Privilege: The Tale of Two Airbnbs

Byjack

So I just changed Airbnbs in France and it made a massive mental difference.

The first Airbnb was fine. It looked nice and modern and was in the heart of the city. But the bed was uncomfortable and it was small and everything felt dark and closed.

The outside felt dirty and dark and the “main attraction” was the Carrefour (a french grocery that was extremely close by).

Rarely got a full nights sleep
View overlooking the street
Mirror in the back, not as big as it looks
Little bathroom
Door for apartment right window construction frame
The local attraction

The second Airbnb was very different. It was over twice as large (55 m2 vs 20 m2), filled with natural light and greenery and was near a park (Jardin des Arenes de Cimiez) and a museum (Musee Matisse). 

Living room is filled with natural light and interesting interior design and decor
Lots of space to work
Garden outside
More comfortable, though small bed
Outside the airbnb
Local attraction, Jardin des Arenes

The difference in mentality was so massive I was floored. In the first Airbnb I felt:

  • Depressed
  • Unmotivated to work
  • Tired
  • Not feeling like I’m on vacation

While in the new Airbnb I felt:

  • Like I was on vacation
  • Full of energy and enthusiasm
  • Ready to get work done
  • Feeling creative and relaxed

The interesting thing was, that my girlfriend told me that the new Airbnb was in a much much nicer and richer neighborhood and this got me thinking. This is the definition of privilege – the ability to grow up in an environment that nurtures you and gives you energy instead of sucking it away.

I’ve never believed in leveling the playing field for the sake of fairness because fairness is both a subjective and impossible standard to meet. Instead, I’ve been interested in creating a more productive society as a whole and I think that by creating better spaces for all of society people would feel more energetic and productive. I only experienced the change in physical space, in greenery and natural light and calm and quiet. What would happen if you were able to get a better mental environment, with more supportive loving people? This is why children in single-family homes and substance abuse have it so hard in getting ahead. They don’t have the mental environment to live up to their full potential.

This has a couple of implications for me:

  • Money is not everything, but it is important in getting you into a good environment
  • Don’t skimp out on rent or places to stay on vacation, the environment is everything
  • Surround yourself with nurturing people who help you feel peaceful and energetic
  • Take care of yourself and the space around you
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Drafting out My Disclaimer

Byjack

Intro goal:

  • Create a disclaimer for my hot takes channel
  • Make people understand why I’m doing what I’m doing
  • Make it ok for people to disagree and debate

It is important to talk about controversial issues because controversial issues are controversial because they are important issues. I have strong opinions and will say exactly what I mean and be very direct. I am not an expert on everything. I can be wrong and you can disagree with me. I might also change my mind, this is just what I believe right now.

Outro goal:

  • Get them thinking deeper
  • Get engagement

What came up for you during this video? What is your hot take? Add to the conversation in the comments sections below. I read everything.

Breaking Down What Racial Discrimination Really Is

Byjack

I believe that racial discrimination exists primarily in today’s day and age in two forms:

  • Attractiveness. We know attractiveness is partly biological, but it is also in large part cultural. White people are considered more attractive than other races. We also know “pretty privilege” exists and has a profound effect on how trustworthy, successful and smart someone is. We are biologically and socially hardwired to like attractive people.
  • Social economics. We know that white people own most of the wealth. We also know wealth is generational and can give you a huge advantage in life.

Let’s just run through a few examples:

  • Who has a better chance of being an actor? What about a tik tok star? An attractive person or an unattractive person?
  • Who has a better chance of being a banker? Or a real estate agent? Someone who’s parents are investment bankers, or if their parents worked at Mcdonalds?

I believe that affirmative action and other tools to remove bias are not meant to “even the playing field” or create an “equality of outcome” (even distributions) but rather to counteract biases that may be counter to the correct action or truth. For example, hiring a more attractive person even though they are lazier, dumber and have less experience.

I do believe that race can be very complicated and there are many instances that are not being considered here. However, I feel that those cases are more niche and require more thinking as to the best solution, such as:

  • Perceptions of blacks as more capable of crime. 
  • Women not succeeding as much because of childbearing.

