THE CHAOS THEORY

“The Tao Made Easy: Timeless Wisdom to Navigate a Changing World” by Alan Cohen

In around 4th century BC, a Chinese man called Lao Tse (meaning “old master”) was appointed by the king of the Zhou Dynasty to the prestige position of keeper of the imperial archives. It was a turbulent time, with wars, divisive politics, and moral decay which eventually took their toll on Lao Tse and left him yearning for simplicity, harmony, and integrity. And so, at an old age, he eventually packed up and set to leave the city to live a more natural, and saner, life in the countryside.

As he was about to walk pass the western gate of the kingdom, a guard recognized him and pleaded to him to record his wisdom before he leave for good. And thus, Lao Tse then set brush to parchment and started to write down the 81 stanzas of Tao Te Ching (meaning “The Book of the Way of Virtue”). It was said that it only consist of 5000 written characters, but it covers all the sources of human suffering and their cure.

Tao Te Ching later becomes the most translated, interpreted, and printed book in history second only after the Bible. To date (or at least until the publication of this book by Alan Cohen) there are 1216 books related to Tao Te Ching currently in print, including, as Cohen remarks, “the revered translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English; Dr. Wayne Dyer’s popular Change Your Thoughts—Change Your Life; and the immortal surfer version, Dude De Ching.” (yeah, I should really check out Dude De Ching after this).

So what could Cohen possibly add to this pool of Dude De Chings? He decided to select the most significant themes of Tao Te Ching, provide more explanation about them, and apply them to the modern 21st century context. And I must say, for a person who once attempted to read one of the [poor] translations of Tao Te Ching (by James Legge), this one is like a breath of fresh air.

It is written in a laid back (and sometimes funny) manner, making it enjoyable to read especially considering the heavy nature of the subject, but without losing its clear and concise way to teach us about the core messages.

For example, just look at the way Cohen describes what the Tao is: “While it appears that the universe is a foolish, even cruel play of random events, there is an intelligence operating behind the scenes, a fabric of life that integrates all creation. This power is invisible to the eye, yet more real than anything the senses can touch. It is a mystery to the intellect but knowable to the heart. It is life itself. Lao Tse called this power “the Tao,” or “the Great Way.””

Indeed, some call it God, others describe it as the universe. And Cohen? He elaborates this message by talking about The Force, like, in the Star Wars kind of way. Talking bout 21st century context, eh?

But this book is not all about modern interpretation of Tao Te Ching. When needed to make a point, Cohen also provide wisdom from the original stories, such as Lao Tse’s lesson after a student asks him about the validity of an astrologer: “All sciences are valid depending on how they are used. If they empower you to live more fully, they help. If they make you feel like a puppet on a string that someone else is pulling, they hurt. A knife can be used to heal through surgery or it can kill. It’s all what you do with it.”

Lao Tse then continues, “You should look within for your answers. Your life is not determined by the stars. It is determined by your state of mind and the choices you make. Regardless of how the stars are configured, you are in charge of your journey. Make healthy choices, and even if adversity comes, the Tao will show you how to use it for your benefit.”

But then when you think it’s about to get serious, Cohen then proceeded to talk about his male puppy trying to hump his older female dog. As Cohen told the story, “All of our dog expert friends told us that our nine-month-old male puppy was too young to mate with our older female. But he didn’t get that memo. One night while my beloved Dee and I were sitting in our living room, we heard a sharp yelp from the kitchen. We rushed in to find the little guy stuck to the older woman. They remained interlocked for 45 minutes with a baffled look on their faces: “Now what do we do?””

What could possibly be the moral story from this hilarious encounter? “The best things that happen are unplanned”, the great master would say. Because, get this, that little geezer impregnated the older dog and Cohen and his wife suddenly have little joyous puppies!

And this is actually what the entire teaching of Tao Te Ching boils down to: Let nature take its course. Cohen then elaborates by categorizing the relationship between cultures and nature into three 1. Man under nature 2. Man over nature 3. Man in nature:

1. Man under nature believe the world is ruled by gods, demigods, or any spirits superior to humanity. As Cohen remarks, these beings “chart our destiny, so we lower beings must bow down to them, appease them, make sacrifices, and, whatever you do, don’t piss them off.” Such cultures believe that favorable conditions are given from higher powers, and calamities are forms of punishments from our misdeeds. Cultures like ancient Greek, Roman, and Mayan civilizations are examples of this approach.
2. Man over nature regards nature as an obstacle to be tamed or controlled, our enemy to overrun or to subjugate for our purpose. Our technologically bullying culture is a prime example of this, where “we tear down forests, dam rivers, preserve food with chemicals, manipulate genes, and spew toxins in the air with no awareness that when we hurt our planet, we hurt ourselves.”
3. Man in nature is actually the only way we were born to live, how we should live. Many cultures that are close to the Earth understand that our purpose in life is to align with nature, thank its Creator, accept its blessings, and give back to it. Native American, First Nation, Aboriginal, Māori, and Hawaiian cultures are some of the examples for this.

This book is ultimately about teaching us to live life according to the third option, man in nature. And it’s such an impactful one.

I must admit, not all section of the book are brilliant. Like in each chapter Cohen somehow inserted a fictional depiction of his own interactions with the old master, in an imaginary way as if Cohen is Lao Tse’s student. Which is super weird. But I treat these episodes like I would treat a drunken uncle that is starting to talk about government conspiracy theories, sure it’s wacko but there are some truths in it somewhere. Besides, had these stories been true, it would actually be insightful.

And one last note, it is particularly astonishing for me that a lot of the messages from Lao Tse are similar like Stoicism. Such as “what’s in the way is the way” is similar with Stoicism’s the obstacle is the way. Or “let nature take its course” is similar like let things happen naturally. Or Stoicism’s core message of focus on what you can control, can also be seen in Tao’s “sometimes you can change the environment. Always you can change your mind” and its examples in chapter “How to fix the world.”

Moreover, Tao Te Ching, according to Cohen, is also similar like the content of the Gospel of Thomas. And in this book Cohen also tells the story of Siddhartha Gautama to illustrate a Tao lesson. So, I guess that quotation from the Rig Veda is spot on, “all truth is one, the sage call it by many names.”

Here are some of the most memorable quotes from the book:

1. You don’t have to tell the Force how to help you. You just have to let it find you and work for you and through you.
2. Our dilemma is not that we do not have an invincible Source; our dilemma is that we do not realize It exists and we do not make use of It.
3. If you knew who walks beside you on the path that you have chosen, fear would be impossible.
4. Life does not go in circles. It is constantly cycling upward. Let cycles play themselves out and they will reveal their purpose to you.”
5. “The heart knows the answers to the questions the mind cannot satisfy,”
6. Victor Hugo said, “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.” If your idea is aligned with the Tao, it will have a life of its own and it will reach all the right people in the right way at the perfect time. You will watch in awe as the river carries your boat to the ocean. When nature takes its course, there is no stopping it.
7. The tribe realizes that correction is achieved not by punishment, but by remembering who we truly are.
8. Lao Tse would agree that our true self knows how to live. When we live according to our nature, we don’t need anyone else to prescribe our path for us.
9. We know all we need to know from the inside out. Rules are for people who have lost touch with their inner guidance. Laws are also misused by unscrupulous leaders to control others for self-serving purposes.
10. In our society, however, many of us have become disconnected from our innate wisdom. We don’t trust ourselves, so we depend on external authority to tell us how to live. It seems easier to obey than to think. We entrust our lives to government, religion, education, economics, medicine, culture, and family.
11. Those who stand on tiptoe are not steady. Those who stride cannot maintain the pace. Those who put on a show are not enlightened. Those who are self-righteous are not respected. Those who boast achieve nothing. Those who brag will not endure. According to followers of the Tao, “These are unnecessary food and baggage.” They do not bring happiness. Therefore followers of the Tao avoid them.
12. Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom, And it will be a hundred times better for everyone. Give up kindness, renounce morality, And people will rediscover filial piety and love.
13. No act is always right or always wrong. If someone took a hatchet and broke into your house to steal something, it would be wrong. But if your house was on fire and a firefighter broke into your house with a hatchet to extinguish the fire, you would be grateful.
14. to let ourselves be guided by internal wisdom rather than external opinion. This is the mark of a mature soul.
15. Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.
16. You can manufacture heaven or hell with your thoughts and live in that world as if it were real. But when you wake up from the dream your mind has fabricated, reality remains intact.
17. Tao Te Ching tells us that ultimate reality is benevolent. A Course in Miracles underscores, “Only the creations of light are real. Everything else is your own nightmare.” So if you are going to “create” a “reality,” be sure to create one that matches what has already been created. Then the Tao will be at your back like a firm wind that powers sailors home to port after a long day at sea.
18. When this small group came to a red light, they stood at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn green to cross the street. There was no traffic and their lives were in danger, but still they had to obey the rules and not be guilty of jaywalking! This is a clear example of denying one’s fundamental instinct in order to follow social rules. At that moment the regular rules were totally inappropriate. It was culturally illegal for them to cross against the red light, but spiritually legal for them to protect their lives.
19. Specific tasks do not create struggle. What makes a situation hard is the struggle attitude we bring to it. We resist a circumstance or believe it must be hard, and so it is. Not because struggle is required, but because our thoughts are powerful and we can create experiences by our belief. If you resisted nothing, you would never feel like you were working.
20. Just because so many people are in pain, or your life has been so painful, does not mean that is the way it has to be. It just means that we have historically chosen to fight our way upstream rather than flow with the current. What we call history is largely the record of fear-based human choices moving contrary to the Tao.
21. Hold foremost in your mind the result you would rather create. Fight for your valued goal instead of fighting against the situation you do not prefer.
22. If something comes up that you wish would go away, accept that it has come for a reason and consider how you can benefit from the experience. How is this situation stimulating you to grow in ways that you would not have grown had it not come forth? Is there an unseen opportunity here? Are you being guided to make a course correction that will ultimately improve your life? Every difficulty comes with a gift in its hands. It remains a problem until you accept the gift.
23. Life becomes difficult when you attempt to do things that don’t belong to you. It becomes easy when you do what belongs to you. In these last two sentences you just read the cheat sheet for the entire Tao Te Ching.
24. Painful events are not a punishment or our destiny. They are an alarm clock waking us to return to the kindly universe we have turned our backs on, and claim the well-being we deserve.
25. Only when we address the source of our problems do we heal their manifestations.
26. This story illustrates two key principles underlying sustained healing: (1) Real transformation occurs not simply by manipulating the symptoms, but by going to the core and addressing the fear, pain, and beliefs that are causing the symptoms; and (2) Healing occurs through release or forgiveness. Forgiveness does not mean that we condone abuse or cruelty. To the contrary, it means that we love ourselves enough to not accept negative behaviors directed at us. We further honor ourselves by deciding that letting go of the past will bring us greater benefit than holding onto it. When we can drop grievances and step fully into the present moment, we are free.
27. The goal of changing other people to make you happy is fruitless. Get over it. You may be able to nag or intimidate someone to change, but inwardly the other person will resent you and look for ways to rebel, sabotage, or leave. Forced change is not true change; a backlash always follows.
28. Sometimes you can change the environment. Always you can change your mind. If you can change your environment from a sense of positive vision, you will succeed. Remember to work toward what you want rather than against what you resist. All metaphysical teachings tell us that the world we see is a projection of the thoughts we are holding about it. To attempt to change the world without changing your mind is tantamount to making a run on the screen in a movie theater and trying to force the images to do something different. If you want to see a different movie, you must change the film in the projector. The film is your thoughts. The screen is the world. Insert a new film, and everything you see on the screen will be different.
29. Someone who is mean and manipulative is steeped in fear, the densest of energies. When you grow fearful, upset, angry, or resistant, you match the negative frequency of the person you dislike. You are locked into a painful cycle by energetic agreement. You have no hope of escaping their influence because you are operating at precisely the same frequency. When you choose a higher frequency, you rise above the denser energy.
30. Someone who is mean and manipulative is steeped in fear, the densest of energies. When you grow fearful, upset, angry, or resistant, you match the negative frequency of the person you dislike. You are locked into a painful cycle by energetic agreement. You have no hope of escaping their influence because you are operating at precisely the same frequency. When you choose a higher frequency, you rise above the denser energy.
31. If you want someone to change, model the energy and behavior you wish that person would exhibit. Then you will achieve two crucial goals: (1) You will establish yourself in the strongest position to influence the other person to act uprightly; and (2) You will find the inner satisfaction you sought by attempting to change the other person.
32. Be not deceived by ups and downs that occur in the short run, or appearances of disorder. No matter what evil or error seems to rule, truth eventually makes itself known, character is revealed, and virtue prevails.
33. The question, “What do you really need?” is the meditation of a lifetime. If you can distinguish between what you think you need and what you really need, you will realize that your true needs are far less than you have been taught, and you are always provided for.
34. The more you know, the less you need.
35. This brings us to a crucial point about how the Tao works. If a partner, job, or home belongs to you, it will be yours. If not, it will not come, and, believe me, you don’t want it. Something else that is truly yours will find you. We own things not by money or paperwork, but by right of consciousness. What is yours will know your face.
36. The system of Chinese medicine is based on the flow of chi, life force. As long as chi is flowing, you are healthy. When chi is blocked or for any reason does not reach a part of the body, illness ensues. To restore health, get chi moving again.
37. When you withhold money, kindness, or support from others, you are withholding wealth from yourself. It is a fundamental psychological principle that we expect others (and life) to do to us what we do to or for them. Generous people expect the universe to be generous with them, and it is. Stingy people expect the universe to withhold from them, and it does.
38. When Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you,” he was actually saying, “What you do unto others you are doing unto yourself.”
39. Life is simple unless we make it complicated. The ego thrives in complexity while the spirit thrives in simplicity.
40. The more complexity, the more issues. The more simplicity, the fewer difficulties. If you find yourself in a complicated situation, look for the simple way out.
41. Resist change and you suffer. Accept it and you are free.
42. When you are with people you love, imagine you may never see them again. Be fully present with them. Speak the words you wish for them to hear. Thank, honor, acknowledge, and celebrate them. They are in your life for a blessed season that bestows its unique gifts. Don’t miss a moment of loving. Leave nothing unsaid or undone.
43. Soul mates are not just romantic partners; they are all the people with whom you connect at a soul level. Some soul mates bring you immense delight, and others are extremely challenging. Some are both.
44. The secret to successful relationships is to let every relationship be what it wants to be.
45. If you try to end a relationship before it has fulfilled its purpose, it will just keep coming back. Many couples break up or get divorced, and other individuals distance themselves from families or friends. But somehow life draws them together.
46. Because we are spiritual beings at our core, it is the spirit of a relationship that brings us fulfillment. It matters less what the bodies are doing. You may live under the same roof with someone and sleep beside them, yet feel worlds apart. You may also have friends at a far distance with whom you feel deeply united. Relationships are about souls more than bodies.
47. If there is one thing in the world that we can depend on, it is change. Lao Tse calls us to not resist change, but to let it empower us. The more you fight change, the more it overwhelms you. The more you flow with it, the more it strengthens you.
48. If we fear to take that first step ahead, we might be tempted to glamorize the past or reactivate it to escape present discontent.
49. It is said, “Man’s [or woman’s] rejection is God’s protection.”
50. As much as we would like to hold on to sweet situations forever, we must let go when they have run their course.
51. Regret is time doubly wasted. If you made a mistake, you may believe that a moment or years were for naught. If you regret your mistake, you are wasting the current moment as well. If you learned from the mistake, the time and experience were worthwhile.
52. Be grateful, then, that you are sick and tired of being sick and tired, or fed up with what is not feeding you. Toleration of dysfunction only keeps it in force. Refuse to put up with what is not working, and you will find your way to your perfect place in the Great Design.
53. We have become so accustomed to dysfunction and toxicity that we fail to recognize when it has passed a critical threshold.
54. Bless your wake-up calls. They are the Tao benevolently reaching from reality into illusion to rescue you from further pain.
55. Any expression of mean-spiritedness or cruelty is a sign that you are in pain and you are attempting to relieve yourself of your discomfort by passing it along to others.
56. If you say you are going to do something, do it. If you make a plan, follow through. If you schedule an appointment, show up on time. If you borrow money, pay it back. If you are not sure you can do something, don’t promise it.
57. Patience is one of the most valuable virtues we can cultivate in a lightning-speed world.
58. Impatience means that you do not trust the Tao to deliver what you need when you need it. Patience means that you have faith that the Tao is with you right where you stand.
59. Presence makes the crucial difference in human interactions. In a world in which many people have given their presence and power away to busyness and technology, fully being with another person is more important than ever.
60. Robert Brault suggested, “Do not call any work menial until you have watched a proud person do it.”
61. The Tao cannot be prescribed for you. It must emerge from within you. You will not master your life by pleasing others. You will master it by aligning with yourself.
62. The God that you have been taught is out there somewhere, is in here. External temples are reflections of the inner sanctuary. If they do their job properly, they will lead you home to yourself. If they lead you elsewhere, run like hell.
63. Humble people are confident because they recognize the Tao is the source of their good.
64. When we renounce our demands on the world, we gain the freedom and peace that we hoped constant control would bring us, but never does.
65. Be not deceived by those who appear to thrive by amassing power, fame, and worldly accolades. These are but cheap trinkets, glittering toys to distract and amuse the unawakened.
66. Lao Tse sees education and enlightenment from a different perspective. He would say that you are not here to learn something you do not know. You are here to remember what you already know. The spiritual path is not a learning curve. It is a refresher course. You were born knowing.
67. It’s extremely difficult to teach people who are not motivated to learn, by teachers who would rather be elsewhere.
68. If your life is not working, a little or a lot, tell the truth about how you feel about what you are doing, and what you would rather be doing. In that one honest statement you take a major step to reclaim the Tao.
69. Lao Tse came to the same realization. He cautioned against excesses and extremes, and advised us to live with equilibrium. The famous yin-yang symbol of Taoism captures this principle, illustrating the existence of opposites and our need to integrate them: light and dark, life and death, male and female, good and evil, joy and pain. To deny opposites sets us up for suffering. To recognize them and make them work on our behalf yields mastery.
70. Too much of anything, the master taught, is no good. Too little of anything is no good. We must each find our “sweet spot,” the just-right integration of contrasting elements that, when we step into it, makes us both happy and productive.
71. Everyone has a piece of the puzzle of life, but no one has the whole picture. An ancient parable tells about an elephant that wandered into a village of blind people. Not knowing what an elephant was, the villagers began to examine the huge animal with their hands. One man grabbed the elephant’s trunk and declared, “An elephant is like a snake.” Another wrapped his arms around the creature’s leg and announced, “An elephant is like a tree trunk.” Another touched the tail and told, “An elephant is like a rope.” All of the blind people were partially correct, but none of them were totally correct. They accurately identified the parts, but none of them identified the whole, which was far greater than any one person could embrace or, from their limited perspective, understand.
72. So it is with truth. All religions, philosophies, and lifestyles capture a piece of the Big Picture, but none capture all of it. Some arrogantly tout, “My way is the way and the only way.” But humility would recognize that there are many paths to the mountaintop. Religious wars, inquisitions, crusades, and missionary movements all spring from insecurity. “You must believe as I do. If not, you will go to hell, or I will kill you,” speaks of deep primal fear. If our world is ever to come to peace, we must grow beyond such immaturity.
73. To put the puzzle together, we must acknowledge the contribution of each philosophy as well as its deficits. Every belief system contains an element of truth and an element of illusion. Purists of each belief spotlight the value of that path, but they also magnify its shortcomings.
74. Life has already set it up by making indulgence in extremes self-policing. When we swing too far to one end of the pendulum, we are forced in the opposite direction. After experiencing both polarities, we extract the best of both worlds and find a middle way that works.
75. Religions were founded by prophets who had lofty visions and noble intentions to bring healing and upliftment to the world. But then people with selfish motives infiltrated religions and twisted the faith to their own foul purposes. While elements of religion remain pure, other elements fall to evil, represented by the dark dot in the light field.
76. On the other side of the spectrum, for every dark experience, something good comes of it. Sickness is an invitation for a course correction to improve the quality of your life. Painful relationships move you to honor yourself and claim better. Losing a job can motivate you to create a more meaningful, passion-filled career. Overbearing monarchs incite downtrodden people to establish democracies. The crucified and resurrected Christ taught that he—like all of us—is greater than the body. Like the white dot within the black space, the spiritual master finds light in the midst of the darkness.
77. Masters of the Tao keep their head in the clouds and their feet on the ground.
78. Paradox delivers the ultimate teaching of balance: two ideas that appear to be contradictory are simultaneously true. Herein lies your point of power. If you can accept the reality of two apparent opposites, you are at altitude on the mountain of mastery. The thinking mind goes haywire when it attempts to integrate polarities.
79. Seek perfection but allow for imperfection. Let what appears to not be working be a part of what is working. Let night and day make each other more poignant. Let evil give way to good. Allow what seems apart to come together. Life is not a question of balance. Balance is the answer to the questions of life.
80. True artists merge with the Tao and disappear into their work. The artist and the art become one. The small self becomes a vessel for the Grand Self and is indistinguishable from the Source.
81. To enter the Zone your mental and emotional state must match it. That configuration is never based on the dense frequencies of struggle, pain, sacrifice, resistance, or complaint. It is always based on the higher frequencies of joy, trust, flow, and positive vision. If you are angry, upset, or defiant, you can’t get there from here. You need to elevate your consciousness. You can’t get to something you love by doing something you hate. You can’t get to ease by way of struggle; to peace by way of conflict; to wholeness by way of sacrifice; or to self-affirmation by way of self-denial. You have to attain a state of being that is closer to the experience you desire.
82. Lao Tse would not call himself a Taoist. Noble and helpful as the religious tradition is, the old master could not live inside a case. Even while Lao Tse warned against efforts to organize truth, an “ism” has grown up around his teachings. If I had to join a religious movement, Taoism would be a worthy prospect. But I would not find Lao Tse at its meetings.
83. All beliefs are temporary and ultimately evolve to something different. There will come a time when everything you now believe will not be true for you. As much as you are sure you know how it is, one day you will change your mind about how it is. Never argue that your way is the only way or the right way. One day you will be proven wrong, even to yourself.
84. The need to be right is what makes things go wrong. If insecure religions, political parties, cultures, teachers, spouses, and parents would just quit trying to force others to adopt their beliefs, violence would abate, humanity would grow beyond its dogmatic immaturity, and society would evolve rapidly.
85. If you need to be right by making others wrong, you will not find a home in the Tao.
86. The only thing worse than discovering that you have been participating in a dysfunctional system is to stay in it.
87. Blind faith leaves people sightless. The Tao calls us to never swallow any belief system whole, but to be discerning about what is true and what is illusion laid over truth in truth’s name.
88. Give yourself space to be what you are. Give others space to be what they are. Then everything will make itself clear.
89. Jesus went into the desert for 40 days, during which he conquered temptation. Moses scaled Mount Sinai and later descended with the Word of God. Muhammad’s first revelation came when he was meditating in a cave on a mountain and was visited by the archangel Gabriel. Then all of these masters returned to the world and delivered the insights they gained. You need not be a religious prophet to benefit from a retreat. Nor do you need to wait until you can get away for a weekend or week. Do it daily. Set up some kind of meditation, prayer, or soul-renewing activity each day. Begin your day with connection to Source and then take space during your day whenever you can, even for a few moments, to energize your spirit. Then, before you go to bed, devote some time to cleanse your thoughts and emotions and prepare you for deep, healing sleep.
90. If you are not enjoying what you are doing, either find a way to re-create or reapproach your work, or leave. Do not settle for a boring or oppressive career. Take charge of your vocation and your happiness.
91. Jobs don’t make or break our happiness. Only our mind does. Point your mind in the right direction, and you can turn any job into an adventure.
92. Life is not happening to you. Life is responding to you.
93. Sometimes things have to fall apart before they can come together better. Every difficulty comes with guidance to move in a new direction. Redefine challenge as your friend, and it will prove itself to be so.
94. Spiritual teachers have been telling us for millennia that all minds are joined. Now science is demonstrating this profound capacity.
95. We can summarize the proper relationship between body and spirit with one simple word: priorities. Which comes first: Love or stuff? Connecting or dividing? Winning or joining? You don’t have to slice away or deny your bodily activities. Just keep them in order.

