Hello everyone,
Thank you so much for joining me.
I have added 2 podcast episodes, 1 post, and 2 predictions. Check the new podcast intro music debuting on the Clark Goes There episode. It was created by Chris Hoogewerff who I also had on the show and I think it sounds awesome. Want some music produced or have him perform a live show? Book him.
For all my posts and predictions I have cross posted them on other websites so you can comment on them. Argue with me, tell me I'm wrong. If I think you have a point, your response will be linked on no gradient.
Podcast
- Clark Goes There
- You can't make this up, a Marxist who attempted to join the United States Marine Corps. Clark is a friend from high school and one of the most interesting people I know. He has thoughts on everything. Sit down, strap in, and get blasted by the Clark experience as he talks movies and tv, the Marines, Marxism, politics, and religion. Like I said, he goes there.
- "The last Marxist that went through the Marine Corps was Lee Harvey Oswald. So I definitely tried to keep that silent."
- "Fantasy was part of my religion, literally. I remember going to church down at St. Francis and Jesus Christ just dying on that cross, that's not a hero I wanna read about. I wanna read about the dark elf Drizzt Do’Urden, fighting vampires and demons and all sorts of stuff. "
- Chris Hoogewerff on Quitting his Job and Lifting Off
- In a 50 dollar a month rental studio, Chris Hoogewerff talks quitting his day job to pour himself into music. This guy has a calmness and a realness we can all learn from. In the bay area and need a musician? Book him.
- "I really do believe that if more people did what they wanted to be doing in their lives, that we’d have a whole lot less to worry about as a society. I think it's not people who are doing what they love to do every day who are burning the world down."
- "If you're sitting at a desk, cashing a good paycheck every month doing something you don't wanna do, and you do have flexibility financially, then it just seems crazy to keep doing that, because there's so little certainty with everything else. At least you can have certainty in the fact that you're trying something that you wanna be doing."
Posts
Predictions
Podcast Quotes & New Posts
Clark Goes There
2:15 Jazz is my philosophy that I hold towards unimportant TV shows and movies.
7:00 Star Wars is famous in the novels for having competing writers that would shit on each other.
11:30 BET is the worst offender. They can turn a 90 minute movie into three hours of block time.
12:56 A criticism that I get a lot, and a lot of people who speed read is can you retain it? Well short answer is absolutely not. I have no idea what's going on.
13:00 Let's say you're watching a really bad Bruce Willis movie, i.e. most Bruce Willis movies. You're not really watching because he's saving a child from some bad government agents. But if you see that throat rip, you're getting the experience.
16:30 This media is as important to me as it is to everybody else. I wouldn't watch it if I didn't hear anything about it from other people.
22:15 Politics is the most important thing in any discussion. Everything else is distracting, maybe minus personal relationships.
23:00 I hope Hollywood just implodes on itself. I'll be able to catch up on my watchlist, and I'll be able to read more important things like philosophy and become a learned man.
25:00 Repetition is fine as long as it's fresh.
25:30 I'll be talking about Captain America until the next Thor movie comes out. I'll be talking about Thor until Infinity War war comes out. I'll be talking about Infinity War until they repeat the whole franchise with Avengers one.
27:30 Actors back then generally sucked at their job. We didn't have any Daniel Day Lewis's in the 1950s.
30:00 On virtually every point of, all the check marks. I was artificially trying to fill all those marks.
31:30 Southern California, not a lot of hicks or rednecks to burn Qurans with so you gotta hide yourself. But you can be proud of how Republican you are amidst all the Democrats. Because you see you're special. You're Republican. You're important. Everybody else, they're just stupid. Those academics, those poets, virtually every person, every artist, everything that doesn't have to do with the CMAs, they're all stupid.
32:30 That's also why I would never be able to be a Republican is my skepticism. One big pill I was never able to swallow was, aside from country music, religion. That was a really big problem and I guess I floated to Dungeons and Dragons, Forgotten Realms novels, fantasy.
33:30 The next day she asked me where were you at mass? And I said I walked home. I think she would have given me detention if I had lied to her.
