2024-12-21 08:00:00
This ad struck me as the culmination of a long-standing trend. I struggled to articulate it at the time, but I’ll attempt to do just that in this article.
Let’s start by the ad itself. It carries implicit symbols and memes, whose interpretations will vary wildly from person to person, but in general I believe it attempts to convey these subtle messages:
Relying only on external validation, specially from foreign entities, as a means to sustain one’s self-esteem is a time honored strategy to produce nefarious results. Yet, it’s celebrated by certain influencers, mainstream media, TV shows, ads and movies that attempt to distort a small sample into a normality.
When external validation is postulated as a basic human need, and one’s default natural, vanilla body is not sufficient to garner the validation one needs (as the above ad suggests), it soon follows that external interventions are required to achieve it.
I was fortunate enough to grow in an environment where artificial external displays of vanity were seen as a quirk, and sometimes even frowned upon (depending on the situation), thus not a requirement for a happy and fulfilled life. But once one is born or dislodged into the eye of a hurricane, it is hard to see the surrounding damage, especially when peers abide by those standards, generating an underlying group integration peer pressure.
Several off-the-shelf beauty products are known for their toxicity, contributing to increased prevalence of cancer and infertility, yet they stand as one of the cornerstones of modern standards of beauty.
How we show up is important, and is a meaningful way of self expression, but when the baseline for allowing one’s self expression requires one to consume / apply several products (sometimes on the go), or even subject to invasive body modifications, then I would argue that something is wrong in the underlying societal system.
One such body modification, turned mainstream, is the injection of botox.
Botulism is an often-fatal nervous system disease, first recorded in Europe in 1793, claiming the death of over half of those patients who had become ill through eating uncooked blood sausages. botulus being the Latin word for sausage. One one-millionth of a gram this neurotoxic protein can kill a man, and one pint would be enough to kill everyone on earth.
In 1989, purified botulinum toxin was approved as a drug under the brand name Oculinum, and later renamed to Botox. In small doses, the same nerve damage that causes fatal paralysis in poisoning cases, helps to remove forehead creases and crow’s feet, with the only side effects being an inability to express emotion using your face, and an occasional case of drooping eyelids.
Today, injecting the deadliest substance on earth into one’s face is normalized, as seen in this TV commercial (where its mid-commercial disclaimers makes one question if it’s a real ad, or a parody2), or as seen in this suggestive London tube ad:
I hold nothing against those who choose to subscribe to a certain mode of expression or style. I too, have my own. I do welcome you to introspect why you chose it. If your sincere why comes from a deep rooted desire to feel accepted and valued by others (good to receive these in healthy dosages, but dangerous when overbearing), then it might be something to look out for.
Relying solely on external validation likely results in feelings of emptiness and insatisfaction. I’ve been there several times, and its not pleasant. Instead, attempt to obtain self validation by looking in, rather than out. Some simple, yet powerful strategies:
Why: friends, family and close connections likely already acknowledge you by who you really are, or at least should. Why would they need you to wear a beauty product in order for you to feel seen? Therefore the remaining target audience are acquaintances and strangers↩
Transcript from the TV commercial: (…) FDA approved to temporarily make frown lines crow’s feet and forehead lines look better. The effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life-threatening condition. Do not receive Botox Cosmetic if you have a skin infection. Side effects may include allergic reactions, injection site pain, headache, eyebrow, eyelid drooping and eyelid swelling. Tell your doctor about your medical history muscle or nerve conditions and medications including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. So get that “just saw a puppy look”! (…)↩
2024-12-08 08:00:00
I’ve recently finished Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power, a controversial, yet useful book. The information it shares makes one better prepared to navigate our complex and perilous world of influences, power and subtle manipulations.
I found it to be an eye-opener on some fronts, but mostly as providing different perspectives on things that on the surface, appear obvious.
I can recommend this book to just about anyone. Its information, just like a knife, can be used for useful, enriching and productive endeavours (like cutting vegetables for a family dinner), or for nefarious activities (such as inflicting harm upon others). It’s ones responsibility to use it correctly and morally.
