When Brian Wallach was diagnosed with ALS, he was given six months to live. @bsw5020 and @sabrevaya’s film, For Love & Life: No Ordinary Campaign, chronicles their incredible journey, and proves that all of us are far more powerful than we know. I hope you’ll watch it on Prime Video and get involved with their work to find a cure for ALS at

As an ambitious former hedge fund PM, now current entrepreneur, it's always been hard for me to turn my mind off. I got to a point maybe 10 years ago where I could really never relax, and it got to be too much. Even on the weekend, with my young kids, my mind was active with work problems and it was hard for me to be truly present to the moment. Not only is this a hard way to live, but I found myself showing up Monday morning intellectually fried. I eventually wore myself out so severely that I needed many months away from work to feel "normal" again. Maybe you feel this way. If you do, ahead of this holiday weekend, I wanted to two few rituals I've learned along the way that helped me. Ritual 1: Empty Your Head on Paper. Write for 3-5 minutes (pen and paper always best) about all the work-related problems still bouncing around in your head. People to call, ideas, problems, things you're worried about. Get it out of your head, onto paper. Even better, ask whatever higher entity feels personal to you to help you untie these knots over the weekend ("dear God/guides/Universe, here are a few things I am struggling with, please help me on these over the next 48 hours"). It's woo-woo, but it works, and I instantly feel better, like I've done something crafty but temporarily assigning my struggles to a higher, wiser entity. Those "aha" moments have a way of finding themselves into my brain come Sunday afternoon, and this sort of work can be just as or even more powerful than more hours behind a computer screen. Ritual 2: Self Talk, "I Did Enough This Week": Look at yourself in the mirror, and tell yourself, "you did enough this week...I did enough this week". Celebrate the progress you've made and what you completed, get into gratitude and thank yourself for all the progress you made. This shifts the anxiety of "I didn't do enough this week" to "you did enough this week", and that kindness with yourself will cause a subtle but important energy shift. Just be kind to yourself. High achievers are very good at flogging themselves into hard work. There's a time for that, too. But be kind to yourself as well. For me, when I'm busy (and I've been quite busy lately, working long hours), this stuff just makes me feel better. And even in the context of long hours, tight deadlines & big opportunities, just slightly, makes work feel a bit more like play. Try it out. Maybe it will work for you, too. I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend with their families. Mrs. Caughran on a sister trip so the Caughran boys are excited for the first ASU football game tomorrow night and riding our new jetskis on Lake Saguaro. Go Devils!

Drowning claims about 300,000 lives every year—but these deaths are preventable. To mark World Drowning Prevention Day on July 25, Kelly Larson, Rebecca Bavinger and Lievanta Millar from our Public Health team traveled to Ghana to see how our partners are putting proven drowning prevention strategies into practice to save lives. Hear from Lievanta about what they saw during their visit. Learn more about our work to prevent drowning:

The ONLY realistic way to eject tens of MILLIONS of illegals (without military support) is to FORCE them to self-deport Bovino nailed it: “Let's make it SO HARD for them to live, to work, to recreate, to do ANYTHING in the US that they have NO CHOICE but to self-deport” Mass deportations are NOT POSSIBLE otherwise. We don’t have enough time. FORCE THEM TO TAP OUT.

Dutch people stayed up until 6 a.m. to watch their national team get eliminated by Morocco. They only slept for one hour, and on their way to work they had to deal with Moroccan immigrants doing this. No one should have to live like this.