34:00 Fantasy was part of my religion. I remember going to church down at St. Francis and Jesus Christ just dying on that cross, that's not a hero I wanna read about. I wanna read about the dark elf Drizzt Do’Urden, fighting vampires and demons and all sorts of stuff.
34:30 I remember always reading a lot of Warhammer. It's a disgusting franchise that everybody should stay away from. Warhammer's a drug. Stay away from it. Keep your children away.
35:00 I remember asking my mom if it was okay if I worshiped Sigmar, the Hammer God of humanity in church and everybody's like excuse me? Like what the fuck? She was just like okay well my kids fucked up, whatever. I just realized no you're not allowed to do that.
35:30 I just wanna put on the record, I have never had a neckbeard ever.
37:00 I went to confirmation class eventually because mom thinks Satan's come into the house. That made me despise all of religion even more.
37:15 If you wanna turn a kid off of religion, just make him keep going to church, attend a confirmation, make him read the Bible.
37:30 Who were the Israelites to kill all those Canaanites. They were living there. They were having fun.
38:15 Unforgivable. I shouldn't be talking about anything until I've finished it. Because that last line of Revelations is really gonna cinch everything together.
39:00 I think I was born Marxist. It sounds crazy, but I think I was born with this innate thing. Maybe all the homeless people aren't really to blame for all their problems and I'm just looking at all this wealth that I was enjoying and we could easily, easily redistribute all this. That the current mode of distribution is fucked.
39:30 You're either Marxist or you're okay with the status quo, or you're Republican.
41:30 Yeah because as soon as you bring up the word liberal, they'll start frothing at the mouth and going Clinton's a whore.
42:00 A lot of the sins are bipartisan.
42:30 It is a bipartisan system and under its current form, it can't be anything else. Third parties only take away votes from those other two. So yeah fuck you Avery Johnson.
44:00 It invoked some self realization. There wasn't one particular event. There wasn't "oh I got it, I figured it out." Shrooms is a bit like that but what else? It was gradual like most other things.
44:30 I lived with a Slovenian communist, possibly even anarchist, and I'm supposed to hate this guy. Just according to all the rules. This guy represents everything I hate except I still love The Clash and The Ramones. I felt like we shared so much in common. I loved all the same things he did, except politics.
45:30 I mean we say neo-Nazi, and they've been dead for not even as long. But neo-confederates should have been used 100 years ago.
47:30 After college, I did seek a commission in the Marine Corps and I went to Quantico, Virginia, stuck in there for about five weeks.
48:30 I really do think that there are some things about America that are maybe worth sticking up for, worth fighting for.
49:00 America stands for something, it can be great. It can be awesome. I think it gets progressively worse. I guess with a Marine commission under my belt, I mean I'm not exactly feeling anything for the Taliban. I have no issues with who we're fighting. I support that all the way. I think that would be a good jumping off point.
50:00 No you'd have to do 100 sit ups, which is what anybody can do. The fattest kid in the whole thing can do that, that's not a problem.
50:30 I'll say one thing about the Marine Corps, they don't take any bullshit.
50:45 I was there for four days with more hair than anybody else. It was embarrassing.
53:00 Always have extra pairs of everything because there's a gremlin that steals all of your shit in boot camp and in OCS.
53:30 They'll empty your box out in front of everybody. You'll try to retrieve all your belongings. Everything.
54:00 Oh shit tons of trouble. I got into more trouble I think...I was the second shittiest person in the platoon.
54:30 There was a guy I think in the next platoon who just sat down and said I'm not moving. That took a lot of guts. There's eight gunnery sergeants just desecrating this guy. Just screaming. He's covered in spit. It's a cocoon.
55:00 And they always made that distinction how much better you had it than the guys in basic, the enlisted guys. In fact, the first thing they give you is a stool, the idea is enlisted sit on the ground, you get to sit on the stool, because you're an officer and you get that courtesy.
