Year Of The Opposite - Travis Stoliker's Substack Podcast

I think I was unclear in my last post about AI. Many people thought that I had went full doomer on AI and that I was fearful that ai was going to destroy us all. I want to be more clear. This is the most fun that I have had in years. And as I use these ai tools more and read history more the more I realize that: Ai isn’t replacement. It’s expansion. Let’s go back to the example I used of my father...

My job has changed more in the past month than it has in the past 10 years. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a FREE or paid subscriber. My dad always described his work at GM as “a tool maker”. He’d say he made the tools that helped repair the tools that made the cars. I don’t know if I have any of that right since I was a kid when he said it. My understanding is that th...

Remember when we were growing up and we’d hear things like “Better calm down, you’re gonna give yourself an ulcer!” It was thought back then that stress and spicy food caused ulcers. Around 1979, Dr. Robin Warren and Barry Marshall started noticing these spiral-shaped bacteria while doing stomach biopsies of patients with gastritis. Then a crazy thing happened: The Easter Breakthrough. In 1982, a...

People think verifying if someone is “right” means asking an “expert” or checking Snopes for a yes or no. Real verification comes from outcomes. If someone claims gravity pulls mass toward Earth’s center, drop a ball and see. Don’t just ask the professor if gravity exists. I’m baffled why we keep believing people who are constantly wrong. Like predicting we will run out of oil in 20 years, then 20...

I wanted to share with you an old parable that I just learned of that I can’t stop thinking about. It’s called Chesterton’s Fence and I think it’s important today. “There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let u...

Today marks two years since I started serving on the Haslett School Board. It also marks about a decade of my fascination with education in the United States. I consider myself lucky to be in Haslett. We’re not perfect, and COVID definitely impacted our kids, but our academic performance has been stronger than almost all of the surrounding communities. Especially compared to Holt, where I graduate...

A person posted a heartbreaking story and asked for money advice in a local community group. They said they are trying everything, work a good paying job, published multiple books, try to save, but they still cry daily over unexpected bills. They asked the community for money advice. First I gave the standard BS response. “Advice is always worth less than you pay for it, so this is probably useles...

Early Monday morning, a person entered our car and searched through it looking for items to steal. They didn’t find anything worth taking, but our neighbors weren’t as lucky. Several of them had things stolen from their vehicles. We alerted the police and shared our video footage in hopes it would help track down the thief. And, as is common now, we posted the videos to our local Facebook groups t...

Reflections on Fatherhood – April 17, 2025 I wrote this on the day Brady was born, but I didn’t feel comfortable releasing it until now. I’m embarrassed to admit how often I write a post but I’m too much of a coward to release it because of fear. Anyway, here it is… On Parenting, Policy, and Trust I’m running into this again and again. I’m being told how to raise my kid by people who speak with to...

There’s only one large all-sport lake (allows for watersports) around Lansing, Lake Lansing. It has a terrible reputation because it used to be dirty, and that was not entirely wrong. As a watershed lake, about 90% of its water comes from storm runoff, which means everything from lawn fertilizer to road salt and oil once flowed straight in from the surrounding area. That runoff built up sediment a...

The JumpStart Payroll Tax was passed in Seattle on July 6, 2020 to “fund affordable housing and combat homelessness” by taxing corporations with payrolls over $8.5 million. It targeted companies like Amazon. So five years later, what happened? The tax brought in new money at first. It raised $231 million in 2021, $293 million in 2022, and $310 million in 2023. That was new additional tax money. Ev...

Note: At the bottom of this article you’ll get several FREE tutorial videos that will show you practical uses for AI that you can start using today. This is just a taste of what you’ll learn in the full course. * How to use AI to create a poem for your grandson * How to use AI to review a lease for you or your family member * How to use AI to create a logo for your business or side project * How t...

