Rebellion

Towards a permissionless world

Reflecting

Young children need to ask permission to leave the classroom for bathroom breaks because their brains are not fully formed enough to have full agency.  They can’t fully think for themselves or protect their interests.  That’s childhood.  Adults should not hurt each other or take each other’s stuff.  Beyond that, permission is largely a function of ritual humiliation, a way for government and elite institutions to remind you of their power over you. 

It is especially revealing how they value your time at zero.  Get you emissions checked in person, despite the fact that they already know the answer for a given make and model of car well to the right of the decimal point.  Zero information is needed or used.  The process is the punishment and the punishment is to keep you in your place. 

Rebel.  Rebel in a thousand ways great and small.  Inconvenience arbitrary authorities.  Embarrass them.  Accentuate their absurdities.  Make your oppression as miserable a task as possible.  This baffles the moderates that accept authoritarianism but want to make oppression as nice as possible (with the hope that it will be especially softened for them as collaborators). 

One of the thousands of petty indignities of our regulatory state is the fact that I am forbidden to order glasses for my eyes with my money unless I go to an eye doctor to confirm the prescription that I already know.  It is a racket, but one that I just excused myself from by getting rid of glasses.

Neither eyeglasses nor contacts not blurry vision work well with MMA, so I needed to fix my eyes.  I did Zeiss SMILE surgery yesterday and was back to CrossFit and boxing today.  It was fast (ten seconds per eye of laser cutting), painless, comfortable, and I liked my surgeon, Dr. Mark Buchsbaum.  He practices out of Manhattan but works in Westchester one day per month.  If you want perfect vision without glasses or contacts with a fast recovery and minimal weakening of the eye’s surface, this is a procedure to consider. 

Lasers work wonders on eyes, so I’m going to see if they help fix my skin too.  Next up: AviClear, a new laser skin treatment that is essentially a permanent solution for avoiding acne and similar skin problems.  They are really hard to avoid with jiu jitsu. Something about the repeated sweating and contact is horrible for skin and this looks like it might be a great solution.  I started looking at it as a potential investment and then decided to try it out; will report back on results. 

Training

This morning’s whiteboard –

3 Rounds

• Run 400m

• Rest 1:00

• 40 Cal Row

• Rest 1:00

• 40 Cal Ski

• Rest 1:00

Followed by boxing.

Then next run:

Fueling

Duck eggs with garlic, onion, foraged mushrooms, and chili peppers:

Supplementing

I took Valium for my surgery yesterday. It has a half life of 24-48 hours. I look forward to getting it fully out of my system. Both CrossFit and boxing felt more sedate than usual. I might have been at my best on technique but was notably worse on aggression. My stats were below my normal output but I didn’t care as much as I normally would.

Measuring

Always watch the crosstabs.  Metabolic disease as measured by insulin resistance kills.  In the modern developed world, it is the basis for most disease including most cancer and heart disease.  It increases with age.  But aging is just the name we give to deciding to allow ourselves to get incrementally sicker.  The increase with age in large part comes from abdominal fat increase as measured by waist size.  Staying lean breaks down much of the correlation of age and metabolic disease.

H/t P.D. Mangan

Recovering

Good information on The Barbell on saunas: 

Saunas can be a valuable addition to your post-workout regimen. Their potential benefits in relaxation, muscle recovery, hormone release, circulation improvement, detoxification, cardiovascular health, mood enhancement, skin health, and temporary weight loss make them an attractive option for those looking to optimize their exercise recovery and overall well-being. As always, it’s essential to use saunas responsibly and in conjunction with a balanced exercise and recovery plan.

Closing

Please click on https://give.holeinthewallgang.org/valetudo to see what we did.  Thank you, Tom Isenberg, David Lastovskiy, Perry Kourembanas, Liz Speck, Paul Romig, Stan Harrison, Solomon Yi, Drew McGavran, Nathan Langello, Janet Siegel, Jenn Fittipaldi, Phil Hogan, Andrew Walker, and each of the anonymous donors.