3 MINUTE MONDAY

Hi friend,

“Fuck-you money” is a meme but it’s also a truth.

There is an amount of wealth you can achieve when typical restrictions and conventions no longer apply to you.

You don’t need to suck up to the gatekeepers.

You don’t need to do things you don’t want to do.

In extreme situations you don’t even need to follow the law.

Similarly, “fuck-you freedom” is kind of downstream from fuck-you money, but also can be achieved through cultivating a lack of reliance on other groups.

There are no restrictions on where you can travel to, and when, and for how long.

You don’t need to show up to work on time, or work at all.

If you’re sufficiently well structured, you don’t even need to care about the state of the economy, or the power grid or the wider world.

But I’ve recently learned about another type of fuck-you liberation.

One which is significantly cheaper, more accessible, more common and maybe even more powerful.

The “fuck-you family”.

Many fathers I’ve spoken to have told me about how their priorities were completely changed upon starting a family.

All the previous status games they played seemed petty.

The admiration and gamesmanship they used to play in an attempt to impress people in power or those with status seemed juvenile and shallow.

Much of their anxiety around whether different people liked them or thought they were cool evaporated.

The only people they needed to care about impressing were now asleep in their house.

To their kids, they were the coolest, richest, strongest, most heroic person on the planet.

And that gave them a very powerful type of liberation.

It seems to me that much of what young men get up to are surrogate activities until they finally get a family.

This isn’t to say that all fathers become placid soyboy hippies, or that having kids neuters your ambition.

But it definitely seems to open up a new realm where they care far less about the flotsam and jetsam that used to occupy their lives.

MODERN WISDOM

I do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

This week’s upcoming episodes:

Monday.
Kyle Forgeard - befriending Dana White, helping Donald Trump get elected, making $30M in 30 minutes selling merch, reacting to Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta U-Turn and more.

Thursday.
Jillian Turecki - 9 harsh truths about how relationships work including how to forgive your parents, the difference between lust and love and why your mind is a battlefield.

Saturday.
Dan Koe - how can you construct your life for maximum creativity, what is the daily schedule of someone who wants to be effective and also inspired?

THINGS I'VE LEARNED

1.
US College students have interesting opinions.

A 2023 survey reveals a troubling trend:

Nearly three-quarters of U.S. college students think professors should be reported for expressing views that offend them.

The trend is particularly pronounced on the left of the political spectrum.

For example:

Around half of liberal students think professors should be reported for denying anti-Black bias in police shootings.

Around a third think professors should be reported for stating that affirmative action does more harm than good.

Around a third think professors should be reported for saying that biological sex is a scientific fact, and that there are two sexes.

The extent of anti-Black bias in police shootings and the potential harms of affirmative action are subjects of ongoing debate among scholars; the concept of biological sex is a cornerstone of the science of biology.

The survey results therefore raise serious concerns about the future of free speech - and the future of science. — Steve Stewart-Williams

2.
Life is what we deem it.

“We never really encounter the world, all we experience is our own nervous system.” — Connor Beaton

3.
Research is MEsearch.

Most people’s bodies of work are just a thinly veiled autobiography.