Change is easier to name after it already happened. What is harder is feeling it while it is still moving through daily life, before the old language has caught up to what is actually going on. That is where strength starts to matter. Not because someone decided it should, but because staying with change before it becomes obvious requires something real. Strength is being asked for in a time when the systems around life are still standing, but less and less able to carry what they were built to hold. They still shape daily life. They still hold influence. But they no longer truly serve the needs that created them. They remain anyway. A system can survive for decades while failing the exact needs that created it. That is the pressure underneath what is happening across the world right now. The arguments sound political on the surface, but the force driving them is more basic than ideology. Food. Sleep. Safety. The moment those three become unstable, the structure around them starts shaking too. The systems being used now were not created by accident. They solved real problems for a long time. They organized survival, distributed resources, created stability, and held societies together through periods where humanity still lived inside older limits. Humanity began pushing beyond those structures, and the same systems that once held life together started feeling like limits around it. The systems still speak the language of stability, but larger parts of life are experiencing them as limitation. Not because transcendence suddenly became a mass obsession. Not because the streets are filled with philosophers. Survival pressure reaches the body first. That is why the reactions happening across the world cannot be understood through slogans alone. What gets called populism is usually described as manipulation through ideas, as if large movements happen because a population suddenly gets captured by one philosophy. But underneath the language, the same pressure keeps returning. Something to eat. Somewhere to sleep. A sense of safety about tomorrow. Once those begin weakening, the emotional structure of society changes with them. That is the real force underneath the protests, the instability, the exhaustion, the anger. The argument on the surface is political. The mechanism underneath it is biological. The body reacts long before philosophy catches up. And that is why strength becomes one of the central questions of this period. Not strength as domination. Not strength as performance. Strength as the capacity to remain stable while old structures stop working the way they once did. Strength as the ability to face transition without collapsing into fear, ideology, or blind reaction. The deeper problem is not that humanity created systems. The deeper problem is that humanity is starting to outgrow them while still depending on them to survive. Philosophy becomes dangerous when it explains the world but never gives anyone a way to live. That is where the work has to become practical. Not practical in the shallow sense of turning every idea into a method, but practical in the sense that understanding has to touch action. It has to help life move without becoming another ideology. The point is not to force awareness onto everyone. That already becomes another form of pressure. It starts as consciousness, then becomes demand, then becomes the same old pattern wearing better language. The real task is not to make everyone speak the same language, walk the same path, or enter the same interior process. The real task is to build tools that return agency. That is where strength enters again. Strength is not something that arrives because the whole world finally understands the same thing. Strength has to be built. Made. Chosen into structure. It cannot wait for everyone else to walk the same road before it starts acting. That mistake happens easily when the path becomes personal. Once a certain kind of awareness starts opening, it is easy to imagine that the entire world must open in the same direction. But that assumption comes from being inside the path, not from seeing the whole. Music shows the mistake in a simple way. Some musicians treat one band as if it is the foundation of all real taste. If that band does not move someone, then the judgment comes fast. Maybe that listener does not understand music. Maybe there is no taste there. But that is absurd. Music can still be loved deeply without loving the thing someone else treats as essential. Consciousness work can fall into the same trap. The ones walking that road can start believing everyone else must wake up the same way for the world to change. But most of the world is not here to perform a consciousness process. Many are simply trying to live, eat, sleep, stay safe, and keep life from breaking. So the work cannot be to push everyone into awareness. The work is to translate philosophy into something usable without turning it into ideology. Ideology explains and gathers followers. Philosophy, when it becomes practical, should help create conditions where life can be ruled from within. An idea stays trapped inside philosophy until it can be touched. A board can be explained for hours. The surface, the ink, the chemistry behind why the marks disappear with water. All of that can be described intellectually. But the moment someone writes on the board, erases it with their own hand, and sees it happen directly, the relationship changes. The explanation arrives after contact. Movements can organize around ideas, symbols, language, identity, theory. Philosophy can also stay suspended above life if it never enters action. That is why philosophy cannot end in discussion. Words alone do not feed anyone, protect anyone, or give anyone a place to rest. The point of learning any of this is not to collect better concepts. The point is to turn understanding into action capable of addressing the three pressures that keep shaping human life underneath every ideology. Food. Safety. A place to sleep. Most of humanity is not waiting for a spiritual framework or a philosophical answer before the end of the month arrives. Most are trying to survive long enough to breathe. That is the ground every system eventually answers to whether it admits it or not. So the responsibility falls differently on the ones asking deeper questions. Not to force everyone into awareness. Not to hand out manuals telling everyone exactly what to do. The point is to awaken enough inner potential to build something real wherever that potential exists. Different places. Different projects. Different forms. But all rooted in the same movement from understanding into manifestation. History shows the same mechanism again and again. Revolutions are remembered through philosophers because philosophers later gave language to what happened. But the pressure underneath the movement usually began somewhere more immediate. Hunger moves faster than theory. The French Revolution did not begin because whole populations suddenly became intellectually devoted to republican philosophy. Bread disappeared. Survival pressure intensified. The body reached its limit first. Then philosophy entered the opening created by that pressure and helped shape a new structure afterward. That is the sequence history keeps revealing. Need arrives first. Theory comes later, once pressure has already opened a