Magic in fiction

The Magicians is the premium mediocre show that feel like a CW product with 1.5x the budget. I'm sure the books are much better.

But its treatment of the mechanics of magic has an engineering slant that's somehow inspiring to me in a hard to describe way.

Here magic is closer to the Clarke-ian sentiment of technology sufficiently mysterious than it does with a Tolkien hand-waving it-just-works kinda way.

I feel like an eastern take on magic-as-engineering is a space that's not at all exploited.

Jungian shadow

Carl drew the map to integrating the psychotic shadow. I haven't taken the step to travel through it.

I've recently completed my beginner study of Enneagram. I'm good enough to use it for map my psyches but not good enough to tell other people's types.

Having also explored childhood traumas, I suspect embracing the dark side (Jung called it integrating your shadow) is the next logical item.

It's the how I dunno about.

Mediums as therapists

A convo recently prompted me to a realization: in the East, people don't go to therapists (the mental variety). Instead they go to fortune tellers.

Fortune tellers exist in many forms. The range go from feng shui consultants to be hardcore mediums.

When the going gets tough, people go to what they know and comfortable with. Unlike therapists who encourage hard thinking-work, fortune tellers offer straightforward solutions.

Their dubious reasonings matter much less than the comfort of confidence imparted onto the client.

Feel like another untapped potential for fictional premise.

On big risky bets

There big bets and then there are risky bets. Big and riskys bets should come few and far between.

I didn't tell anybody but [[https://synthetix.io/][Synthetix]] was turned out to be a good bet for me. I got in early (not quite from the ground) enough such that weekly reward got big enough to cover exorbitant ETH gas fee. Yield was good, the team delivered and now its total holding value sits among the top three in my portfolio.

I hardly dove deep into a new long term high-risk holdings since, even though opportunities were many to be had. Partly because I've learned to not FOMO into hyped assets.

For some reason a new project called SynLev got in my radar. The business proposition looks suspiciously similar to Synthetix which is a slight red flag.

Upon closer inspection there is in fact some sound fundamentals. The basis being that if you believe derivative market volume will exceed spot market volume (which they always do in trad-fi) then SynLev has an almost first-mover advantage.

I personally don't trade derivatives but am fascinated by it and people who do. I don't think I need to trade them to get rich but I know about it enough to be dangerous when it comes to putting money in this project.