Author: Robert
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3 Reasons to Write Daily
Make room for fresh thinking You already know that your brain is not great at long-term storage. You probably don’t even remember what you had for lunch 2 years ago (pathetic human). You’re even worse at short term memory. In fact, the way you keep an idea in your head is by repeating it to…
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10 Lessons from my first eCommerce Venture
About a year ago, I began reading The Four-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris. In the book, Tim lays out a road-map for creating a muse (an online side-hustle with the goal of creating financial independence through mostly passive income). Although I ended up ignoring a lot of Tim’s advice, my learning-through-experience approach was much…
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What I Tell Crypto Non-Believers
We’ve seen this before When a revolutionary technology comes around, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype without really understanding what the fundamental disruption really is. I saw this happen in the dotcom boom when anyone with a website claiming to be a company got showered with money from investors. The investors and…
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8 Steps to Become an Expert at Anything
So you’re ready to take your interests/hobbies/skills to the next level and become an expert? Or maybe you’ve identified some new business skills that would serve you well professionally? Either way, I firmly believe that everyone is an expert in something. Whether your expertise lies in front-end development, the mating rituals of sea monkeys or…
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Generalist or a Specialist? Which is Best?
As a newly graduated professional, I wondered whether I should market myself as a generalist or a specialist. Of course, as a recent grad, I am certainly not an expert at anything yet. I certainly considered myself a generalist. As a creative, I’m drawn to things I don’t know much about. This passion has led…
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An Experiment in Voluntary Poverty: I Lived in a Truck for 60 Days as a Full-Time Student
Yes, I am crazy. In this extra-long post, I’ll be explaining “the how” and “the why” (with some stories mixed in) behind my 60-day journey of voluntary poverty and alternative lifestyle experimentation. Basically, I’ll explain how and why I lived like a homeless person in the bed of my truck for 60 days even though…
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Open Source, Open for Business: Eric Raymond’s 9 Open Source Business Models
A the start of one of my first Open Source Software (OSS) classes, the professor invited the students to mark three personal learning objectives for the course and she would gather them and display the results anonymously. I don’t remember what all three of my points were except that I may have been the only…
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Blockchain and the Libertarian Uprising: The Bitcoin Example
This is part 1 of a 5 part series adapted in blog format from my senior research paper titled “Blockchain and the Libertarian Uprising“. Why do we trust a currency backed by a government that is fourteen trillion dollars in debt? Ever since 1971, when Nixon announced that US dollars could no longer be redeemed…
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Blockchain and the Libertarian Uprising: The Blockchain Principles
This is part 2 of a 5 part series adapted in blog format from my senior research paper titled “Blockchain and the Libertarian Uprising“. THE BLOCKCHAIN PRINCIPLES The bitcoin example allows us to contextualize the disrupting effects blockchain. Don Tapscott, the co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute, outlines “7 Design Principles of the Blockchain Economy”…
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Blockchain and the Libertarian Uprising: The Libertarian Philosophy
This is part 3 of a 5 part series adapted in blog format from my senior research paper titled “Blockchain and the Libertarian Uprising“. THE LIBERTARIAN PHILOSOPHY Any argument claiming the fulfillment of a political philosophy must first define the tenets of such a philosophy. Additionally, in 2014, PEW research revealed that one in ten…