“The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” by Robin Sharma

This book begins in an epic way. Told from a third-person vantage point, this is a story about a hot-shot lawyer named Julian who drove himself to overwork and stress, whom eventually had a heart attack in the court room. Sure he had all the worldly luxury we can imagine, but with his workload he never really forge a sincere friendship nor marriage, making him feeling empty inside.

And the heart attack was apparently the last straw. After recovering, he never went back to practicing law, sold everything from his mansion, to his Rolex, and of course his Ferrari; let go of his playboy bachelor lifestyle; and then travelled to India.

Julian spent the first several months wandering around in India in search for a teacher, all to no avail. That is, until he met with an Indian lawyer that turned into a monk, and he told Julian to seek a certain sage in the Himalayas. He then walked for 7 days with little food and water, until he met a disciple of the sage, who eventually brought him to meet Yogi Raman. 5 stars of a story, so far.

That is, until about 15% of the book, when Julian is suddenly back home – looking radiant, calmer, more youthful, and happy – where he was found visiting John (the narrator of the story) at his office, to tell him about the trip.

John was Julian’s junior associate in his legal practicing days, who has been telling Julian’s story from the beginning. And now we’re going to find out why John is the narrator. You see, this book is about John’s transformation afterall, where he is glorifying Julian as a American guru fresh from pilgrimage and mentorship from Yogi Raman in the Himalayas, and now Julian will teach everything he knows to him.

This is where, for the remaining 85% of the book, Julian turned from a badass wanderer slash monk ( who sold his Ferrari) into a figure more similar like a spiritual salesman selling a multilevel marketing scheme. And for his part, John seems to be a person who are completely oblivious about spirituality and just willingly accept anything that Julian tells him, without any skepticism.

So what are the life changing secrets taught by a sage in the Himalayas? If we strip away the guru-language, the vague indirect messages from this “fictional fable”, and every other sage-related anecdotes to give this book some fake credibility, at the very essence there are 7 main lessons:

1. Master your mind
2. Follow your purpose
3. Practice Kaizen
4. Live with discipline
5. Respect your time
6. Selflessly serve others
7. Embrace the present

I mean, I get it. I understand why this book has such low ratings in Goodreads, with quite a lot of people giving 1 star seemingly almost in contemp. It looks like your typical self-help bullet points, but wrapped around a fictitious story. But this is not actually an issue if done right.

I can see how in writing this book Robin Sharma is trying to emulate what George Carlson did with “The Richest Man in Babylon”, delivering lessons from a fictional fable. But unlike the way Carlson wrote his excellent book, Sharma’s book is not consistent with its context. Like the usage of “Kaizen”; this is such a 1990s self-help Japanese buzzword about constant and never ending improvement, which surely no secluded sage from the Himalayas would know.

In addition, the book also uses way too many unecessary jargons to make certain normal action sounds more mystical than it is. Such as rebranding the 80/20 rule into “the ancient rule of twenty”; or teaching about “the Heart of the Rose” technique, with the “thorns” represent the challenges or hardship you face in your journey and the “flower” represent the glory or the beauty you can experience once you can discipline your mind and can overcome your challenges. You know what is it really about? Meditation.

Moreover, Julian also likes to quote the likes of Winston Churchill, Viktor Frankl, Emerson, or Benjamin Disraeli, even Chinese proverb, in deliverying his points. Which is excellent in the broader sense of self-help approach, but poorly forced within the specific context of a wisdom from India.

This got me thinking, why force it to make this book about Indian wisdom, while in truth there’s hardly any Vedic approach in it? Because if you read the likes of Baghavad Gita, the Upanishad, or at least the introduction of Eknath Easwaran’s Dhammapada, you will find a completely different sets of wisdom that will expose this book to be nothing but a self-help book. Heck, read “Inner Engineering” by an actual Yogi Sadhguru and you will see how he riddicules the feel-good but empty mantras of self-help approach.

Hence, I can’t help but thinking that maybe, just maybe, this book is specifically catered to the stereotypical non-religious [white] people who are seeking spirituality from Eastern wisdom, but not bothering to actually dive deep into the whole sets of sub-continent religions. You know, those people who ended up joining the cult of Osho in 1980s Oregon; or those meditation app subscribers; or those vegan hippie that you can find living in Canggu, Bali, today.

However, I also understand the positive hype around this book when it was first published in 1997, because despite all the poor narration the messages are actually good. Not only the big picture framework but also the little sub messages scattered all over the book, such as “Ten Rituals of Radiant Living” (however cringy the title may sound). Hence, the popularity of this book, with millions of copies sold worldwide since it was first published and with the book have since been translated into 51 languages, not to mention that it was indeed one of the early fews book for the self help genre.

So to be fair, this could be more about wrong timing rather than quality per se. Had I read this book earlier – and haven’t read the dozens more self help books throughout the decades – I can see how it could have a big effect on me back in my teenage years in the 1990s; placing this book among “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People”, or the Chicken Soup series, Andrew Matthews’ cartoon series, or the Tony Robbins books and cassettes.

“The 50th Law” by 50 Cent and Robert Greene

Robert Greene is my number one favourite author, and to date I’ve read every single book written by him. Except for one, this book. Initially I never had the desire to read a book co-written with Fifty Cent, not that I have anything against him but because as much as I like some of his songs I’m not really a hip hop kind of guy.

But then the Diddy case emerges, with a lot of the biggest names in showbusiness are mentioned. So like a lot of people I did a deep dive into the whole scandal, including watching all 4 episodes of the documentary funded by Fifty. Oh the sheer level of patience and calculated pettiness by him is just chef’s kiss. And I thought, this dude’s different, he’s very strategic in everything he does, very methodical, and I’m intrigued to read more about him. And I know exactly which book to read about all of it.

In making this book, Greene was given access to pretty much all of Fifty’s world throughout 2007. As Greene recalled, he “followed him on numerous high-powered business meetings, sitting quietly in a corner and observing him in action. One day I witnessed a raucous fistfight in his office between two of his employees, with Fifty having to personally break it up. I observed a fake crisis that he manufactured for the press for publicity purposes. I followed him as he mingled with other starts, friends from the hood, European royalty, and political figures. I visited his childhood home in Southside Queens, hung out with his friends from his hustling days, and got a sense of what it could be like to grow up in that world.”

And during this whole shadowing period, Greene noticed something: “the more I witnessed him in action on all these fronts, the more it struck me that Fifty was a walking, living example of the historical figures I had written about in my three books. He is a master player at power, a kind of hip-hop Napoleon Bonaparte.”

This is not a cheap compliment from Greene’s part. Because Greene is the master of writing about various power plays in history, where he developed a theory that the source of greatness or success could almost always be traced to 1 single attribute or skill or unique quality that distinguished them from the rest. For Napoleon, according to Greene, it was his ability to absorb a huge amount of detail and organized them in his mind. And after shadowing Fifty and interviewing him about his past, Greene concluded that the 1 single source of his power is utter fearlessness.

As Greene reasoned, “This quality does not manifest itself in yelling or obvious intimidation tactics. Any time Fifty acts that way in public it is pure theater. Behind the scenes, he is cool and calculating. His lack of fear is displayed in his attitude and his actions. He has seen and lived through too many dangerous encounters on the streets to be remotely fazed by anything in the corporate world. If a deal is not to his liking, he will walk away and not care. If he needs to play a little rough and dirty with an adversary, he goes at it without a second thought. He feels supreme confidence in himself. Living in a world where most people are generally timid and conservative, he always has the advantage of being willing to do more, to take risks, and to be unconventional. Coming from an environment in which he never expected to live past the age of twenty-five, he feels like he has nothing to lose, and this brings him tremendous power.”

And this is what the 50th Law is about: Fearlessness. As Greene sums it up neatly: “In the end, this is a book about a particular philosophy of life that can be summed up as follows—your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.”

With this in mind, the book tells Fifty’s story from the technical side: Unlike any other biography, it focuses less on the anecdotal details of his life’s story but more on the blueprint of his moves, the method out of the madness, how he carry himself during each one of those events, etc. The book doesn’t tell Fifty’s story in a linear way either, where Greene would go back and forth between Fifty’s hustling days and rapping days in every other chapter, to illustrate his many different power plays.

Fifty, however, is not the only figure covered in this book. In fact he only comprised of what it feels like 40% of the total coverage, with the other examples for the fearlessness trait are taken from the likes of Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Pope Alexander VI, Cesare Borgia, Miles Davis, JFK, Mao Zedong, Leonardo da Vinci, Ingmar Bergman, Charlie Parker, Niccolò Machiavelli, Richard Wright (the first best-selling African American author in US history), Catherine the Great, film director John Ford, Moses, Thomas Alva Edison, Louis XIV of France, Roman general Scipio Africanus, Jane Goodall, Fyodor Dostoevsky, French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Eleanor Roosevel, Malcolm X, Isaac Newton, boxer Jack Johnson, Demosthenes, Thur-good Marshall, Michelangelo, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earheart, Frank Lloyd Wright, Joan of Arc, Seneca, Ernest Hemingway, Oliver Sacks, Jean de Léry, and more.

Suffice to say, I am now a big fan of Fifty, not necessarily for the music but for the character. His life’s story is immensely crazy, from never knowing his father and the fact that his mother was killed when he was 8 only years old, to learning hardship and how to survive in the streets selling drugs from the age of 12 in one of the most dangerous neighbourhood in the country. Along the way he got into numerous troubles, including getting caught and go to prison, having beef with the biggest drug lord in the neighbourhood, and of course the infamous story about him getting shot 9 times and survived. His fearless aproach on life is also what later helped him successfully navigate the nasty world of music business.

To compare his harsh beginning with his life now as a rich and famous person in control over his own business empire, might seem like something close to a miracle. But if you read this book that shows all the power plays behind his rise to success, you will see that luck got nothing to do with it.

“Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly” by Anthony Bourdain

You know when you talk to people who are passionate about their craft, and you can now see their subject of affection from a completely different light and you can feel their enthusiasm being contagious to you? This is what this book makes me feel, where suddenly I can see “chefdom”, as Anthony Bourdain describes it, from a new exciting angle.

This book is Bourdain’s intriguing autobiography from his previous life, the time before he became world famous for being an adventurer. It is narrated in a familiar way like the way he used to narrate his travel adventure shows: with raw honesty, sarcasm, skepticism, dark humor, somehow wisdom, and of course no bullshit. But instead of the slums and villages around the world, it is the brutal and unforgiving jungle of his home turf: the messy, chaotic, tough world of New York’s food scene.

As Bourdain describes it, “I want to tell you about the dark recesses of the restaurant underbelly – a subculture whose centuries-old militaristic hierarchy and ethos of ‘rum, buggery and the lash’ make for a mix of unwavering order and nerve-shattering chaos – because I find it all quite comfortable, like a nice warm bath. I can move around easily in this life. I speak the language. In the small, incestuous community of chefs and cooks in New York City, I know the people, and in my kitchen, I know how to behave (as opposed to in real life, where I’m on shakier ground).”

He tells it all, in a brutally honest way, from the time he was being a dishwasher in a pizza place straight after high school, to the best culinary school in the country, the long and difficult tale of climbing up the ladder in chefdom (or more precisely, moving around restaurants within the city), being fed up with all of it and stay away from being a chef, living in the wilderness for years, working at a restaurant owned by a mob, getting fired from a Mexican place, working at a Chinese food place for a while, working under “New York’s Prince of Restaurant Darkness”, and many more tales before finally becoming one of the top chefs in the city.

All the foul mouthed scenes in the heat of the kitchen, his serious (but hilarious) contempt towards vegetarians, his take on food freshness, him actually teaching us how to properly cook a meal, on owning a restaurant, a guy nicknamed “Bigfoot” who taught Bourdain everything about the industry, that time when he was burnt out and swore to never work in the restaurant industry again, his addiction to drugs, lessons from the many shitty restaurants that he worked for, all of them make some highly amusing tales. A stuff of legend.

Funny how looking back to his insanely turbulent life as a chef, can really prepare him for his next life as a travel adventure superstar. It’s like his whole life was preparing him to toughen up and wise up in order to be able to travel into the most difficult corners of the world.

I really enjoyed reading it due to its rawness and vulgarity, a kind of no-bullshit attitude that I increasingly grow to love. Like the Ernest Hemingway of the world, or Dave Chapelle, Mark Manson, or even Charles Bukowski. The chaos-ness of it all also reminds me of the beautiful disaster of the book “Please Kill Me”, the oral history of punk music. But instead of musicians, Bourdain makes chefs and their kitchen staffs look like the ones who are the rock stars. And rightly so.

“Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace” by Christopher Blattman

This is a highly realistic book about the ugly nature of war and peace.

The author, Christopher Blattman, is a professor of Global Conflict Studies at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. He’s had the craziest range of first-hand research, from Uganda accounting bodies in war torn area, to Colombia interviewing real drug lords, to Northern Ireland investigating the religious divide, meeting the love of this life in Kenya, and to Liberia where he constructed a rehabilitation program for the worst of the worst fighters from the civil war.

The range of second-hand researches in this book are also intriguing: from the economics in Lesotho involving cows, to tribe war in Mongolia, unstable South Sudan, to hooliganism in England by a journalist who embedded himself with an actual hooligan, and many more hot spots around the globe; using several scientific findings, including a deep analysis of the psychology of war from letter exchanges between Freud and Einstein during World War 1.