Below are my key takeways, segmented by Behaviour, Resources, Relationships, Strategies and How you Show Up.
2024-10-13 08:00:00
Keeping up with the theme on capturing lessons from content I consume, I’ve recently seen an interview from Lex Fridman to Gregory Aldrete, an historian specializing in ancient Rome and military history, in which Gregory eloquently spoke about many of the fascinating details on the rise and fall of ancient rome. Here are my takeaways from it.1
Romans were absolutely obsessed with the past, especially with their own family.
Entering an aristocrat Roman’s house, the first thing you would see would be a big wooden cabinet with several rows of wax death masks. These masks were imprints of Roman aristocrats at the time of their death.
Every child in the family had obsessively memorized every accomplishment of every one of those ancestors: their career, what offices they held, what battles they fought in, what they did.
At a funeral, people would talk about all the things their ancestors had done. The children would take out these masks, tie them onto their own faces, and wear them in the funeral procession. They were wearing the face of their own ancestors. You, as an individual, weren’t important. You were just the latest iteration of that family, and was a huge weight to live up to the deeds of their ancestors.
Rome started out as a monarchy. They had kings and were not happy with their kings. Around 500 BC, they held a revolution and they kicked out the kings, and the Roman Republic started at that point. One of the people who played a key role in this was a man named Lucius Junius Brutus.
500 years later, Julius Caesar2 came along as the culmination of a sequence of generals trying to overtake Rome and declare themselves as kings. Even though he was populist who provided entertainment to the state, Julius Caesar was arrogant, didn’t hide his power, ignored the senate, and got several people angry. Romans don’t like kings.
Just so happens that one of Caesar’s best friends is Marcus Junius Brutus. People went to Brutus’ house and wrote graffiti saying “Remember your ancestor” or “You are no real Brutus”. He had no choice. He forms a conspiracy, and on the Ides of March, 44 BC, he and 23 other senators take daggers, stick them in Julius Caesar, and kill him for acting like a king.
Brutus killed his best friend because of something his late ancestor did.
Julius Caesar and left a power void. There are many contenders for filling it up:
By now being Caesar’s son, Octavian gets to rename himself Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, and it just so happened that in the Mediterranean, there were about 12 legions full of hardened soldiers following the orders of a man named Gaius Julius Caesar.
As such, Octavian inherits an army overnight and becomes a player in this game for power, and a civil war starts.
Octavian emerges from it as the victor. He wasn’t a good general and lost almost every battle, but was politically savvy and very good at manipulating public image and propaganda. Octavian waged a propaganda war against Antony, portraying Antony as a foreign aggressor allied with an enemy queen, Cleopatra, and who was an official enemy of the Roman state). Octavian takes what’s a civil war and makes it look like a war against a foreign enemy.
Octavian now becomes the sole ruler, essentially a king, but could not take the same approach as Julius Caesar, otherwise he would end up murdered all the same.
Instead, he was very modest, lived in an ordinary house like other aristocrats, wore just a plain toga, was respectful to the Senate, and ate simple foods. He’s someone who cared about the reality of power, not its external trappings. He wanted real power, not the appearance of it.
In terms of government, everything seemed the same from the outside, but in reality Octavian was able to retain absolute power. He did by resigning from all public offices to give that appearance, but at the same time got voted to have the powers of a consul, by which he could command armies, he got tribune power, to control meetings at the Senate, he could veto anything, and got several other powers.
Each year elections are held, and notionally, these people are in charge. But floating off to the side, there Octavian, who can just appear and say that “I don’t like this, let’s change it”
Octavian wondered what to call himself. He couldn’t call himself a king, or anything that could suggest it, so instead he picked ambiguous names, that when joined an interpret in a certain way, would proved to be powerful:
It’s wonderful to contemplate how the roman empire in about 100 AD overlaps with the regions where olives could be grown. Romans consumed olives, grapes, wheat. Barbarians meat, dairy, beer. When you are a farmer, you tend to stay in the same place, when you raise cattle you follow them around. They are two fundamental forms of living. Diet was a big part of their culture and one of characteristics that was considered fundamentally Roman. Not having their diet was barbaric.
