Another long hiatus. Again because of my back going out on me, this time for almost 3 months. Re the title of ‘My Heart Hurts’ See video from Zoe below.

I am finally getting back on my feet which means I can sit at the computer long enough to do my blog.

Some general thoughts. I am finally starting to look at news again a little bit. It is still quite depressing. I follow a channel on YouTube called TLDR which seems to be relatively nonbiased. It is based out of Europe.

There seems to be a worldwide attack by governments on privacy. As usual, politicians are driven by short term thinking, greed, and fear. The attack on privacy by attacking encrypted methods of communication by demanding a back door for governments, or the increasing wave of support for age verification laws, supposedly to “protect the children”, are exacerbated by the fact that the politicians that are pushing for these laws simply do not, as I have said many times before, understand the technology they are attempting to legislate.

I will summarize quite briefly the issues with the laws above.

1. There is no such thing as a ‘safe’ back door for the good guys. Once there is a back door, it WILL get exploited by the bad guys. And incidentally, I consider any government to be the ‘bad’ guys anyway.
2. ‘Child’ protection. Forcing people to upload critical ID documents to prove one’s age is incredibly dangerous for everyone, ESPECIALLY children. There are documented cases of children being exploited as a result of this. And, when you upload the ID documents, who knows how the organization to whom you upload them is going to protect them. Obviously not well considering the issues that have ALREADY arisen.

I am somewhat at a loss as to how one combats this. Especially, in my case, as a purportedly Argentinian national, living in Thailand, I have zero people to whom I have the right to appeal about the stupidity that is going on. Concerns about the EU trying to enact legislation to allow backdoors into encrypted chat applications? Who can I speak with? I certainly can’t try to send an e-mail to a Danish European Parliament member saying you guys are idiots. Nor can I write an angry letter to a Senator from the state of Texas who is trying to pass a law that insists that you should give age verification even for something as innocuous as buying a weather app off of the Google Play store.

I do however encourage anyone who does read this blog to make sure that you do address your concerns to whoever occupies a position of governmental power over you. In cases like mine, I would encourage supporting the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) (which is what I do) because they fight the good fight continually. EDRI (Electronic Digital Rights) is the EFF equivalent in the EU and the EFF is also present in the EU.

Home

https://www.eff.org/issues/eff-europe

https://www.eff.org

This is a YouTube video by a channel called Zoe Languages. I have followed her for some time, not only because she has really good videos about learning languages, she speaks 8 that I am aware of, and she is just a incredible person. However, it is clear to me that she was going through some personal problems recently, and this is her video about what to do ‘when your heart is tired’. It literally brought me to tears each time I’ve watched it. I am hoping that it is going to give me some inspiration to get out of the slump that I have found myself in for quite some time. It certainly is worth the 9 minutes it took to watch it.

I am also trying to look at more investment stuff. The last week or so has been disastrous for the value of my portfolio 😅, but I am taking it in stride, I hope. I got a newsletter from an investment channel on YouTube (Ryne Williams) that was quite germane. It talked about looking at the long term and not getting into a panic about what happens in the short term. In addition, I stay in contact with the one or two people that I talk with about investing. I have to keep reminding myself that this is a long term game, not a short term boondoggle.

A close friend has opened my eyes to the concept of day trading.

Don’t everybody get their undergarments in a wad about this. I am well aware of the dangers. I have no intention of risking the majority of my nest egg doing this, however I think this is something that I MIGHT be able to do. My plan would only be to trade for a couple of hours a day between 6:00 and 8:00 PM Thailand time and only work with a fairly small amount of capital. There is an in-depth trading course that I would take, and a simulator that I would try to use for at least 90 days before actually trying to operate with real funds.

The simulator would be to verify that my training has actually taken, and I am capable of implementing it real time. My biggest fear is that I am not what I commonly think of as a rapid thinker. And the way day trading works (in a nutshell) is to look at whatever stocks are volatile on a given day, apply a number of parameters, look at the chart for that stock, apply technical analysis, and be able to make a decision on buying and then selling within an extremely short period of time usually less than 5 minutes, and sometimes in seconds.

If the simulator shows I can do that consistently, I’ll give it a shot. And if not, I will bow out. 😊. But I want to get some other things in my life a little more settled before trying this.

I have been hanging around my condo in Pattaya. And I have to say that all in all, I have an extremely good life. I’m in a place that I like, and a condo that I’m extremely fond of, surrounded by a small number of people who truly look out for me and care about me. I am extremely fortunate to be able to have all of that in my life.

I invested (I hope) in stem cell therapy last month. I will write next month my opinion about that.

I wish everyone the best and I hope I can get back to posting a little bit more often. I close with a gallery of various pictures from recent travels and daily life. Including my kitchen remodel is finally done. So happy with it. The firm (DSDG) did a great job!