Shanti’s Dispatches

nietzsche: god is dead

science killed religion.

what’s left?

an elaborate conspiracy. what other mystery could there be?

one man couldn’t have pulled off killing JFK alone.

Osama & a small group of ~ 25 couldn’t have pulled off 9/11.

It all has to be an elaborate mystery.

No one dies … we’re all faking deaths & chilling in the carribean with tupac, biggie, elvis & the crew.

conspiracies are the new religion … and there’s nothing wrong with that.

i was really curious about this before i took the leap, so i’ll try and score some karma points here by relaying these costs for you…

rent: $1400 => 500 EUR or ~ $700 usd (the pad here is 2x the size of the SF pad)
car insurance: $86 => $0
food: prob $450 or so at least => ~ $200
books: way too much (thx Amazon Prime ) => $0
gym: $52 => $145 (my gym here is pimp — a lil slice of home)
utilities (PG&E): $60 => $15
cell phone: $80 => 30 EUR or $45usd
cable internet: $50 => included in rent or $15
cable TV: $85 => included in rent or $15

i actually haven’t paid my cable bill yet so i don’t know if it’s included or what. my friend’s is very cheap tho.

going out: i go out a lot more now, so it’s hard to compare. you can easily spend $100 - $125 / night going out in the states, if you like to party =) here it would be hard to spend 150RON (about $60usd) in even a night of hardest partying. a big ass 24oz heinekin for example might run ya 9RON or ~ $3.80usd. in the states at a similar club this would probably run ya $9-10usd or so.

new expenses –

just remembered you might be curious about that as well =)

1. cabs — you can get anywhere in the city for $2usd… if you’re going waaay far out of the center, it might cost ya $4usd

2. if you have the time, you can usually just walk wherever you need to go. the subway / metro is also ridiculously cheap — like 30 cents per ride. (just buy a few 10-packs of tickets and consider it free)

for the first time in my life recently, i didn’t have 100% access to my disposable funds and/or lines of credit.

by the end of the few 3-4 days of this, i was literally down to my last accessible $10.

i can see how people who grew up or experienced long periods of poverty have basically been conditioned into a mental state of a) i can’t afford anything, b) where is my next $50-100 or meal going to come from, c) the world is a cold & unfair place.

my parents raised me with the cliche meme that money doesn’t buy happiness. even if we weren’t rich, we always acted like we at least had enough money for a decent middle-class life. (going out to eat, etc)

the problem with this conditioning (money can’t or doesn’t or won’t buy happiness — they are all similar in my mind) is that it’s a fallacy. money can purchase or allow for you to do things which can enable or further your happiness.

what i believe should be the ideal meme to instill in kids re: money is the following:

there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of wealth. it’s all about how to choose to use that wealth to further your own happiness & of those around you.

thus if you are a greedy douchebag who cares only about the bill, to the detriment of all other aspects of your life, then of course you will not find happiness.

if you pursue wealth with the aim of it allowing you to follow your passion or do what you really love in life, then of course this should be 100% encouraged — none of this money is the root of all evil hippie bullshit.

Anti-Emo Riots break out across Mexico

wanted to post this in a previous rant on teh current state of US politics:

Click Here to view the Full Size version

i don’t give a shit anymore. i’ll pay caesar his due & stack the rest of my chips for a rainy day.

why do the prophets always speak in similes & metaphors?

Yeah, it sounds cheesy & cliche. But it’s true. Via Wikipedia:

Endorphins are endogenous opioid polypeptide compounds. They are produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in vertebrates during strenuous exercise [1], excitement, and orgasm[2]; and they resemble the opiates in their abilities to produce analgesia and a sense of well-being. Endorphins work as “natural pain killers”, whose effects may be enhanced by other medications.

The term “endorphin” implies a pharmacological activity (analogous to the activity of the corticosteroid category of biochemicals) as opposed to a specific chemical formulation. It consists of two parts: endo- and -orphin; these are short forms of the words endogenous and morphine, intended to mean “a morphine-like substance originating from within the body.” [1]

The term endorphin rush has been adopted in popular speech to refer to feelings of exhilaration brought on by pain, danger, or other forms of stress,[2] supposedly due to the influence of endorphins. However, this term does not occur in the medical literature.

Beta-endorphin is released into the blood (from the pituitary gland) and into the spinal cord and brain from hypothalamic neurons. The beta-endorphin that is released into the blood cannot enter the brain in large quantities because of the blood-brain barrier. The physiological importance of the beta-endorphin that can be measured in the blood is far from clear: beta-endorphin is a cleavage product of POMC which is the precursor hormone for adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH). The behavioural effects of beta-endorphin are exerted by its actions in the brain and spinal cord, and probably the hypothalamic neurons are the major source of beta-endorphin at these sites. In situations where the level of ACTH is increased (e.g. Addison disease), the level of endorphins also increases slightly.

Beta-endorphin has the highest affinity for the μ1-opioid receptor, slightly lower affinity for the μ2- and δ-opioid receptors and low affinity for the κ1-opioid receptors. μ-receptors are the main receptor through which morphine acts. Classically, μ-receptors are presynaptic, and inhibit neurotransmitter release; through this mechanism, they inhibit the release of the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA, and disinhibit the dopamine pathways, causing more dopamine to be released. By hijacking this process, exogenous opioids cause inappropriate dopamine release, and lead to aberrant synaptic plasticity which causes addiction. Opioid receptors have many other and more important roles in the brain and periphery however, modulating pain, cardiac, gastric and vascular function as well as possibly panic and satiation, and receptors are often found at postsynaptic locations as well as presynaptically.

So obviously you can get them them through strenuous exercise. If this is hard to come by for whatever reason or you’d like to get even more endorphin-stoned all the time, just do something you fear.

It could be as simple as not wearing a watch & when you see an attractive girl by herself waiting at the bus stop, asking for the time, nothing more. For most guys, this alone will probably get you at least a small endo-buzz.

just like Edison, if you try enough things eventually you will be rewarded, in some way or another.

in code, this might come in the form of reusing snippets & pieces from other apps you’ve written.

obviously one cannot violate a previous client/employer’s IP rights, but if you are going to re-write the exact same 10 lines of code, you are just plain a bad developer of you don’t copy those lines instead of re-writing / re-thinking about them again. (oh, and your rewrite is not even guaranteed to work whereas your previous solution does like a charm)

this principle can be applied to everything. music producers who have seen/done it all will remember the perfect african drumbeat that they used 5 years ago, that slightly modified could go great in a hit new song, etc, etc ad infinitum.