And what can this book possibly teach us? Quite a lot, actually. And I’m going to dissect them and reorganize them into 3 categories: 1. What prevents war 2. What causes war 3. Negotiating peace.

What prevents war

This book attempts to enlighten us about one of the most misunderstood notions in history: that us humans are in a constant state of war. Indeed, as Blattman remarks, “For every war that ever was, a thousand others have been averted through discussion and concession.”

Being economically intertwined is one of the big reasons for averting war. Like the Hindus and the Muslims in Somnath, India, where “the enterprises of one side are wrapped up with that of their rival, these entrepreneurs, financiers, and industrialists have a stake in peace with the rival group.” The same with nations, with their multi-nations web of trades, which becomes a key part of maintaining the likes of Pax Romana, Pax Mongolica, Pax Britanica, and especially today’s Pax Americana.

Another element that prevents war is the separation of power between the executive, the legislative, and the judicative branches of a nation. Dividing these power and holding the decision-makers accountable can reduce all 5 risks of war (more on this later). Check and balances are indeed the solutions. As Blattman explains, “Elected prime ministers and presidents might be just as lustful for glory as tyrants, but they have a harder time taking their nations to war to satisfy that desire. The same is true for misperceptions. Leaders are human. In a personalized system of power, a nation is at the mercy of the bias (or lunacy) of a cabal. When power brokers are restrained and decision-making is institutionalized, however, a ruler’s mistakes are modulated by other actors.”

This is why, for example, a lot of countries in sub-Saharan Africa become some of the most violent in the world in the late 20th century. “Hasty decolonization left the continent with some of the most unaccountable regimes on the planet. Few rights and responsibilities were spread across different branches of government. Many presidents weren’t just military commander in chief, they were also comptroller of the treasury, appointer of every office, and even chancellor of the university. Authority was concentrated in the capital, and provinces could seldom tax or spend independently of the center. Power was often personalized as well.”

And if we read the history books, the majority of leadership in a kingdom or country for most of human history have also been like this: centralized, personalized to its leader, and unequal. Hence, their tendency for war bias. Because, as Blattman explains, “when power is centralized, governments cannot persuade internal challengers to give up their arms. This may be why countries with more constraints on the government are less likely to have long and repeated internal conflicts. This is also why so many ethnically and religiously diverse countries avoid majoritarian rule, and choose more consensus-based forms of government that are more decentralized and allow power sharing. This ethnic and geographic power sharing seems to be a stabilizing force.”

But gaining these level of checks and balances is not an easy task, something that a Nigerian political scientist Claude Ake sums up nicely: “Democracy cannot be given, it must be seized.” And among all the books written on constraints and democratization, we can see that checks and balances were achieved gradually and through struggle. Because we’re dealing with human nature with its greed for money and lust for power.

Another big determinant that prevents war is a game theory involving risk-reward or cost-return as tools for measure. As Blattman remarks, “People will compete for riches, honor, command, or other power, just as Hobbes believed, but they’d prefer not to kill, subdue, or supplant the other. It’s too dangerous and expensive. That’s why stateless societies try to foster norms and create bodies that keep order. Not a state—that’s difficult to conjure out of nothing. But some of humanity’s other inventions have echoes of the state: tribe and clan structures, for example, with respected headmen and councils of elders, who coordinate with other clans to admonish or punish warlike groups in their network.”

Indeed, in the absense of a strong state presence, the danger and cost of war would force us to create structures to keep order out of chaos. In fact, even within a strong state these structures can still exist. And it doesn’t have to be only a tribal or political structure, it can also appear in other structures to shape behavior: religious edicts, rituals, taboos, culture of honor, moral code, and many other shared beliefs that can push people to maintain peace using societal system of praise and shame.

Another incentive to keep peace is when we’re unsure about the strength of our enemies, and thus unsure about the potential risk-reward or cost-return. As Blattman remarks, “When your true strength is ambiguous, your enemies are never sure how strong or resolved you are. Thus, in a lawless society, you have strategic incentives to cultivate a reputation for violence, even if you do not have the taste for it. A culture of honor is what we call it when this strategic response becomes a widely shared social norm.”

That’s right, crucially, in the absence of a strong state presence, a culture of honor is what can help to preserve a fragile peace. This is what often overlooked in history books, the structure that kept peace in tact. “The fact is, even the bitterest of enemies prefer to loathe one another in peace. That’s easy to forget. Our attention gets captured by the wars that do happen, like the ones in northern Uganda or North Lawndale. News reports and history books do the same—they focus on the handful of violent struggles that occur. Few write books about the countless conflicts avoided.”

I mean, sure, conflicts and wars are in abundance, that’s all we humans seem to do. But if we overlook the more abundant examples of when conflicts and wars were avoided, we’re at risk of getting the root-causes of war and the path to peace all wrong. As Blattman elaborates, “When people focus on the times peace failed, and trace back the circumstances and events to find the causes, they often find a familiar set: flawed leaders, historic injustices, dire poverty, angry young men, cheap weapons, and cataclysmic events. War seems to be the inevitable result. But this ignores the times conflict was avoided. If people also looked at the times rivals didn’t fight, they’d see a lot of the same preceding conditions. All these so-called causes of war are commonplace. Prolonged violence is not. Things that are present in both the failures and the successes are probably not the roots of war.”

So what are the root causes of war and peace? Blattman explains, “peace arises not from brotherly love and cooperation, but from the ever-present threat of violence. Each side’s bargaining power comes from its ability to threaten the enemy with harm. This power could come from guns, from defensive fortifications, from the money to hire soldiers, from new terror tactics, or from the ability to mobilize millions of people into the streets, munitions factories, or infantry—anything that helps one group triumph over their rival. But you garner concessions only if you can credibly threaten to burn the whole house down.”

Yes, it is about sizing up our enemies once again, and projecting strengths from our side. Because, as long as war looks costly, both sides would likely to strike a political deal. “This implies something you might find counterintuitive: often, the more destructive our weapons, the easier it should be to find peace.” A case in point, the US and allies never really bother North Korea with “democracy” or “human right” despite being a blatant violator for both, because North Korea explicitly shows that they have a nuclear weapon.

What causes war

But why do wars still happening? Blattman narrows down the risk of war into five categories: 1. Unchecked interests 2. Intangible incentives 3. Uncertainty 4. Commitment problem 5. Misperceptions. Let’s break it down.

The first is unchecked interests. The main incentive for peace is if the cost of war are great, from the actual dollar amount, to the potential death tolls, the destructions, the lost of territory, or the sanctions or social consequences. But war could still occur when the decision maker are not accountable to the others in their group. Like sending other tribes to fight the war for them, or someone else is paying for the weapons supplies or the cost of rebuilding, or sometimes these decision-makers expect to gain personally from these conflicts. As Blattman comments, “Unchecked rulers like these are one of the greatest drivers of conflict in history.” This is like the US and Europe funding and supplying Israel for the genocide in Gaza and attacking 5 countries, while protecting them in the UN through US vetoes, and have Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner leading the “rebuilding” of Gaza without involving any Palestinian. Israel can be so trigger happy because there’s no accountability whatsoever.

The second reason is intangible incentives. Sometimes violence occurs when there are intangible incentives to be gained, like revenge or status or dominance. In other times, violence is the only means to a justified end like God’s glory, combating injustice, or freedom. These things are priceless in their eyes, and it justifies any cost necessary. As Blattman remarks, “Unjust acts triggered a strong, lasting, predictable desire to act justly and punish the aggressor. The glow from righteous action would outweigh some of the costs and risks.” Nearly all leftist revolutions against right-wing dictators came from this desire for justice, or the terror attacks by Afghani and Iraqis against US soldiers during US occupation.

The third reason is uncertainty. It’s like calling a bluff in a game of poker: “You don’t know what cards your opponents hold, but you know they have an incentive to fool you. Obviously, your best response is not to fold every time. Likewise, in war, you don’t know your enemies’ strength or resolve, and they, too, may bluff. So sometimes you call. The fact that you don’t have the same information as your rivals means that attacking is occasionally the best strategy, even if fighting is detrimental.” Indeed, while most of the time when we’re unsure about the strength of our enemy it can preserve peace, other times a risk-taking enemy will do the opposite and test our real strength. US attack on Iran (on behalf of Israel) in June 2025 seems to be about this, where Iran’s retaliation showed a force mightier than expected, which prompted the US to ask for a truce. Or Russian invasion of Ukraine can be seen as a safeguard measure to prevent a potential NATO recruitment right at the borders with Russia (no matter how unjustified the invasion is).

Fourth reason is commitment problems. During a commitment of peace, when your rival grows powerful your best option is to concede with it. But what if you can see your opponent’s rise in advance? You can have the incentive to strike them now while they’re still an equal match and you’re still strong, breaking the peace commitment pre-emptively. “The fear of an encroaching, growing minority consumes many societies”, Blattman remarks, “We see it in the native concerned about immigrants with a different language or color of skin (in America or Sweden, for instance); in the exploding population of a minority with a different religion (in China, Israel, or Northern Ireland, for example).”

What happened in Rwanda is a horrific example for this: “Genocide is a tactic of the temporarily powerful. The logic should sound familiar by now: today’s majority can share a slice of the pie with the minority group for eternity, or they can pay a cost now and avoid having to bargain and share in the future. When the minority is expected to remain small and weak, it doesn’t make sense for the majority to pay the price of eliminating them. But if the minority is growing quickly in number, military might, or wealth, then the majority is faced with a diabolical decision akin to that of a Germany facing a rising Russia.” And thus, “Often, the majority feels imminently imperiled—a situation so dire that it overcomes internal opposition and fears of being held to account for this horrific crime. That’s one reason most mass killings happen in the middle of an active conflict. This was the case in Rwanda. The Hutu hard-liners in government were losing a war to an invading force of Tutsi soldiers. The civilian massacre was part of the Hutu extremists’ final failed gamble for victory.”

The fifth reason, misperceptions. This stems from overvaluing ourselves and downvaluing our enemies. As Blattman explains, “We are overconfident creatures. We also assume others think like us, value the same things we do, and see the world the same way. And we demonize our enemies and attribute to them the worst motives. We hold on to all sorts of mistaken beliefs, even in big groups, and when we do, it hijacks our ability to find a bargain we and our enemies can agree to. Competition and conflict make all these misjudgments worse.” The ever growing political polarizations anywhere in the world is a prime example for this. Or the baffling support of a mass murder.

Indeed, probably one of the most frequently asked questions about World War 2 is why do people support Hitler’s rise to power and the eventual conduct of the Holocaust? The answer is, the same with any other support for mass murder and genocide: propaganda. Demonizing or dehumanizing our enemy is a classic propaganda trick. Using religious texts to justifies the horrific act is another. And doctrinizing the population with a fear-mongering of a target group is a sure way to get approval behind your actions. As Blattman commented, “When marshaled by war-biased leaders, our fear and anger can be bent to their aims.”

It is only after seeing these 5 reasons that we can finally understand why today in 2026 the global geopolitical temperature is at its worrying level. Level that hasn’t been seen in decades.

Negotiating peace

So, where do we go from here? What do we do after war breaks out? Around 2,500 years ago, the Chinese military general Sun Tzu puts it aptly in his book The Art of War: “There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.” Indeed, war massacres soldiers, ravages civilians, starves cities, disrupt trades, plunders stores, demolishes industry, and bankrupts governments. In short, war is ruinous. Nobody in their right mind wants a prolonged war, and so we naturally resort to negotiation.

As Blattman remarks, “On the whole, however, we’re a remarkably cooperative species. If anything, the striking thing about human nature is our capacity to empathize, to work together in large groups, to negotiate, and to make the kinds of trade-offs that preserve peace. In no way are we unthinking war machines.” And the key to peace negotiation is how to strike a balance between incentives and bargaining.

The challenge, however, is once the weapons are put down, the stronger side (such as the controlling government or the bigger country or an occupier) has the incentives to renege on the agreement or at least to settle old scores. The risk is particularly high when the rebels are disproportionately weak, even worse if the controlling regime is autocratic and unchecked. Hence, as Blattman said, “a constrained, legitimatized state is probably the most effective at producing peace.” Because peace is not the absence of conflict, but it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.

But you can see the irony here, right? Most likely the main reason why the rebels put up an assymetric war to begin with is because of the unconstrained and unchecked nature of the controlling regime. And this is the ugly truth about peace deals, “A peaceful society does not have to be equal or just. Even repressive security forces can be an effective institution of violence control.” We never said anything about justice, only how to end a war. This is also why some wars prolong way longer than it should, due to the injustice nature of peace terms.

Conclusion: It’s all about compromise

But the good news is, everything has its price. And the effectiveness of a peace negotiation depends on how to reach a compromise. As Blattman remarks, “To find the real roots of fighting, we need to pay attention to the struggles that stay peaceful. By this I don’t mean happy and harmonious. Rivalries can be hostile and contentious. The groups may be polarized. They’re often heavily armed. They disparage and threaten one another, and they ostentatiously display their weapons. That is all normal. Bloodshed and destruction are not.”

“This shows something important”, Blattman further remarks, “we should expect peace to be resilient, even when power is unequally held, even when rivals detest one another, and even when they’re buffeted by shocks and shifts in power. In general, the side with the least material wealth, mobilizational power, and military strength should expect to get a lesser share of the pie, and to live with it. A final lesson is this: if a mismatch between spoils and power ever arises, it is better for both sides to deal than fight.”

Because, we very rarely can have the entire pie to ourselves, but we sure can share it.

Hence, the attempt to create a two-state solution in Palestine and Israel (no matter how unfair it is); or the Treaty of Tordesillas 1494 between 2 competing superpowers of the day, that gave Portugal “land rights” to the east (Africa, Asia, and Brazil) and Spain to the west (most of Americas); or the Berlin Conference 1885 between several European colonisers that breaks apart the continent of Africa into several fictitious countries; or the type of deals that I resent the most and can be seen in a lot of conflict resolutions: a peace treaty where the war will stop with the condition that the perpetrators will be immune from prosecution and can get away with their crimes.

Indeed, forget justice and equality, the world is never fair to begin with. And seeing it from the point of view of power struggles and incentives – as covered in this book – can provide us with how the real world really operates. Afterall, it’s never our intention to seek utopia, instead what we’re trying to do is to prevent a war or to stop it from prolonging much longer.

It is perhaps analogous to what former UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld liked to say about the function of the UN: “The UN was not created to take humanity to heaven but to save it from hell.”

“The Effective Executive” by Peter F. Drucker

This book is a classic for a reason. It is filled with an abundance of wisdom from Drucker’s decades of experience in consulting some of the biggest names in the business world.

And although the examples are understandably slightly outdated (Jack Welch, Robert McNamara, Harry Truman, etc) the lessons are still very much relevant today.

And it comes down to these 10 main points, as perfectly summarized by Jim Collins in the 50th anniversary foreword (and I took the elaborations from all over the book):

1. Manage thyself: If you want the performance around you to go up, first you must improve your own performance.
2. Do what you’re made for: Focus on your distinctive competences, and then navigate your life and career in direct alignment.
3. Figure out how you work best (and let others do the same): Some people work better at night, some in the morning. Some absorb information better through reading, others by listening. Etc.
4. Manage your time and make it count: what gets measured gets managed. “But before springing into action, the executive needs to plan his course. He needs to think about desired results, probable restraints, future revisions, check-in points, and implications for how he’ll spend his time.”
5. Prepare better meetings that are more efficient and effective: “The key to running an effective meeting is to decide in advance what kind of meeting it will be.” Moreover, “Good executives don’t raise another matter for discussion. They sum up and adjourn. Good follow-up is just as important as the meeting itself.” And listen first, speak last.
6. Don’t make a hundred decisions if one will do: “But effective executives do not splinter themselves. They concentrate on one task if at all possible. If they are among those people—a sizable minority—who work best with a change of pace in their working day, they pick two tasks. I have never encountered an executive who remains effective while tackling more than two tasks at a time. Hence, after asking what needs to be done, the effective executive sets priorities and sticks to them.”
7. Find your one distinctive impact: “What made them all effective is that they followed the same eight practices: 1. They asked, “What needs to be done?” 2. They asked, “What is right for the enterprise?” 3. They developed action plans 4. They took responsibility for decisions 5. They took responsibility for communicating 6. They were focused on opportunities rather than problems 7. They ran productive meetings. 8. They thought and said “we” rather than “I.””
8. Sunk cost fallacy: Stop what you’re doing now that in hindsight you would not start again.
9. Run the company with a small team and stay lean as you grow, to ensure effectiveness and efficiency.
10. Be useful: Ask yourself “what can I contribute?”

The further elaboration from these 10 points are what makes this book one of the first books that come to mind when anyone ask about the best book on management.

It is refreshing to read that in 45 years of his work as a consultant for executives, he said that he has never met with a “natural”, or an executive that was born effective. And instead, they are all had to practice effectiveness until it becomes a habit.

As Drucker remarks, “Effective executives differ widely in their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, values, and beliefs. All they have in common is that they get the right things done. Some are born effective. But the demand is much too great to be satisfied by extraordinary talent. Effectiveness is a discipline. And, like every discipline, effectiveness can be learned and must be earned.”

Indeed, effectiveness can be learned. And this book shows us how.

Hence, even if you’re not an executive you can still use all the knowledge from this book to make yourself a more effective person. Because, when other management books are focusing on managing other people, this book is about managing yourself for effectiveness. And I actually learned a lot from it.

“The Idiot” by Fyodor Dostoevsky

In a world filled with crooks, thieves, murderers, and corrupt sinners, being a genuinely nice person can be seen as an idiot. That’s who Prince Myshkin is, the idiot.

After spending 4 years exiled in a sanatorium in Switzerland, from an illness (epilepsy) that caused him to lose memory and ability to reason, the prince returns to St. Petersburg bringing a legal document showing entitlement to a significant inheritance. And he was immediately confronted by the extreme contrasts of life at the Russian capital city. He smiles at strangers, willingly give away his last Ruble, and believes that honesty is the best act. And his childlike innocence and kindness were immediately ridiculed.

Yes, this is a story where a man with a truly kind soul is being tested against the psychological, social, and political cruelty of the Russian society. It is not only about how he respond to such world, but also how the dark world respond to him.

But the prince is not in any shape or form a perfect person. He has no sense of danger and no survivorship skill, he trusts untrustworthy people, get easily manipulated, quick to believe in the lies told by everyone, and never think about doing things that will benefit him (like pursuing more education – and instead proud of his lack of education). He is also genuinely an idiot, where he can sacrifice himself to be the scapegoat in someone else’s matter that has nothing to do with him, in order to calm down a situation and maintain harmony.