56:00 So there's only three places where marines are made. You've got Quantico, which is where I went for officer candidates school. Then there is Parris Island if you're born east of the Mississippi and San Diego if you’re born west of the Mississippi.
58:00 You have enough shitheads that get into junior officer status in the military and the drill instructors only see so much. You see 'em when the lights are out, how that person acts, and so it is good to check that person. If there is a fucking psychopath who can just yell out ditties correctly and march well, he can get through the filter and he shouldn't be there. Maybe there is a reason to talk shit about that person and report that person for being a shit head, like me.
58:30 I remember I lost my temper with a gunnery sergeant. He did see a little bit of anger in me, reported me to a colonel. I was put on probation. I was one of only two guys in my entire platoon to be put on probation.
59:30 The last Marxist that went through the Marine Corps was Lee Harvey Oswald. So I definitely tried to keep that silent.
1:00:30 I would keep telling myself “yeah I'm fucking up but I'm just gonna stick with it.” They call it going internal, when you start to question yourself and you get silent and you just try to compose yourself and that's when you fail. As soon as you see someone going internal you tell 'em to snap out of it. Just keep your head in the game, don't think about anything, just keep with it.
1:01:00 I was always internal since ever since I was a kid. I've always been “okay did I do that thing right?” This is going back to maybe some insecurities or something like that. No trauma, just the way I was. I would always, “did I talk to that girl? Did I say anything stupid? Does she think I'm stupid?“
1:02:00 Getting yelled at by a colonel, that was pretty fucking crazy. It didn't help that I didn't like the colonel as a person. Just looking at him kind of pissed me off. I just wondered how are you in charge? But that's the way it is. And that's the other thing I learned that people don't look exactly like you expect them to.
1:04:30 Am I willing to bend? I am. I'm obviously there. I'm ready to take shit from people. And in fact, I've never been shy of taking orders, but for me personally, it was giving orders. That was what broke me in the end, becoming candidate platoon commander. I was in charge of 60 other guys. No one would listen to anything I said even though I was in charge. I didn't know how to deliver orders. I didn't know where we were headed. I didn't know what time chow was. I didn't know anything.
1:07:00 You were given a sheet of paper and you’d have a multiple choice, “what do you wanna do right now?” Oh none, no prisoners of war. Is that like Jolly Roger on your pirate ship? What if they do surrender? What if this is a civilian? Geneva Convention, Article I. You gotta take prisoners.
1:08:30 It's a tough decision. But at the same time, so I'm asking it's never okay, this is my liberal Forgotten Realms, Dungeons and Dragons, paladin talking. I'm not gonna kill someone who's surrendering, but they tell you despite any Geneva Conventions or any bullshit, this is expeditionary warfare. We don't have time to take prisoners sometimes. So I don't know, is it justified? I would question myself but asking that question out loud in front of the entire platoon put me on the radar.
1:10:30 There was a guy who stuttered a lot. He had it pretty bad. He gave up the first day you could.
1:11:30 I still feel terrible about it. I know you're supposed to derive some sort of “oh you got a benefit out of this. This is a good experience.” Except I could have done without it. It's just another doubt that's just been planted in my mind for every other sort of leadership.
1:13:00 I could have given up the week I did, or I could have stuck through until they actually kick you out.
1:14:00 Yeah no of course, chivalry, honor, that does ... I sound like an asshole, it does ruin a lot of things. Honor is something that does ruin, Palestine comes to mind. Honor killings. You might kill your sister because she slept with someone out of wedlock.
1:17:30 The greatest argument to communism as we know it is that capitalism has never become as bad as they say it is. It's never gotten to the point where the whole working class crumbles down, and is just starving to death. It’s never gotten bad enough.
1:18:30 You got stages of human civilization. First stage is what you would call primitive communism. You're an illiterate tribe, nomadic, and say you go a stone tool, you share that tool with the rest of the tribe, for the good of the tribe. That tool doesn't really mean anything to you if you're not using it. That's primitive communism. As soon as you encounter agriculture, land becomes important. You don't need to hunt everywhere and forage for berries and stuff because of course as soon as you absorb all the berries and the prey you have to move. That's why they were nomadic. But as soon as you get agriculture, all of a sudden land, that form of capital becomes really important, and then you have this whole patriarchy that starts and you have inheritance and all these laws.
