Five Bullet Friday #18

“Five Bullet Friday” is a weekly series of what I’m enjoying or pondering inspired by Tim Ferriss. I want to stay consistent with this log, so I decided that for every extra day that I put things off, I will add an extra bullet.

1. Motivational video I made

The theme of the message is to know the darkness but face it with courage anyway. I would want the music to start with a very dark fade in and through a few cycles of ups and downs, then reach a triumphant climax towards the end then fades out.
Any suggestions for better music?
Any suggestions for images and scenes from movies that would fit the message?
I would like to make an even more effective version that could match the quality of this:

Thanks!

2. Short story I reviewed

https://steemit.com/bookreview/@limitless/stories-of-your-life-arrival-review

I wrote this in a rush and thought it was rather disorganized and experimental, but I got pleasantly surprised by the amount of upvotes I received.

Thanks to all my readers and supporters!
Especially @mammasitta who reads everything.

3. Article I am reading

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-in-an-enormous-planet-sized-nutshell/
I like this writer. He's very intelligent, objective, and meticulous in everything he writes and isn't afraid to tackle difficult topics in a diverse variety of fields. This is a writer who I look up to... it will take a lot more knowledge and practice for me to get to this level.

4. Project I am working on

I have hinted at this for a while now in various past posts, but I am very interested in the intersection of strategy and memes. This week, I have finally taken a concrete step towards making something useful out of this bizarre esoteric hobby. I have started a shared Google Drive folder to collaborate with a few friends on writing a book, tentative title The Art of the Meme War. In last week's Five Bullet Friday, the tentative title was Trump-Tzu: Art of the Election.

My objective is to create a book of aphorisms that is useful to everyone. I imagine it to be something like a cross between The Art of War and Poor Charlie's Almanack updated for how modern information overload has affected society. But I do see the potential for other people to appropriate it for their own political agendas. That's out of my control, and a main teaching of stoicism is to not stress out about things outside of your control. My aim is to just spread practical wisdom with a touch of humor, because it would be personally fulfilling to me.

5. What I am watching

Empires series by PBS on Amazon Prime
This is a series of historical documentaries on empires. I have watched the episodes about the Roman Empire and Egyptian Empire. It was enjoyable to accompany the Roman episodes with Mike Duncan's History of Roman Podcast, and to accompany the Egyptian episodes with Rob Monaco's The Podcast History of Our World.

What I learned:
Sometimes capable commoners rose to become the best kings and queens. Terrible pharaohs and emperors often had popular fathers or advisors. I try to put myself in the shoes of the fathers and advisors of the despots to question what did they do wrong while rising the despots?

Particularly, Vespasian was a good emperor. He came from a modest family and was relatively unsuccessful as a young man. Then he rose up the military ranks and was loved by his troops by the time he seized control of Rome during the Year of the Four Emperors. As emperor, he enjoyed the humor of the common folk and enjoyed getting roasted by insult comedy.

Vaspasian's son Domitian was the opposite. He was a cruel tyrant who couldn't take any criticism at all. He was extremely paranoid... for good reason, because he was assassinated by court officials.

Today, thousands of years later, we still have not overcame this problem. Many successful people still leave terrible heirs. How can we improve upon education to minimize this?

Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful weekend,

@limitless