I use the Internet based on a set of principles. These principles are based on concepts of ownership, autonomous sovereignty of my property, and democracy. When I purchase a product in this democracy, I own that product, and am free to do with it what I like within the laws that protect the rights of others from harm. This means the intended purpose or use of a product I buy is entirely up to me (governed by well-principled laws) once I have paid for it, not to the person who sold it to me. This means that every byte of memory, every block of storage, every single clock cycle that my computer generates belongs to me. I paid for the hardware, and I paid for the electricity that feeds it. The seller of the computer forfeits all rights to those things once they receive my money, because that is how the exchange of goods for money works. This is why I won’t ever own a computer made by Apple, because they don’t share this philosophy. An Apple product is always owned by Apple; they only give you the right to use it as they see fit. It’s also why I refuse to run Microsoft Windows, as Microsoft appropriates some of my clock cycles, memory, and drive storage for their own purposes, attempting to do so without my knowledge or explicit consent, and only gives me the right to use their software under their terms and conditions. It is also why I don’t use proprietary closed source software that only give me the right to use that software under certain terms and conditions. I only run Linux and open source software, and generally consent to the use of clock cycles, drive storage, and memory to that which benefits the community because ultimately that also benefits me and contributes to improvements in the open source software that I like to use. I have nothing against Microsoft per se, just that their terms of agreement are not congruent with my own principles.

A common theme among fans of Star Trek is the idea of living in a Star Trek utopia, and discussing ways of how we are to achieve this. Some go on to describe a harmonious society, perhaps with communist undertones, and with the expectation that we should all should just have respect for all life, apply science wisely, and pursue principles of justice, fairness, and reason. Whenever I see something like this, I must immediately assume either this person doesn’t really understand the fundamental lesson of Star Trek, or, if they do, they are purposely twisting its meaning towards a political agenda. I prefer to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and go with the former, because there’s not many who have watched as much Star Trek as I have.

Well, it’s that time of year again. Time to reflect on the things I thought were important last year, and see what I got right, and what I got wrong. If you want to see my new year’s post from 2023, you can click here.

After reading and reflecting on my resolutions for 2023, I noticed a trend. Things that required positive changes in my habits, such as doing those things to maintain good physical and mental health, or taking fewer pictures with more care, were doable. Commitment to doing specific tasks, such as more camping and canoeing or spending more time on improving my piano skills, were not resolutions I stuck to, and I believe it’s because of the first one, which was focusing on maintaining good physical and mental health. I found that, by focusing on things such as cutting out alcohol, getting 8 hours of sleep each night, and enjoying the benefits of a clean diet free of excess salt and sugar, along with the mental health benefits of distancing myself from social media, my mind was able to come into focus and I was able to recognize the things that were really important in my life in the moment. So I opted to sacrifice my weekends to go after the opportunities to work overtime whenever I could in order to more quickly shed my debt load and build my pension upon fully understanding how short life really is; making sacrifices today to improve things for myself and my family in the future. Clean living gave me the stamina to work a lot of overtime, as well as the discipline to not buy much of anything throughout the year, and hopefully will permit me to enjoy a longer, more enjoyable retirement doing all the things I truly enjoy.

In this the end of the year of 2023, I bought a brand new DVD box set from Wal-Mart of a new television series. This was Star Trek: Picard, which exists because of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show that first aired on September 28, 1987. Star Trek: Picard ended on April 20, 2023, and on November 25, 2023, I was able to buy all three seasons of this show on DVD mere months after this series ended, and there are some interesting coincidences which help to underscore some of the reasons why I decided to buy this series on DVD and waited to binge watch it until Christmas of 2023.

Spend enough time watching Youtube videos, and you will inevitably come across one that tells you all of the problems in our world today are due to capitalism. They tell us how capitalism is unnatural, and how a “Gift” economy came before capitalist economies. This I do not doubt, given that capitalism is estimated to have started around 500 years ago. Another thing that existed before capitalism is slavery, which dates back to ancient times, because one of the inherent problems of a gift economy is slavery; which, I would argue, is a problem that capitalism solves.