The Humble Tycoon

05/10/2026

The YouTube industry advice is to never tell your friends and family about your YouTube channel until it's going strong and has lots of views and subscribers, because your family probably isn't strongly into the subject your videos are about, so they'll check them out from curiosity or just to be supportive, but they won't watch the videos through to the end or like or subscribe or comment, all of which convinces the YouTube computer that your videos are boring and it doesn't recommend them to anyone else. But everything has to start somewhere. So I hope you'll check my videos out if you'll do all that, but if you're not going to watch them to the end, and like, subscribe, and comment, please just wish me luck.
https://www.youtube.com/-Realism

I put a lot of work into my first Rational Realism overview video, McGuyver-ing up a teleprompter system so I could look at the camera while I was talking without having to memorize a one-hour script, etc. But when it was done it seemed like it wasn't visually interesting, though the content I'm talking about is compelling, since it's just camera video of me talking for an hour with a boring background and a couple of minutes of illustrations of what I'm talking about. (I've since renamed this: Rational Realism Overview - Raw Reality Version)

So I tightened up the script and did it all again with an animated Pixar-style avatar of me and a nice TED Talk-style background with a bunch of pics and video clips scattered throughout to illustrate and provide visual variety. (How to Fix The World and Build Paradise - Rational Realism; The Core Policies)

Then I excerpted three shorter videos from that, (knowing that a lot of people aren't going to choose to watch an hour-long video unless they've already liked a shorter one):
a 12-minute video on restoring the life and ecosystem of the Earth,
a 9-minute video on redesigning and modernizing government,
and a 3-minute YouTube Short in portrait mode on eliminating government corruption.

I really do think my system can fix the world, but for now I'd settle for getting enough views to be able to work on this full-time. If you want to compliment, agree, disagree, debate, argue, or call me an idiot, I welcome any comments on my work, here or preferably on YouTube, and I'll respond to all of them unless there's too many for my available time.

Rational Realism is a comprehensive, evidence-based system for understanding reality and designing a better future for humanity. It integrates science, sociology, ethics, governance, infrastructure, and environmental systems into a unified framework aimed at maximizing human health, happiness, freed...

10/25/2024

The raw materials for methane fuel and oxygen like SpaceX's Starship burns are abundant on Mars, so you can make Starship fuel there pretty easily. The only stuff we've found on the moon that can be used for rocket fuel is water, which can be separated with solar power into hydrogen and oxygen. This could provide fuel for a hydrogen burning rocket like the second stage of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, but not for Starship. On the other hand, water found on the moon is so precious that it would be criminally stupid to use it for rocket fuel. You can re-use it for plants and people over and over again, but if you burn it for rocket fuel it's pretty much gone forever. Once we have a few dozen Starships cruising around the Inner System we'll grab a nice rich comet full of water and methane and all kinds of good stuff as it goes flying by, and put it into a convenient orbit in the Earth-Luna system. Comets range from 900 billion to 10 trillion metric tons, and that's a hell of a lot of water, oxygen, fuel, and raw mateials to have available in a close orbit. Then humanity will really be in business.
The future of humanity isn't on planets like Mars, it's in huge spinning ships/stations moving all over the solar system. If you don't have to spend the insane amount of fuel it takes to escape from a planet's gravity, then flying all around the solar system is pretty cheap, and there's enough materials floating around in asteroids, comets, and moons to last us a billion years.

10/22/2024

Every time a political poll is taken they lie about the results.

In Canada, on average, about 10-15% of people contacted for a political poll choose to respond.
In the United States, only about 6-10% of people contacted for a political poll choose to respond.
It's pretty certain that most of the people who didn't respond to any given poll NEVER respond to ANY polls!
So the real result of the poll is: "I'm not going to tell you." Remember this, because it makes a big difference. The poll gives you the opinions of the small minority of people who respond to polls, and they're different people from the people who DON'T choose to answer polls.

So, whenever you hear any news source talking about a political poll, remember the truth that they're NOT telling you:
"In a recent political poll the vast majority of people contacted said: 'I'm never going to tell you!' And since most people never answer polls, and the people who DO answer polls are not very representative of the people who DON'T, we really have no idea who's winning the election until the votes are counted!"

06/29/2024

One of the coolest videos I've ever seen! If you mouse on the time-line it tells you what's growing then.

5583 days (15,3 years) of growing in total. This is a compilation of some of my favorite videos I've done in the last 4 years, in no particular order. Many m...