But perhaps his biggest tragedy is not his naivety. Instead, it’s his ability to actually see clearly and understand too much. He can see general Epanchin’s greed during his business deal, spot Nastasya Filipovna’s self loathing beneath her glamour exterior, understand the despair behind Rogozhin’s violent outbursts and forgive him when others judge. It is a tragedy because his clear understanding of any situation don’t really contribute much.

For example, the prince becomes the intermediary between disputing factions but his pacifist solutions only delay the inevitable violence. Or that time when he is trying to save Nastasya from her abusive patron only to trigger a love triangle that ends in murder. Or that one occasion where he caught a liar trying to scam him out of his money, but he ended up still giving the money anyway. Which led Dostoevsky to ponder, if Jesus Christ returns tomorrow we would probably not crucify him, but instead we would ridicule him for his good nature, call him an idiot, and lock him up in an asylum.

In writing this character Dostoevsky was aiming to create a “wholly virtuous man”, in which he projects the workings of the human mind and our complex and complicated nature. It is said to be the closest character Dostoevsky created that resembles his personality and circumstance, especially the parts where he’s living in Switzerland and having epileptic episodes.

Indeed, Dostoevsky was living in Switzerland during the time he wrote this 12th novel of his (in around 1867-1871), where he exiled himself and his wife to get away from his creditors. They were living in a dire poverty during this period and had to constantly borrow money or pawn their possessions, while more often than not he gambled his wife’s money away (an addiction that cripples a lot of his finances throughout the years and ruins most of his adult life). And by the time the novel was completed in January 1869, they had moved between 4 different cities in Switzerland and Italy, and had been evicted from their lodgings 5 times for failure to pay rent.

Prior to this Dostoevsky became famous after publishing his first novel Poor Folk (1845), then The Double (1846), The Landlady (1847), and White Nights (1848), before getting involved in the activities of the Petrashevsky Circle, a Russian literary discussion group that was banned due to their position of opposing the tsarist autocracy and Russian serfdom. This got him into trouble and he was eventually captured and sentenced to death by a firing squad in 22 December 1849. But the firing was overturned at the last minute and he was instead sent to Siberia for 4 years of hard labour and followed by 6 years of compulsory military service in exile. He would not write again for the next 10 years.

This near-death experience and the exile left a profound impression on Dostoevsky, and it shows in his next novels, including in The Idiot in the way the prince talks in depth about the subject of capital punishment. Dostoevsky’s suffering also reflected in the way he sees the world as a dark place filled with evil people, hence the incredible range of casts in this novel with twisted characters and psychological depths.

The novel does not have a happy ending, however, but instead it has a realistically appropriate one that concludes the story with a full circle. After being left at the altar by Nastasya, the prince eventually finds Nastasya murdered by Rogozhin but yet, somehow, stupidly, he spends the night comforting the killer. This last selfless act destroyed the prince, where he succumbs into a mental breakdown with his mind shattered by the world’s cruelty and doctors pronounce him incurable. And so the prince ended up back in the sanatorium in Switzerland, where he completely withdraw himself from society.

“The Judgement” by Franz Kafka

There’s arguably no better way to begin 2026 for me than reading another Kafka classic.

This particular short story begins quite slowly, with the main character Georg Bendemann writing a letter to his friend who has left to St. Petersburg for a business opportunity 3 years prior. The letter fill-in on what’s been going on in Georg’s life, including the death of his mother 2 years ago. And this seems to be the root cause of the problem.

You see, ever since his mother passed away Georg has been living with his estranged father, where the already difficult father slumped into a depression-like state. The book then becomes a narrative over the conversation between father and son, which suffered from a nasty turn when the father begin to lash out over Georg’s friend, his fiancee, and his life in general.

It was bizarre and confusing at first, that is unless you know beforehand Kafka’s bitterness towards his real-life father. The entire story was said to be written in one night full of rage, filled with themes of alienation, guilt, and inner conflict. 8 hours to be precise, between the night of 22 September – 23 September 1912.

And the tragic ending? It was so unexpected, especially after judging from the exchange of words that seems light compared with other stories that are more gruesome. But I guess it’s just the tip of an already mounting iceberg, and it symbolises the last straw of a frustration. So powerful, so disturbing, so Kafkaesque.

