Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

Every week is interesting if you have to write a newsletter each week about becoming wiser, healthier, and wealthier.

I really must thank all of you for continuing to read my words.

A big shout out to Matt R., Maddie H., and Devon H. for showing their support by buying me a coffee in the last month. Y'all are too kind.

This week I talk about:

• The concept of Mental Immunity
• A fun way to use protein powder
• Ethereum thoughts

Let's get into it.

You can find all past issues (including this one) here.

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🧠 Wisdom Tip(s) of The Week: The Idea of Mental Immunity

I listen to the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast.

If I had to guess, that admission would upset somewhere between 20-40% of people in the US.

Why? Well because the JRE podcast has become so large and massive that it has more influence than traditional media. Traditional media does not like this, and so they create negative articles and news stories about the podcast in an attempt to discredit it.

I am not here to defend the JRE podcast. I am here to call out that the media uses its long-standing methods of sharing information to share misinformation.

The one thing I love about the JRE podcast is the wide variety of guests that appear. Nowhere else will I get to listen to people like Elon Musk, Neil Degrasse Tyson, David Lee Roth, or Paul Stamets talk about their ideas and areas of expertise for several hours in a row.

In one such episode aired recently, a philosopher by the name of Andy Norman came on the show to talk about something extremely interesting. The concept of a Cognitive Immune System.

Like I wrote above, Andy is a philosopher, and by just using the power of his mind, as well as many, many conversations with scientists from all disciplines, he has come up with a theory on why some people are so susceptible to misinformation.

The idea is simple - Humans have a Mental Immune System. A built-in bullshit detector.

Some of us have compromised mental immune systems, and are far more susceptible to bad information, or mind parasites.

When our body encounters a virus or bacteria it has never encountered before, it learns and adapts itself so that in the future it can more easily combat that same virus or bacteria.

Our minds work the same. The classic "Nigerian Prince Email Scam" is one such example of how one such mind parasite became so common that we as a species have developed a cognitive immunity to such scams.

In addition, just like our bodies, if we don't take care of our minds, their immune systems can weaken and we can become vulnerable to bullshit.

The storming of the U.S. Capitol building is one such example of how a community of weakened mental immune systems can lead to some truly stupid actions.

Anyway, before I write too much in this newsletter I am going to pause and just say this:

• The podcast is super interesting
• His new book "Mental Immunity" is a must-read in my opinion.

☕🍫 Health Hack of The Week: Protein Powder and Hot Chocolate

Both the wisdom and wealth sections of the newsletter are a little mentally intense this week, so I figured I'd share a little health hack I have implemented to be a little healthier in my life.

I realized recently that one of the main challenges I face when trying to maintain a caloric deficit is my cravings for something sweet.

If I could just replace an unhealthy snack with a protein-based alternative I would, over time, dramatically shift the quality of my diet.

So I began experimenting with this idea.

My conclusion?

Add chocolate protein powder to my morning coffee to create a healthy version of hot chocolate!

Here is my basic recipe:

• 1 packet of stevia
• 1 cup of coffee
• 3/4 scoop of a chocolate protein powder
• An emulsifier/frother to mix it all up

I use Molk as my chocolate protein powder of choice because it has both probiotics and many amino acids included in it. They also have Mint Chocolate and Chocolate Peanut Butter flavors if you're a true degenerate 😅.

The frother I use is the Bellemain Professional Milk Frother. It's under $10 and it is freakin' awesome for mixing stuff up. Mixing protein powder into any drink kind of sucks, but I have found that milk frothers like the one I just linked does a damn good job of it.

If you're not into hot chocolate-flavored coffee, you can also just mix the protein powder with water, almond milk, or normal milk and have yourself some healthy chocolate milk.

🤑 Wealth Thought of The Week: Let's Talk Ethereum

I've been writing about the importance of Cryptocurrency, and more specifically the importance of Ethereum since ETH, the asset that runs the Ethereum Network, was at less than $200 a coin.

ETH now sits at around $2,500 a coin and has peaked as high as $4,200.

Ethereum has two different layers to it

• The application layer, where transactions are processed
• The consensus layer, where miners secure the network and process the transactions for the application layer (This is done by miners in ETH1 and stakers in ETH2)

What makes Ethereum so powerful, is that its application layer can handle more than just basic transactions. It can handle advanced transactions due to something called a Smart Contract.

A Smart Contract is basically a programmable piece of software that exists on the blockchain. This means you can have applications, video games, or collectibles (like NFTs) on the Ethereum blockchain.

This also means that any other Cryptocurrency can, in theory, exist within Ethereum.

This is why, when people come to me and ask questions like - "What do you think of ___ coin? It has an awesome use-case and has potential." I just smile and tell them they should stick to Ethereum.

Why?

Because with the current state of cryptocurrency, your favorite coin will get swallowed by my favorite coin.

Even Bitcoin can exist on Ethereum. Seriously.

Right now, on Ethereum, there are just under 240,000 BTC on Ethereum.

Feel free to fact-check that.

That is over Eight BILLION dollars worth of BTC on Ethereum.

And this is before the major Ethereum network upgrades!

My friends...I cannot stress this next statement enough:

If you like Crypto. If you think Crypto has a future, then you absolutely need to own some ETH. Period.

Basically - until I am shown otherwise the "anything your coin can do, my coin can do better" mantra will remain.

And when the Ethereum network finishes its merge into Ethereum 2, there won't be a discussion anymore.

Interesting Crypto Tweets:

• What exactly is the eth1 merge with eth2?
• How Crypto redefines culture

Interesting Crypto Articles:

• A non-technical Introduction to Rollups

Quote/Meme of the week:

Inspired by the book mental immunity that I just started reading this week.

Have a great week!

This concludes our issue this week, I hope it gave you some perspective or injected a little motivation into your life!

If it helped, let me know! I read every newsletter response I receive, and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. This newsletter is for you, so I need your help to make it as great as possible.

If you'd like to show me some love for writing all this free stuff, you can always buy me a coffee.

More Resources

I will be adding to this section over time as we find resources that will help you all.

• Check out the Wise Owl Store
• All Wise Healthy Wealthy Articles on Medium
• Start your own Sendfox Newsletter
• Free products to help you level up

Crypto Resources

The Bankless Podcast: This is a link to the bankless podcast on Spotify. Start from the very beginning and learn why I am so positive about the power of Crypto and Ethereum in particular. You can find the podcast easily on the internet, but I am linking to episode 1 on Spotify for your convenience.

Buy your first ETH or BTC:

• On Coinbase - this is the easiest starting place for the newest beginners
• On Gemini - Another great option founded by the Winklevoss brothers. They are based out of New York.
• On Kraken - Kraken has a bit of a harder user interface, but they already have ETH staking enabled with the push of a single button.

Earn interest on your crypto

• BlockFi - Currently, you can earn 5% interest on BTC, 4.5% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8.6% on stable coins like USDC. Use the referral code b09f24fd to support the newsletter.

Other tools:

• Argent Wallet - This is the best mobile wallet for Ethereum, Defi, and all things on the Ethereum network, including staking. They even have plans to implement Layer 2 to remove network fees.
• Ethhub - this is a weekly newsletter that lists out all the interesting news, articles, and tweets that have happened in Crypto that week. It's free and awesome.
• Ethdashboard - A simple dashboard to look at various metrics in the ethereum space. I mainly use this as a quick tool to check ETH gas fees.
• Cointracker - this is one of the better tools for tracking all of your various crypto across all of the various wallets, exchanges, etc. You can also use them to do your crypto taxes each year.
• Metamask - this is a crypto wallet that you can access from your browser and allows you to easily interact with blockchain apps online.