06/08/2024

I teach English to people all over the world. The lesson I just taught was the most difficult one I've ever done. There was a Russian man, an older man too old to be conscripted into the army to go kill Ukrainians, and an older woman, a retired Ukrainian woman. And she obviously hates Russians, and he obviously feels bad about what his country is doing, and we're all trying to act normal while I teach them English. And halfway through the lesson her daughter runs over with their phone showing a warning that there is a bomb attack in their city, and she and her daughter have to run for the parkade, and she left the camera running, so I didn't know if I was going to see her home bombed and destroyed while I'm teaching this lesson.

05/27/2024

Recently two nagging health problems I've had for more than 10 years have healed, being a bunch of little pinhead warts on the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands, and huge sores on the tops of my feet from a bunch of red ant bites I got shortly after I arrived here in Nov. of 2013. The only thing I can attribute this healing to is consuming a bunch of things that doctors and nutritionists on YouTube recommended, including walnuts, almonds, shelled sunflower seeds, raisins, and chia seeds (about a tablespoon each) and three healthy shakes of cinnamon I add to a small bowl of good granola with 1.5% milk. I recently added a hot drink with camomile tea, Himalayan pink salt, cayenne pepper, thyme, cinnamon, tumeric, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, and honey. I get a daily dose of about two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, usually straight from the bottle. I eat blueberries whenever I can get them. I drink some 100% fruit juice every day, (though they're so strong and sweet I have to add 40 - 50% water) either concord grape, cranberry, or pomegranate. I take centrum silver, 500mg vitamin C, and supplement my calcium, magnesium, and potassium with lots of bananas, supplement pills, and Pocari Sweat to prevent foot cramps and restless leg syndrome when I'm sleeping.

So many of the people I care about the most are getting old now, same as me. We have to take care of ourselves. Now if I could only resist the temptation to order fast food deliveries, and get enough exercise (which is hard since I have to avoid running or anything with impact or bending my knees more than 90 degrees).

Getting old sucks, but I'm determined to stay alive until science figures out how to reverse old age symptoms. And they're getting there, slowly.

04/16/2024

Everyone who have children really need to read this!

How cell phones are killing our kids, and what we can do about it

With his book “The Anxious Generation,” social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls for a revolution in how parents administer smartphones and social media to children.

04/02/2024

Good news! The various sources of news in the world always emphasize the bad news, because that's what gets more attention. So it's nice to find a source of exclusively good news! Enjoy!

Uplifting news, heartwarming stories, and empowering content that will keep you motivated and hopeful! Join us as we celebrate the incredible achievements in...

03/25/2024

I watched this concert video not long after it was made. There was a lot of great music in it, but this is the song that really made an impression on me. At that time, South Africa was still under the iron fist of the racist Apartheid government, and Nelson Mandela, the leader of the black resistance movement, had been imprisoned for over twenty years as a political prisoner. Hugh Masekela and his band sang:

Bring back
Nelson Mandela!
Bring him back home to Soweto!
I wanna see him walkin' down the street
of South Africa!
Tomorrow!

At the time, it seemed almost certain that Mandela would never be released, and that he would die in prison.
But a few years later the Apartheid government gave up power, and Nelson Mandela was released! He went on to become President of South Africa in the first truly fair election in the country. He presided of a period of joy and renewal in his nation. It was one of the times when the good guys won, and gave us all hope that justice and good people really could triumph over crime and corruption and evil. Mandela lived a long life after he retired, and died among his family when he was 95.
Unfortunately, the South African government fell into corruption, and they misgoverned and mismanaged the place pretty badly. Right now crime is out of control and most of the country is rapidly falling back into the stone age because criminals and gangs have stolen almost all of the cables in the electric grid and sold them as scrap-metal, and as soon as the utilities replace them the criminals steal them again, so no one has any electricity. Some major cities are completely out of water, and the crisis is spreading.
I bet a lot of them wish they really could bring back Nelson Mandela.

miriam makeba, Graceland live concert in Zimbabwe, with Paul Simon

03/24/2024

Here's the most valuable information on the internet: 2 real working Canadian doctors (They're actually knee and hip replacement surgery specialists) who give you the real information you need to know about your body and medical conditions. The videos are short, fun, and easy to understand. They bring in doctors from other specialties to talk about anything they don't know.

Dr. Paul Zalzal and Dr. Brad Weening are orthopedic surgeons and members of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Together, they help make ...

12/31/2023

Happy New Year Everyone!