By Tae-Sik
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July 6, 2025
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~6 min read
The other day, I was chatting with some friends, middle-aged, like me, with kids and businesses to juggle. I asked them what keeps them up at night as they move forward in life. Was it their children? Their business? Their health? Their personal future, or maybe their wives? What’s the biggest worry on a daily […]
By Tae-Sik
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July 6, 2025
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~6 min read
The connections we form in early life, whether with family or friends, carry a profound weight, shaped by biology, culture, and the innocence of our youth. The ties that bind us to others, through blood, friendship, or shared experience, leave an imprint that is both deep and mysterious. From the moment we enter the world, […]
By Tae-Sik
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May 29, 2022
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~11 min read
In the beginning was energy. Maybe it was matter, or something else. For simplicity, let's assume we started with energy. The universe experienced the Big Bang. Energy is converted into matter, or at least a lot of it was. Energy becomes matter. Energy is matter and matter is energy. E=MC2, So the science goes. The […]
By Tae-Sik
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May 14, 2025
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~5 min read
I'm sitting at a restaurant and notice a gentleman having lunch with his children. He's disheveled, middle aged and the kids appear to be about 8yrs old. If we were introduced, I wouldn't hesitate to address him as "sir", and use honorifics. Then it dawns on me: I could actually be older than him. It's […]
By Tae-Sik
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June 7, 2022
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~8 min read
There is a tolerance for life on Earth to proliferate, evolve, and multiply. The partiality for living things to stay alive is its primary imperitive, its number one self programmed instruction set. If there’s any single driving force for living...
By Milan Ji
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December 4, 2025
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~9 min read
From Blood and Soil to Contracts and Code: The Great Substitution For almost the entirety of human existence, the primary social glue was biological and territorial. Societies cohered through extended kinship networks; clans, villages, tribes, and the literal soil that contained the bones of their ancestors. In traditional societies across Asia, Europe, the Americas and […]
By Tae-Sik
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December 25, 2023
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~5 min read
Is a major recession or an unspeakable depression akin to 1929 possible in our modern age? Central banks stand ready, modern banking systems with derivative assets locked and loaded, fiat currencies ready to print and the cost of money digitally available to be distributed to anyone and anywhere in seconds. Our modern economy is global, […]
By Tae-Sik
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June 12, 2025
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~12 min read
This is my impressionistic explanation of how the Bitcoin Wallet works and how it fits within the larger Bitcoin ecosystem. There are 3 components to the Bitcoin core. The Bitcoin core is the software or programmatic implementation of the Bitcoin software system. 1. Bitcoin Mining 2. Bitcoin Node 3. Bitcoin Wallet Bitcoin miners compete for […]
By Milan Ji
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June 23, 2026
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~7 min read
The Irreplaceable Currency and the Vanishing Light of Youth King or slave, the tax is paid. Time, in its indomitable nature, underlies all of life. It is the invisible backdrop upon which every event unfolds, the medium through which consciousness is experienced and existence becomes real. Every thought, every decision, every achievement, every regret, every […]
By Tae-Sik
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June 26, 2020
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~3 min read
A most mysterious phenomenon of human nature is the self-awarness of one's own consciousness. To know that one is alive. Present. Locally aware. Finite in space and time. Embodied in a physical nature. It is a most mysterious thing. To be confined within, behind the eyes, between the ears, above a torso, and within the […]
By Tae-Sik
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December 6, 2019
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~4 min read
Self Consciousness is the Highest Form of Evolution We often think of IQ and intelligence to be the highest attribute of human beings. I would argue that it's the degree to which we are "self conscious". Self Consciousness, more than anything else sets us apart from every other living animal on the planet. What is […]
By Tae-Sik
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August 4, 2023
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~5 min read
The 7 Pillars of Life Seven Pillars represent the structural foundations of a substantive and meaningful human life. A careful reflection into these seven domains which support and substantiate a mindful human existence, in harmony with our nature and knowing self awareness. This is a meditation and exploration. These seven domains are foundational to a […]
By Tae-Sik
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June 19, 2020
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~4 min read
We live in a modern civilization. Organized. Structured. Peaceful. Productive. There is very little want. We should all be so lucky to be alive in this epoch. Civilization wasn't built in a day. It's taken thousands, if not millions of years, for humanity to reach today's precipice. We can easily take this for granted. Feel […]
By Tae-Sik
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June 29, 2023
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~23 min read
Sovereign governments have the power to print their own currency. Governments authorize their Central Banks to manage their fiat currency. Central Banks have the authority to create money. Central Banks can create money that increase the money supply and money available for financial transactions. More money in the system is inflationary in nature. Inflation is […]
By Milan Ji
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December 4, 2025
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~15 min read
S&P 500 and the Microstructure of Modern Short Squeezes The E-mini S&P 500 futures contract (ES) is the undisputed primary global price-discovery vehicle for U.S. large-cap equities. On active days it routinely trades $600-900 billion notional (occasionally exceeding $1 trillion), on effective intraday leverage of 15-25X, and consistently leads both the cash S&P 500 index […]
By Milan Ji
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June 22, 2026
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~9 min read
The Emotional Compression of Knowledge and Experience There is an overlooked simplicity in how life organizes itself. Across biological, cultural, and psychological systems, complexity appears to move in a single direction: toward compression. What begins as sprawling experience, distributed information, and layered understanding gradually condenses into something smaller, more immediate, and more usable. Not simpler […]
By Tae-Sik
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June 28, 2020
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~3 min read
Why Being Self-Interested is for the Collective Good. Through the collective interest of individuals. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The majority of our interactions lie with other people. Our relationship with associates, family and friends. It is rare to contend with wild animals or the forces of nature. We have […]
By Tae-Sik
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February 4, 2024
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~6 min read
Ancient explorers bravely ventured into uncharted territories with rudimentary tools and an adventurous spirit. Some were fortunate to have primitive maps inherited from previous explorers, perhaps even an indigenous guide who knew the land by heart and sight. The expedition was fraught with danger and the unknown. As the journey progressed, charts were updated, redrawn, […]
By Milan Ji
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April 23, 2026
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~7 min read
Humans tell stories of empire, power, and destiny. We frame our ambitions as a search for love, security, or the service of God and nation. Yet beneath these lofty ideals lies a more practical transaction: we are biological traders, relentlessly negotiating for our next payout of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. Every goal we set […]
By Tae-Sik
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June 23, 2023
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~12 min read
Human beings have birthrights and entitlements, unlike any other living creature. In democratic and free market nations, we have private property rights, the right to vote, the right to life, the freedom of speech, the freedom of movement, the freedom to work and pursue happiness. We have freedoms and liberties given to us by "default". […]
By Milan Ji
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October 3, 2025
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~4 min read
There comes a moment in life when a person begins to sense his or her own disappearance—not the biological one, but the social one. It is the quiet vanishing of relevance. You leave a job, you sell a business, you step back from the arena of competition, and suddenly, the world looks past you as […]
By Tae-Sik
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December 10, 2020
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~3 min read
We live in a virtual world today. What we need physically are provided for by machines and a few humans. All basic human needs are fairly inexpensive and easy to acquire. We spend most of our day in front of computers, glued to our phones, talking to dots & colors on computer screens and phone […]
By Milan Ji
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November 4, 2025
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~7 min read
In the theater of a single life, where the curtains rise on boundless vitality and fall on quiet acceptance, there unfolds a profound arc shaped by the interplay of energy, time, and fortune. Youth arrives as a lavish subsidy from the universe, a non-renewable gift of effortless abundance, where every sensation is amplified, every risk […]