1. Welcome to 100 Things 2025, this is going to be fun! In 1968 a pig was nominated as a US Presidential candidate. The name of the pig? Pigasus. And he was brought by the Youth International Party into the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as a theatrical gesture to protest some government policies including the Vietnam War. A guy from the Party had a speech on behalf of the pig, but in the middle of the speech they were all arrested, including Pigasus.
2. The word “freelance” comes from a medieval term for a mercenary warrior, that is free from any lord. So they’re literally a “free” lance.
3. There is an animal that still exist today that already exist long before the dinosaurs. Can you guess what animal? No, it’s not sharks. It’s not chicken either, although that would be hilarious. Let me just tell you the answer: It’s scorpions. Scorpions already exist in the Silurian period (more than 400 million years ago), with the earliest know scorpion that had been found is in Scotland and dated to about 434 million years ago.
4. Do you know what the oldest color in history is? Not black. Not white. But pink. Researchers concluded this when they were observing a 1.1 billion-year-old rocks deep beneath the Sahara Desert in the Taoudeni Basin, Mauritania, West Africa, and discovered ancient pink pigments in the rock. Making them the oldest colour in the geological record.
5. On 28 July 1900, the King of Italy, Umberto I, went out to have a dinner in the town of Monza. When he arrived at a restaurant, the king was confused when he saw the owner: the man looked exactly like the king! “What is your name” asked Umberto? The man replied “my name is Umberto.” What a coincidence, thought the king. “Where were you born?” he asked. “In Turin”, replied the man. “Double odd. So was I!” said the king. “When were you born?” “On 14 March 1844”, the man replied. How bizarre, triple odd! That was the king’s birthday too. What was going on? As they kept talking, it gets weirder: the both got married at the same exact day, to a woman called Margherita. Their sons even have the same name: Vittorio. “How long have you had this restaurant?” the king asked. “I opened up shop on 4 January 1878” said the man. “But that’s when I was inaugurated as king!” the king replied. It was so amusing that as the night ended, the king invited the restaurant owner to join him at an athletics competition the next day. But the man never arrived, as he mysteriously passed away in the morning, in an accident involving a gun. The king was obviously disappointed, but not for long. Because later that day, the king himself was shot to death. This weird episode has since became known in history as the story of Umberto and Umberto.
6. New Orleans-style chicken wings are a hit in China, but not in New Orleans. Furthermore, Hawaiian pizza was created in Canada, while Swedish meatballs? Originally came from Turkey. Oh there’s more: French fries are actually originated from Belgium, Danish pastry was originated from Vienna and was introduced to Denmark by Austrian bakers, Vodka is not from Russia but it was invented in Poland, Sushi was originally invented in region bordering present-day Thailand and Myanmar, French horn was from Germany, German chocolate cake was actually named after a man whose last name is “German” (and he’s English), the Venetian blinds were Middle Eastern invention that the Venetian merchants brought to Europe, Tulips were also originally from Turkey, while the bird “turkey” was first introduced by Turkey to the rest of Europe but in Turkey itself the bird is called Hindi (a bird from India). Isn’t the world a wonderfully chaotic place?
7. There’s a point in the southern Pacific Oceans called Point Nemo. It is nothing more than a floating tube in the middle of the ocean, which marks the farthest place from any land on Earth. Even space is closer than any human civilization. Just in case you’re crazy enough to want to go there, it’s coordinate is 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W. It is named Nemo not from the Disney character, but from the character of Captain Nemo from the novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne. Speaking of Captain Nemo, in the book there’s a famous scene where the submarine led by Captain Nemo is being attacked by a giant squid. The thing is, this kind of incident is very rare in real life. Except for this one incident in 2003 when a giant squid was really seen attacking a ship. What was the ship? It was a vessel that was competing in the Jules Verne trophy race.
8. What’s the most mysterious number? According to scientists the most mysterious number is 137. It is a number that keeps on popping up in research, but scientists are still unable to find out why, so much so that many physicists even believe that solving it might explain some of the biggest mysteries of the universe, which incidentally many scientists are estimating that the universe to be around 13.7 billion years old. As you may have imagined, a lot of scientists become obsessed with this number, including Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was determined to solve it before he passed away. However faith had other plan for him, where one day he became very ill and was rushed to a hospital in Zurich, where he would die few days later. And his room number in the hospital, that was randomly assigned to him? Yup, 137.
9. What’s the difference between socialism and communism? Both are economic and political systems with the goal to reduce economic inequality, but in a radically different approach. So socialism attempts to reach this through government regulation and intervention in the economy, which often means a mix between private and public ownership. Singapore, Canada, and of course the Scandinavian countries are the prime examples for this. Conversely, communist countries aim to eradicate economic inequality by creating a classless, stateless society where all the resources are controlled by the community, as well as eliminating private property and the concentration of wealth. Which are indeed a bit Utopian in nature, but not without a lack of trying from the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, or the extreme case Pol Pot’s Cambodia (as told in 100 things 2024 no. 7-9) all of which ended up being forced into the society and created a genocide.
10. Now enter capitalism. One the most often asked questions in this topic is, which one is better socialism or capitalism? It’s not actually an apple-to-apple comparison. Because all socialist countries who have “failed” (like the many Latin American countries) all have US interferences or US sanctions written all over their history. And if you see those “socialist” countries who are socialist in every being of their fiber except for the name (i.e. welfare states in Western Europe or those that adopt social democracy) that are not being interfered, they are all successful today. Of course critics who don’t know the difference between socialism and communism will then have a cheap go by attacking socialism using the failed communist countries, because although on paper a classless and stateless society looks like a dream, human nature (with greed and fear) will always interrupt the process. Well, to be fair, we can also say the same with capitalism, which is theoretically great on paper but human nature gets in the way, creating predatory capitalism in the process in an environment ruled by corporatocracy and the Plutocracy behind them. So, which one is better? The answer depends on the leader, the type of society, and quoting the book Why Nations Fail by the Nobel Prize winners in Economics, it depends on whether they are inclusive or extractive.
11. The first Barbie doll was modeled after a German sex doll named Bild Lilli. One day on a trip to Germany the creator of Barbie, Ruth Handler, saw the Lilli doll and ended up purchasing some and redesigned them to be more suitable for children (less make up, still keeping to curve, etc) before they were launched at the 1959 New York Toy Fair and became an instant hit. The Lilli doll, in turn, was based on a German comic strip character where the character was a “high-class call girl”, and in 1964 Handler’s company Mattel bought all the rights to the Bild Lilli doll. The name “Barbie”, by the way, was named after Handler’s 15 year-old daughter, Barbara Handler.
12. The music genre R&B is short for Rhythm and Blues. But here’s what a lot of people don’t know, in the 1940s music were recorded in a vinyl plate that has 2 sides: the fast side and the slow side when being played. Rhythm music is where they put all the fast rhythmic music on the fast side, and blues is where they put the mellow music on the slow side of the vinyl.
13. You’ve probably heard this story before: Vincent Van Gough, one of the most celebrated painters in history, died by killing himself while being broke and not knowing that his nearly 150 paintings would become world famous post-mortem. But do you know HOW his paintings eventually become famous? After Vincent passed away, 6 months later his brother Theo died after contracted syphilis from his earlier visits to brothels. Theo was an art dealer, who has just started a family with his new bride, Johanna. Now Jo is the real hero of the story. When Theo died Jo was left with a flat full of Vincent’s work, which amount to nothing valuable (in his lifetime Vincent only managed to sell 1 painting, the Red Vineyard, for 400 francs or roughly $2000 in today’s money). But how? Jo had a very low self esteem, where she often describes herself as ugly and some days she’s quick to judge herself as utterly and completely wrong in many situations. And on top of this, she didn’t have any training in arts and business, in a world entirely dominated by men. What proceeded then, was nothing short of a remarkable journey, where Jo transformed herself from a worthless widow into a marketing genius.
14. First, she moved from Paris to a boarding house in the Netherlands. Then she settled in a cultural village where she can live among artists and intellectuals. And afterwards she began to put herself in a self education journey: reading art critic journals, books on art theories, biographies of inspirational figures, and attending discussion gatherings. Her approach was simple: gain networking and immerse herself in the art scene so she can understand Vincent’s place in it. And one year later, she decided to re-launch Van Gogh as an artist. Jo’s first step is to get Vincent’s work reviewed by art critics. At first the paintings were seen as a work of either children or a mad man, since classical art tradition at the time followed a theme of order and calmness, a total opposite of Van Gogh’s thick brush strokes and intense colours. His subjects were considered as too raw and vulgar. So Jo was fighting an uphill battle, where her persistence has begun to irritate many. But she didn’t give up.
15. And then, from all of the rejections Jo noticed a harsh truth: Vincent’s artworks couldn’t stand on their own, due to the stiff zeitgeist of the time, and thus she needed to provide context and emotional resonance to them. And so she began to send letters to art critics along with the paintings to build a case: Vincent wasn’t failing to meet classical standards but he intentionally reject them, his bold style were deliberate and innovative, and he was trying to capture the essence of life in ways that traditional techniques fail to do. And it was a success (yes, sometimes all we need to do is to look at the same things from a completely different angle). One year later she organised the 1st of many Van Gogh’s solo exhibitions, working with one of the many critics whose opinion she managed to change. And over time Jo used more tactics to successfully increase the perception and value of Van Gogh’s painting, like gifted selected pieces to influential figures and prominent galleries, strategically withholding some of Vincent’s best paintings from sale (and instead, displaying them as “on loan” alongside works that are available for purchase, creating the illusion of scarcity), and partnering with international galleries like Metropolitan Museum in New York and lobbied for his inclusion in major exhibitions. And hence, Van Gogh’s paintings – the same exactly paintings that were worth nearly nothing – became world famous and expensive. In 2022 his “self-portrait with bandaged ear” painting alone was sold for $117 million.
16. Belgium have 10 provinces: Antwerp, Brabant, West Flanders, East Flanders, Hainaut, Liege, Namur, Limburg, and Luxembourg. Yes that’s right Luxembourg. In fact, the Belgium province of Luxembourg is right next to the border with the country Luxembourg, and it is larger than the country.
17. Australia wasn’t invented to solve Britain’s convict problem, but the convict problem was invented to solve a colony problem. So, the urban legend was Britain had so many crimes that the convicts were so abundant that it made the British to seek a solution by exporting all of them to another continent Australia. But apparently that wasn’t necessarily the case. You see Britain had a colony problem, where a lot of people (even peasants) are perfectly happy to live in Britain and nobody wants to move to a faraway land that they just conquered. But then the government started to change the law, where crimes as petty as stealing are suddenly punishable by death. That is, unless they can arrange some kind of agreement to move to some place (like, I dunno, Australia?) in order to populate the colony. So, yeah, same outcome but very different intention.
18. Mount Rushmore used to be a sacred Native American mountain called The Six Grandfathers, with rock formations looking like six heads. It is part of the sacred Black Hills of the Lakota tribe, which was illegally seized by the US government in 1877 after gold was discovered there. US president Ulysses S. Grant then ordered the army not to protect the local tribes, and proceeded to put a bounty of money reward for each Native American killed. The carving of 4 US presidents into the hills happened much later, in the 1920s which was partially funded by the Ku Klux Klan.
19. Do you know how they come up with the number of 6 million Jewish deaths at the Holocaust? It was primarily sourced from Dr. Wilhelm Höttl who first testified in a November 1945 Nuremberg trials and again in a 1961 trial of SS officer Adolf Eichmann. In both trials Höttl recalled Eichmann telling him that some 6 million Jews had died. Prior to this, a Riegner telegram in August 1942 warned that 6 million Jews were in danger of extermination (but not deaths), Korherr Report in 1943 gave deportation numbers of Jews from Germany (but also not death toll), Vrba-Wetzler report in 1944 showed mass killings in Auschwitz with figures in the hundred of thousands (but not 6 millions), while Jewish demographic studies in 1944-1945 showed millions missing but it was statistical deduction and not confirmed death toll.
20. Hence, according to an investigation by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Höttl’s testimony became the first reference for the 6 million Jewish deaths. Only after this that Yad Vashem (Israel’s principal Holocaust research center), by quoting Höttl’s Eichmann reference, estimates that there have been 5-6 million deaths by further justifying the figure by comparing pre-war census data with population estimates made after WW2. And the proceeding statistics and analyses by others are built around Yad Vashem’s findings. So, bottom line, is the 6 million Jewish deaths fabricated? It still looks plausible. But here’s the thing, if you do a deep dive into this you will most likely find so many gaps and holes. Even ChatGPT (before Israel signed $6 million contract to make ChatGPT more pro-Israel), when really prompted (like not taking a vague answer provided by it and demanding more specific answers), concluded this about the primary source of the claim (well, technically secondary source after Eichmann): “Höttl was known as an opportunist and an unreliable witness, trying to save himself after the war. Historians treat his claims with caution.”
21. For me it doesn’t even matter. Like I said last year in 100 Things 2024 no. 22-23, even if the 6 million deaths are correct the bigger question is why do 6 million deaths (8%) are more important than the rest 92% of the total 75 million deaths in World War 2? And as mentioned in 100 Things 2024 no. 39-42, Hitler only began to prosecute the Jews in 1941 (2 years after the start of WW2) but most mainstream media and texbooks are saying it began in early 1930s, while simultaneously ignoring the actual event occurring in 1932-1933, the Holodomor, where between 3.5 – 10 million Christian Ukrainians were killed by Stalin and the Bolsheviks. And meanwhile, during the same WW2 Churchill made some decisions that would eventually led to the Bengal Famine in 1943, where 4 million people died. So, why the hell was Hitler the only villain in history, while Churchill and Stalin became the heroes of WW2 (that is, until Stalin enggage in the Cold War and he overnight turned into a new villain)?
22. The northernmost point of Brazil, Monte Caburai, is closer to Canada (4279 KM) than it is to the southernmost point of Brazil, Arroio Chui (4393 KM). Yeah, Brazil is yuuuuge. And it is so fascinating how the identity of the nation is largely built around football.
23. To avoid paying tax, lottery winners in North Macedonia never claim their prizes. And instead, they sell the winning tickets to wealthy investors for 80% of the prize money (a good deal considering taxes on lottery can get as high as 37-50%). This created an underground market where lottery tickets become a tradable currency. Now why would rich North Macedonians buy winning lottery tickets and claim it as their win and lose some money due to taxation? 1 word: money laundering (yeah sorry, 2 words). And everybody wins. Except for the government. And well yeah the owner of the dirty money that the wealthy stole from.
24. A part of Spain-France 646-685 KM long border consist of the Bidasoa river, with 10 KM of its 66 KM length serve as a natural border between the 2 countries. And in the middle of this natural border lies an inhabited island called Pheasant Island. The immediate question is, who owns the island? This is where it gets interesting, as France and Spain signed the Treaty of the Pyrenees on 7 November 1659 (which ended the Franco-Spanish War) that included giving Spain the sovereignty of Pheasant Island from 1 February to 31 July each year, and to France from 1 August to 31 January. That’s right, the 2 countries have a joint-custody over the island. And where did they sign the peace treaty in? Where else than in Pheasant Island.
25. Today there are a staggering amount of 35,000 different Christian churches in the world. This is a recap of the evolution: Martin Luther didn’t like the Catholic church and he founded the Lutheran church (the OG Protestant) to break out from the Vatican. John Calvin didn’t like the Lutheran and founded the reform/Calvinist church. Henry VIII wasn’t happy that the Vatican restrict him for having more than 1 wife, so he founded the Anglican church. John Smith didn’t like the Anglican and founded the Baptist church. William Miller didn’t like the Baptist and founded the Adventist. Ellen G White liked what she saw in the Adventist and founded the Seventh Day Adventist church mimicking the Adventist. Charles T. Russell didn’t like the Adventist and founded Jehovah’s Witness. So far so good, and can keep up?
26. Ok let’s continue. John Wesley also disliked the Anglican church and founded the Methodist Church. Joseph Smith didn’t like the Methodist and founded the Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormon). An anonymous person also didn’t like Methodist and founded the Pentecostal church. Many didn’t like the original Pentecostal and founded many other Pentecostal-themed churches like Stop Suffering, Assemblies of God, Light of the World, etc. Meanwhile, the Evangelical movement came from the Baptist church, while the born again movement came from the Evangelical church. So, which one is the true one? Does it matter? Just like every other fractions of a religion, every single one of them claim to be the right path but us humans have no way of knowing for sure. For me, what’s important is whatever you choose (even for other religions and atheists) it should make you a better, kinder, more compassionate person with high tolerance.
27. Loch Ness, Scotland, contains an estimated 263 billion cubic feet of water, which is way more water that all of the lakes, rivers, and reservoirs in England and Wales COMBINED. It is so huge that there’s a claim that all the population in the world x 10 can fit into the Loch or lake (which makes it 80 billion people!), which is sadly an exaggeration. But it is big enough for a perfect hide out spot for a certain monster. Wink wink. Anyway, there’s a guy by the name of Steve Feltham who has hunted Nessie (aka Loch Ness Monster) for so long that Guinness World Record awarded him with “the Longest Continuous Hunt” for 33 years and counting. Well, that’s one way to do it isn’t it? Dedicate your life to one single thing, however menial it seems, and you will forever become a legend while avoiding a Second Death (see the next fact).
28. In Mexican tradition, there’s an interesting philosophy called the Second Death. The concept believes that there are 3 stages of deaths that a person will go through: 1. The moment the body cease to function 2. When the body is buried or returned to the Earth 3. The final remembrance, when the person’s name is no longer spoken by anyone, marking the complete erasure of their existence on Earth. That’s hauntingly poetic.
29. Have you ever wondered what happens if 1 conjoined twin dies but the other continues to live? So, medically speaking conjoined twins are 1 fertilized egg that splits into 2 embryos. But unlike twins, the separation isn’t fully completed where some can be joined at the chest, abdomen, lower back, pelvis or head, and others may share certain organs depending on the type. Conjoined twins can feel each other’s pain, some even can feel each other’s stomach aches despite having separate organs from the waist up. It is estimated that 1 in 200,000 live births result in a conjoined twins, while more than half of conjoined twin pregnancies result in stillbirth or miscarriage and many die shortly after birth.
30. But what if only 1 dies? The answer depends on the type of conjoined twins. For example, for thoracopagus twins (sharing a heart and circulatory system) the other twin will more likely to succumb to sepsis (blood poisoning) shortly after his/her twin died. Indeed, the probability of death following the twin is higher for those who share organs and systems, because in the occurrence of hearth failure in twin 1, the twin 2 will begin to lose blood and needed an emergency surgery for separation from twin 1. I hear you’re thinking, why not separate them from the start? Some cases can (and do) but for those who share organs it’s not possible. Which leads us to probably the most famous conjoined twins, the “Siamese twins” Chang and Eng Bunker who were born in Siam (present-day Thailand) and were connected at the sternum and shared a liver. One day in their mid-60s Eng woke up to see his brother passed away from a blood clot, and he also eventually also died 3 hours later from a pulmonary edema and hearth failure.
31. The longest wall in the world is the Great Wall of China with 21,196 KM, but do you know the 2nd longest? It’s the Walls of Benin (16,000 KM combined). Also known as Benin Iya, it was a series of earth ramparts and moats that made a complex system of walls covering an area estimated at over 6500 square KM. It was constructed gradually from around 800 AD to 1460 AD by the Edo people of the Benin Empire (modern-day Nigeria), which primarily served as both defensive fort and boundary markers encircles Benin City and over 500 surrounding communities. It was a testament of West Africa’s advanced culture before the colonial era, showcasing the engineering and mathematical sophistication (centuries before Europe “discover” them) that was not made of stone but shaped from earth by organized human labor. Its streets glowed with palm oil lamps at a time when London still live in darkness, the Portuguese called it “greater than Lisbon”, with the city has no crime, no locks, and people live in perfect order. The walls were recognized by the 1974 Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest earthworks carried out before mechanical engineering, and only 2nd in length after the Great Wall of China. But sadly only few fragments remain today in Benin City, Nigeria, because the original structure was destroyed during the British Punitive Expedition of 1897 to legitimize their colonization and erase evidence of African urban development. Of course they bloody did. Just like how we hear a lot about the Roman Empire but never about their equally advanced rival in North Africa, the Carthage; or how ancient Persia was larger than Ancient Greek and Ancient Rome, exist in the same region and the same era, control 40% of the world’s population, contributed more to science, have better women rights, but hardly ever mentioned in history books because they’re not Western. And today where is the best place to see the Benin art? The British Museum.
32. In 2012, an Emmy Award-winning wildlife photographer John Downer set up a bunch of underwater cameras in the waters off the southeastern coast of Africa, in order to film bottlenose dolphins in their natural habitat. The cameras were disguised as squid, fish costumes, even sea turtles; in the attempt to capture a more relaxed behaviour from the animals compared with the traditional filming techniques. And it worked. A bunch of dolphins in the footage did appear more relaxed than usual. Way, way more relaxed, in fact. First, a dolphin grabbed a puffer fish off the ocean floor, chewed on it for a while, then passed it along to another dolphin. At first it looked like the animals were playing catch with the poor puffer fish, but it didn’t take long for the scared little dude to release its primary defense mechanism: a yellowfish cloud of deadly nerve toxin, which was exactly the dolphins’ plan. While it is fatal in large doses, in small amount puffer nerve toxin is intoxicating, including a possibility of shift of consciousness that produces a trancelike state in dolphins. That’s right, these dolphins were high as a kite. After ingesting a hit, these dolphins huddled in a tight pod, smiles on their faces, tails pointed towards to seafloor, snouts tickling the water’s surface. When looking at the footage for the first time, Downer must be thinking what….. the hell am I witnessing here??
33. In 2014, a British man named Kevin Mashford got a heart transplant. Prior to getting a new heart, he was never into cycling. But just 7 days after the transplant, he suddenly had this huge urge to start cycling. Not casually, but obsessively. And within weeks, he began to ride for hours, every single day. He had no idea why he suddenly get this obsession, until he found out that the donor of the heart was a man named John, a competitive cyclist who died in a tragic accident. And it suddenly made sense. Kevin then trained non-stop, and months later completed a 342-mile charity ride in honour of John. Kevin also met John’s family, and said “Ill carry him with me for the rest of my life.” Could it be possible that when inherited someone’s heart, we also inherit their spirit? Scientists call it “cellular memory”, a still controversial theory that argues a person’s energy, habit, or passion can live on in the organs they leave behind. Sure controversial, but what else can explain Kevin’s sudden change of entire personality to the previous heart owner’s personality?
34. Can one telegram message change the course of history? On 3 January 1896 Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany intended to send a telegram to president Kruger of South African Republic (Transvaal), which was meant to be a private diplomatic message to congratulates the Boers for defeating a British raid (the Jameson raid) without the German help. However, this message became public when British telegraph operators leaked it to the media, and it outraged the British public who saw this as foreign interference to their colonial affairs. This incident eventually destroyed the British-German relationship, which set the stage for the alliance system in the upcoming World War 1 where the British alliance fought against the German alliance. Mind you, this was a big deal because previously Britain and Germany were very close, where the current British royalty – the House of Windsor – even have German roots and was originally called The House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha before King George V changed it in 1917 during World War 1 into a more English-sounding name Windsor.
35. This incident got me thinking. If there was already bad blood between Germany and Britain (and similarly between Germany and Russia, France, etc) prior to the war, why blame the cause of the war to Gavrilo Princip? The early 20th century was the time of competing imperialism with military might, alliances between the super powers, and fierce nationalism to counter the imperial force. Now, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip on 28 June 1914 was widely regarded as the trigger that started a chain reaction that would eventually lead to World War 1. But do we know why Princip wanted to kill Franz Ferdinand? It was because the Astro-Hungarian Empire “expanded their borders” to Bosnia and Herzegovina (translation: annexed) in 1908, capturing lands from the Ottoman Empire and subjected the people to harsh treatment. It was few years after this latest annexation that the crown prince Archduke Franz Ferdinand decided to visit Sarajevo, on St. Vitus Day (a Serbian national holiday) that was seen as a deliberate insult. As a local guy living in a poor condition after the annexation, would you feel a grudge against the occupier? That’s who Princip was, a Bosnian Serb nationalist who was supported by the Black Hand, a secret society with ties to the Serbian military and aspiration of uniting Bosnia with Serbia. But yet it is Princip, and not the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who is labelled as the terrorist in the history book.
36. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand triggered some chain reactions that began with Austria-Hungary issuing ultimatum to Serbia (due to Princip’s unconfirmed ties with Serbian military), ultimatum that largely consist of a demand to destroy anti-Austria propaganda and movements, which was not fully complied by Serbia. When this happened, Austria-Hungary (with the financial backing of Germany) declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914 and in return Russia show backing to the Serbs. This Russian involvement prompted Germany (who hated the Russians) to declare on Russia on 1 August 1914 and later on France on 3 August 1914. And when Germany did this Britain then declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, and especially after Germany invaded Belgium. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire (who has a good relationship with the Germans) joined the war after on 2 November 1914 German warships took refuge in Ottoman waters and the Ottomans subsequently declared war on Russia, which is ironic because the whole thing started by Austria-Hungary who annexed Bosnia from Ottoman Empire, but now they’re allies simply because the have a common enemy in Russia.
37. Hence, the alliances of Triple Entente or Allies (Russia, Britain, and France) vs. the Triple Alliance or Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman), while Italy switched from originally Triple Alliance (but took a neutral stance) to join Triple Entente in 1915. Did you see that? “World” War 1 was merely 3 countries fighting against 3 countries, with another 2 countries (Italy and the US) later join the Allies, all fought in Europe. The narcissistic ego on this bunch to call it a “world” war. And did I say the US? Perhaps it is a bit poetic, while an intercepted telegram started one of the bad bloods that created the sides for World War 1, another intercepted telegram kinda helped to end it. So in January 1917, in the midst of year 3 of World War 1, German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann meant to send a secret diplomatic telegram to the German ambassador in Mexico, with a proposal for a German-Mexican alliance against the US, and a promise to help Mexico to reclaim Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico (yes reclaim); as well as financial support. You know, a plan B just in case the US decide to join the war. The message, however, was intercepted by British intelligence (them again!) who then leaked it to American newspapers. When Americans read about it in the March 1917 publication, public opinion immediately shifted from neutral to demanding war and helped to push the US to declare war on Germany in April 1917, changing the outcome of the entire conflict. The war ended on 11 November 1918, with Austria-Hungary broken into Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and parts of Yugoslavia; Ottoman Empire dissolved into Turkey and several Middle Eastern countries divided by Sykes-Picot Agreement; and Germany burdened with the entire war reparations that will led to hyperinflation and paved the road for the rise of Hitler.
38. Which brings us to Everton Football Club. Did you know that in 1912 Adolf Hitler used to live in Liverpool for a while? He stayed with his brother, Alois Hitler, and his wife Bridget at their house in 102 Upper Stanhope Street in Toxteth, after bailing Austria to avoid the military draft and came to study art. Hitler was a lonely man, used to spend most nights wandering the streets alone, and spent many nights drinking in the Poste House pub. And apparently he used to go to Everton games (of course he’s an Everton fan, no wonder he’s so bitter and angry LOL). However, this story is solely originated from Bridget Hitler’s diary, which many suspect to be exaggerated to make her book more appealing to publish after her brother in law became famous. Because records show that Adolf was supposed to be in Vienna in 1912-1913 during the time that he was reportedly in Liverpool. But Alois and Bridget really did live in Liverpool and visiting your brother overseas looks like a normal thing to do. So, who knows.
39. There’s a bizarre tradition in Taiwan called funeral stripper. I’m sorry, a what now? Yeah, you read it correctly. The practice started in 1980 and was commercialized by the Taiwanese mafia, who began to offer strippers from their clubs to attract the crowds, honor the deceased, and ensure a lively afterlife for them. It is often seen in Buddhist-influenced funerals, because it is believed that a well-attended funeral signals the importance of the deceased and a good afterlife. Riiiight. This, uhm, “tradition”, is not weird though. Not weird at all. Because it derived from older practices of hiring female mourners to express grief, a cultural performance dated back centuries.
