FlyingSideKick

I’ve studied Afro-Cuban percussion for 28 years now and I can tell you from experience there are some bata rhythms that definitely make the listener enter into a heavy trance state. Haitian vodun drumming is especially designed for generating trance and out of body experiences in its entirety. If you can find an old recording of Haitian voodoo drums give it a listen using good headphones with your eyes closed, and after about twenty minutes you will enter an altered state.

Most of the best boards don’t come off factory presses instead they are built by someone with great passion in a small warehouse or garage. These guys are happy just getting by and sharing the stoke with customers they know. Moreover, once you become addicted to surfing that’s all one cares about. True surfers don’t care about the hype around the latest thing, once you buy your board and a wetsuit all you care about is getting that glide. If I didn’t have a family to support I’d make the yearly circuit from Sri Lanka, Peru, etc and just live on the beach for less than $10 a day and would be perfectly satisfied. I feel sorry for my office mates who don’t have any hobbies or escapes and instead are focused on the next bonus or promotion either for their egos or so they can buy more stuff. I just want more time off to travel with my family and surf. After 3 startups and 23 years in tech and many, many 12 hour days I can tell you the whole system is empty. Despite recognition or financial success there’s nothing in the system that brings true long term happiness, but the natural meditation when waiting on the wave or for the next set does.

I have ADD and consider myself somewhat successful (top 2% income earner) but always beat myself up for what I could achieve. My career has mostly been a long string of failures with me being extremely “lazy” but with a few home runs which is what I’m known for. I don’t really “work” more than 8 hours a week until I get passionate about something and then I crank on it without break until the kindling has been lit where then I hand it to others for the day to day. ADD has been very hard on my marriage too.

By 2030: 1. Nigeria and/or Kenya's GDP will surpass that of the UK. 2. Global births will rapidly decline in all but the poorest nations. Data will show that "Peak Child" is near and will occur around 2040. 3. 4 day work weeks for salaried employees will be commonplace amongst large corporations. 4. A new search engine disrupting our commonplace search behaviors will be on its way to disrupting Google 5. The average Bachelor of Science degree in the USA will cost >$180,000 at a public university

I love the new look and am curious about if the exoskeleton has crumple points to reduce the kinetic energy imparted to the passengers during a collision.

Yes. I have been lucky enough to attend two Theravada retreats in Thailand. However, the practice of daily meditation and adherence to the 5 precepts (not taking life, not stealing, not engaging in false speech, not engaging in sexual misconduct, not taking intoxicants) plus practicing loving-kindness to all beings is far more life-changing than attending a retreat every once in a while.

Daily meditation especially vipassana and loving-kindness can truly change your life, bring inner peace and can truly in your personal and business relations.

As an entrepreneur, one side-effect of meditation is that it made me really examine what my definition of "success" and "happiness" is. In so doing meditation has taken away much of my ego and the desire to achieve revenue growth or market share goals. I simply don't care about that anymore and now I just want to operate a business that makes great products that people love while that producing enough revenue to support my team. For myself, building and maintaining an awesome and supportive work environment where individuals and life-work balance are valued are my top priorities. Happy lives and families are key. The gain of status and material objects are just transitory with no significance.

As a citizen of the United States (a country that cut down nearly all of its old-growth forests) what can I do as an individual to slow down deforestation in the Amazon? What are some real solutions I could enact that would make any difference?

The situation feels hopeless until the Brazilian government makes a sweeping effort to preserve the Amazon and that it's laws are fully enforced.

I worked at T-Mobile and did some work on this very subject our studies showed that people are so addicted that unless there is a threat of jail time or drivers license suspension people will not put down their phones.

My Grandfather was employee #3 at his company and over 35 years of hard work eventually became CEO and helped grow the company until it was listed on the NYSE. He preferred to hire people whom attended state schools and with B averages. Moreover, he thought private colleges and out of state schools were a huge waste of money (even as CEO and worth tens of millions lived in a modest 3 bedroom house and drove a 20 year old car).

He would repeatedly say to me: "I'd rather hire people whom got B's in school and had a social life than automatons who got A's." and "College is like driving cross-country. You can get there in a pinto or a Mercedes, what you see and learn along the way is up to you!"

I’m a founder of a specialty outdoor apparel manufacturer. After a brief stint of selling on Amazon we know only sell our gear via retail locations and our site. After achieving first page ranking for the category, we encountered massive problems including repeated page hijacking and low quality knock offs being sold as ours despite brand gating. I hope that discerning shoppers will model the behavior of the author and choose to make purchases of goods they know to be of high quality from manufacturer websites. This being said Amazon is great for product discovery and I hope we can build our brand effectively through legitimate reviews such as Backpacker, Ourdoor magazine, etc. Even though we’ve gone all in on social media our purchase rate from FB and Instagram is awful as our target buyer is wealthy fly fisherman over 50. Any tips on how to generate more online sales away from Amazon that older demographics utilize?

While this is fantastic news on one hand, it is concerning that cheap launches will lead to so much debris in low earth orbit that future generations will find it difficult to orbit without significant risk of micrometeorite strikes.

Chinese citizens have en masse been exploited by those in power for thousands of years. Moreover, workers and peasants weren't critical or even overwhelmingly supportive of the cultural revolution. Now China near the highest income inequality in the world and just like in the past those in power have technology in place to keep the average Chinese worker the ability to protest their working conditions. Hopefully, this will change but it is probably unlikely.

I'd really like to ask these VC's and corporate leaders "Are 12 hour work days 6 days a week where every movement of your workers are tracked something you'd like to see as a cultural norm?"

I think it is up to employees and entrepreneurs here in the US to push back against this march to longer and longer work days. Our physical and emotional health is far more important than a title or a few extra dollars. The well balanced life is a wealthy life.

$230k

As an entrepreneur I’ve never understood how closing a round of funding is somehow a badge of success. In fact it is quite the opposite. The ultimate businesses are those that are highly profitable and can scale using their own funding. Successful bootstrappers are the best entrepreneurs.

The cost of healthcare and need for health insurance prevent many people from becoming entrepreneurs. Case in point one of my best friends is a talented physiotherapist who has dreamed of starting his own clinic for years, however he has a chronic genetic health condition that keeps him reliant upon working for employers whom provide “good” health insurance. I think a nationalized health system would provide a boost to the startup economy.