> be German
> get brain-fried by edgy Continental philosophy
> back a charismatic Führer promising national rebirth and superiority through conflict with the world
> support his movement that memes the country into a war of aggression motivated by a kooky doctrine about the special historical importance of Jews
> actively contribute to the war effort
> proceed to lose the war
> flee to Buenos Aires, Argentina
> be Adolf Eichmann
> picture unrelated
Brand guys primarily make their money fellating corporate boards full of striver psychopaths who don’t care about anything and who’s only understanding of the company is as an achievement ladder. They don’t really care, so they get bamboozled by some technician looking to razzle dazzle them with art school bullshit. Sometimes it works, but 99% of the time, they wind up schlocking the sort of boring, derivative, edge-less, middle of the bell curve slop we are all very familiar with.
Real founders know 100% the name doesn’t matter, the mark doesn’t matter, none of it matters. Quality matters. Customer obsession shows and matters. Open and direct/no bullshit communication with the customer on all levels, that matters.
That is what builds great brands. A bunch of HBS freaks arguing over Pantone swatches and font spacing are just burning shareholder value to feel/look important. Half the time, they are doing it because their product is getting utterly mogged on Amazon by Chinese companies whose brand meeting was a guy filling out the AWS back end form by sneezing on the keyboard and hitting “submit”.
there's an ancient Chinese saying "the way a person does one thing is the way they do everything". the best way to conquer this is to ask "if i had to do everything in a single way, what would i want it to be?" - finding your answer will feel like compounding magic over time
May God bless you so hard you beg him to stop. may he love you until it breaks you open and you cannot close again. may he choose you and may you spend your whole life wishing he had chosen someone else and still saying yes
May you be the light and may the light cost you everything you thought you wanted and may you want nothing after that because wanting is over for you now
I bless you with no way out. i bless you with eyes that cannot unsee. i bless you with a mouth that speaks and loses friends and speaks anyway. i bless you with the kind of love that makes normal life impossible
May you be so blessed that no one understands you. may you be so blessed that you walk alone through rooms full of people. may you be so blessed it looks like a curse to everyone except God
May the light enter you and may it never leave and may you never be comfortable again and may comfort become disgusting to you like old meat
and may you thank him. may you thank him while it destroys you. that is the blessing. the thanking while it destroys you. that is how they know you are his
That's home. That's us.
On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering,
thousands of confident religions,
ideologies and economic doctrines,
every hunter and forager,
every hero and coward,
every creator and destroyer of civilization,
every king and peasant,
every young couple in love,
every mother and father,
hopeful child,
inventor and explorer,
every teacher of morals,
every corrupt politician,
every "superstar," every "supreme leader,"
every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there –
on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
bees cant fight wasps. but they can confuse wasps by coordinating together and creating a confusing pattern. if the wasp simply refused to be confused - to accept his confusion as an obstacle - he could just tear through these bees no problem. wow. crazy that only bees do this
A tobacco plant was engineered to produce DMT, psilocybin, psilocin, 5-MeO-DMT, and bufotenin.
Five psychedelics. One leaf.
Scientists stitched together biosynthetic machinery from plants, fungi, and the Sonoran Desert toad — three kingdoms of life running inside a single host.
One amino acid substitution gave a 40-fold increase in 5-MeO-DMT production.
This isn't copying nature. It's a platform for building psychedelics that don't exist yet.
Everything around me is rotting, so i build. that is it, that is the whole reason. God built six days and rested one. he could have stopped at function, he could have given us eyes that only see useful things, but he made color. he made sunsets. he made the shape of a woman's back. he made the sound of rain hitting a dirt road at night. beauty was not an afterthought, it was the first thought, everything else came after. i build because the world is falling apart, and a man who does not build is just watching a fire. i lay bricks straight, i put flowers where nobody will see them, i sand wood until the grain is smooth enough to hold without a glove. these are prayers. and the man who says beauty does not matter has never built anything, he has only consumed, and consumption leaves you hollow. everyone i know who only takes has the same eyes, empty, always hungry, looking for the next thing to swallow. hold a hammer instead. hold wood. hold stone. make something that does not need you to survive, and then walk away from it, and feel what that is. that is the closest i have ever got to being alive, and i am not giving it back.