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Marcus's Friends and Family Update #6

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Welcome to Friends and Family Update #6!
"The body adjusts itself to the condition of the soul."
"Never trust a thought that occurs to you indoors."
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Table of contents

🧠Thoughts

I love cognitive dissonance, the ability to hold two opposing ideas. Especially within identity. E.g. the business monk. Love to hate Bodhisattva. Love is not the opposite of love. Bondsman.
Since working more with non-duality and Michael Taft, I've been contemplating a lot how much of personality is constructed, that if we really aren't a bunch of threads, memories wrapped in biological processes, how can we rewrite our stories to serve us.
The Optimist — Shy, a comic by Tom Pappalardo: shyness as a coward's version of vanity

🛟ACALI

The Acali experiment
This is the Acali. It was an experiment to prove that humans were innately tribal.
In 1967, an Argentinian professor thought he could prove humanity's inherent racism by putting 10 people from different ethnicities and political beliefs into one small raft and letting them drift across the ocean.
What he instead found was the innate ability all humans have to bond. When I reflect on some of the best experiences of my life, what I would class as the best months of my life, they normally have these characteristics:
What he found largely lines up with my own experiences I've had. That a small group of people who otherwise have no connections, put together to live and work, will naturally form strong bonds. I have experienced this a number of times in my life:
  1. In San Francisco 2023 with 20 of the most cracked uq students (read the partially completed article I wrote here).
  2. In Madeira in which I lived for 4 weeks at a Coworking house and going hiking almost every day.
  3. In Network School which I've lived for the last 2 months.
📷 SF 2023 & Madeira photos coming soon

🏝️Network School

NS is an experiment by the ex CTO of Coinbase Balaji to see if you can create a physical printout space of the internet. Built around 4 principles: learn, earn, burn and fun. To me, I went into NS with two goals: secure revenue for our business and gain a few kilos at the gym.
In terms of business goals, we built a functioning platform and secured a few thousand dollars of revenue. Unfortunately we couldn't acquire customers profitably and decided to pivot.
While we played basketball almost every single day, Connor and I have also realised we need to age into Golf. We went to the golf simulator a couple times in NS.
📷 NS food & views coming soon
To live at NS for the rest of my life I need:
  1. $1500 USD / month.
  2. That's 150 people paying me $10 per month, I know 150 people.

🩺Health

Blood health

While at NS I decided to graph every blood test I've ever done. The result was health.rehbock.xyz. A few interesting things of note:
Looking into what causes high SHBG was eye-opening. Given that I've skipped breakfast every day for almost the last 5 years I now understand that I've been unintentionally nerfing my hormonal health by not eating enough for the last 5 years.
Using Claude to transcribe and create the dashboard was pretty easy — the most annoying part was going into my gov and downloading every result.

Gym progress

After my first year of working out I'd gained about 10kgs. I remember the first time going to the gym seeing 63kg on the scale and thinking damn I've gained weight. Even working at a gym didn't really make much difference to my training due to inadequately eating. Future girlfriends take note I must be fed to maintain this new cuddliness.
  1. Since starting Jiu Jitsu at the start of the year I realised that was borderline victim weight. It gave me sufficient motivation to actually push to carry more weight on my frame.
  2. Over the last 6 years of going to the gym. For almost 5 of them I was chronically undereating, this only recently discovered when I calculated my macros (thanks Stefi).
  3. Being at NS was the first time in my adult life where I've had unlimited food, easy access to a gym and strong motivation.
  4. I started NS in April at 75kg and left at 78kg.
  5. Ultimately my gym goal is Daniel Craig in Casino Royale.
  6. Add me on Hevy if you use it.
  7. No leg days were harmed in the making of this video.

Peptides

I started experimenting with BPC-157, TB500 and GHK-Cu. I definitely think BPC and TB500 work for recovery and increased endurance, insert photo of Connor passed out after playing basketball. Technically this also means I've lost my natty status. I've accepted this and internalised it given that I will be hopping on TRT as soon as I'm 35 and my T levels start declining. The next peptides I'm most interested in trying are: Enclomiphene for muscle growth, Epithalon and Pinealon for sleep improvements and CJC + DAC.
For the first week before injecting I would use this Napoleon edit to hype myself up every night.
Watch this TBPN episode between Martin Shkreli and Max Marchione if interested in the different perspectives on peptides. You can view the conversation as an abstract battle between the old entrenched pharmaceutical industrial complex and the newer wave of preventive focused medicine.

Health is wealth

Back around 2022/23 I was building an entire identity around nature tech / startups as a narrative to sell to employers. More so I was trying to sell it to myself. Right now I feel like I'm going through the same journey with healthcare. Except I feel like I don't need to sell it to myself. I feel like every job I've had that shaped me had something to do with either healthcare or nature:
I really resonate with making people healthier, I don't know if I'll work in healthcare forever, but I like that it actually matters. It's real. Unlike what I could be doing at other companies such as A/B testing software that helps people tick off things. I'd be trapped working on some screen 12 clicks deep for the first 2-3 years of my career. But life is long, I might end up there someday.
What I've realised is that health is wealth. "A healthy man wants many things, a sick man wants only one."