There are many factors that could explain the fall of Rome, and there is not a single clear cut explanation. Even the date of the empire fall is debated.
Geography, climate, religion, disease (there were a whole series of waves of plague that started to hit under Marcus Aurelius and continued after him, which seemed to caused real serious death and economic disruption), Marcus Aurelius leaving is succession to his child (who turned out to be deranged), instead of picking the best suited person for that role 5, as it was done on the previous 80 years, which is often regarded as the high point of the Roman Empire.
Gregory and his wife wife wrote The Long Shadow of Antiquity: What Have the Greeks and Romans Done for Us?”, where they provide several examples of things that we think are just in truly unique parts of our culture or things that we think are just innate to human nature, that are actually rooted in the past, such as government, education, art, architecture, language / words, culture, medicine, habits, law, the way we get married, the calendar (Julius Caesar was the one who basically came up with the 365 days, 12 months, leap years).
We’re the accumulation of the knowledge of several generations that have come before us. Everything we do is based on that. Otherwise, we’d all just be starting at ground zero.
It’s vital to have some understanding of the past in order to make competent decisions in the present. Not just in your own life, but it’s in understanding others. You need to understand where they’re coming from, where they came from, and what shaped them, and what forces affect them.
The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see: and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings: fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.
― Livy, The History of Rome
People from antiquity had different environments, technologies, and information available, but were just as sharp as we are nowadays. They were not stupid. Even though it might seem that many concepts and ideas were invented by our contemporaries, many lessons, successes and mistakes were already discovered in the past 6. The real challenge is to incorporate them into our own lives.
Gregory Aldrete portrayed several of these concepts beautifully, so some passages of this article are literal paraphrasing of his discourse.↩
Kaiser, Tsar, Tzar, Czar. These are based on the word Caesar.↩
Princep is the reason why we have “Princes” and “Princesses” afterwards. Everyone wanted to be like Octavian.↩
It’s from the imperator that we get the word emperor and empire.↩
How did these emperors pick the best suited person for that role, while still sticking with the tradition of leaving succession to the emperor’s children? By adopting middle aged men that they considered fit for the role.↩
For example, Cicero (assassinated on the orders of Octavian and Marc Antony) is considered one of the prime examples of a good orator, and wrote at length about it. Many of his experiences, skills and tricks are still used nowadays by several orators.↩
2024-09-15 08:00:00
As we experience an increase of massive amounts of AI generated content, this note will go through the role and added value that a connection with reality and nature brings not only to your business and craft, but also to yourself.
Walking or hiking has been a recurrent weekly habit of mine for several years, and its one of my favorite activities.
I find it essential to have a walk outside the office / home and be in contact with the surrounding world, be it in nature or around the city. This is especially relevant for those, like me, who have their daily jobs working at the computer.
I love to be enthralled in the digital world, think about abstract concepts, and use digital devices to, for example, communicate this content to you. But like anything else, a balance needs to be kept, and a balance between the digital and real domains seems essential.
As generative models get better, more and more people will just assume that a given piece of text, image or video is likely fake, and I believe there will be an increased demand for a connection with the real world through experiences such as in-person events, travel, spirituality, or consumption of digital content by certified entities.
Businesses and creators that prove their connection with the real world and real people, will likely have an edge and rise against the noise.
So if you’re creating a business, a piece of content, anything really, think how it relates with the real world. Ask yourself: how can you provide that connection? How can you provide reality as a service?
Apart from all this, and just as important, it’s for you to maintain your contact with reality.
So if you feel you spend too much time around the internet, digital devices, TV series, etc, I invite you to the outdoors, the world outside. It’s free, it’s accessible. You just need to open the door and step out, provided you are fortunate enough to have the required physical capabilities. I’m pretty sure that it will make your life much better.