space where the old structure can no longer carry what life is asking from it. That is why awakening cannot remain internal only. Understanding has to become capable of building conditions where human beings can eat, rest, and feel safe again. Once those conditions stabilize, another kind of question finally becomes possible. Then philosophy stops being a luxury suspended above survival and becomes something life can actually reach toward. That brings the whole question back to strength. Because strength is still being imagined through the logic of conflict. Through resistance. Through opposition. Through the belief that change only happens when enough force gathers together against an enemy. That idea shaped civilizations for thousands of years. Entire societies were organized around territory, conquest, defense, survival through dominance. Unity became associated with war because survival depended on collective force. The stronger side won resources, protection, land, continuity. That logic stayed inside institutions long after the battles themselves changed form. It still shapes the imagination now. The phrase “unity creates strength” carries that older structure underneath it. A group gathers. An enemy appears. Pressure builds. Victory belongs to the strongest side. Even many movements trying to create change still unconsciously operate through that same architecture. But something stops working once reality begins changing faster than the structures built to contain it. Strength cannot continue meaning permanent combat against something outside. That model eventually traps everything inside reaction. Every movement needs an enemy to survive. Every identity needs opposition to hold itself together. Every system starts feeding on conflict because conflict becomes the source of coherence. Then the search for blame never ends. Another hidden group. Another controlling force. Another secret structure somewhere behind reality pulling the strings. The mind keeps looking for one thing to fight because the older idea of strength depends on having an opponent. But most of the systems shaping life now do not function through one hidden controller standing above everyone else. Power became structural long ago. Institutions, economies, governments, corporations, universities, media systems, political movements, cultural pressures. All of them interact and reinforce each other at different moments. There will always be individuals trying to gain influence or control, but reducing reality to one enemy keeps attention trapped in reaction when creation is the work being asked for. That is why blame cannot become the center of transformation. The moment all energy gets organized around fighting shadows, inner strength starts depending on the existence of an opponent. Then identity itself needs conflict in order to feel purpose. These times require another kind of strength. Not the strength of domination. Not the strength of the strongest male entering battle to conquer territory. Not the strength of permanent resistance. The old model can destroy structures, but it does not automatically know how to build new ones afterward. And that is the part becoming unavoidable now. No matter how much collapse, corruption, instability, or exhaustion becomes visible in the world, the real question remains the same. What can actually be built differently? What can sustain life differently? What can create food, rest, safety, and direction without reproducing the same structures again under new names? That work cannot come only from opposition. It has to come from inner stability strong enough to create without needing an enemy in order to move. The path turns inward before it turns outward, not as escape from the world, but because anything built externally without inner foundation eventually recreates the same patterns it tried to escape. That is where strength connects to power. Power outside and power inside are not the same movement. The older meaning of power was tied to mastery, ownership, authority over something beyond the self. To rule. To direct the destiny of others. That is still the structure behind political power, institutional power, governmental power. A population hands its will to someone else and trusts that structure to decide direction, protection, order, and future on its behalf. But that transfer happens more easily when inner strength is weak. The problem is not only that power concentrates outside. The deeper problem is that uncertainty inside makes external authority feel necessary. The less inner structure exists, the easier it becomes to search for someone else to hold direction together. That is why strength cannot mean aggression. Strength is construction. A structure becomes strong when all its parts hold together tightly enough that pressure cannot immediately break it apart. The image behind the word points toward solidity. Something difficult to move. A mountain. Stone bound by weight, pressure, and coherence. Yet real strength goes further than remaining unmoved. The same inner coherence that keeps a thing from breaking can also make action more precise and less scattered. It does not fight the mountain from every direction. It stands from one center long enough for what seemed fixed to begin shifting. This is why ancient civilizations built on elevated ground, surrounded by walls, towers, and fortresses. Not only for military defense. The fortress stood as a living image of stability. A place that held firm against chaos from the outside. A place from which danger could be seen in advance. A place where others could rest because something solid existed at the center. The same architecture exists inside a human being. Self knowledge starts building that fortress inside the being. The more disconnected someone becomes from inner history, inner structure, and inner understanding, the easier external forces begin shaping identity, decisions, reactions, and perception. That is why forgetting becomes dangerous. A human being disconnected from memory, history, and self understanding becomes easier to direct because nothing stable remains underneath the pressure. The center weakens. Then identity gets assembled externally through systems, trends, slogans, fears, distractions, and emotional reactions arriving from outside. Strength begins disappearing long before freedom disappears. And that is why education matters far beyond information alone. Knowledge by itself does not automatically create strength. Entire systems can produce enormous amounts of surface knowledge while avoiding the deeper process of helping someone know themselves. Facts can be memorized without ever constructing an inner foundation capable of standing on its own. But the moment self knowledge begins deepening, direction stops depending entirely on external authority. Inner power starts appearing because awareness begins organizing the structure from within instead of waiting for identity to be handed over from outside. That is the real meaning behind this movement toward strength. Not collective aggression against an enemy. Not building another ideology. Not replacing one ruler with another ruler. Real strength appears when the being becomes stable enough internally that power no longer has to be surrendered outward in exchange for direction. Ignorance hands power away. Self knowledge takes it back.

