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Favorite

Motivational Videos / Workout Jams

Consumer Goods

• AmazonBasics 8” Chef’s Knife (Kitchen workhorse at an unbeatable price.)
• ASUS ROG Strix 27” 4K Monitor (Gaming and web surfing as they were meant to be.)
• Bowflex 90lb Adjustable Dumbbells (Space-saving squat rack alternative for novices.)
• De’Longhi Portable Air Conditioner (Makes working in the summer bearable.)
• Element 26 Self-Locking Weight Lifting Belt (Belt: $35. A healthy back: Priceless.)
• Goshala Raw Milk (Pasteurization ruins milk. Get yours straight from the cow.)
• Kitchen Mama Auto Electric Can Opener (Opens up a whole world of canned goods.)
• iBUYPOWER Pre-Built Gaming PC (Using this in a smartphone world is a superpower.)
• Mitchum Men’s Deodorant (Anti-perspirant to keep workouts focused and dry.)
• Motorola G Power (Cheap smartphone with two days of battery life.)
• Nature’s Bounty Fish Oil Softgels (Essential omega-3 fats for healthy gums and joints.)
• Nike Men’s Air Max Shoes (A 1.5” height boost to 5’11” makes life much nicer.)
• Optimum Nutrition Whey Protein Powder (Four scoops a day for optimal gains.)
• Redify Jump Rope (Who needs a treadmill? Free up a room in your house.)
• Rfiver Mobile TV Cart (Take your TV anywhere and adjust it to the optimal viewing height.)
• Rogue 5lb Technique Plates (Essential to safely practice beginner deadlifts.)
• Rogue 22lb Training Bar (Useful for learning overhead movements and Olympic lifts.)
• Rogue 45lb Stainless Steel Ohio Bar (Gold standard barbell.)
• SABRE Pepper Gel (Self-defense you can actually use without being charged with murder.)
• Sensarte 12” Nonstick Skillet (Tacos, fried chicken, pasta sauce, pork burgers, and more!)
• Sony Bravia 65” 4K Mini-LED TV (Perfect blend of cinematic and portable.)
• Vive Wrist Brace (Theoretically type for ten hours a day. Don’t actually though.)
• ZNHIS Magnetic Bookmarks (Avoids the mess of disposable paper bookmarks.)

Lifestyle Books

• Deskbound by Kelly Starrett (You’re sitting, standing, and walking all wrong. Fix it fast!)
• Double Your Dating by David DeAngelo (She said yes to the date! Now what?)
• How to Cook Everything: The Basics by Mark Bittman (Most of my diet is recipes from this.)
• How to Make Love to a Woman by Michael Morgenstern (Love is downstream of sex.)
• Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe (Squat, press, deadlift! Drink raw milk and flex your back!)

(If you can only read one, pick Deskbound. Poor posture, which is the norm, ruins most people.)

Hobbyist Books

• The Age of Movies: Selected Writings by Pauline Kael (Will transform how you watch films.)
• The Great Movies by Roger Ebert (Pair with a Criterion subscription. Also read II, III, and IV.)
• Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman (Physics! Read the full lectures and do the problems.)

Philosophy Books

• Certain to Win by Chet Richards (How to outmaneuver and defeat much larger enemies.)
• The Complete Works by Arthur Schopenhauer (Hindu wisdom distilled through German eyes.)
• The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti (Nobody actually exists.)
• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (Either exercise power or have it exercised on you.)
• Straw Dogs by John Gray (Giving up hope of “ultimate meaning” is the secret to happiness.)
• The Trouble with Being Born by Emil Cioran (Resignation is only the beginning.)
• Zero to One by Peter Thiel (Push the boundaries of what’s possible, or don’t even start.)

Economics Books

(I loosely define economics as “the study of scarcity”. It’s a very broad field.)

• Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (“Work” is more about societal control than actual work.)
• The Death of the West by Pat Buchanan (Whites will be mixed out by 2100. I’m helping!)
• Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt (Hierarchies deform every aspect of our lives.)
• The Gervais Principle by Venkatesh Rao (Sheep led by sociopaths is a universal pattern.)
• How Civilizations Die by David Goldman (Birth rate collapse is leading us to war.)
• Natural Causes by Barbara Ehrenreich (Giving the old chemo for slow-killing cancer is idiotic.)
• River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins (Suffering and scarcity are built into the system.)
• Screen Schooled by Joe Clement (Social media is Roald Dahl’s “Television” on steroids.)
• Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis (Big Tech is more powerful than most governments.)
• Untrue by Wednesday Martin (Monogamy is a recent invention in our evolutionary timeline.)

History Books

(I’m interested in the things they won’t teach you at school. There’s at least two sides to any story.)