1:20:00 What comes next is wealth becomes more and more concentrated. You have an empire eventually, you enslave other people and there's all sorts of ways it can happen. It's happened all over the world. This is your Persia, your Greek city states, your ancient realm, Babylon, everybody.
1:20:30 The monarch himself isn't powerful. He's only as powerful as the land owners let him.
1:21:00 You appease your aristocrats and they support you. That's all you need. And of course you got God on your side.
1:22:00 Communism is about the abolition of government. And these socialist states give all their power to this government that doesn’t just abuse their power, they are unable to wield it properly. The Great leap Forward, what happened to Vietnam after the North Vietnamese won, you got these famines because sharecropping doesn't work.
1:23:30 America left and we half-assedly tried to support the south without any American forces physically being there and it failed. It failed big time.
1:24:30 Maybe I'm not a Marxist at all. Maybe I'm just whatever benefits everybody.
1:26:00 Say that you got all the food and all the shelter you needed, all the happiness you needed, you could just spend all your time building up your personal relationships and absorbing really shit Planet of the Apes '70s TV shows. That's what I'm hoping except what I'd like to think is those innovators would innovate as an art by themselves, except can I guarantee that?
1:27:00 As far as the economy is concerned, if I die today, my impact would be nothing. I don't create anything.
1:28:30 If I call in sick because I'm hungover or something like that, I am putting more stress on the others. I never call in sick.
1:29:30 It is hard to rectify my two views on the world. How do I care about my fellow worker and despise what we're working for.
1:30:30 People do kill themselves just going to work. Your work just is killing you very slowly.
1:31:00 I seriously understand why some people would rather die than go to work.
1:34:30 You speed read that shit. You just go find the good tidbits. Maybe a children's story has a certain amount of cultural capital. You gotta read it even though it's a children's god damn book.
1:35:30 It's embarrassing how I didn't really read a lot of Stephen King beforehand.
1:45:00 No, if Yoda had confronted Jar Jar instead of Count Dooku, whoever the fuck Count Dooku is at the end of Episode II, you would have two CGI monsters just fighting each other, that would have been pretty lame. But that also would have been great. What if Jar Jar just sheds all the silliness and just becomes all fucking serious and dark.
Chris Hoogewerff on Quitting his Job and Lifting Off
5:00 The public schools do a really good job trying to make all the instruments no one actually wants to play the first ones they pick up. No offense to the flutes, clarinets, and the French horns, but otherwise, everybody would be playing saxophone, trumpet, guitar.
5:50 I decided I wanted to switch, and I picked up the sax over Christmas break, and I just brought that to my band class when we came back. I didn't ever really talk to the instructor. I just carried that one instead of the clarinet, switched seats, and that was my first memory really enjoying the music.
6:15 The only serious practice I did was to just play along with the radio, and I would do that for hours, never really working on the things that I should have been.
6:35 When I decided I wanted to make a career out of this, and make this what I do with my life, I really made the decision that it's time to actually do the work, not just do the fun things that I like to do that are in my comfort zone.
8:15 I've just started saying, “No, I play music.”.
10:30 It just jumped out at me, it hit me in the face that I wanted to play music. I didn't wanna spend time doing other things.
12:45 I got so sucked into that. We did things like businessman competitions, and we were in the news, and it felt like we were doing something super cool, but honestly, we hardly made any transactions.
21:05 I didn't really care about the outcome anymore... It was more about getting through the day to day at that point, than trying to see this app and this company through, and I think that was a big red flag for me.
27:15 I think we set expectations for a culture that we wanted...we wanted to work on projects that deserved to exist in the world. We wanted to have meaningful work. I think I'll take credit for that.
29:50 I don't wanna get too much into it, but generally it means, most of my body hurts most of the time.