40. There’s never a population in Central America who called themselves the Aztecs. And instead the natives called their civilisation as Mexica (a word where “Mexico” is derived from) where the people were called “Mexicans”, which looks and sounds awfully a lot like the “Mexicans” from Mexico today. This has caused some confusions, and in about 2 centuries ago anthropologists from some Ivy League university decided for themselves that they need to differentiates between the pre-Colombia Mexican culture and the present-day Mexican, and decided to change the ancient civilisation’s name to Aztec. The name was first coined by German explorer Alexander von Humboldt in 1810, using the origins story that these people originally came from the mythical land of Aztlán, and that “ec” in their language indicates “people.” Hence, Aztec, the people from Aztlán. I guess it never occurred by these high brows in Northeastern part of the US that “Egypt” never got confused with “Ancient Egypt” or “China” with “Ancient China”, and all they needed to do was to add “Ancient” to”Mexica.” Unless, of course, having an Ancient Mexica as your next door neighbour would make your dick feel small.
41. Did you watch the 9/11 Files documentary by Tucker Carlson on September-October this year? In the documentary Carlson’s team interviewed some of the key people from the inside (inside White House, inside CIA, etc) that can provide more clearer view on what actually happened on 11 September 2001. And it was pretty clear, actually. According to 9/11 Files: “11 of the 19 hijackers had US visas issued in Saudi Arabia while John Brennan was CIA station chief there” and claims that Brennan was aware of it. The visa processing was, according to the documentary, part of a broader CIA-Saudi intelligence cooperation. Indeed, the CIA knew that Al Qaeda were planning for a massive attack but the CIA didn’t do anything to prevent it and blocked the information from the FBI (why?). And then once 9/11 happened the US government changed numerous laws – most notably the Patriot Act – including giving more power and money to the CIA (that’s why). Furthermore, as they began to investigate, the 9/11 Truth Commission was deliberately weakened and compromised, given no real access to the key information, having low budget and constrained resources, given a very tight deadline, and putting people inside that have conflict of interests, like Philip Zelikow; hence, the murky detail about what happened, even today 24 years later. Brennan eventually became CIA director under Obama, and Brennan tried to destroy former CIA official turned whistleblower John Kiriakou for speaking up against CIA’s new torture methods, their modus operandi, etc. So, what the hell was going on? Kiriakou on Tucker Carlson’s 9/11 Files documentary sums it best: “9/11 was the best thing that had ever happened to CIA.” Here’s his follow up in-depth interview with Joe Rogan, not long after the 9/11 Files was released.
42. Yup, you wouldn’t be wrong if you say that 9/11 was an inside job or even a false flag operation, because they knew that it was going to happen and they did nothing to prevent it, while trying to cover it up during the investigation. The 9/11 Files documentary also clearly state that the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, also knew about the potential attack but they didn’t notify the CIA or FBI. Instead, they let it happened, and when it did those “5 Dancing Israelis” were actually real; not celebrating a job well done (as the widely held conspiracy theory suggest) but instead celebrating that it finally did happen and now Israel can milk it by provoking the US to stage a war in the Middle East, including Netanyahu’s famous plea to the US to invade Iraq. I think it’s very important to figure out the truth, so that we can truly understand how they really work: according to this documentary, Israel did not cause 9/11 BUT they didn’t share their prior knowledge to their ally US and after it happened they milk the most out of it. But then again, in the 1st episode, minute 23:03 the documentary shows a still picture of Condoleezza Rice with Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, while narrating “when a man called Philip Zelikow took over as the [9/11 investigation] commission’s executive director, he reached a secret agreement with the White House to block his investigators from accessing records related to the hijackers until the White House had already screened them.”
43. What are they trying to say, and what kept them from revealing it in the documentary? From the whole 5 episodes, it feels like they’re not revealing every information that they’d found. Just like at the end of episode 4 they said they will reveal who placed the put options on airline stocks and the overall market just days before 9/11, implying an insider information prior to the attack, but they never mention about it again ever in the last episode. Larry Silverstein wasn’t discussed, the mystery of building 7 that also collapsed wasn’t answered, the plane that hit Pentagon wasn’t discussed either. So, a little bit of grain of salt wouldn’t hurt, and we should treat this as another important puzzle piece of the big picture.
44. Breaking mirrors is considered a bad luck because back in the day mirrors were made with toxic mercury backing that could poison us if the glass is shattered and releases deadly vapors into living spaces. Mercury poisoning could also cause severe neurological damage, organ failure and death. Ever heard a phrase “7 years of bad luck”? That’s actually the approximate length of time it took for mercury poisoning to show fatal symptoms. So, “breaking a mirror can cause 7 years of bad luck” was actually a health warning rather than superstition.
45. The wonderfully colourful West African fabrics are actually rooted to Indonesian Batik. So, during the Dutch occupation the Dutch saw Indonesian Batik and thought that they can copy this, mass produce them, and sell them back to the Indonesians. But of course the demand for the knock-off Batik weren’t that popular. So instead, the Dutch took them and ship them to West African countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote D’ivoire where the locals then took them but turned the prints into inspiration for local symbols of pride, power, and tradition, with more bright colours.
46. There’s a theory called the “Bisley Boy”, where it is suggested that Queen Elizabeth I of England was actually a man. Not in a conspirational way though, like the arguments that suggest Michele Obama is Michael Obama or Brigitte Macron is a man. So when she was 9 years old Elizabeth was sent to a town called Bisley, because there’s a plague going on in the city. Now, King Henry VIII hasn’t seen her daughter for a long time, and one day he decided to go on a hunting trip near Bisley, and was planning to visit Elizabeth. But on his way there Elizabeth got sick and died. The people in Bisley were so afraid of getting the receiving end of Henry’s notorious anger, and the villagers decided to find another young girl with the same age to replace Elizabeth. But they couldn’t find one that look similar, and instead found a pretty young boy – Elizabeth’s friend, actually – that looks like her, and then dress him up as Elizabeth. King Henry wasn’t suspicious, and so the boy was raised to be Elizabeth I, one of the best queens in world history.
47. The evidence cited by this bizarre theory are: Elizabeth’s masculine attire and behaviour, the fact that she always wear a high collar (to hide her Adam’s apple), it is said that she had no weakness of a woman and the mind of a man, and she never got married. And hundred of years later in Bisley they found an unmarked grave which when they excavate it, it contained a body of a young girl at the same age when Elizabeth would have died, wearing a Tudor royalty clothes. I dunno, I mean Elizabeth I’s story in the brilliant book The Tudors: The Complete Story of England’s Most Notorious Dynasty by G. J. Meyer looks pretty convincing that Elizabeth was indeed a woman. Otherwise, her “sexual adventures” described in the book will have a completely different twists.
48. While Elizabeth I of England is one of the best queens in world history, do you know who is the worst? One strong candidate is a woman named Hope Cooke, an American socialite from New York City. Hope was travelling to India at the age of 19 when she met a 36 year old Palden Thondup Namgyal, the air to the throne of the kingdom of Sikkim. Kingdom of what? Exactly. This is where the story gets tragic. The Kingdom of Sikkim was a hereditary monarchy in the Eastern Himalayas, existed from 1642 to 16 May 1975. On the map, it is located snap bang in between Nepal and Bhutan (yes, that weird gap in the middle), where in 1861 it became subject to a British protectorate, but then gained independence alongside India in 1947, before Hope Cooke arrived and became one of the major factors that eventually make the kingdom vanished.
49. So, upon meeting Hope, a widower Prince Palden immediately fell in love with her and after 2 year of writing letters to each others they eventually got married in 1963, with Hope moving from the US to the kingdom and renounced her US citizenship. The people rejected her straight from the start, however, due to her behaviour as a member of the royal family that was detestable. And it got worst when the king passed away 2 years later and his husband became the new king (and Hope officially became the queen consort). Hope reportedly showed a really bad mannerism during her time there, splashing money and only want to eat gourmet food, have luxury travels, as well as attempting to “westernized” the kingdom, while often flying back to the US to have an affair with a friend. To be fair, King Palden himself also had an affair with a married Belgium woman, but nevertheless his fragile marriage contributed to his depression and he famously drown his sadness in substance and alcoholism, which spiraling him down further to a point where he (as an unstable king in an already heated domestic political climate and annexation pressure from India), no longer have money nor power. Hope eventually left Sikkim in 1973 with their children back to the US, and king Palden then succumbed to India’s pressure and let India annexed his kingdom on 16 May 1975. The once-royal couple got divorced in 1980, and king Palden passed away in 1982. Hope is still alive today, now living in Brooklyn, New York, as a writer, historian, and lecturer.
50. You know what the loudest animal in the planet is? Not lion, whose roar can reach 114 decibels and can be heard 8 KM away. Not elephant, who can produce a sound that reach 117 decibels. Not the blue whale with their 188 decibels, underwater. Nope, the loudest animal is a tiny shrimp at the size of our finger. They are called the pistol shrimp and they mostly live inside the warm waters of the Caribbeans, off the coast of Eastern Australia, and off the coast of east Africa. Pistol shrimps produce their sound through their claws that can snap and shut so fast – 580,000 m/s (as fast as a bullet) – that it creates a bubble. And inside the bubble the temperature rises to 4700 degree Celsius, almost as hot as the surface of the Sun (5500 degree Celsius), before it hit its target and snaps to create a sound of 210 decibels (louder than a gunshot, or a jet engine). So loud that it can scare or even kill other sea animals (yup, just like a bullet from a pistol). So loud that its snaps are detected even by military hydrophones on submarines.
51. This guy should be one of the richest man in the world. But, just like Tim Berners-Lee who let everyone use his invention the internet for free, this guy also gave his invention away for all humanity to use for free. Meet Masahiro Hara. In 1992 workers at Toyota factory in Japan were scanning 10 different barcodes just to track 1 car park, it was so inefficient and workers were exhausted. Hara was a quiet 35 year-old engineer back then, who loves playing “go” during lunch breaks. One day, while starring at those black and white stones at the game board he realized something, what if the codes could work like go? Not just left to right like normal barcode, but also up and down too. Same space, more information. For the next 6 months he obsessively studies every piece of materials he can find, from magazines, to newspapers, even fliers, to hunt for the perfect pattern that scanners will never confused with random texts. And then he found the magic ratio: 3 small squares, that can be read from any angle instantly. That’s right, in 1994 the QR Code was born. His company immediately wanted to patent everything and charge royalty, but Hara made a decision that made his colleagues think that he’s lost it: he gives it away for free, no licensing fee, nothing. Because, if you want to change the world, you don’t own it, you share it. Fast forward 3 decades later, today QR Code process over $2 billion transactions daily in China alone, with the global QR payment is now a $35 billion market and growing. That decision to make his invention free has created the foundation of our cashless society.
52. On 15 November 1883, there was a ship called Martha Cobb’s Cargo captained by Thomas Greenbank carrying goods across the Atlantic, when they encountered a giant storm. During the storm they saw another ship nearby in trouble, the Grecian, which was overloaded with grain bound for Portugal and got damaged by the storm and started to take on water. By the time Greenbank’s ship found the Grecian, the stormy ocean had destroyed all of their life boats and they were signaling for help. But it was too rough to send lifeboats, and Greenbank decided to wait for conditions to improve. But after several hours the conditions have not changed, and thus Greenbank decided to pump out the petroleum product that they were carrying into the ocean, but to no avail. So, the Martha Cobb crewmembers tried something else: dumping 5 gallons of fish oil into the water. And the rough seas immediately calms down. This was an old pirate’s trick, but it actually has the verification of science behind why it works. You see, fish oil has molecules with a water-attracting (polar) end and a water-repelling (non-polar) end. When poured on water, the oil will spread creating a thin single layer (monolayer), with the polar ends submerged in the water and the non-polar tails point upwards. This oil film then spreads out and lowers the surface tension at wave peaks, which eventually flattens the waves. This phenomenon is known as the Marangoni Effect. So, next time you’re going on an adventure into the sea, it won’t hurt bringing 5 gallons of fish oils along with you.
53. Einstein once said the faster you go, the slower time ticks for you. And at the speed of light, time stops. That’s the origins of the thinking that if we can somehow manage to move at the speed of light, we can technically expand to inventing time travel. But do you know how fast is a speed of light is? It’s approximately 299,792,458 meters / second. Or roughly, to make it neater, around 300,000 KM / 1 second. That’s equivalent to circling the Earth around 7.48 times in 1 freakin second. That’s crazy fast! But imagine if we indeed can invent something that can go at the speed of light, and just travel away from Earth and never stop. What can happen, or where can we go?
54. Well, at 8.3 minute we’d reach the Sun. After 4 hours and 6 minutes we’d passed the farthest planet in our solar system. And then we’d entered the Kuiper belt filled with large mess of comets and asteroids. After 23 hours and 19 minutes we’d reached the farthest object ever sent by humans up until now (remember, in the speed of light 1 second is equivalent to circling the Earth around 7.48 times). Beyond that, at 29 days we’d hit this cloud of icy debris that takes 1 year and a half to get out from. After 4 years, we’d pass Proxima Centauri, the nearest star from us. After 88 years, we’d arrived at the edge of our “radio bubble”, a some kind of bubble wrapping us and several other solar systems (the distance where radio waves have travelled out into the universe). That, by the way, in the grand scale of our Milky Way galaxy, where after 100 years of speed of light we’d just be coming out of this tiny bubble on the outer ring of the galaxy. And it would take us 27,000 years to go from there to reach the center of the Milky Way Galaxy (that bright white thing in the middle) and another 55,000 years to go to the other edge. If we keep going and going and going, in 46.5 billion years we’d reached the edge of our observable universe (so far) where our galaxy is only one out of 200 billion trillion galaxies. No light has ever arrived at Earth from places outside this edge. So yeah, insanely, utterly, massive! And surely, from places as vast as the observable universe, we can’t possibly be alone, can we?
55. One possible “alien encounter” appeared in Mexico. On 21 June 1976 a 23 year old student pilot by the name of Rafael Pacheco Perez took his first practice solo flight, taking off from la Escuela de Aviacion “Mexico” on an XB-ZOX plane. In this solo flight he was planning to fly from the Mexico City airport to the las pistas de Chimalhuacan, an empty fields by lake Texcoco, in less than an hour flight. Right away after taking off he noticed that it’s very foggy around the plane and he doesn’t really have a good sense of where he is. He then tried to call the control tower but didn’t get a feedback and only static sound. So he tried to turn the plane left, but the plane kept flying forwards and ascend higher towards a big cloud, before he passed out. And when he got to 900 feet in the air, the plane disappeared from all radar. 1 hour later, Rafael finally resurfaced, a whole 3 hours distance away in Acapulco. The thing is, this training plane wasn’t made to travel that far, and it only had enough fuel for the trip to Chimalhuacan, not somewhere 3 hours away (and fly there within 1 hour), and he didn’t have the experience to make it over the huge mountains on that flight path. So what the hell happened?
56. When he resurfaced the radio tower asked Rafael to identify himself, and he requested for a private channel to talk to them. In this private channel Rafael replied that this is his voice but he’s speaking not of his own free will, but rather being used as a microphone. By who? They say that they are beings from the same universe as ours, their planet is many light-years away, they are physically the same as us (and that all races in the universe are physically the same), they had always been here, but compared to them humans were primitive. They say that they can speak any language, and the air traffic controller happened to able to speak German, English, and Spanish, and these people were able to engage (while Rafael himself only knew Spanish). They said that they were watching us from the skies, that we are not alone in the universe, and we had to change from our habit to killing each others, otherwise there will be an irreversible global catastrophe. The transmission then ended.
57. Not long after, the frequency changed and it was Rafael again. But this time he was calling out for help in a freaked out tone, saying he didn’t know where he is and he was 7000 feet in the air and he can only see water. He then was guided to safety, and when landed he was arrested. He was interrogated and screened for any type of intoxication but no trace of drugs or alcohol was found. Psychologically tested, but they also found nothing is wrong with him. So finding nothing’s wrong with him, they let him go home by bus to Mexico City, where he never piloted a plane again. And we never heard from our neighbours from the same universe again.
58. Have you ever wondered why in England so many cities have names ended with “ham”, “ton”, “by”, or “chester”? As it turns out, they are historical stamps on who used to control the area. Like “Ham” in Birmingham, Nottingham, Gillingham, it is an Anglo-Saxons word for homestead or village, which the Anglo-Saxons controlled around 1400 years ago. And there’s “ton”, like Brighton, Luton, Taunton, where Tun means a farm; also controlled by the Anglo-Saxons. All of these Anglo-Saxons area are in the south. Now “by” – as in Derby, Grimsby, Whitby – is an old Norse word for village. These places are where the Vikings used to settle, which is all over the north and east of England. And then we have the “caster” or “chester” or “cester”, like Lancaster, Chester, Leicester, Manchester. These words came from Latin, where the area used to be Roman military sites over 1800 years ago.
59. Speaking of Manchester, in Australia the collective noun for bed sheets, pillow cases, towel, bedding, etc, is “Manchester.” So when Britain invented cotton, Manchester was the center of what would become the cotton industry. And then after a while in the 19th century they started to ship away cotton to the colonies, including Australia. And when they arrived at the port in Australia, all the cotton-made goods are all boxed into one and labelled “Manchester”, as in the box that came from Manchester. I bet the locals sees the box with the label Manchester and thought, I guess these things are called Manchester!
60. You know in fairy tales the story often begins with the sentence “once upon a time”? In Korea, they use this sentence instead: “back when tigers smoked.” Now that’s badass. The saying comes from a time when tigers were pivotal in Korean folklore, which symbolizes both danger and protection. But what’s with the smoking? It is a very human act, which when combining the 2 it will create an image that is so impossible that it placed the story outside reality. Indeed, this phrase signals right from the beginning that the story that follows will be something mythical or from the realm of imagination.
61. In 16th century England there was an occasion called the Great Debasement (1544-1551), where under the order of Henry VIII the amount of precious metal in gold and silver coins were reduced, and in some cases even completely replaced with cheaper base metals such as copper. The idea was the debasement would give the Crown more gold and silver (aka, more money) to fund the overspending by Henry VIII due to his lavish lifestyle, and to fund more wars with Scotland and France. As a consequence, the debasement led to a surge of prices (where sellers anticipated the drop in value for the coins, and adjusted price accordingly for each coin, causing inflation). It also marked the loss of credibility for British merchants and the royal family, making foreign merchants to refuse to accept debased currency as payment, which eventually disrupted trade relationship with other countries. The debasement and inflation, naturally, also eventually led to widespread social unrest. The debasement was eventually revoked by Edward VI but was later continued, until 1560 when Queen Elizabeth I came to her senses and restored the coinage to its previous standards. A lesson apparently never learned by some people in history.
62. Which brings us to today. In 2025 we saw a record jump in gold price, from $2075/ounce at the beginning of the year to breaching the $4000 mark in October, with economists from big names such as Société Générale and Bank of America all predicting gold price could reach $5000-6000 in 2026. The reason? To put it bluntly, Trump’s shenanigans over trade and fiscal policies that have the potential to drive the already massive US national debt of $38 trillion to even higher figures, which would further weakened the value of (and the trust towards) the USD. In other words, in this fiat-currency era: modern-day debasement. Now, the talking heads on the media can argue all they want about the positive and negative impacts of Trump’s actions, but the market cannot be fooled. The rise of the price of gold perfectly aligned with the timing when Trump first came to the office in January 2025, for his 2nd term. The lost of trust in the treatment of USD is eventually what led investors and traders alike to switch to a safer “risk-free-rate” asset of gold, which is why when gold breached the $4000 mark it has risen by around 50% by that point, with Bitcoin also risen by 18%, while at the same time the USD has dropped by 9% since the start of the year. And you know what happens if the USD is starting to lose its power (even before Trump shenanigans)? The collapse of the US Empire (that is powered by petrodollar recycling, which I covered here in 2012).
63. So the Empire is crumbling, with another superpower looks set to rise as the dominant force. If you’re the leader of a crumbling power, with a giant ego, what would you do? Exactly, have a tantrum (yeah, I’m not going to get a US visa after this). That’s what the Trump tariffs were on 2 April, where out of the blue he announced a bombshell of tariffs for all countries around the world (including islands that only have penguins as its inhabitants). The market immediately crashed, whipping more than $6 trillion, hedge funds’ “Basis Trade” got exposed, Treasury yield spiked to 4.5% and was this close to needing a Fed bailout. And then, in what become a signature move with his passive-aggressiveness, Trump then gave a bizarre face-saving speech filled with ego, saying “these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are dying to make a deal, please, please sir make a deal. I’ll do anything, I’ll do anything sir.” Only to back off from the move (another Trump signature move that prompted the slogan of TACO: Trump Always Chicken Out), pausing the new tariffs for 90 days. Except for China, the superpower that look set to be the replacement of the US Empire, their tariff became 125% and the trade war is ON full blast, with tariffs increase and decrease and increase again for China became the dominant headline grabbers throughout 2025.
64. But there was 1 other headline on 10 April 2025 that went under the radar, that can give us more clues over the way Trump operate. From Reuters, a week after Trump tariff bombshell: “US recognizes Panama’s sovereignty over canal, Panama says after talks.” Why Panama? In the first few months of his 2nd term, Trump has been obsessing about Panama alongside Greenland to be the country that Trump wants to grab for the US. The Panama Canal is controlled by a Hong Kong-based company CK Hutchison Holding (owned by Li Ka-shing), which operates both the entrance port at Pacific ocean and the Atlantic ocean. And on March 2025, the company said that it would sell its interests in a deal worth $22.8bn to a consortium led by US investment firm, BlackRock. The deal covered a total of 43 ports in 23 countries, including the 2 in Panama. But then on Monday 31 March the Chinese government blocked the deal (Hutchison is a private company but operates under Chinese government’s financial laws), citing a thread to its national interest. And two days later, on 2 April, Trump launched the tariff bombshell to all, but hit China in particular pretty hard. Coincidence?
65. Less than a week later on Monday 7 April, Panama’s comptroller authority suddenly publish an audit that claims to have found irregularities in the renewal of a 25-year port concession with Hutchison, which put more pressure for Hutchison to let Panama go. And coincidentally (juuust coincidentally), the report was published on the same day the US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited Panama to participate in a regional security conference. He’s the first Defense Secretary to visit Panama in decades, and in the conclusion of his visit on Wednesday 9 April he said that the US recognizes Panama’s sovereignty over its canal, and announced an agreement to deepen US military training in the country – hence the 10 April Reuters headline (you know what happens when Murica decides that a country needs “freedom” LOL). But why the sudden interest on Panama? Because, get this, around 40% of US container traffic (roughly $270 billion/year) passes this canal. Imagine what will happen if “China” suddenly closes the canal? Looks like Panama is a key puzzle piece to this whole shenanigans, alongside China’s 70% control over Rare Earth Minerals, a key component to microchip that are being used to power AI and other tech innovations in Silicon Valley.
66. Indeed, Rare Earth, which was what another Trump tantrum on Friday 10 October all about, where he announced a 100% additional tariff on China over their Rare Earth Mineral ban, creating a massive crash particularly in crypto market where Bitcoin crashed -12%, Ethereum -16%, Solana -20%, XRP -25%, Dogecoin -50%, among others, with $19.1 billion in total were liquidated in 24 hours, the biggest liquidation event in crypto history (20x larger than COVID crash). Curiously, 30 minutes before Trump’s announcement there was an unknown trader who opened a new account at that same day, placed a massive $190 million short on Bitcoin, closed 90% at the bottom after the crash, and walked away with $88 millions. And sure enough, by Sunday TACO Trump posted on his Truth Social that suggested he may not follow through with his treat on Friday. Indeed, it has market manipulation written all over this (and many pointed at Baron Trump, without proof, of course). But since the crypto market is not regulated, this were all legal. So, considering all of this shenanigans – not to mention many other things that Trump did domestically like the despicable ICE, National Guard deployments to Democrat states, the standoffs that created the government shutdown – can you really blame the lost of trust on the USD and investors’ exodus to gold? And this is just the 1st year (out of 4) of his 2nd term. Fun times ahead!
67. In the Middle Ages, there was once lived a woman named Phyllis. She’s a great seducer, even became the mistress of Philip II of Macedon. She said to be very beautiful, so much so that Philip’s son Alexander the Great also had an eye on her, which prompted Aristotle (Alexander’s tutor) to warn him against her. So, what did Phyllis do? To teach Aristotle a lesson, she then decided to seduce him too. Hence, the many famous paintings and sculpture of a woman riding a sad old man like a horse. That was Aristotle! Oh dear, yes she got into him eventually, where Aristotle let Phyllis ride her around like a horse to prove his devotion to her. And the best part was, Phyllis had arranged Alexander to witness this humiliating scene LOL. Moral of the story: don’t mess with a seductress. And I must admit it tarnished the credibility of Aristotle in my mind.
68. Sphincter control is our conscious ability to regulate the opening and closing of the sphincter muscle that control bodily functions like urination and defecation. In other words, it’s the ability to hold pee and poop. Do you know when do we learn to do it? The most common answer is around 18-24 months. But as it turns out, that answer is a lie. It was produced by the Pampers Institute in order to delay potty training (and thus sell more disposable diapers) and this information has spread all over throughout the years that it becomes a common knowledge. But the truth is, babies are born with sphincter control and with a proper training they can already hold it from an earlier age till you get the diaper off.
69. There once a man in India by the name of Hira Ratan Manek, who had 1 question: can the body live on just light? Born in 1937, he was an engineer turned seeker of ancient wisdom; and in 1995 he undergone a spiritual journey that led him to survive 411 days without food. And instead, he lived just by drinking water and, more importantly, by doing “sun gazing.” This wasn’t a crazy guy trying out a crazy thing, as this practice have been implemented by Egyptian priests, yogis, and Tibetan Monks. No, Manek wanted a scientific proof, and his practice was being closely monitored by doctors 24/7, doing body scans, blood tests, retinal exams. So what happened? Days passed, then months, and no weight loss and no organ failure. Instead, he got energy, stability, and clarity. NASA heard about it, and in 2002 Manek was studied at the University of Pennsylvania, this time with neurologists, endocrinologists, and millions in funding. And the result: his pineal gland was enlarged, from the usual 6×6 mm to 8×11 mm. His serotonin and melatonin peaked, his brain showed regeneration instead of a decline. And weirdly, he wasn’t starving but instead adapting.
70. So, what is actually “sun gazing”? Manek starts with 10 seconds of sun gazing (looking directly at the sun) at sunrise or sunset while being barefooted on Earth. He then adds 10 second daily until it reached 44 minutes/day (remember, during sunrise or sunset, and not when the sun is at full blast). By doing this, light enters the retina, which will signal the hypothalamus, which in turn will activates the pineal gland. Once it occurs, it will rewire energy, awareness and perhaps even biology itself. NASA, however, never released their full report, the project then was stopped, and the researchers stay silent. But Manek kept teaching his method, with critics called him pseudoscientific. But is he really? It is a know fact that plants convert light into energy, then animals eat those plants, and in turn we eat either the animals or the plants directly. So, why couldn’t humans go straight to the source: light? This of course raise another question, are we actually solar powered? (I’m pretty sure that cats are solar powered, just look at the way they “charge” everyday, but this is a story for another day LOL).
71. You know that conspiracy theory about the Titanic? The one that suggest JP Morgan orchestrated the sinking of Titanic to eliminate several opponents of the creation of the Federal Reserve system? Indeed, it so happened that several wealthy individuals that opposed the creation of the Fed, such as John Jacob Astor, Isidor Straus, and Benjamin Guggenheim, were all on the Titanic when it sunk. The conspiracy theory emerged after JP Morgan was also supposed to be in the ship, but he cancelled last minute. But there’s another conspiracy theory about the Titanic that is equally intriguing: the Titanic never sank. Don’t get me wrong, a ship really sank on 15 April 1912 and around 1500 passengers aboard that ship died. But, as the theory goes, the Titanic ship was secretly swapped with its sister ship the Olympic as part of an insurance scam, where Olympic (now secretly operating as the Titanic) would be scuttled into an accident and the owner of the ship (White Star Line) could collect an insurance payment, while the original Titanic still in tact. This ship swapping also contributed to the JP Morgan theory, as Morgan (who own White Star Line) was the one who allegedly switched the Titanic to an inferior ship to drown his enemies. There are several reasons that supported these theories, but the number one reason was the fact that they didn’t allow the Titanic to be examined before its voyage, while when people were comparing the pictures between Titanic that was under construction and the Titanic on its first voyage, the 2nd picture were eventually changed with a picture that look closer with the Olympic.
