The internet did not reveal that the mainstream media was not the only avenue to truth about current events. The internet revealed the demand for truth about current events is small, while the demand for opinions about current events is high.

Helping others so that others will help you later? Good luck with that.

Helping others increases your ability to notice and appreciate when others help you, which they are, kind of randomly (just like your help is kind of random). That noticing and appreciating is a skill to develop.

Demonstration: Demonstrating power is amplifying power.

Riot: good fun, especially if you get away.

Agent provocateur: sometimes effective, usually enjoyable.

Protest: admission of weakness is amplifying weakness.

When I was starting to scout, it was magical that I could buy a book for a dollar and sell it for a dollar fifty. Then I tried (but not hard enough nor long enough nor successfully enough) to buy books with more than a ceremonial margin of profit. Looking back that was my greatest error. Small margins are okay / unavoidable at the start, but I should have spiraled upwards instead of just spiraling. Buy for a dollar and sell for three, buy for three and sell for ten, buy for ten and sell for fifty, buy for fifty and sell for two hundred, etc.

Before I moved to Portland I worked briefly in Knoxville. The owner there one day said “Trevor, you can sell a thousand dollars in diamonds or you can sell a thousand dollars in potatoes, it’s both a thousand dollars. I sell potatoes.” And there’s not a thing wrong with that, at any point. But I’d rather carry a thousand dollars in diamonds to the post office than a thousand dollars in potatoes.

I think there’s a small number of terrible things I can hold in mind, and a larger number of wonderful things I can hold in mind.

Girls have fun. Boys have friends.