2024-09-12 08:00:00
I’ve been getting into the habit of writing down what I learned from content I consume and I’ve recently seen an interview with Andrew Bustamante, a former CIA intelligence officer on the Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett.
Andrew Bustamante is a former covert CIA intelligence officer, US Air Force combat veteran, and Fortune 10 corporate advisor, who founded Everyday Spy, where individuals and teams are trained to leverage influence, intelligence and intent. Techniques once reserved for elite spy agencies can now serve everyday people in their pursuit of personal and professional objectives.
Andrew shared his candid and unfiltered views on the human condition and how his previous CIA intelligence officer (commonly known as a spy) can be leveraged towards gaining an advantage in business and everyday life, and in this article I will share some of the highlights and learnings from this interview. Here are my key takeaways:
For you to be a step ahead of everyone else just do an action, any action, and you’ll already be ahead of everyone. Even if you fall, you’ll already be four steps ahead of everyone else.
There are two kinds of people:
Motivation and manipulation are two sides of the same coin.
Using motivation just exploits something that people are already prone to do, and we just give them something that they want.
If they’re not motivated, then we use manipulation, so they can actually give us what we want.
Moral Flexibility is a gateway for manipulation, which makes something acceptable in one context, but unacceptable in another context.
Then there are three spheres: the public, the private and the secret.
The public sphere is the safe zone:
The private sphere is what the people in your inner circle see:
So it’s small by definition. This makes you feel good and special, and you have this elite group which is distinct from the public.
The secret sphere is where all of your secrets lie:
To move from one person’s public to secret sphere, you need to pass by the private one first.
We want to have someone to tell our secrets, but we don’t have enough trust on the people that are in our private sphere.
Once you get to someone’s secrets, they’ll trust you so much that even if you break their heart. They’ll resist leaving you, because it is very rare to find someone who we can tell our secrets to.
About the four core motivations, they are described by RICE: Reward, Ideology, Coercion and Ego
If you want to get information from a person, then you can ask two questions and then follow up with the validation.
For example, if the other person mentioned that they have an issue with their wife, then you ask:
Use windows instead of doors when leading a conversation.
Opening a door is when you change the topic completely. For example, if the conversation is about the weather and all of a sudden you ask about someone’s income. The analogy is that you’re breaking through someone’s door.
Instead you’ll want to open a window, which is to leave a hint for the other party that will organically lead them towards a new ramification of the conversation. You open a window by giving a queue, a suggestion, or an implicit conversation seed.
People will also volunteer information to you, and you can actually assess that by the information that they give you through their statements.
The person that is asking the questions has the power over the conversation, and not the person who is saying the most words. For example, in the interview it was agreed by both that Steve was the interviewer, so Steve had the power there.
Andrew mentioned how the SADRAT methodology can be used in business. SADRAT stands for: spotting, assessing, development, recruiting, agent handling and termination.
In order to know if someone is a liar, you need to first establish a baseline. Once that is acquired, you need to put pressure on them to see if they react differently.
The difference between good liars and bad liars is that bad liars tend to twitch and turn, as if they were in a hot seat when they get exposed to pressure.
Good liars, on the other hand, they occlude all of these signals. Good liars tend to be the ones at parties that ask a lot of questions, and you felt like they were so friendly, but in reality you know nothing about them.
Perception is your gut view. Perspective is seeing the event through other lenses.
You should not trust your perception, because most of the time it is wrong and it is emotion based. You need to use your rational side to process challenging situations.
To achieve that, you need to be inoculated by getting exposed to small doses of something you fear. For example, asking someone if you’re overweight. You’ll get the physical fear arousal, but once it’s over no real harm was done.
You can train yourself to not respond to that physical jolt to make your emotional part slower, and your rational part faster.
2024-09-11 08:00:00
After several years using Evernote, I’ve eventually migrated all my notes into Obsidian, which allowed me to have full control of my notes, in a format that I could use, move, or leverage upon. As a consequence, my notes would no longer live in the cloud and my personal device, so any redundancy and backups would need to be guaranteed by me, via my personal periodic backups.
