About the Author

Autobiographical note:

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Evan is an Austrian-American writer who works full-time in a big 5 accounting firm. Currently he lives and works in Canada. The ideas discussed on this website are his alone and are not to be associated with his employer.

What I write about:

1) Research. Specifically, my own research and the research of others into the Venezuelan economic crisis. This crisis is unique because in response to it many Venezuelan people (numbers currently unknown) are now playing the online role-playing game RuneScape for a real world income; doing so is a better alternative to their local options. People are playing a video game to survive and I think it's ridiculous and sad and important.

2) Drugs. I have a scientific approach to drugs, not a moral one. It's my belief that drugs like alcohol, LSD, and heroin should be classified as legal or illegal based on hard evidence, rather than whimsical political opinion (note, I'm not saying we should legalise heroin). In the United Kingdom at least, we need to have a more mature conversation about drugs. This is because the war on drugs has broadly failed, drug consumption has rocketed, and many of these drugs are much safer than legal alternatives. In fact, much evidence suggests that some illegal drugs have medical, psychological, and spiritual benefits.

3) Ideas. I read lots and my head gets filled up with ideas. I love connecting them and thinking creatively about how they relate to each other, and the world. The ideas may be scientific, historical, or related to our current cultural climate. An inspiration in this might be Alexander von Humboldt, who championed interconnected science but also emotion, or Richard Dawkins, whose writings in science I find immensely accessible and interesting.

4) Personal. Because I enjoy reflecting and also sharing. I feel incredibly lucky to be where I am today; psychological therapy at a young age was crucial for improving my developmental pathway. In this section, I write about solo-travel, with a focus on realism. But also on development, failure, and mental health. I hate overly simplistic ideas about "personal development" because life is inevitably messy, difficult, and doesn't go as planned. But nonetheless I do enjoy genuine personal development, which is full of challenges, and by definition means stepping beyond what I personally find comfortable in order to experience something new, exciting, or rewarding. And that, in a nutshell, is why I started this website.

A note on the images used on this website:

Many (though not all) of the images used on this website come from the artificial intelligence computer programme called Midjourney. The AI listens to instructions from me, then searches for an image based on what I asked of her. This means two things. One, whenever Midjourney images are used, they are originals. Second, it means that (at least in part) this website is a collaboration between man and machine, human and computer, consciousness and AI.

Thanks, Midjourney.

The views discussed here are my own; they are not to be associated with my employer.