Ed Calderon

Well, I'm a member of your Patreon.

I recommend people sign up.

It's really great because you also have philosophy.

You're the Mexican Miyamoto Musashi.

It's not just these skills, it's also the philosophy around it.

Well, there's some aspect to fitting in.

You quote Hattori Hanzo on imitation.

The most important thing you should keep in mind when you go on a shinobi mission is to imitate well the language of the target province and the ways of the local people.

This includes their appearances, the way of wearing clothes, the way of shaving their head, the way of making up their hair, the way of making up a sword or short sword, and the way of refinement and luxury.

So how do you fit into some of those places?

So you know Mexico, but a person like me that doesn't know anything about Mexico and say I'm interviewing somebody in a leadership position in a drug cartel, how quickly do you learn how to fit in?

I like how you focus in on the tools of violence.

But there's also the social engineering de-escalation, right?

Or the opposite.

It might not be an issue.

What I usually prefer to do is I find somebody from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and beat them up in front of the—just to send a signal that I'm not a journalist, and I, too, don't like journalists.

Yeah, so that's interesting.

But I have this belief, it has to do with the way I operate in this world, I suppose.

But if you come off as a person legitimately, I guess you could fake it, but I think it just feels like you can be extremely good, possibly the best in the world,

if you practice it your whole life, at being you.