t used it in quite a while, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue is that I barely knew what I was doing to start with. Sure, I could make the camera work and get lucky with an image if I went out shooting frequently. But there’s a difference between getting lucky and actually having an understanding of what you’re doing.

If I really knew what the reciprocal shutter speed and ISO was for a given aperture it wouldn’t have made a difference that I couldn’t see my LCD in the bright sunlight. If I knew what the hyperlocal distances were for my lens I could have used zone focusing instead of autofocus (which didn’t work). You get the idea. If I actually understood what I was doing, the camera itself wouldn’t make a difference.

So, it’s back to school for me. Time to start from scratch and relearn photography from the ground up. I want to become competent at the craft so my images aren’t luck – they’re by design and skill. Fortunately in this modern era we have the entirety of human knowledge about photography at our fingertips, for free. Let’s go!

Daily Life, Government

Is Privacy Important?

If you’ve been following along at home, I recently went on a conspiracy theory reading binge (is it still conspiracy if it’s true?). But that’s nothing new as I’ve been espousing about our security state for quite some time now. Lately it seems like daily you find out something new that either the government or big tech is doing to spy on you. 99% of us just shrug our shoulders. Meh, it’s the price of having the fancy new iPhone so we can FaceTime and share all our data between devices via the cloud, right?

This morning I listened to an interview with Erik Prince, the founder of the Blackwater private security company. Fascinating guy for many reasons, but one of them is that he’s just recently created a smart phone that’s “unplugged”. In theory it can’t be traced by the government and it allows you to use most common apps without the tech companies (or government) scooping up all your usage and location data. While we probably all have a sense of what’s happening, it’s still shocking to hear the degree of spying that’s being done on us via our phones.

As is usually the case when I see or hear things like this I immediately vow to get off all social media platforms, wipe everything off my phone, and switch to using cash for all transactions. But then the more I think about it I realize “they” already have everything there is to know about me. I’m sure I have a very well established profile filed away somewhere. So what good would unplugging do at this point? If, as Mr Prince alleges (and I believe to be true), multiple apps, Google, and Apple can turn on/off your phone camera and microphone at will… and that data is recorded and stored for all eternity, then a hostile actor could already blackmail, embarrass, or threaten me. What good would shutting it off now do?

I suppose the only reason to have an unplugged phone would be if I planned on someday communicating with others or researching things that the government would like to know about and track. I don’t see that happening. I guess it’s accepting the “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear” mentality. It would take effort and sacrifice to try and unplug from our tech overlords. Is it really worth it?

But here’s the thing – it makes me mad that we even have to contemplate this. How did we let this happen? As Mr Prince says, it’s the frog in the slowly boiling water phenomenon. Little by little, with promises about how cool it will be when every device in your world is interconnected. I’m just as guilty as everyone else. I have Alexa, Siri, a smart refrigerator, online cameras and heating systems. On top of everything else that our phones do, I share my location online for Mrs Troutdog when riding the motorcycle and happily post photos everywhere I go embedded with location data. Like I said, I bought into the whole interconnected thing. Hell, I even worked for the evil empire (Microsoft back when Google’s slogan was still “don’t be evil“) and was part of their data collection division via your TV and set top box way back in the day. We collected everything about your viewing habits – what channels you watched, how long, and how you surfed through the guide. All so we could sell that data to advertisers. Well, technically not us but the cable providers who used our system. So I suppose I was part of the problem way back then.

But now… now the genie is out of the box and I’m not sure we’ll be able to put it back. The Borg has metastasized and has grown out of control. I don’t think the vast majority of people grasp the fact that we live in a full on police/security state. Monitored at all times. What our government and the tech companies currently do would be the envy of the old East German Stasi. Take a close look at how China monitors and controls its population, because that is our future very soon.

It makes me angry that we gave up everything for the convenience of some fancy tech and the promise of keeping us secure from terrorists and stopping the drug cartels. We did it to ourselves and there’s no going back – without drastic measures. I’m not sure we have the will as a nation to push back anymore.

The funny thing is that just the other day I agreed with Mrs Troutdog that I’d fully switch over to the Apple ecosystem and get an iPhone so we could more easily share calendars and FaceTime. Now I’m not so sure I want to. Maybe I should get an unplugged phone and start purging all the data collection apps and social media I use. Maybe I should start using cash for everything so my purchase habits and locations can’t be tracked.