Capitalism gets a bad rap as a ruthless, dog-eat-dog system, but in reality, it’s the most effective way to create shared prosperity . Unlike socialism, which focuses on redistributing wealth, capitalism multiplies it. Take Peter Thiel’s $500,000 investment in Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. At the time, Thiel was the wealthier of the two. But as Facebook scaled, Zuckerberg became exponentially richer th...

Personal Note: I’m very sorry for the delay in publishing. We took a vacation to Florida to see the first launch of Blue Origins New Glenn rocket. Our 6 year old loves rockets and space —it was awesome! Although a bummer that all of the launches were at 1am. Quite a difficulty for a 6 year old and a wife that is 6 months pregnant. But they were troopers and really impressed me. If you can make it...

*This is my personal account of Bill Hamilton from my own personal memory. I’m sure that I have some of the details and facts wrong. I apologize for any errors On December 15th, 2024, Bill Hamilton, the Founder of TechSmith died from a heart attack at the age of 77. Bill Hamilton was the greatest entrepreneur of the Lansing area in this century. Arguably more. He was a husband, a father, a veteran...

I wanted to follow up on my post from last week, Return to Real Science , that talked about “Relativism”. Two things happened since then that I thought perfectly illustrated the problem with “Moral Relativism” or “Moral Inversion”. I posted the following writing on Facebook: “I am appalled that many people, including journalists like Taylor Lorenz (Washington Post & New York Times), are celebratin...

Over the past few decades, a troubling shift has occurred in how we perceive and utilize science, particularly within educational contexts. Traditional science, grounded in facts, evidence, and experimentation, is increasingly being overshadowed by modern social science frameworks that emphasize subjective interpretations over empirical data. This shift has significant implications for the reliabi...

I’m sick of the crap story that we’re taught about the founding and “discovery” of America. The narrative is skewed, overemphasizing accidental “discovery”, guilt, and grievances while ignoring the truth: history, like nature, is savage and brutal. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 🙏 Migration, conflict, and innovation have always defined human...

The world is drowning in words that mean nothing because they can’t be tested, proven, or falsified. Words like “racist” or “bias” often serve as weapons, not tools of understanding. They rely on feelings, assumptions, and shifting definitions, making them impossible to disprove. If a person tells an offensive joke but is married to someone of that same race, are they a racist? Instead of using an...

Two years ago, I got the call I’d always feared. A close friend had suffered a heart attack after years of alcohol abuse. Within 48 hours, he was gone. He died alone in a hospital bed, separated from loved ones by pandemic restrictions. But that isolation wasn’t new to him.  His alcoholism had been isolating him for years. I often wonder—what came first? Did his alcoholism drive his isolation, or...

Thomas Jefferson said: "I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” The idea of choosing your friends or distancing yourself from family based solely on who they choose to support in a political election seems deeply unamerican to me. But sadly it seems to be very fashionable again as we grind through the last days of...

Back when I co-owned the restaurant chain Slice by Saddleback , I was looking for ways to increase the net income of the business. One of the things I became fascinated by was how sports stadiums would sell the naming rights to their stadiums as an advertisement to large businesses. Consider how many stadiums are named after companies, like the Staples Center or the DTE Energy Music Theatre. I tho...

I Dreamed I Had an Interview with God by James J. Lachard (Jim Brown) "So, you would like to interview me?" God asked. "If you have the time," I replied, and God smiled. "My time is eternity. What questions do you have in mind for me?" "What surprises you most about humankind?" I asked. God answered, " They get bored with childhood, rush to grow up, and then long to be children again. They sacrifi...

Year Of The Opposite - Travis Stoliker's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I used to say no—a lot. No to new experiences, no to challenges, no to anything that pushed me outside my comfort zone. But with The Year of the Opposite challenge, I started saying yes. It’s been about two years since I made th...

A quick update: The post that I get the most questions about is “ How to get a CT Calcium Score .” The most frequent question is: “Where can I get one?” and “How much does it cost?” The cost question was a surprisingly hard question to answer. Year Of The Opposite - Travis Stoliker's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or p...