🌊Anti-fragility and intransigence

Almost all of the best people I know have one thing in common: the ability to interpret the negatives as opportunities. Calm seas never made good sailors. Unless problems affect the health of yourself, your family or friends, they probably really are just social / hierarchy problems and can be fixed through adjusting your perspective rather than acting. Sometimes the easiest way to solve a problem is simply to let it go.
"Anger is a burning stone you hold onto while waiting to throw at someone else."
— The Buddha
Recently I encountered a rather stressful situation due to my own lack of foresight, my ESTA to transit through LAX on my way to Peru didn't come through in time.

🤍Love is infinite

I've had many meditation sessions where I've really tried to investigate what is at the base of existence. I've found many times the same thing: a growing white light of love that is perpetual, ever expanding and self-evident. Love only begets more love.

🏔️Peru

On our last day in Peru we went to the 26th best restaurant in the world. It was a gastronomical experience. In terms of food I would say it's an 8/10. A unique experience you can't get elsewhere. But it also reminded me that the real value of the night was the connection with family, the conversation and the company.
Currently in Peru just finished hiking the Inca trail to Machu Picchu. It was the first multi day hike I've ever done and I have to say it was the most beautiful and best hike I've ever been on. Day 3 in particular is incredible. You come off the highest point of the mountain and as you descend into the valley you also regain the ability to breathe well, coupled with incredible photos it's an incredible experience.
If I'm being honest, Peru is kinda a shithole apart from the Machu Picchu trail, with a low average GDP per capita, it borders on being a third world country. The main exports are illegal gold, agriculture (cocaine from the Amazon) and tourism.
We had people in our group, all Americans. When Americans are not fat or stupid they are incredible people. There was a family of 4, the patriarch of which was this great guy. A urologist by trade he had some interesting things to say about modern medicine. In fact he found preventive medicine "totally boring." As a surgeon he said his favourite disease to treat was kidney cancer, because the surgery was generally successful but had real risks of something going wrong. Paradoxically those closest to death are normally the happiest people you'll meet, I think because they have great perspective on how bad things can get. It's similar to returning home to Australia after travelling to a third world country.
He was a hunter from a young age and made a great argument that hunters are actually all animal lovers, he showed me this infographic of revenue generated from hunting vs photography tourism. He had travelled all over the world on hunting trips, from the Tian Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan, the Kruger in SA, NZ. I've never really had a bucket list but I think I'm adding a few things to it: having children, owning a homestead, doing a walk and talk, and going on a hunting trip in NZ. Apparently the best hunting in the world is in NZ. It made me think about how things would be if I had been born differently.
"The greater the god complex of your surgeon, the safer you are."
Almost all doctors are competitive, surgeons especially so. I do think Australians (especially Queenslanders) are very similar to American southerners in a lot of ways — QLD is the Texas of Australia.
Highly recommend, our porters in particular were amazing. They would carry 25kg of gear and essentially run the trail. Our tour guide Joseph would entertain us at night with stories from his friend who worked for the cartels in the Amazon, carrying coca leaves.
I bought an alpaca Beanie which complements the green theme I'm going for. Connor recently asked me why green is now my favourite colour. This hex code in particular is quite satisfying to wear.
📷 Machu Picchu & alpaca beanie photos coming soon

♟️Finite and infinite games

There is no late game content. "XQC" said this on a stream once and it makes sense. The capitalist dream is to become a billionaire but that's not my dream. I don't want to end up monetarily rich but surrounded by acquaintances and yes men.
In fact one of my anti-visions is Jeff Bezos ordering bottle service at St Barths (it seems so devoid of meaning and pointless to be surrounded by people who are only there to leech).
My entrepreneur heroes include: Derek Sivers, Naval, Sam Ovens, Chris Williamson, Pieter Levels, Hormozi.
I remember once I told the president of the finance and investment society at uq, I'm not monetarily ambitious but I am personally ambitious. What I mean by that is that I want to be experientially and relationship rich. I already feel incredibly blessed that I am ahead of most people in both of these regards.
My four homes
SF, Singapore, Sydney, Japan. SF and Singapore are for working, Sydney and Japan are for enjoying.
My thesis is product doesn't really matter anymore, build something everyone needs on a huge TAM, add some AI features others haven't built yet. Spend 10x the time on marketing as you do on product. Marketing is literally all that matters now that it's 10x cheaper to build. As Derek Sivers says: Ideas are only a multiplier for execution. If I can get 150 people paying me $10 per month USD, I am financially free at NS.
I keep coming back to: I need 5000 people paying me $10 USD per month to unlock my dream life. That's roughly 10m views and I'm done.

🎯Health goals

📺What I've been watching

Anime: JJK, Solo Levelling, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime.
Movies: Sinners, Wuthering Heights, that Christopher Walken movie, Bluey, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

💭Quotes I keep coming back to

"The more you complain, the worse your model of reality."
"The greater the outward show, the greater the inward poverty."
"A healthy man wants many things, a sick man wants only one."
"There is no late game content."
— XQC
"I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly."
— Paul Graham

🔮Looking ahead

The different levels of how Claude thinks
That's all for now! Looking forward to sharing more adventures in the next update.

— Marcus