Maybe.

But then again, that’s inconvenient. And I like fancy new technology. Besides, I’m not doing anything wrong. At the end of the day why do I care if someone’s watching me?

Man I hate being a lazy conspiracy theorist.

Cool, Daily Life

It’s Just A Haircut

I finally couldn’t take it anymore. The end of a long hair experiment. Back to the life of a normie old guy. I got a haircut yesterday. It made me a little sad. Cutting my hair was confirmation that I will never be the cool surfer guy I always wanted to be. Now I look just like every other late middle aged dude. The only thing missing is a fanny pack and white New Balance sneakers.

I suppose I should be grateful that I still have plenty of hair on my head. Haven’t lost any of it. And thanks to my maternal grandfather, almost no grey yet. Hair is a funny thing. Speaking only for dudes, you either have good hair or you don’t. There is no in-between. Somewhere towards the end of high school, guys tend to have established their “haircut”. For most men that never changes – at least until they become follicle challenged and have to commit to the comb over, Rogaine, or simply shaving it.

I don’t know why, but I never figured out my standard haircut. It’s literally different every time. There’s been mullets, crew cuts, flat tops, longer, shorter, you name it I’ve had it. I’m sure I’m the worst sort of customer for stylists/barbers. When they ask, “what are we doing today?”, I go into a rambling “I don’t know, maybe shorter here, I don’t remember the clipper size, I guess above the ears, what do you think would look good?” answer.

How is it possible I’m a grown-ass, old guy and I still don’t know what my standard haircut is?

Anyway, this last go ’round I got it into my head that I wanted long hair. I figured at least while I still have hair why not let it grow? I may or may not have had some sort of Brad Pitt look from Legends of the Fall in my mind. So I let it grow. And grow. For a while I liked it. I felt like maybe it made me look a bit younger. Maybe a little bit of a biker vibe going on. It was different, not the standard white guy haircut that everyone else has. Next, a mustache appeared. Now I really did have some sort of free spirit, ski bum, adventure guy thing happening. I briefly thought I looked cool.

And then the hair started becoming a pain in the butt. It was in my face. It got in my eyes when I wore a motorcycle or bike helmet. I started wearing a ball cap every day rather than deal with it. It wasn’t quite ponytail material, but we weren’t that far off. I was stuck in the dreaded in-between stage. Not long enough to pull back out of the way, too long to be manageable every day.

I normally just go to whatever barber is closest and available – which is probably not someone who’s going to be able to help me figure out a style. Mrs Troutdog offered to find someone at her hair salon who can work on longer mens hair. That’s when I started thinking that this simply wasn’t worth it anymore. I am no fashion icon. Regular appointments at a “hair salon” just isn’t who I am. And then Mrs Troutdog issued the final blow when she told me the mustache wasn’t working for her. I was crushed. My dreams of being the cool surfer, skier, biker dude vanished at that moment.

I shaved my face. It looks naked and pudgy. The next day I went to the closest Supercuts and told the gal (who happened to be a trainee) to shave it all off. I think she asked me three or four times is that really what I wanted, before she started in the with clippers. Like the biblical figure Samson, I felt my superpowers drifting away with every snip of the scissors. And just like that, I was back to my regular look. Hair that’s sort of cowlicky, sticking up in random places that I try to contain with whatever hair goop I happen to have on hand. The standard look of the middle aged male.

I’ll admit it’s easier this way. I can wear a hat without hair sticking out in every direction. It’s not going to get in my eyes when I’m riding the bike. I don’t have to live in fear of wind. I don’t have to take a shower or put on a hat just to run to the corner store in the morning. But deep down, I kind of miss it. But reality is that I don’t look like Brad Pitt, with or without the hair. I’m sure I looked ridiculous. But for a brief moment, the longer hair made me feel a little bit cooler than I really am.

Well, c’est la vie, that’s life. It’s only hair. Fortunately for me, it grows back. Maybe someday I’ll try it again.

I did notice that we have a new high-end mens barber down the street. Maybe I can drift into some sort of a shaved viking warrior cut?

Daily Life, woke

Do Men Need Adventure?