Broadly it is clear to me that this has two main implications:

  • Mainstream ideas about race discount the disadvantages of “ugly” low-income white people.
  • Mainstream race theory overcompensates for perceived roadblocks of “attractive” wealthy minorities (as they are not only privileged but are often touted as the beacons of hope when they are benefitting from the same system that is currently creating bias).

The only two things I would support affirmative action for would be affirmation action for looks (I don’t know how this would be measured exactly) and for social economic status. I believe that affirmation action in these two areas would:

  • Disproportionally benefit minorities as they are considered uglier and are often poorer
  • It would call attention to bias that we have very often in our own lives, a bias that affects our ability to make clear and rational decisions
  • We would see many competent and talented people who were formerly ignored, be brought to the top

Finally, I would say that all races and all people struggle with issues. There is little to no point in trying to make everyone happy. The main point is to somehow come up with a system where our biases have checks and balances that will guide us to making the most rational and clear decisions.

Being someone who has grown up a minority in America, there is a big wound racism creates within you, a feeling that there is something wrong with you. However, those wounds are opportunities to heal and become wiser, they are not something that everyone else needs to carefully tiptoe around (and be politically correct about). Wounds and pain are not bad things. We can show compassion without enabling people to not grow emotionally and not face their own demons.

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Valorant 23: Hitting Plat

Byjack

It has finally happened. I’ve hit plat in Valorant. A journey that was supposed to take 2-3 months, but instead took a year and two months (14 months).

Blood sweat and tears went into this challenge, and I learned something interesting at each rank.

IRON

Iron was an interesting rank because it was the rank when I was first learning how to use my mouse and keyboard in a game. I had never played a shooter game on the pc, and haven’t played many serious games at all on the PC. 

Getting out of iron was simply learning how not to make extremely basic mistakes such as reloading out in the open, not getting stuck on walls, planting and defusing the bomb.

BRONZE

Bronze was also an interesting rank. I started actually enjoying the game more here since I had a better idea of what was going on. Bronze rank was still stressful because I would get killed out of nowhere all the time.

I don’t really remember what I did to get out of bronze rank, but I think it had something to do with playing off of my util and learning how to check corners where people hide.

SILVER

I was stuck in silver for a long time. Silver was where I learned a lot about aiming and movement and got quite good at it.

What eventually got me out of silver was learning how to preaim angles.

GOLD

Gold is not a very interesting rank, everyone is pretty much like silver but with slightly better util and aim.

However, perhaps the most interesting thing in the whole challenge is how I got out of gold. I got out of gold primarily by getting more confident.

I did this in two ways:

  1. I focused on a few agents and learned how to get reliable value out of their util (Chamber tp locations, Brim lineups, Sova lineups).
  2. I dealt with some of my underlying negative self talk

I hear lots of things that people say about confidence:

“Stay positive”

“Imagine you are the best”

I always thought these ideas were bogus since I always thought confidence was about one thing: Feeling comfortable in your own skin.

But I started to doubt myself when I say professional Valorant coaching advocating (SEN Zellsis) for the “cocky confidence” mentality and I was stuck in silver.

But I think in the end, I was right. In order to be confident, you need to feel safe and at peace. The real question, is HOW?

Here are the main ideas:

  1. In order to be confident, you need to be ok with not being great (not being smart, successful, attractive, etc.)
  2. In order to be ok with those things, you need to process your traumas and limiting beliefs.
  3. In order to process, you must welcome in your limiting beliefs and incorporate it into yourself.

My limiting beliefs were:

  • “If I don’t succeed, I don’t think I’m worth anything”
  • “I need to beat myself up for every mistake and always think I’m worse in order to not mess up”

Simply by saying those things in my head, made me feel clarity every time I started to stress out and I suddenly felt calm. I gave myself permission to continue to berate myself (or not) but simply welcoming these parts in instead of avoiding them (and having them show up as unresolved stress), made me have a clear mentality that made my rise to plat.

I learned I have a huge amount of power, intelligence and creativity that are locked up by stress and fear. Slowing down, focusing on a few things at a time, and embracing my fears allows me to operate at my fullest potential.

What I thought confidence was:

  • Fake it until you make it
  • Cocky
  • Don’t care
  • Aggressive

What confidence actually is:

  • Ok with failing
  • Calm and clear-headed
  • Balanced
  • Trust yourself
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Valorant 22: Mentality

Byjack

I felt that I nailed aiming mechanics for so many times, I realized that I need to combine a whole bunch of hard skills together.

