Butters

Can't argue with it. I mean doesn't this perfectly describe our time now? Remember: Trump, Netanjahoo, Putin, Erdogan, all democratically elected.

They're not democracies.

The Vision: I'm in Bali, wake up in my beautiful Villa. Dip in the pool, then grab a double espresso, hit the gym and go to my coworking after that. Work until 1PM, then after that I focus on content creation for Youtube to inspire others. At night I do stand-up comedy and socialize, or hit the gym a second time or do more intense kickboxing classes. That's it! Never having to worry about money, doing something amazing, being creative and entrepreneurial at the same time. And being financially independent allows me to grow myself, going deeper into stage Green. There are plenty of hippies and yoga people on Bali doing the same. No Money: But the reality at this time still was: no money, little income and nothing was stable. I couldn't even afford a hostel bed some nights so I had to sleep at the library (the only library that's open 24 hours for some reason is in Lisbon). Had to borrow from family and friends which I find embarrassing. I had some sporadic income from e-commerce and selling those websites on Flippa but it was very little and not stable. So after studying the homeless I am now myself homeless. The only difference of course is mindset: I see myself as a digital nomad, a starting entrepreneur, not as an actual homeless person with no perspective. Mindset is what makes all the difference here. Plus Portugal being such a safe country really helps here too. But by the grace of God I made it. At some point I did get a few customers to pay me money. One guy paid for help with his Google Ads and in the same week another guy paid for a website I made. It's crazy cause that last guy withheld the money for like a month until I got it. Grace of God man, grace of God. Volunteering in Bali: What can I do for money? I've been vibe-coding, I know my way around web design and I'm tech savvy. I don't want to work in certain industries that are boring or evil; I wanna do something good for the world. Wait a minute, what if I can help yoga and spiritual retreats with their tech? Set up automations for them, help them sort their admin through AI usage. PERFECT! That's what I'm doing. But where do I start? First I did a few exploratory calls with yoga instructors, just to find out what their tech needs are and how I could help them. Unfortunately, they were all broke and I didn't see market there. So I shifted to retreat centers; those guys have money and some even have multi million dollar turnovers. Fantastic. I went online and found this volunteering opportunity in Bali: one month at a luxury yoga retreat helping with their tech and marking, which was exactly the kind of opportunity I wanted. I sent them my vibe-coded portfolio that showed some of my 'work' (retreat web design) and they loved it. The deal was: You have to 'volunteer' 5 hours per day, 5 days a week. The rest of the time you are free to do what you want. You get to drop into any yoga class on-site for free Free use of their co-working spaces Free breakfast Free accommodation (I think it was just bunkbeds with mosquito nets but still, free) My thinking was this: I work at the co-working spaces in my sparetime to get clients. Then when the month is over, I have an actual paid client PLUS this amazing month-long volunteering experience to put in my portfolio. After that I will understand how retreats operate and can start doing paid work for other retreats. I was still in Lisbon, but now I had some cash. Fuck yeah, let's go to Bali! I got out of the hostels (I fucking HATE the smell of other people at night, can't stand that shit any longer) and into a basic private room and I started booking my trip: Lisbon > Abu Dhabi > Jakarta > 1 night in Jakarta > Bali Bought the visa online Paid the Bali fee online as well Paid the hotel in Jakarta Ready to go But then... Iran War: Yep. The one time in my life where I'm flying all the way to Asia via the middle east and this shit happens. I was already stressed about this whole ordeal and I had spend my last dime on this trip, and now it's canceled? Do I even get my money back? Am I stuck here? Things were uncertain. One moment the app said the flight was going, then the next moment it would all say canceled. One morning I got a text saying the flight was reinstated. Went to the airport; no flight. No money to re-book, no flight, no nothing. Now what?

I started living as a digital nomad in January of this year. That means I canceled my rent (or got kicked out, whatever) and started traveling around while working on my laptop. Here I will talk about the places I visit and some of the lifestyle and challenges I guess. Feel free to post here and participate! I'll try to summarize one place or topic in one post in here to keep it somewhat organized.

How it feels Although tbh I find Codex slow.

That's really gay.

Lol tell that to the girls dating coked up junkie club promoters. In fact, many girls date total lowlifes.

Although that should be taken with a grain of salt given the sources. Either way, if Fable 5 does relaunch with strict geo-locking I predict a shadow economy. I will definitely hire a US based VA to run the model for me (data analysis) and send me the report. Easy. Literally just give someone Github access, ask them to run Fable with the prompts I tell them, and report back when it's done.

Google AI answered my question, but it's more concerning than I thought tbh

@Elliott awesome insight. However, a fully stage orange+ 'dictatorship' seems to be possible when you study Singapore. So far that experiment has gone well but who knows how it will pan out. Same for China of course.

Drake is turning 40 too. Happy birthday Drake, you made the 2010s what they were 🎵

Today I saw what seemed like my dad. The way he walked, his clothing, his face all looked exactly like my dad. But my dad is 2400km away. That is the second time in 4 months. Last time I met a guy who looked exactly like my best friend in high school, just as I was thinking about him a lot. I consider these glitches in the matrix. The dream revealing itself to me. Shits weird man.