31:45 It was around the same time that I started developing this really strong drive to play music, and to play music more and make that a bigger part of my life. And so I just didn't have time to do my full time job and do it well.
32:55 I wanted to continue working. I wanted to play music. I didn't actually have the expectation that music was gonna be something I'd be doing full time though.
34:25 I was a little crazy about it. I think I made a giant thing of chilli once a week, and that's all I ate.
35:20 And so it was just easy for me to, instead of putting most of my paycheck away into paying off debts, I'd just put in the bank and tuck it away. That became my safety net. I didn't have to have an income source when I quit my job.
35:45 My expectations were that I would quit, come close to running out of my money, and then look for a real job again.
37:25 Major milestones for my musical career happened this summer. And these big music festivals. We played at the Fillmore in San Francisco. Just all these things that I wouldn't have dreamed of doing so quickly.
38:35 I had just started going to as many of the jam sessions, and as much of the music scene as I could. These are like networking events that actually, are worthwhile.
39:25 One of the musicians in the Afrolicious family was at this jam session and they were looking for a horn player around the same time, and it just kind of worked out. It was just one of those putting myself in the right place at the right time kind of situations.
43:45 I got into music because, what really compelled me to do it, to invest my life into it, is seeing the way it can impact people's lives, and how you can make people feel things so much more dramatically than anything else I've seen.
46:25 We had these conversations together about what I wanted to be doing with my time, with my life, with our time, it was never really a question. It was just do what you want, and we'll figure it out. That was a huge help to have somebody else with the idea, or the delusion that it was okay to do this.
50:15 I think we're going through a pretty dark time right now.
50:25 Politically, environmentally, socially, there's a lot of darkness out there in the world right now, and it's been pretty tough for me to deal with that...And so it seems crazy not to do something like this at this point, because I feel that there's so little certainty about anything anyways right now, that why wouldn't you try to do what you love.
51:00 I was in a really fortunate, and privileged position to be able to quit my job and do something like this, but there's a lot of people who have kids that are depending on them, or are paycheck to paycheck, and it's a much more challenging thing for me to wrap my head around that. If that were the case, I think it would have probably been a lot different for me.
51:30 If you're sitting at a desk, cashing a good paycheck every month doing something you don't wanna do, and you do have flexibility, financially then it just seems crazy to keep doing that, because there's so little certainty with everything else. At least you can have certainty in the fact that you're trying something that you wanna be doing.
52:55 I really do believe that if more people did what they wanted to be doing in their lives, that we’d have a whole lot less to worry about as a society. I think it's not people who are doing what they love to do every day who are burning the world down.
53:15 If we had enough people just living life how they wanted to, spending time how they wanted to, we'd be living in a much different place.
Snap Inc., one of the highest valued tech IPOs of the last decade, is built on cloud infrastructure from Amazon and Google. It has committed $2 billion to Google Cloud Services and $1 billion to Amazon Web Services over the next five years. This is a tech company that has outsourced a large portion of their tech and it makes me fear for the future of the internet. I don’t blame Snap at all, Google Cloud and AWS are excellent products that has allowed Snap to reach millions of users without significant up front costs associated with building out an entire backend infrastructure form scratch. It is also very possible that like Dropbox, Snapchat will wean themselves off an external infrastructure and take it all in house. But I suspect that over the course of the next decade it will become increasingly difficult from both a technological and cost perspective for companies to build their own infrastructure that can compete with Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure. On top of this, solutions like Google’s Firebase, which I expect to become even more popular and even more advanced, ensure the switching costs are even greater because these types of solutions supply more than just computing primitives like storage or computation. These types of solutions force your software to comply with a very specific API, making switching infrastructure even more difficult. Does this mean we will be left with three companies that control the vast majority of internet traffic? I think yes. Though there are other companies like Cloudflare that are increasingly expanding their infrastructure, economies of scale and the moment behind Google, Amazon, and Microsoft make me think this game is already over. The only way unseat these behemoths is to change the game. Maybe it's blockchain, maybe it's something else. One thing is for sure, it's a brave new world.
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