I am increasingly annoyed by agents running locally, launching stuff (browser windows, apps etc) while I'm trying to work, interfering with my own desktop This stuff needs to live either in a VM, or probably the cloud. I want to kick it off and not distract me!

Liebowitz, the tailor, retired and moved to the country to live with a married daughter and her family. It was a charming house, the countryside was beautiful and he was made to feel welcome. But the peace and quiet after thirty years in New York City began to get on his nerves. One day, he went for a long walk and came upon a convent about two miles down the road. As he approached, one of the nuns came out of the gate and greeted him. He returned the greeting and they got into a conversation. Liebowitz told her he was a retired tailor and was now living with his daughter down the road. "By the way, Sister, do you need maybe a good tailor by you in the convent? I'll work cheap. Money, I don't need! I need a little part-time job, it should occupy my time." She told him she'd inquire of the Mother Superior and let him know. And so Liebowitz went to work at the convent, every afternoon but Saturday. He seemed a happy man once more. After working there a few weeks, his friend, Sister Margaret, came in to visit him After inquiring about his health, she said, "Mr. Liebowitz, you're a fine craftsman and the Mother Superior is very content with your work. Only I have a favor to ask of you. When you speak to the Mother Superior, please try to remember, it's 'Mother Superior' not 'Mother Shapiro'."

Your long-term goal should influence what you do every week. One of the most important habits you can build is writing down a specific weekly goal that moves you toward your bigger ambition of the life you want to live. Let me explain If you start each day without establishing priorities then whatever arrives first can end up setting the tone for your day. Messages, requests, notifications, and many times solving other people’s problems. If you are not careful your energy gets spent. The thing you say matters most keeps getting pushed into the future. Planning always comes before execution. Start with the outcome you want. Work backward to the conditions required to achieve it. Then identify which actions are ultra net positive to getting to your goals. If you want to build a business generating $10M, the useful question is: what currently prevents that business from existing or growing? You might need to validate demand, improve your offer, acquire customers, remove a bottleneck or fix retention. Now that you have your list of difficulties then you need to begin brainstorming solutions. The key here is to just share as many ideas and helpful comments as possible. Interview 10 potential customers. Test an offer with qualified prospects. Speak to five customers who stopped buying and identify what needs to change. Choose the task that addresses your actual constraint. Define what completion looks like. Give it time on your calendar. At the end of the week, review both the work and the response it produced. Input + Output = Feedback You cannot guarantee the outcome but you can estimate it. You can choose your actions, protect time for them, and adjust when the results challenge your predetermined plan. Over time, those weekly decisions shape what becomes possible and things compound and ideally become easier. Before the next week starts, write down one answer: What can I finish in the next seven days that will materially move me toward the future I keep talking about? After this, turn off your brain and simply execute!

In one Australian town, a lot of people live underground. Coober Pedy sits in South Australia’s outback, about 850 kilometers north of Adelaide. From the surface, it looks rough and dusty, with low buildings, piles of pale dirt and very little shade. Then you realize how much of the town is beneath your feet. Homes have been dug into the sandstone, along with hotels, shops and churches. Locals call the homes dugouts. In a place where summer heat can be brutal, living underground keeps temperatures much steadier. But the digging started for another reason. Opal was discovered here in 1915, and Coober Pedy grew around the people who came looking for it. Miners cut shafts into the ground, and some eventually used the same skills to carve out places to live. After World War I, returning soldiers helped make underground homes more common. You can still see that history all over town. Bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms are cut straight into the rock. There are underground churches, hotels and old mines that have been opened to visitors. Outside, heaps of excavated dirt sit beside shafts where people spent years hoping to find opal. In 1920, the settlement officially became Coober Pedy. The name is commonly explained as coming from an Aboriginal expression meaning “white man in a hole.” Mining brought people here from all over. By the late 1960s, workers from across Europe were arriving as opal prices climbed and mining equipment improved. That mix of backgrounds became part of the town too. Coober Pedy still feels like a mining town. Dust gets everywhere. Equipment sits outside homes. The edges can look unfinished. You’re never far from some reminder that people came here to dig. That’s what I find interesting about it. The underground homes weren’t dreamed up as a tourist attraction. People were trying to work in one of the harshest parts of Australia and needed a better way to handle the heat. The town grew around that problem. Dig for opal. Dig somewhere to live. That simple connection explains a lot about Coober Pedy. It’s the kind of place I write about in my newsletter. The underground homes pull you in, but the mining history is what makes the town make sense. If you like places with a story behind them, subscribe to the Timeless Traveler.