I've been feeling the same way. And "out of love" is a great source for creations, but survival is where I have been drawing my inspiration.
I've gradually been avoiding large cities and crowds and seeking an off-grid lifestyle because it has occurred to me that the founders of places like Rome and America did that very thing.
Yes it is somewhat of a vague statement. But I enjoyed the read because lately I've been trying to discipline myself with:
"The more I browse the internet arbitrarily without purpose - the less effectively my time is spent."
Of course, it sometimes takes a spark of surfing to began the a long-term project. It just gets so easy to consume the ~infinite content of the internet sometimes.
That feeling of joy when you complete even the simplest of modifications of your environment is definitely worth pursuing.
I don't think that a failed artist would lose out on basic needs because of money. The average, economically entrenched observer would see a "successful artist" as one getting paid for their efforts.
I see a successful artist as someone who is creative enough to acquire basic needs, comforts, and actualization with little or no money - be it through bartering or learning to create for themselves.
Success can also come in the form of making statements about society through their medium(s) of choice, and ideally changing the outlook an audience.
In this regard, religion and arts were the first forms of software engineering - by the modification of the observers perspective.
Of course there is also aesthetic art, which is beautiful for us to admire because it is proof of the capacity of another humans attention to detail. These works usually don't seek to comment on the state of culture.
> I don't think that a failed artist would lose out on basic needs because of money.
How many former humanities students do you know?
If success just means being happy with yourself then sure, go for it. However this is a retreat from what OP stated: "The World Belongs to Those Who Create VS Those Who Don't".
If we are restricting ourselves specifically to artists then, for an average person, becoming a materially successful artist requires capital investment and an appetite for risk (or a lack of understanding of the risks). The capital investment will most likely come from parents in the form of education, food, security, etc.
Becoming a successful artist without any of that support sounds like a horrible all-or-nothing proposition with no fall back position. (You have no capital if you fail because you didn't hedge your bets with a steadier/less fulfilling career).
It doesn't make sense to me. I thought BTC was supposed to decentralize currency. One currency to rule them all. Having dozens of different ones that fluctuate like this seem counter-intuitive.
Sure, it's still decentralized. But now in order to buy things, we'll have to realize some sort of standardization. Of course, there are things like the Pot Coin, which obviously has only been deployed for a certain purpose.
So maybe everything is relative to BTC anyways, just specialized for different markets.
I've been teaching myself C, with the intention of learning how to write code for embedded applications where efficiency is key.
It seems to me that new languages prioritize quick iteration over effective machine operation. The easier a language is to write and interpret, the faster an outfit can churn out an application. The exponential computing power growth has been sufficient enough to absorb these collective "shortcuts". Thus, it is not being taken advantage of properly.
The CSCI/Engineering fields have become more of a gold rush than thoughtful trades. Boot camp management seeks profit, and trainees seek to quickly fill high paying jobs. It all culminates into this situation where code doesn't need to be clever and thought out - just created A.S.A.P to handle whatever trending niche market or "low-hanging fruit" there is. The work of these products get handled server side, where electrical costs for cooling is a fundamental expense.
I want to second Rust. I've been writing C for 5+ years and finally decided to give Rust a serious try... and I love it. I never ever thought I would say this, but I don't see myself going back to C (with minor exceptions)
I recall being excited the first time i learnt C. But after i learnt other programming languages, the defects of C started to appear clearly before my eyes. C++ is even worse (in terms of things that look like hastily designed)
Rust is comparably more coherent and elegantly designed.
It's easy to fall into this trap of thinking that we need to hold out our hands and ask (beg?) for wealth distribution. But this mentality of expecting someone else to come to the rescue is why we remain "poorer" than these other people. Especially now that we all have access to the world's information - it should be easier than ever to take care of ourselves and even coordinate boycotts of useless goods and services that the rich rent-collectors use to reap the harvest of proletarian dollars.
The founders of places like America and Rome were self-sufficient agrarians. The appeal of these places was that they were new and independent of other powers. The people that settled there were escaping the rich city folk in cultures that had already been developed.
But a century of rapid industrialization has yielded less capable, reliant people that have gradually lost their way of providing for themselves. Media has poisoned the minds of economic participants, from a young age, to desire more/bigger things than their neighbor, and that is a primary factor in the simple desire to be "rich".
These days there aren't really any new areas like these aforementioned to "discover" and cultivate (perhaps Alaska, but this place is not for weak people which in turn makes it exclusive to more virtuous citizenry).
Constant growth and expansion at all costs is what cancer cells do.
"You're an entrepreneur, so you're wanting to grow your business. How do you grow?"
"I'll throw you a curve ball - we don't want to grow."
The boom in Silicon Valley is largely because of the internet. This has resulted in much of the world connecting and becoming capable of equal economic input/output - therefore the next "place like Silicon Valley" could ironically be anywhere and everywhere, since information is now far less exclusive.
Whenever Elon Musk answers questions about how to learn as effectively as he has over the years, he routinely says "my process isolation isn't what it used to be."
I don't think I've ever had or ever will have any capacity to isolate a process and complete a large project.
I haven't researched the overhead costs, but there are alternative kinetic "batteries" that have been proposed, some of which are already being used:
- Use excess energy generation to drive a gravel-filled train up a few miles of 2% grade, back down the track to drive turbine(s) for energy to be tapped
- Run water up an incline into a reservoir. This can simultaneously serve irrigation purposes. Water level is indicative of available energy to be sent through turbines
- Multi-ton flywheels. I've seen that some fusion experiments use this for massive, quick energy bursts. Magnetism prevents excessive wear/tear on bearings
Flywheels sound exciting but their energy density is about the same as Li Ion batteries (even when carbon composites are used). There are very few large scale deployments of flywheel energy storage systems in the world despite lots of active interest in them. Safety is also a huge concern since if there is a mechanical failure, a huge amount of kinetic energy will have to be safely disposed or you are going to have shrapnels flying everywhere.
Flywheel systems last considerably longer than batteries, and are generally installed dug into the ground where failures cause no safety issues. Even when not installed underground the vessels fully contain any failure in any case.
In certain failure scenarios I think an energetic flywheel is predictable: Most of the momentum is within the plane of rotation, which is where you can place whatever kind of shielding or catching-material.
I've gradually been avoiding large cities and crowds and seeking an off-grid lifestyle because it has occurred to me that the founders of places like Rome and America did that very thing.