72. You know that famous moment in history when the library of Alexandria got burned and all the known knowledge of the world up until then were all vanished? Have you ever think that maybe there are other libraries that hold similar amount of knowledge? Well we actually have one, and it’s still exist today. They call it the Cave of 1000 Buddhas (or the Mogao Caves), and it is located in Tibet, no sorry, present-day China (located about 25 KM southeast of Dunhuang province). The library is located up in the mountains, and specifically cave 17 was sealed for a long time until it was discovered in 1900. It contains tens of thousands of manuscripts and relics from around 5th to 11th century AD.
73. So what knowledge do they provide us with? Perhaps the biggest revelation from this library is an ancient map that shows a giant island of Atlantis (as big as North America, or at least bigger than Europe in the map) in, guess where? In Atlantic ocean (yeah, the clue is always there right in front of our faces). The island is located snap bang in now-empty space in the middle between 4 points (clockwise): North America at the top left, Europe at the top right, West Africa at the bottom right, and the Caribbean (or above Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana) at the bottom left. And if you recall in 100 Things 2023 no 11-12 about the Richat Structure, where evidence over the capital of Atlantis being in modern-day Mauritania, it’s still clicked. This also means the underwater ruins in the Bahamas and Cuba that have similar style with Egypt (shout out to Graham Hancock), were all part of Atlantis and further proof that they were all part of this intriguing ancient civilisations that all have similar style of architecture.
74. There’s a golf course called Tornio golf club, where the first 7 holes are in Sweden and the rest 11 are in Finland, with the most spectacular part is its 6th hole: a 132-yard par 3 where the tee is in Sweden and the green is in Finland. You could say, you hit a golf ball so hard that you send it to another country.
75. One day, a student by the name of George Dantzig was late to his grad stats class, and he was rushing into the classroom without talking to anyone, only to find an empty class and 2 math problems on the blackboard. He thought, this must be the assignment, so he copied them and went home to do the homework. But as he work on it, he realized that this is not just an ordinary homework, and that he needed more time to solve it. And thus, few days later he eventually hand in his assignment while apologising over the lateness of the submission. But 6 weeks later, his professor came to his dorm room being excited and shaking at the same time. It turned out that the math problems that Dantzig did was not a homework, but they were actually 2 of the most famous unsolved problems in statistics. And Dantzig has just solved them. His work later transformed the fields of economics, engineering, and computer science. And perhaps more importantly (for me), his life later inspired the movie Good Will Hunting.
76. Remember the kid who was reincarnated from Princess Diana? Meet a boy who used to be Lou Gehrig. So, at the age of 2 a boy named Christian started to say things that no child – who has never been exposed to baseball – should know, when he was remembering that he used to be a famous baseball player and that his name was Lou Gehrig (“the Iron Horse”). Of course his parents dismissed it at first, until one day Christian saw a bunch of photos and saw a photo of Babe Ruth and he immediately said “he was mean to me.” And then he saw a team photo as said, “I’m the one with dimples.” When his memory has become too vivid to ignore, his mother then started to investigate. Because Christian’s memory got weirder, as he remembered the smallest minute details, like being left-handed and Lou’s swing technique. And the thing was, Lou died in 1941 after being diagnosed with ASL, and Christian remembered it all when he said “I had to stop playing baseball because my body stopped working.” And when shown the photos of Lou’s parents, Christian can say their names. But just like the kid who was once Princess Diana, by the time Christian is 5, these memories were starting to fade.
77. Not convinced yet? In 1963, in a quiet town of Ashford, Ohio, a little girl named Emily was born. From a young age she likes to say strange things that her parents couldn’t understand. And when she was 4 years old, she told her parents that she used to live in Egypt and that she was a servant for Cleopatra. Of course her parents laugh, as they thought it was just a child’s imagination. But then as Emily grew older, unlike the boy at previous story (and the reincarnation of Lady Di), her memories of her past life actually became stronger. And by the time she turned 6, she can draw and write in ancient Egyptian symbols, even though no one had taught her. Furthermore, she spoke about the royal palace as if she had lived there, describing the grand stone floors and the rich scent of perfumes. Curious, when Emily turned 18 her parents brought her to Egypt. When they arrived at the Pyramids, Emily could move through the ancient halls like she had been there before: she pointed out rooms few people know, can walk through secret passageways and able to describe hidden chambers in detail. At one point she stopped in front of a small chamber and told her parents that this is where she used to sleep. A few days later, they found a hidden tomb in one of the pyramids, where there was a mummified servant dressed in robes and she looked exactly like Emily. The tomb was unmarked, but above it there’s a symbol that Emily has been drawing since she was a child.
78. Ok one more. There’s another kid in the US by the name of Ryan, who since he can talk he has been telling everyone that he has lived on Earth before, but he was murdered and buried. Of course at first people laugh at him, but his teacher became concern after he keep on repeating it, and told his parents. Ryan claimed that in his past life he was a 45 year old man who live in a small house near the woods, working as a wood cutter, next to his neighbour who one day murdered him with an axe struck to his head. Ryan even described the location of his home, the name of the neighbour who killed him, and where his body was buried. Curious, his parents then take him to the place that he had described, and found an older man who is still living in the same house. When they knocked on the door, he refused to answer, so they called the police. Good thing that they took Ryan seriously, as the began looking at the place where Ryan said he was buried, and in their disbelieve they found a human remains. And next to the skeleton was an axe, still embedded in the skull. When confronted with the discover, the old man finally admitted of murdering his neighbour years ago, exactly how Ryan described it.
79. Do you know why some words in British English and American English are different? Like cancelled (UK) and canceled (US), colour (UK) and color (US)? It is because back in the day American newspaper ads charged by the letter, so to save money a lot of people began to eliminate unnecessary letters like the second L in cancelled or the U in colour. Some of these spelling changes were used so frequently in the ads that in time they became stuck and became the commonly used spelling. In short: American spelling changed because of capitalism.
80. This year there’s another genocide apart from Gaza that keeps on getting worse and worse: Sudan. It is a gruesome picture where since the civil war broke in 2023 between 61,000 – 150,000 people have died, 12 million forcibly displaced, and 30.4 million people (more than half of Sudan’s population) are in desperate need of aid. What is happening? It can be traced back to the downfall of its dictator Omar al-Bashir, but to understand that we need to go back further. Since gaining independence from Britain in 1956 Sudan has endured 20 coup attempts, prolonged military rule, and 2 civil wars, with Bashir himself took power on 30 June 1989 when he led a military coup that ousted the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and President Ahmed al-Mirghani. He stayed in power for 3 decades, that is until he was toppled in a 2019 coup.
81. During Bashir’s dictatorship there has been an ongoing conflict in Western Darfur due to ethnic tensions (between blacks and Arabs) and disputes over land and water. In 2003 the situation escalated into a full rebellion against Bashir’s government, where Bashir relied on the Janjaweed (a union of Sudanese Arab militias) to crush the rebellion. 300,000 people reportedly died and 2.7 million forcibly displaced. In 2013 Bashir announced that Janjaweed will be reorganised into Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and will be led by Janjaweed’s commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (or more commonly known as Hemedti). The RSF then conducted more mass killings, mass rapes, torture, pillage, and destruction of villages, as well as conducting an ethnic cleansing of the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit people. RSF was also sent to quash an uprising in South Darfur. During this time RSF developed a working relationship with the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group (who are used by Putin in Russia’s invasion on Ukraine). In short: RSF was Bashir’s trusted attack dog, even when there’s an official army of Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). This was further shown by a 2017 new law that gave the RSF the status of “independent security force” and Hemedti received several gold mines in Darfur as patronage from Bashir (these gold mines will later be a main source of funding for RSF in the civil war since 2023, with the gold traded to UAE and become the main focus of the international pressure and activism).
82. But then in April 2019, after widespread protests against Bashir due to economic crisis, the military (including SAF and RSF) ousted Bashir and established a Transitional Military Council (TMC). In August 2019 the military agreed to share power in an interim joint civilian-military unity government headed by a civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, with elections planned in 2023. But then in 2021 the military changed their mind and seized power once again, led by SAF’s leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF’s Hemedti, and the leadership of Sudan was reconstructed as a military junta led by Burhan. After the 2021 coup, tension began to rise after the weak Sudanese economy steeply declined, which further fueling protests demanding the junta to return power to civilian authorities. And tension between Burhan and Hemedti also arose, after Burhan’s restoring old-guard officials – who had dominated the Bashir government – to the office, which Hemedti saw as Burhan’s attempt to maintain the dominance of Khartoum’s traditional political elite, a danger to RSF because the elites were hostile against Hemedti due to his ethnic Darfuri Arab background.
83. Tensions between SAF and RSF then escalated in February 2023, as RSF began to recruit members across Sudan and the capital Khartoum, until a deal was brokered in 11 March and the RSF withdrew. But the deal was shaky, with disputes occurring around the plan to integrate RSF into the military (the army’s proposed 2 years timetable vs. RSF’s preferred 10 years timetable) and whether RSF should be under the command of the army chief rather than its commander-in-chief Burhan. On 11 April 2023, RSF finally deployed forces near the city of Merowe and Khartoum, and led to clashes with the government forces when RSF took control of the Soba military base south of Khartoum, raising fears of a potential rebellion against the military junta. Hence, the civil war between the 2 military powers erupted, with fighters from both SAF and RSF proceeded to conduct a genocide in various towns and villages, creating humanitarian catastrophe.
84. This is where it gets interesting. Look at the foreign involvements in Sudan’s civil war. Countries supporting SAF: Egypt, Eritrea, Russia, Saudi, Ukraine. Countries supporting RSF: Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Russia’s Wagner Group, UAE, UK. While countries supporting both: China (supplying weapons to both), Iran (supplying drones to both), Turkey (supplying weapons to both). It’s important to highlight that Saudi’s proxy is fighting against UAE’s proxy, Libya is supporting RSF to counter Egypt’s support on SAF, and funny how Russia (SAF) is on the same camp as Ukraine (SAF) and both are fighting against Wagner group (RSF). So, the ultimate question is, who is the bad guy here? The media and international activism are quickly pointing out RSF’s war crimes in Darfur and Geneina as the demon here, which is justified. But it doesn’t mean that SAF is a saint, as they also have conducted lethal attacks on civilians, bombing infrastructures, torturing, rape, etc. Indeed, this is one of those classic cases of assholes fighting against assholes, and it is the civilians in the middle who are paying the price. But you won’t see this big picture in the mainstream media, as the focus is oddly solely on UAE’s support for RSF in exchange of its gold (which is true and it is highly questionable, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg isn’t it?).
85. BB King named his guitar “Lucile” after he had to rescue the guitar from a burning building, where the fire was started by 2 men fighting over a woman named Lucile. Unlike many of us, whenever they’re flying, his guitar “Lucile” flies in first class.
86. Norway is one of the largest countries in the world that uses electric cars (95%), where 88% of car sales in 2024 were all Electric Vehicle. And this trend is arguably started by the band A-Ha. In 1989 A-Ha’s lead singer Morten Harket and environmentalist Frederic Hauge imported a converted electric Fiat Panda from Switzerland, and drove it around Oslo while refusing to pay toll roads and incurring fines to show the advantages of electric vehicles. The stunt caught media’s attention and the public’s attention, and since then they were credited with helping to introduce incentives for EV adoption in the country.
87. One day in 19th century England, a man by the name of John Brooks of Brooks Brothers was attending a polo match when he noticed a specific feature in the shirts of the polo players: the corners of each collar were buttoned down, to prevent the collars to flapping up and down during the match and hitting the face of the players. John thought it was so good that he became obsessed with it. So he went home and immediately created the original polo shirt, not the ones that we know today, but what we now refer as the Oxford cloth buttoned down. So why do they call today’s polo shirt, a “polo shirt”? In the early 1900s people who play tennis used to wear stiff pants, a button up shirt, and boots. That was until 7 times grand slam champion Renee LaCoste entered the game, who thought the common outfit to play tennis is impractical. So one day, in an utter shock to everyone, he came out in a match wearing a (gasp) short sleeve collared piquet cotton shirt (faints). And shortly after his retirement, he launched his namesake brand with its knitted cotton tennis shirt, and it was instantly a hit in Europe (and that crocodile logo came from his nickname “le crocodile”). By the 1950s LaCoste partnered with ISOD to produce the shirts in America, and by the 1960s the shirt was everywhere in popular culture, from universities to the Oval Office. But during the polyester boom in the 1960s, most of these shirts ended up being woven along with synthetics, which helped to keep the structure of the shirt and to keep the colour from bleeding, making the shirt to look brand new all the time.
88. Ok, so what’s that got to do with “polo” shirt, you’re asking? One person who hates to see shirt looking brand new all the time is Ralph Lauren. And in 1972 he dropped a 100% cotton version of the shirt with a whooping 24 colour variations, labeled with the Polo player icon on the left chest (to convey luxury, sophistication, and a sense of exclusivity). The tagline: it gets better with age. These shirts were so popular that it became synonymous with the brand – Polo Ralph Lauren – so much so that through time this type of shirt is no longer called the knitted tennis shirt. Here’s a twist that makes it a full circle: Ralph Lauren worked for Brooks Brothers before starting Polo by Ralph Lauren.
89. There’s a young man from Libya by the name of Amer, who was travelling to go to the Hajj pilgrimage this year when he suddenly encountered a security problem involving his name during the airport procedures. The airport staff said they will try to solve it for him, but he will have to wait. During the wait, the other pilgrims have completed their procedures, have boarded the plane, and the door was closed. Only minutes later Amer’s problem was resolved and he was allowed to leave, but the pilot refused to open the door back and the plane eventually took off without him. The airport staffs tried to console him, but Amer refused to leave the airport and insisted “I intend to perform Hajj, and Insha Allah, I will go.” Suddenly, they received a report that the plane is having a malfunction and that they needed to return. However, despite returning to the airport and waiting while the plane is being maintained, the pilot is still refusing to open the door for Amer. The airport staff again said “it was not meant for you” but Amer again said with certainty “I intend to perform Hajj, and insha Allah, I will go.” And right on que, when the plane is starting to move again, a report came in that it had another malfunction and needed to return for the 2nd time. It was at that moment that the pilot realised what had happened, and said “I will not fly without Amer.” They eventually fly with Amer, and arrived in Saudi safely. The moral of the story? Yes, sure, when it’s meant to be it will happen, but more importantly, the pilot was a dick.
90. Speaking of dicks. Some species in the deep sea have a detachable – sperm-filled – penis that can swim on its own, and seek the female species to procreate (like a heat seeking missile). Indeed, during mating season species such as Argonauta releases this special force using muscle movements and (possibly small) fin-like motions, which is guided by instinct or chemical cues to reaches the female, delivers the sperm, and in some cases embeds itself in her body. This bizarre function is likely evolved as a solution to the challenges of locating a mate in the dark, vast, sparsely population depth of the ocean (somewhere in here there’s a potential of a very funny yo mama joke, but I can’t think of one).
91. Perhaps the most pressing question in today’s modern world is whether AI will be a threat to humanity? Let’s see what history can teach us. The printing press was introduced in the mid 1400s, which allowed for a more proliferation of writing and replacing error-prone (and laborious) manual hand copying. But yet, so many people complained that intellectual life as they knew it was doomed, doomed I tell ya! Erasmus even went on a tirade in 1525 against the “swarms of new books” and blamed printers (whose profit motive was to seek to fill the world with books) were “foolish, ignorant, malignant, libelous, mad, impious and subversive.” Meanwhile, another intellectual Gottfried Leibniz complained about “that horrible mass of books that keeps on growing” which would ultimately end in nothing less than a “return to barbarism.” Descartes also chimed in by saying “even if all knowledge could be found in books, where it is mixed in with so many useless things and confusingly heaped in such large volumes, it would take longer to read those books than we have to live in this life and more effort to select the useful things than to find them oneself.” The complains about books hilariously reverberated way, waaaay, too long into the late 1600s, with intellectuals warned that people would stop talking to each other, burying themselves in books instead, and polluting their minds with useless and fatuous ideas.
92. Of course, as we all know, these warnings resurfaced again and again in our lifetime when radio was invented, then television, computers, iPods, internet, e-mails, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. Every single one of them were decried as an addiction, a distraction, that will make us unable to engage with real people and real-time exchange of ideas. Even the dial phone was heavily criticised when it replaced operator-assisted calls, with some worried that they will not remember all those phone numbers. So relax, tranquillo, the AI can be very useful for humanity if utilised correctly, as proven today in tech-heavy China, not to mention the many benefits that we already unconsciously use like algo in social media, suggestions in Spotify or Netflix, etc, or how the likes of ChatGPT can be a very useful research assistance. After all, as David Epstein (no relation) remarks in his book Range AI is focusing more on the small tactics and humans have more on the big-picture strategy. And someday, soon enough, all of the skepticism of its usage will eventually die down and we’ll adapt to a world where AI will become a subtle presence in our lives.
93. Book of the year: This year I read the usual 50+ books, including the hilarious Don’t Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I’m a Piano Player In a Whorehouse by Paul Carter. I enjoyed reading it so much that I immediately purchased and read the sequel This is Not a Drill: Just Another Glorious Day in the Oilfield, which is equally amusing. I also enjoyed reading Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries (about his trip around Latin America in the 1950s), and then a book by Patrick Symmes that re-traced Guevara’s journey in Latin America 50 years later (which makes it an even better book), and Guevara’s Guerilla Warfare – which I agree is way too much Guevara in a year. Moreover, 2025 is the commemoration of Indonesian legendary writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s 100 years and I’ve managed to read 6 books by/about Pram. I also read books by the best writers: Tolstoy, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Coelho, Hemingway, Wilde, books by other Indonesian legends (N.H Dini and Tan Malaka), a thick-ass book about Ian Fleming, a tale about the intellectual scene of 1940s New York City, and many more. But 2 books stand out from the crowd: 1. Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom, which is so refreshing and engaging in a good way 2. Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Giuffre, which is very gripping but in a bad way, due to its nature as a memoir by the most recognisable face among Epstein’s victims. And the winner? Due to the wide range of topics that I’ve read, the comparisons between the books are not necessarily apple to apple. But, the one book that I can’t seems to put down, where I produced the most notes from, and it provides very useful insights into the psychology of sex abuse victims and their perpetrators, not to mention the impact that this book could potentially have on world politics in the near future: Nobody’s Girl.
94. Btw, when Epstein’s New York town house was raided on 6 Jul 2019, the police found “extraordinary volume” of nude pictures of young women, $70,000 in cash, 48 loose diamonds, and 3 passports belonging to Epstein: US, Israel, and an expired passport from Austria with a fake name and listed a home address in Saudi (a getaway plan). And then on 8 Aug 2019 Epstein moved his entire fortune to a trust. On 10 Aug 2019 he “killed himself”, with guards asleep, cellmate transfered, 2 CCTV malfunctioned and the only working one missing a minute in recording from 11:58:58 to 12:01:01, and died by a broken hyoid bone from hanging using a fabric – something unlikely. On 5 Oct 2019 a prominent plastic surgeon Dr. Daniel P. Greenwald had a plane crash, with technical explanation pointed out that it was a deliberate sabotage. On 19 Nov 2019 Epstein’s private banker committed suicide. Suspicious line of events? Yeah I think Epstein is still alive, with a new face, living in a getaway country or simply back in Israel. Here’s more clues that Epstein is likely to be a Mossad agent. And if this isn’t enough, on 21 November 2025 Benjamin Netanyahu bizarrely posted this article about Epstein’s work in Israel (supporting Ehud Barak to fight against Netanyahu).
95. You know that moment just right after hitting rock bottom, when you suddenly have this surge of energy back to life? After my Kafka-fueled existentialist crisis in late 2024, thanks to the feeling of helplessness with the many situations that I cannot control (like the genocide in Gaza), this year I suddenly have this burst of angry energy, which was initially fueled by a book about the history of Punk music and further sparked at the Green Day concert that was just electrifying. And just like that, 2025 became a no-bullshit year for me, fueled with high-Beta wave of loud music, with so many domestic incidents filling the rage that were just so damn exasperating (which I won’t discuss here, because this neo-orba Indonesian government is increasingly Orwellian and authoritarian), with the Foo Fighters concert as the cherry on top.
96. This is also an eye-opening year, where I also learned that a lot of the knowledge we have in the world are heavily Western-biased. Hence, suddenly plenty of books that I still have in my to-read pile are becoming obsolete, just a bunch of propaganda filled with BS or at the very least trying to normalize certain views that looks harmless at first but helps maintaining the status quo. For example, normalizing seeing the US as the innocent victim of 9/11 or Israel as the victim of October 7th, while ignoring the magnitude of events beforehand that will show them as the original perpetrators. Blaming Princip for the start of World War 1 and not Ferdinand who had no right to annex Bosnia to begin with. Or being upset about the Ukraine-Russia latest peace deal where Crimea and Donbas looks likely to be given to Russia, but fine with US’ annexation of Texas, Nevada and New Mexico from Mexico in the same manner (or conversely, how distributing a “frozen Russian asset” among themselves is not considered theft). Or seeing white men as discoverers of foreign lands instead of settler-colonialists, uniterally renaming an ancient Mexica civilisation, normalizing British Museum as THE place to see world artefacts instead of seeing it as the largest exhibition of stolen things from other countries, depicting Africa as backward (but secretly destroyed sites like Benin Iya), or erasing the history of the Carthage and Ancient Persia to make Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome look better, or celebrating the 4 presidents carved on Mount Rushmore but being oblivious over the history of this sacred mountain for Native Americans, or as menial as celebrating Thanksgiving (and largely ignoring the dark twisted history behind the heart-warming family holiday). Or normalizing seeing resistance to occupation as “terrorism” and not “freedom fighters”, or even as petty as labeling brown people as “immigrants” but white people as “expats.” Moreover, I also learned to see international organisations as a growingly Western hand to control the world. Sure, 22% of UN is funded by the US (and its headquarter is in New York rather than in Geneva), or the IMF and World Bank are headquartered in Washington DC (forming the Washington Consensus), but no not that. I’m talking more about the more casual aspects in our global society, like FIFA, UEFA, IOC (the International Olympic Committee), even the Eurovision Contest, all of which can quickly [and rightly] ban Russia from competing after they have started to invade Ukraine, but these organisations are not banning Israel for doing something even worse. In fact, Indonesia got banned by the IOC after Indonesia is refusing entry to Israeli athletes into athletics championship in Indonesia. Let me repeat that, you will get banned by banning a genocider, but not when you’re doing the genocide. What kind of sick delusional world that we’re living in? An inequal world designed to cater the status quo.
97. Which brings us to person of the year. It’s appalling that the Nobel Peace Prize this year is won by Maria Corina Machado, an opposition in Venezuela who encourages the US to attack Venezuela and take its oil, and even pleaded to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to help. I mean, that’s the complete opposite of a PEACE advocaat. But what do you expect, really? Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize just months after he bombed Laos and Cambodia killing hundred of thousands, Barrack Obama won the Peace Prize after launching attacks on Syria and helped to topple the democratically-elected Egyptian PM Mohamed Morsi, among many other crimes he committed. So, even an institution as dignified as the Nobel Foundation is also incredibly crooked, another “international organisation” that is very questionable in giving out their awards. And instead, my person of the year is the one individual whom many people, including the President of Slovenia, consider as the worthy real winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for this year: Francesca Albanese. She’s a UN special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who is so very brave in standing up for the Palestinians, criticising the genocide, but of course this kind of hero is being attacked by the corrupt and crooked Western governments, and she is even heavily imposed with US economic sanction. Of course they bloody did. This is a fucked up world where protesting against a genocide will get you sanctioned, fired, or cancelled.
98. Just ask Gabriele Nunziati, an Italian news reported who got fired after simply asking EU Commission spokesperson Paula Pinto whether Israel should pay for the reconstruction of Gaza. Or this guy, who exposed the hypocricy of the police who protect anyone who said they are supporting the genocide (using the lame excuse of freedom of speech) but yet will arrest people who are expressing that same freedom of speech to protest against the genocide. And don’t forget what Charlie Kirk did just days before he was murdered. I mean, these examples are only 3 of the plenty of hypocrisies blatantly displayed this year, where rape allegations by Hamas was met with an outcry in the media (but later proven to be false) while an actual admission of IDF soldier raping Palestinian hostages are met with almost a complete media silence (an admission that was even celebrated in Israel, where the rapist Meir Ben-Shitrit has become a media sensation). I mean, what kind of sick society is this? One that the likes of Thom Yorke defended, where they can only blame Netanyahu for everything, and ignoring all the nasty shit Itamar Ben-Gvir, Yoav Gallant, Bezalel Smotrich, etc have said and done, not to mention all the violations of international law occurring everyday by illegal settlers in the West Bank. But I have to give credit where credit is due: Israel is a small nation with only 10 million people, but yet they can control the US like their sad pathetic little puppet, a country that is 423 times larger and with population of 340 million people that have huge pride to be an American, but yet the sheer majority of their politicians and billionaires are all being submissive to their master. Just look at the 250 member of US Congress who went to meet their master in Israel, all the Israeli flags proudly displayed in the office doors in Capitol, the very long list of AIPAC bribed politicians, and how Trump held the chair for his master Netanyahu during his visit.
99. And just in case you’re still skeptical, the following experts on genocide have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza since 7 Oct 2023 constitute a genocide: Raz Segal, Martin Shaw, William Schabas, Melanie O’Brien, Shmuel Lederman, Dirk Moses, Ugur Umit Ungor, Iva Vukusic. Notable human rights groups or organizations have also concluded that it is a genocide: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, International Association of Genocide Scholars, Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, Genocide Watch, War Resisters’ International, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, B’Tselem, International Federation for Human Rights, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, Center for Constitutional Rights, Action Against Hunger, International Court of Justice, UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry. You’re not smarter than so many genocide experts, are you? Even without the opinion of these experts we can all see clearly what’s going on in the most recorded genocide in history, Israeli ministers are even bragging on air about their genocidal plans. All the constant bombings, the hospitals and school destroyed, the starving people, the mass graves, the flat cities, the intercepted aid, even the bragging by Israeli officials and IDF soldiers for getting away with their shit, are all very well documented for all to see. So my question is, why do some people are still either in denial of this and defending this as if what Israel is doing is a moral thing to do, or insisting that they are a victim that are having a revenge while completely ignoring what had happened for 75 years before October 7th? It’s been 2 years, and at this point those genocide lovers who are still defending Israel are either blind, brainwashed, have a vested interest, genuinely evil, or just incredibly fucking stupid.
100. 2025 has been a weird revealing year, where abusive grip in power being challenged all over the world with One Peace flag became the unlikely symbol of resistance: starting from Indonesia, to Philippines, Madagascar, France, the US, all the way to Nepal whose corrupt government was successfully toppled and was replaced through an election conducted in a game app Discord (what a time to be alive). Meanwhile, the global protests over the Gaza genocide are still regularly occurring, with people increasingly immune to Israel’s Hasbara propaganda and always call bullshit whenever a genocide lover is trying to play their old tricks in any social media post. It’s also so refreshing to see that the younger Gen-Z are mostly a bunch of people who cannot be bossed around and cannot be easily manipulated, and instead they fully utilise the information age and are not afraid to stand up for the truth. Just like the Gen-Z uprising in Mexico, or the resignation of the government in Bulgaria after Gen-Z protests. So, there’s still hope for the world after all. And you’re damn right we’re angry for all the injustices and power abuse and all the blatant lies and hypocrisies. And for once, people are not afraid of the status quo anymore. The tide is really turning, the Pandora’s box cannot be closed again, and 2026 is going to be very interesting indeed!

