Category: Uncategorized
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The Company You Keep: A Taoist Reflection
In the quiet hours, when the mind wanders like a leaf on a stream, I often ponder the invisible currents shaping our lives. One of the strongest? The people we surround ourselves with. Taoism, with its emphasis on harmony and flow, teaches that our circle isn’t just company—it’s a mirror, a catalyst, and sometimes a…
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The Piercing and the Return
Seven years. That’s how long I had been lost to myself. Seven years of wearing someone else’s life like an ill-fitting suit: polite smiles, muted opinions, a voice that apologized for existing. I had old friend groups that remembered the version 1.0 of me, the loud, weird, fearless kid who quoted Chuang Tzu between shots…
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Thanks, Pain, and the Slow Mountain
Thanksgiving is almost here, and my body is falling apart. Perfect timing. This year the arthritis in my neck wakes me at 3 a.m. like a landlord collecting late rent. The left knee clicks when I climb stairs. My lower back has filed an official grievance. I’m not old—not yet—but I’m definitely in the foothills…
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Suits and a Mine
Sometimes the universe hands you a scene so perfectly absurd, you just have to stand back and let the Tao laugh through you. Today was one of those days. The Lobby of the Absurd The morning air was cool, not cold—like the breath before a detonation, quiet with promise. I stood at the mine entrance…
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From Stage Fright to Sage Light: A Taoist Journey in Public Speaking and Business Continuity
Last month, I received an unexpected email: an invitation to guest-lecture on disaster recovery and business continuity planning at a local university. The audience? Nearly one hundred students, bright-eyed and notebook-ready. My first reaction wasn’t excitement. It was anxiety. I’ve faced ransomware, nation-state intrusions, and zero-days that kept me up for nights. But public speaking?…
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Who Learns More: The Student or the Teacher?
In the dance of knowledge, who truly gains more—the one who receives or the one who gives? From a Taoist lens, this question dissolves into the flow of the Tao itself, where teaching and learning are not separate but intertwined, like the yin and yang. Drawing from the Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, and modern…
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The Taoist Concept of Te and Red Team Activities
In the realm of cybersecurity, where proactive defense is key, the Taoist concept of Te—often translated as virtue, integrity, or power—offers a profound lens for understanding Red Team and penetration testing (pentest) activities. Rooted in the Tao Te Ching, Te represents the natural expression of the Tao, the underlying principle of the universe, manifesting as…
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The Pyramid of Pain Meets the Tao: A Cybersecurity Journey Through Ancient Wisdom
In the high-stakes world of cybersecurity, where threats lurk like shadows in a digital forest, defenders often arm themselves with a simple yet profound tool: the Pyramid of Pain. Introduced by David J. Bianco in 2013, this framework ranks indicators of compromise (IOCs) from the trivial to the transformative, urging us to climb toward defenses…
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Reflecting on my previous post, I see the extremes in life growing ever wider. This week’s shooting—a catalyst—will send shock-waves that neither the left nor the right can fully grasp. Commentary suggests this is a crystallizing event, shattering the extremes we once knew and pushing them further apart. The left calls for punching more “Nazis”;…
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A few days late and a fist full of dollars short…
I failed. Two weeks without a post. I could cite writers block but that’s not the case. Nor did 75 Hard get in the way really. I simply did not make the time to write. In the past weeks it has been a bit interesting. I signed up for the IC again, I have a…
The Half-assed Taoist 