Firstly, I need to imagine enemies where they might peek out from, until I push ( then imagine where they are holding) and face my body in that direction. This is the baseline mentality (plus some crosshair placement). I talk about it here.

In situations when I am afraid of being out in the open for very long, I will try the strafe clearing for a very tight peek window. I talked about it here.

If I am holding an angle, I should employ the “catching people on my crosshair” mentality that I talk about here.

When flicking close range, I need to go back to trying to face my body towards them.

In long fights, I need to focus on strafing my crosshair to their head, but I don’t know if I have a video showing that.

I suppose one thing I haven’t figure out is crouch spraying, but I’m willing to bet facing them is good too.

Finally, overall, I need to learn to accept death as I talk about here.

I think there are two mindsets in Valorant, aggressive and passive. I still haven’t figured out the right balance between the two, but part of what helps me with that is using the “letting the energy carry the action” mentality I talk about here.

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The Three Aspects of Singing

Byjack

I’ve started to master singing and I think there are three main mentalities that allow you to produce a good sound, maybe a 4th step as well.

Step One: Relaxation

The mentality is that you feel completely and totally relaxed in your shoulders, neck, but MOSTLY the throat and vocal chords. Literally, every note has to be zero effort.

This is achieved by (in order of importance):

  1. Breathe support
  2. Keeping open for high notes
  3. Warmup
Step Two: Sit on the Note

Work on sitting on the note in the back of your throat instead of moving up or down (especially when going up). A good trick is to imagine moving down when you are going up for a note.

Step Three: Let the Consonants Carry the Sound

The last step is focusing on enunciating, basically letting the “speech level” words carry the sounds.

After all these steps, you should be left with clear notes that are on key, but the final step is always letting your voice and tonality tell a story and the emotions you feel.

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The Trifecta of Growth and Progression Down the Path of Truth

Byjack

There was a big journey I went down in terms of working on myself, becoming more mature and being able to live a free and meaningful life.

  • I started by thinking that you needed to meet your own needs
  • Then I thought you needed to be good at asking for your needs
  • And finally, I thought you needed to process traumas and emotions

But I realized that they are all part of the same things and have different parts to play.

In a way, everything is about not abandoning yourself and taking care of yourself. You surround yourself with people who you can talk about what is on your mind truthfully and emotionally. They help you understand what you need. You are able to then give yourself what you need and walk down further along the path of understanding different parts of yourself that are in pain.

From processing emotions, we can truly love ourselves, and the people around us, and be present in the moment.

There is a sense that being with people who don’t accept us, don’t allow us to feel safe speaking our truth is self abandoment. In a way, even if someone meets some of our needs (for example is attractive enough to make us feel special), if we settle for someone who doesn’t love us or allow us to be ourselves, we are putting ourselves down.

Not allowing ourselves to meet our own needs (for example, asking for validation from others because we refuse to give it to ourselves) is self abandonment.

Refusing to look deeper, and shielding parts of ourselves from the world (for example, keeping a confident outward appearance when we feel anxious) is abandoning parts of ourselves and placing the outside world’s comfort above our own.

Creating Excitement in Productivity

Byjack

I’ve been seeking excitement in my life for some time now. The excitement of walking up to random people to ask for them to vote for my non-profit, jumping off something high for parkour, or talking to a pretty girl on the street.

All those things felt like they had an element of risk but felt extreemly freeing and rewarding.

I wanted to know how to get more of this in my life and I stumbled upon a way to bring it into the more mundane parts of life, and if I can bring it into the mundane, perhaps I can bring it everywhere.

I realized that this can be used in any area where I have the desire to act but feel too afraid and that this could be any type of fear, not just social fear. For example, I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety recently with feeling overwhelmed by things. For example, I feel overwhelmed at the thought of taking out the dishes, going to the gym, doing a duolingo test or playing an online chess match against a real person.

