A UFO descends from the heavens over Belmont Plateau, piloted by the one-and-only Spacebug.

It creates a fog as it lands. It's making noises and shit. The front hatch opens, releasing even more fog. A silhouette begins to descend to the surface.

Over a loudspeaker the UFO declares in a robotic voice:

"ZZZZZKHHHH [[[SUSPENDING___GIMMICK]]] KHHHZZZZZ".

The fog clears as the silhouette sets foot on the surface and obviously it's me tf lmao I had to put a pause on the shtick for this one, I know y'all know I'm supposed to be a literal trillion-dollar company whatever hardy har but here go some real spill.

I. Why Does the Caged Bird Sing?

So recently I had been feeling a lil self-conscious about my presence on Twitter. I don't post nearly as much as I used to, but whenever I did I felt like I would sometimes (unironically) sound like one of those #riseandgrind entrepeneur IG pages.

How did this happen to me? Was my precious Internet gimmick rotting my brain?

I did some introspecting, and thankfully the answer to that second question is 'No.' Far as that first question...that's too tricky to say for sure but I think it's cuz my frontal lobes getting even sturdier w/ age lol.

My principles are still the same as they've been. In fact, they're even more refined now, and become more specific damn near every week (hit me on Signal if you want more details than that, duh).

The key realization for me was that THE GRIND® itself actually has no valence, no inherent opinion. THE GRIND® is Swiss, so to speak. It's why you deploy it that matters. Building a new world is...uh...effortful, and I'm convinced there's a CIA psyop in progress to get us all to dissociate completely from our productive urges so that we never get around to building it. (I'm thinking of the whole 'I don't dream of labor' and lying flat phenomema — I understand those impulses but I'm hoping that lying flat is just a precursor to standing upright word to my dog Sankara!!!)

So yeah, I've become someone who values discipline. I keep my word. I wake up early. I work, I exercise, I study. Not because of some weirdo materialistic drive, but because I aspire to be an asset to the ones I love and the causes I believe in.

The caged bird sings to harmonize with the other birds in the other cages, and only between pecking relentlessly at the bars of its own.

II. How to Move in a Room Full of Vultures

The 'room full of vultures' in question here is climate change you ain't see that one coming did you.

Just a few months ago, Greenpeace released video of an ExxonMobil lobbyist admitting to manipulating Congress as part of a 40-year disinformation war against climate science. That would make me extremely angry if I didn't own both ExxonMobil and Congress (brief suspension of the suspension of the shtick I'm sorry).

This was around the same time that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the sixth installment of they lil 'Assessment Reports'. I gave that jawn a skimarooni and....yeah we are super fucked it's looking like curtains.

On the surface, all that context undercuts the argument in favor of discipline. Why shouldn't we do-for-self and pleasure-seek to the max if all we got left is a few years before a molten apocalypse?

It's a perfectly reasonable question, but let me clarify the paradox of pleasure-seeking: those who indulge in pleasure the most actually experience it the least. That's not me waxing philosophic, it's a neuroscientific fact (a good concept to be aware of here is the hedonic treadmill). In other words, practicing restraint is actually crucial to maximizing pleasure .

So by all means, if your response to the climate catastrophe is to become a selfish masturbator, do you. All I'm saying is that if that's what any of y'all choose to be, at least be good at it.

And ard here go some basic protocols:

1. Get adequate sleep.
2. Go outside and view sunlight shortly after waking every morning.
3. Abstain from eating 1 hour after waking and 3 hours before sleeping.
4. Exercise as much as you can.

If you're able to commit to those actions, you'll inevitably build a solid foundation on which to build a joyful and fulfilling life despite the vultures overhead (the vultures I named and those I didn't).

Hit me at zuff@shoya.co if y'all need any more resources on this, but for now I'm getting back on the UFO 🤝💯.