• The Age of Entitlement by Christopher Caldwell (American cultural decay from 1964 to 2015.)
• A History of Hinduism by Gagan Deep Bakshi (Reblooming after a millennium suppressed.)
• Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis (50 million forgotten murders.)
• Montaillou by Emmanuel Ladurie (Based on actual interviews with medieval peasants.)
• A Republic, Not an Empire by Pat Buchanan (U.S. history from a pre-WW1 point of view.)
• The Shadow of the Great Game by Narendra Sarila (Pakistan’s Cold War origins.)
• The Unnecessary War by Pat Buchanan (Unredacted analysis of the world wars.)
• Varna, Jati, Caste by Rajiv Malhotra (The “caste system” is mostly a British invention.)

Novels

• The Long Walk by Stephen King (Metaphor for any competition where most participants lose.)
• Microserfs by Douglas Coupland (A highly-paid office drone is still an office drone.)
• Pet Sematary by Stephen King (Death makes a mockery of everything.)
• The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (Hypnotic in its intensity.)
• Submission by Michel Houellebecq (Alternate timeline where Hillary won in 2016.)
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Surreal reflections on white imperialism.)
• The Witches by Roald Dahl (A boy and his grandmother against the bankers.)

Short Stories

• “American Gold Mine” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Any professional can relate.)
• “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin (You can’t outsmart physics.)
• “Fleep” by Jason Shiga (If you lose your memories, are you still the same person?)
• “Frost and Fire” by Ray Bradbury (Man that is born of a woman is of few days.)
• “A Full Life” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Society peaked decades ago. It’s all downhill from here.)
• “Golden” by Nick Bostrom (Natural selection makes the world a horror.)
• “A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka (The best gifts find the fewest admirers.)
• “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison (Allegory for Judeo-Christian God.)
• “To Build a Fire” by Jack London (One is always only a few mistakes from death.)
• “Yellow Card Man” by Paolo Bacigalupi (In the end, you’re alone.)

Comic Books

• Amar Chitra Katha by Anant Pai (Immortal wisdom from better times. Why I’m a Hindu.)
• Buddha by Osamu Tezuka (Trying and failing to make sense of life.)
• The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller (You have free will. It’s never too late to be a hero.)
• Here by Richard McGuire (100 years from now, nobody will care that you existed.)
• Invincible by Robert Kirkman (Thrilling visions of post-racial multilateralism. Why fight?)
• Open Borders by Bryan Caplan (The non-Islamic world is one big family. Let’s all mingle!)
• Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy (Be born, mate, die. There’s nothing else to do.)
• The Sandman by Neil Gaiman (Refusing to grow can be fatal. Ironically, Gaiman is a rapist.)
• Swamp Thing by Alan Moore (It’s better to be a plant than an animal.)
• Watchmen by Alan Moore (Our leaders are even more misguided than we are.)

Click the pictures!

Movies

• Angel’s Egg by Mamoru Oshii (Borrowed time, borrowed eyes, borrowed world.)
• Chhaava by Laxman Utekar (Heralds a Hindu revival a thousand years in the making.)
• Devi by Satyajit Ray (When men make war, it’s always women and children who suffer.)
• Don Juan DeMarco by Jeremy Leven (Living without illusions is a fast track to depression.)
• Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner by Stanley Kramer (Still radical 60 years later, sadly.)
• Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock (Perfectly captures disorientation. San Francisco at its prettiest.)
• Watership Down by Martin Rosen (Moving depiction of the universal “will to live”.)

(Pro tip: You can use Steam Link to stream pirated movies from your desktop to your TV.)

Video Games

• Arctic Eggs (Masterclass in setting and mood. You’re no hero. You’re poor and desperate.)
• The Case of the Golden Idol (I’ve never seen Hinduism treated with such respect before.)
• Grand Theft Auto V (Easily the best open-world game ever made. Absurdly good story.)
• Hotline Miami (With proper visibility, one man can defeat a hundred. Killer soundtrack.)
• Little Inferno (Our lives are brief candles and every day we burn a little more. No going back.)
• Poker Night at the Inventory (All the fun of gambling but without the addiction and shame!)
• The Roottrees are Dead (Reliving 1990s America and the joy of pre-social media Internet.)
• Sleeping Dogs (Grand Theft Auto meets Hong Kong cinema. The triad life is the life for me.)
• Spelunky 2 (Randomly generated 2D platformer – endless variety and perfect feel.)

Background

Education

Click the pictures!

Political Views

I’m a U.S.-born Hindu. I vote Democrat (peer pressure), but I’m pretty centrist. Vivek is my hero.

I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area most of my life and got rich during the COVID tech boom. Long-term, I expect to move to Texas and later retire to India. (I love my people. We are the future.)

We seem to be leaving an era of globalization and connectivity for one of war and atomization. Much suffering lies ahead. Lay low and avoid making unnecessary enemies.