Using the formula that I developed with talking to women (but no longer use since I have a girlfriend), here are the steps:

  1. Imagine that I am going for it, and that I can imagine myself doing so within the next few seconds
  2. Imagine the fullest extent of “going for it”, how would truly committing look like, how would feeling effortless and free look like
  3. Let the fear/excitement build up in your chest as you start to breathe
  4. Let the energy carry the action – you don’t have to act if it feels wrong, but let the energy flow through your breathing and let it move you
  5. Continue to breathe through the experience to stay connected to yourself

These steps can bring a feeling of aliveness and control over life. I should know, I used it to write this very post and shoot the video below.

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Valorant 21: Aim Mechanics

Byjack

I’ve narrowed down core aiming principals to a couple of things:

  • General Aim: Pointing your body toward your target
  • Survivability: strafe peeking (strafe out, prediction of enemy location, hit strafe and shoot at the same time as seeing enemy)
  • Preaiming: crosshair placement
  • Flicking: loose mouse hand + some general aim mechanics

Overall, I think the most important technique is just having the mindset of pointing to your body toward your target (what I’m starting to call general aim since it gets you in the general vicinity of your target). This helps massively with confidence, with holding angles, and with tracking and flicking.

Second most important is probably a combination of a loose mousehand and good crosshair placement as this allows you to hit most targets while also being ready for a flick. This pairs with a strong understanding of how to slice a pie and clear a site.

Finally, some sort of strafing is important as it increases survivability by a lot.

There are a couple more aiming techniques that I feel are significantly less important as they are more niche. These will help you in deathmatch and higher elos but are not part of core aim:

  • Strafe shooting: general ability to track and strafe a moving target, paying attention to crosshair
  • Spray control: the ability to crouch spray and spray adjust
  • Angle holding: predicting how close or wide a peek will be

Strafe shooting is probably the most important as it is good for long range fights as movement based aiming is a lot more effective on those fights.

Spray control is pretty niche to close range gun fights and fighting multiple enemies.

Angle holding is very important but general aim and strafe clearing are more key to holding angles.

 

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What I Want My Job To Be

Byjack

I think a lot of people have it wrong when they look to people for guidance. We look for the rich, the successful, the types of people who made a million dollars and are now flaunting it with expensive cars, watches, and parties, and beautiful women almost saying, “you want this? I can show you how to get it”.

But the truth is that no one wants that, even though they think they might want it. People want to know the truth of things. They want to know how to live, how to love, and how to lose. They want to learn how to see beauty, find joy and feel sadness. They want to find meaning, feel like they are special, and that they are exploring the world like we did when we were kids. There is nothing wrong with money, but it was once just a tool, and now it has become the goal.

The people who got the closest to the answer are not businessmen, but artists. Is it not the music of musicians, the books of authors, the paintings or painters, and the films of filmmakers that are often the most profound teachers of life?

This is why I’ve always sought creation, youtube, and art out much more than success. This is why creators like Mr. Beast (though more well meaning than some creators disgust me with their materialism).

I’ve decided that THIS is the job I want. I want the hard job of creating. Creating art, music, writing, and videos. Creating something that will help people reach the deep ideas in life, but also simplify things to the sensations we feel and guide us back to being kids in the present moment.

I’ve always felt like some things in life feel like a damn waste of time. I always wonder what work is worth doing for me, something that I feel I was meant to do, and what feels not worth it for me.

I always knew it was understanding life, working through my traumas and understanding how to make life magic. But I never was so clear on what the work was.

I want to serve as more than just an artist but a speaker, a coach, someone who can explain the art in logical and easily understandable ways. I don’t want to be studying to be a coach. I want to be studying life, living it, exploring it, touching it. I want my coaching to be a collaboration in the enterprise of spreading this practice of understanding deeper truths in life and finding true purpose. The kind of purpose you feel when you hear a song you love, the kind of clarity when you read something profound.

And when I get money. Lots of money. I will just continue to create. Organizations, experiences, works of art.

Elements of my enterprise:

  1. Creating art coloring life (comics, paintings, writings, etc.)
  2. Live streaming/videos on creation/techniques/challenges/stories
  3. Discussing works of art that color life
  4. Creating guides on how to live/succeed/understand
  5. Speaking on practical topics/problems/challenges
  6. Coaching on developing color in life
  7. Creating events that color life

*When I say “color life”, I mean the feeling of deep conversations, connecting with childlike wonder, being in the moment and feeling the feelings, being spontaneous, taking risks, and finding silence and simplicity. But why explain it? Listen to it down below.