Having more than a decade’s worth of notes relying on a single redundancy made me somewhat uneasy, so the options I could think of were either:
I’ve chosen option 2., using the Google Drive cloud service, and in this note will share how you can too.
The idea is simple: use the obsidian-shellcommands shell plugin to run a custom script, whenever Obsidian quits. This event is configurable, but I find the application quit event to have the necessary periodicity for my use case, since I often sporadically open Obsidian, write on it, and exit the application straight after.
First, save the below script into a folder in your computer (for example, at /Users/yourunixname/backups/my_backup_script.sh), and update it with your own Obsidian, backup destination folders and your own archive password:
#!/bin/zsh
obsidian_notes_folder="<your_obsidian_folder>" ; # For example, /Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support/obsidian
obsidian_notes_tar_archive="${obsidian_notes_folder}/obsidian_backup.tar.gz" ;
backup_folder="<folder_where_the_final_encrypted_backup_will_be_placed>"; # For example, /Users/yourusername/Library/CloudStorage/GoogleDrive/MyDrive/backup_folder
echo "Starting to compress obsidian notes..." ;
# Create a .tar archive that contains all the contents inside the obsidian folder
tar -czf ${obsidian_notes_tar_archive} ${obsidian_notes_folder}/obsidian_backup
# Compress the .tar archive into an encrypted .7z with password "PasswordOfYourChoosing"
# In this example, 7za installed from the nix package manager is used (https://nixos.org/), but you can use 7za from any other reputable source
/Users/yourusername/.nix-profile/bin/7za a -tzip -mem=AES256 -mx=0 -mmt=12 -pPasswordOfYourChoosing ${obsidian_notes_folder}/obsidian_backup.7z ${obsidian_notes_tar_archive} ;
# Move the .7z file into the the backup folder (e.g. your Google Drive / Dropbox / OneDrive folder)
mv ${obsidian_notes_folder}/obsidian_backup.7z ${backup_folder}/obsidian_backup.7z ;
echo "Finished compressing and moving to backup folder"
(Download this script from GitHub Gists)
The comments are mostly self-explanatory, but essentially this is what the script does:
.7z file. Remember to update the password with your own private password.7z file into the destination folder, which could be the folder used by your cloud storage sync folder of choice (e.g. your Google Drive / Dropbox / OneDrive folder).Since the final file name on 3. is always the same, it will be re-written, but likely your cloud storage sync will keep track of the different versions, as they change, which could progressively inflate your quota usage. If that is a problem, just purge them periodically using your cloud storage interface.
You can test drive your script by granting execution privileges to your script (chmod +x <script_file_name>), and running ./<your_script_name>. Your final encrypted archive should appear on the final backup_folder
Now that we have the script ready, it makes our life easier if it is run automatically, upon a given Obsidian event, such as when Obsidian quits. Running a shell script upon a given Obsidian event is made easy by using the obsidian-shellcommands. These are the steps to set it up:
1. Go to Obsidian -> Settings. Then select the “Community Plugins” option.
1.1. On the “Community Plugins” option, click “Browse”. There, search for “Shell”. The one you want to install is Shell Commands by Jarkko Linnanvirta
2. Now that the plugin is installed, go again to Obsidian -> Settings. You should see in the bottom left, under the “Community plugins” pane, an option named “Shell commands”. Click it.
3.1. On the “Shell commands” plugin, select the “Shell commands” tab, and inside it, click “New shell command”, and the created row, click its respective cog icon. This will show you a new modal with several tabs.
3.2. On this command modal, select the “Environments” tab and insert on the “Default shell command” something like this: zsh /Users/yourunixname/backups/my_backup_script.sh. This assumes that your script is located at /Users/yourunixname/backups/my_backup_script.sh
3.3. Still on this command modal, select the “Events” tab. There you can choose when should the script execution be done. For example, search for “Obsidian quits”, and enable it (there is a toggle in the right)
All done! After performing these steps, your backup script will run whenever you chose to, and the encrypted backup will be created and placed in the location that you chose on Step 1. above 🎉