This year I read the usual 50+ books, including the hilarious “Don’t Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I’m a Piano Player In a Whorehouse” by Paul Carter. I enjoyed reading it so much that I immediately purchased and read the sequel “This is Not a Drill: Just Another Glorious Day in the Oilfield”, which is equally amusing. I also enjoyed reading Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries (about his trip around Latin America in the 1950s), and then a book by Patrick Symmes that re-traced that Guevara’s journey in Latin America 50 years later (which makes it an even better book), and Guevara’s Guerilla Warfare – which I agree is way too much Guevara in a year.

Moreover, 2025 is the commemoration of Indonesian legendary writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s 100 years and I’ve managed to read 6 books by/about Pram. I also read books by the best of the best writers: Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Paulo Coelho, Ernest Hemingway (2 books), Oscar Wilde, books by other Indonesian legends N.H Dini and Tan Malaka, a surprisingly bland book by Chuck Palahneuk, a thick-ass biography about Ian Fleming, a tale about the intellectual scene of 1940s New York City by Anatole Broyard, and a book that teaches about writing – “A Swim in a Pond in a Rain” – that uses Russian short stories as the examples. But probably the most touching fiction book I’ve read this year is “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.”

For the non-fiction portion, I read “The Longevity Diet” by Victor Longo after I first heard the news that my aunt had cancer (she’s thankfully fine now). I also read some of the most mind-bending, out-of-the-box, books such as “Infinite Game” (about different timelines to success), “Stealing Fire” (about group flow), “Range” (about jack of all trades vs master of one), “What the Dog Saw” (perspectives from the other side of the story), “Black Swan” (about sudden and unexpected events), “How Not to Be Wrong” (the application of math in the real world), “How to Work a Room” (about how to act and behave in social settings), and “The Organized Mind” (about storing knowledge in an age of information overload).

I also read the history of the Tudor dynasty, a book by a former Indonesian president Gus Dur, a very interesting story about Brazil as a footballing nation, the most fascinating history of punk music, a heavily paraphrased Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great (which was awful), and the most disturbing book I’ve read this year (but highly eye-opening and impactful): Virginia Giuffre’s autobiography “Nobody’s Girl.”

Moreover, in the religious month of Ramadan, this year I read a book about science and religion, stories of all the Prophets of Islam, a book about the great religions, a story about Jerusalem, and a book by a Zen Buddhist master.

And specifically for finance, I read “Warren Buffett’s Ground Rules” (about his partnership era, pre-Berkshire), “Utopia for Realists” (about Utopian thinking, where the author also formulate a realistic Utopia for modern world), and “The Way to Wealth” (tales of wealth from 17th century Japan). I also read a less impactful ones, “Smart Couple Finish Last”, and “The Complete 101 Collection” by John C. Maxwell; which I read after I reached 50 books target and wanted to just get done with some of the menial books I have in my pile.

Here are the full list of the books I’ve read in 2025:

1. Tolstoy in Search of Truth and Meaning by Leo Tolstoy and Bob Blaisdell
2. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
3. Monumen by Nh. Dini
4. Ernest Hemingway on Writing edited by Larry W. Phillips
5. Larasati by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
6. The Economics Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained by Niall Kishtainy
7. Pramoedya Ananta Toer Dari Dekat Sekali by Koesalah Soebagyo Toer
8. Guerilla Warfare by Ernesto Che Guevara
9. Gus Dur on Religion, Democracy, and Peace edited by Hairus Salim HS
10. Longevity Diet by Valter Longo, PhD
11. The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
12. Manuscript Found in Accra by Paulo Coelho
13. Cerita Dari Jakarta by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
14. Saya Ingin Lihat Semua Ini Berakhir: Esei dan Wawancara Dengan Pramoedya Ananta Toer by August Hans den Boef and Kees Snoek
15. Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion by Nicholas Spencer
16. Stories of the Prophets by Ibn Kathir
17. Beliefs That Changed the World: The History and Ideas of the Great Religions by John Bowker
18. Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths by Karen Armstrong
19. Dropping Ashes on the Buddha by Stephen Mitchell
20. Warren Buffett’s Ground Rules: Words of Wisdom From the Partnership Letters of the World’s Greatest Investor by Jeremy C. Miller
21. Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky
22. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
23. The Castle by Franz Kafka
24. Ian Fleming: The Complete Man by Nicholas Shakespeare
25. Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal
26. How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg
27. “The Invention of Sound” by Chuck Palahniuk
28. Drama Mangir by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
29. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
30. Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War by Larry Hedrick
31. Gadis Pantai by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
32. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
33. Kafka Was the Rage by Anatole Broyard
34. Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There by Rutger Bregman
35. The Tudors: The Complete Story of England’s Most Notorious Dynasty by G. J. Meyer
36. The Way to Wealth by Saikaku Ibara
37. Don’t Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I’m a Piano Player In a Whorehouse by Paul Carter
38. A Swim in a Pond in a Rain by George Saunders
39. Alyosha the Pot by Leo Tolstoy
40. This is Not A Drill: Just Another Glorious Day in the Oilfield by Paul Carter
41. Indonesia Tidak Hadir Di Bumi Manusia by Max Lane
42. What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
43. The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey by Ernesto Che Guevara
44. Madilog by Tan Malaka
45. How to Work a Room by Susan Roane
46. Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey In Search of the Guevara Legend by Patrick Symmes
47. The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
48. Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre
49. Futebol Nation by David Goldblatt
50. The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel J. Levitin
51. Smart Couple Finish Rich by David Bach
52. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
53. The Complete 101 Collection by John C. Maxwell