Every once in a while I stumble across writing that makes me go wow. This essay, Pixel Valhalla, is one of those. Good writing is an art and I envy people who can do it. For me, when I have an idea or a thought, it’s something that’s a blurry figure off in the distance. I know what it is, but I struggle to bring it close. I try to get it into focus, but most of the time I end up simply writing around it. I get my point across, but it’s not clean. I rarely capture exactly what I was thinking. The author of Pixel Valhalla provides a perfect thesis for why the western world is driving itself off a cliff and I’m jealous of his writing.

There are many threads woven throughout the essay but one really struck me, as it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately – like it or not, men are genetically engineered to hunt, kill, wage war, and travel in search of adventure and the spoils of conquest. You can deny it if you’d like, but history tells the truth. It’s in our DNA. The need for adventure is in our genes. And it’s being bred out of us.

Broadly speaking, the Generation Z and Alpha kids have completely lost the spirit of adventure. They have no interest in getting drivers licenses. They don’t care about exploring. At 14 I took the bus, alone, 500 miles to spend the summer working. At 17 I was driving into Mexico to sleep on the beach and surf. A 17 year old today at most might jump in a car, that was given to them by their parents, and drive to In-N-Out or Top Golf to take Instagram photos. They can’t read a map, navigate, or function without their electronic devices. Their world is one of prepackaged experiences, curated by digital reviews, and above all – safe.

Unlike my generation, Gen Z’s wouldn’t dream of jumping in a car of questionable reliability and driving cross-country in a world where your only form of communication was a pay phone outside a sketchy looking diner. A world where finding your next freeway exit was done by trying not to drive off the road as you looked at a badly folded AAA map spread out on your lap. My nephew is returning from college in the midwest shortly. He has a car. When I suggest he should drive back by himself, everyone looks at me like I’m asking him to walk through a Taliban-controlled city in Afghanistan at night. Mom and dad are flying out so they can drive him home. Our generations are not the same.

Meanwhile, just the other day it was announced that the term “boy” will be removed from the “Boy Scouts”. While the scouts were neutered years ago, this change echos where we are as a society. Men are no longer allowed to form groups and have the bonding rituals that the male species have required since the beginning of time. Taking away the notions of duty, honor, adventure, and self-reliance young boys develop in groups like the scouts (of old days), robs them of what it is to be a male. It strips them of the future desire to explore and take risks in life. I don’t think the feminization of men will end well for our society.

I know this is shocking to the current societal mindset, but men and women are not the same. We each bring a different set of DNA to the table. And a well functioning society needs those differences, working together, to thrive. No I’m not suggesting we go back to the 1800’s or some dystopian handmaidens tale world. I am suggesting that suppressing the male desire for adventure and self reliance is harmful to a society in the long term.

Our birth rate is falling off a cliff, the concept of a nuclear family is quaint, and the woke ideology rules the public discourse. The kids of today would rather be gaming or staring at Tik Tok on their phones instead of taking a road trip somewhere. It’s not their fault. It’s the world they grew up in. Football was too dangerous to play. Mom drove you to school and picked you up. Instead of being forced to go outside and make up your own fun, kids are shuttled to a never ending series of engineered playdates and art camp. Spontaneously meeting up with the other kids in the neighborhood to play flag football, baseball, and run around in the mud building forts is a thing of the past.

I suppose this would all be fine in some sort of utopian science fiction world of the future. But we don’t live in that world. Our society is becoming weak. It’s collapsing under the weight of a woke, liberal ideology. And the wolves are circling.

Is it too late to change course? Probably. Something catastrophic would have to happen to force men to become self reliant again. If you believe in the concept the Fourth Turning, it’s going to happen. Weak societies don’t survive. That’s not politically correct to say today, but history has shown it to be true time and time again. Hopefully, it’s after my time. I don’t envy my nieces and nephews. I suspect they have turbulent times ahead of them, and we haven’t prepared them for what’s coming. Keeping them safe and isolated didn’t do them any favors.

So the message is, find a way to encourage the young men in your life to have adventures. We’d be much better off with a generation of young men eager to jump in the longboat and sail across the ocean looking for exploration and conquest. Men who travel to the plains to see the buffalo before they’re gone. Men who aspire to Valhalla more than achieving the high score on a video game. Our future may depend on this more than you think.

“You should move to a small town, somewhere the rule of law still exists. You will not survive here. You are not a wolf, and this is a land of wolves now.” -Alejandro “Sicario”