What's actually concerning is combining both that video I shared with the new article I shared. No Fortune 500 company, legal or medical could ever use Anthopic's Fable 5 because it retains user data for 30 days by default with no way to opt-out. Yet "They highlighted that British hospitals, researchers, and enterprises were already actively integrating Fable 5 into their workflows". Wtf 😑 I assume the UK hospitals were using it for tasks that have nothing to do with patient data but still, this is the whole point of data protection and why we need a strong EU alternative.

Just the fact that digital autonomy is such a hot botton issue around the globe now. https://www.thetimes.com/business/technology/article/lift-ban-on-newest-ai-models-uk-urges-donald-trump-vlhr3qhbv and: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/eu-commission-looking-practical-consequences-anthropic-decision-spokesperson-2026-06-14/ It's a pretty big deal. https://table.media/?p=ec56e75d-cf8a-43fc-a1f5-6b4c163e53e4 https://www.cep.eu/eu-topics/details/us-access-ban-on-anthropics-fablemythos-5-more-of-a-geopolitical-signal-than-a-necessary-security-measure.html

Yeah Anthropic is pretty evil.

I just don't agree with that. I think it will make their non-US enterprise customers seriously consider local LLMs and non-US alternatives. This move really broke something in how people view flagship models from now on and that you can't rely on using them.

But that's not how it works in practice. You really think Trump represents the American people? He's just a grifter who got elected by being in the media constantly and playing on emotions, not because of his fantastic competence as a politician to represent the people.

I mean, I don't think this particular move was deliberate but hurts them instead. I don't see how constantly screaming your software is going to make everyone unemployed or destroy us all is good marketing. Cal Newport actually has an interesting take on this: Basically he's saying these Silicon Valley AI guys are so deep into this "rationalist doomer subculture", that's just how they talk. Only now are they getting pushback on that because they're trying to take these things public. It's impossible to enforce this. Besides, the open source models are only about 6 months behind the flagships so it's constantly moving.

Chapter 2: Lisbon, Portugal Guy at my hostel said I would enjoy Lisbon, so I bought a bus ticket and went there. After a 3.5 hour VERY CHEAP bus ride (paid like €4.30), I arrived in the Portuguese capital. Now mind you, it was still raining. Apparently a tropical rainstorm (or multiple) went over the south of Europe this time and it rained literally day and night, pretty much 24/7, at least that's how I remember it. This was definitely depressing. I was also stressed about money all the time so I just couldn't enjoy it much. Somebody left a pack of condoms in the hostel room, as if to say "I don't need these anymore, you guys have fun". The Lisbon hostel was always noisy because they played music in the common areas. The only trick to work quietly was to wake up at like 4am and sit there before they turned on the music. I really need quiet time and privacy, hostels just gave me stress. Having literally no money for food or hostel AND no income AT ALL made things more stressful and depressing as the intense rain continued day in day out. Locals told me that this level of rainfall was very unusual. Homelessness: I cannot write about Lisbon without addressing this. The streets are full of homeless people. Even the fancy areas! Like you need to crawl over a few sleeping homeless to get into the Gucci store. It was clear to me there were 2 types of homeless: drug-addicted and pretty much regular people. I've seen guys sleep in little tents, wake up, brush their teeth and get to work in the morning. This is because of a massive housing problem in the city. People cannot afford housing because of the high rent prices so they sleep in the streets. Even though there's a lot of homelessness, I never worried about my safety. It surprised me how kind the local people were to homeless people. Banks allowed them to sleep on their steps. they sleep in front of stores and nobody seemed to kick them out. Even right next to the police station is one of the largest homeless colonies I'd seen.

@enchanted fair point, China remains such a mystery to me. On the one hand they're evolving so fast while at the same time remaining this dictatorship where you cannot criticize the government, although I believe it's not as bad as most other authoritarian regimes. The central government also needs to keep a really high approval rating afaik so it's not truly a dictatorship. It's kinda brilliant how Beijing has been playing 4D chess for decades, but would I wanna live there? I still prefer Western democracy. It's the media that influences people to have such dumb opinions and that is bad for democracy. The loudest most viral monkey gets the most votes.

Pretty good video, these companies are pure evil. I've had multiple people try to recruit me into one but thank God I've never joined.

Anthropic used a lot of scare tactics marketing but that has nothing to do with the real application for ai. There's a growing need for ai from corporate and government, more demand than supply can handle. I found this interview with Mystral (a French AI company) CEO quite interesting. Basically all he talks about are enterprise and government use cases which is Mystrals core customer base, not consumers or hype . I think this news is bad for anthropic . Europe is already busy to reduce their dependency on US big tech and these things only accelerate that.

Interesting takes on the Mythos ban, the reasons behind it and he predicts it will be back online within a few weeks.

I don't know. I mean having the government just pull flagship models after they release is a pretty bad look trying to attract investment. And that's what they want, investments. Of course having teenagers create silly videos is a massive cost but surely there's future profit for these companies from coding and enterprise usage, which is the only real use.