The single family home, stay at some Mother set up is an anomaly for humanity. It's unnatural, generally not very healthy, and serves to hold women back from being full participants in the world. This does not mean that I think anyone who is or has done this is a bad person. Not at all. Quite a lot of people have chosen this because it was a solution that matched the logistics of the time and place there were living. I chose this setup for that reason for years. No doubt for some people this is an optimal situation. But now with more education and perspective, I can see that for most people, the world would be a better more healthy place if we changed the logistics that make this such a prominent setup.

So that we aren’t just tearing into things, here is what I see as a healthy future for humanity. The below is an explanation and description of the world that I am working towards and how I think 'motherhood' should be done! When I was dealing with depression/anxiety I of course did lots of reading and study into why. Why is everyone depressed? Well we can look at what makes humans happy. And over and over again one things sticks out, community. People who have close friends, room mates, family near by, close bonds with co-workers, etc, or even just say hi to the barista in the morning, those people are dramatically more likely to be happy people. In the modern world we live very isolated lives and we tend to not have much support. We aren’t built for that. So what are we built for? And that gets complex because I don’t think we should be going “back” to anything in our history, but we would be silly to not take a look at our past to understand what our bodies and minds are expecting. But when we realize that, depending on which part of the world your ancestors are from, ~99% of our history we’ve been living in small bands/villages/tribes we can see how that conflicts with modern life. We were out doors a lot, we knew everyone, (the famous scene from cheers, “Norm!”, that is what our minds and bodies expect to happen to us everyday!) We had lots of people around us to help with day to day tasks. Someone sitting next to the camp fire to tell little Sussie not to touch it so that you don’t have to stop what you are doing every 90seconds. We had friends that would pick up the slack on our tasks when we were having a bad day and needed to go for a long walk. We worried that the tribe would starve, but we didn’t have to worry that the tribe would let us starve. So, interestingly, communism is a great idea and works wonderfully!… in groups smaller than Dunbar’s number. In a big way communism is our natural state. It just doesn’t scale. So when we know this about ourselves, we can apply this knowledge to how we live now to optimize it. For me, and for quite a lot of mothers, the most difficult part of being at home with kids is the constant interruption. It’s a low level constant mental torment to not have any other responsible people around and to have to have your train of thought interrupted every 90seconds because you have to keep a little person from killing themselves. This shouldn’t be how it’s done. So how can we do it the right way? There is this great line from a stand up comic, Jim Gaffigan. He says his wife loves camping and is always trying to talk him into it. She says “It’s a tradition in my family.” and ya, “It was a tradition in everyone’s family until we invented the house!” I don’t like camping. I enjoy indoor plumbing. So how do we be hunter gatherers or villagers in the modern world? I think we need to consciously chose a local, in person, village to practice some communism and communal living with. I think in the glorious future we will have lots of little villages, which people can freely chose and change, and we will essentially be big communist hippies in those villages, and then engage in more “free market” exchange with other villages. I think young families should live in communal housing with other families where childcare can be shared. I think children should attend mixed age local schools in the little village. Adults will mostly work locally or from home like Me and Erik do. Parents work near their kids, but stay focused on their own adult endeavors. This also allows for women … and thus the tribe, to have more specialization and division of labor. Not all women want to or would be good school teachers. This setup will give kids great community, lots of play with other kids, a quality education, and will allow mothers full community, creativity, and autonomy. A real win win. There are so many ways in which this localized ‘communism’ can be practiced. The Kibbutz model. Very high home owner association fees with lots of local benefits. Very casually in even smaller extended family groups, etc. The really important part is small and voluntary! I think this setup would be wildly healthy for the vast majority of people practicing it. It takes into account the realities of human instincts, respects women’s minds and individuality, and has solid economic theory.

People often reject the praising of motherhood at it is used as a round about way to prevent women from being full participants in the world. It's a shame to disrespect motherhood, but I get it. The idea that women's highest purpose is to be mothers, and that that is the most appropriate activity for women, serves to hold woman back from full participation in the world. Women can, should, and for their own happiness, need, to be fully involved in the world. Indeed parenthood is one of the most beautiful things in the world and we should respect it, but not at the expense of women living full lives. We need more involved fathers, more community, and more balance.

We get "motherhood" all wrong. It isn't really a thing. Human history...pre-history: As best we can tell, as it is all a guessing game, humans are about 200k yrs old. And the vast, vast majority of that time was spent living in smallish hunter gatherer tribes. Civilization began about 10k yrs ago, probably, but that varied by place. Of course some people's still live in those small tribes. So we can look to what happens there to form ideas about our instincts. In those tribes "motherhood" isn't a thing like it is in our world. I've read a number of studies on this one, it's fascinating! One study showed that a new born baby is held on average by 14 different people a day. Mothers take a few weeks to recover, and they stay very close to their baby nursing, etc, but they really don't do much "mothering". Small children are cared for communally and once they are old enough to run around, they join their local kids play group. The mothers stay physically close to their kids, but are engaged in their own crafts for most of the day while conversing with other adults. This is what our instincts are build for. Having been through this myself, I can't tell you wave of relief that hit me when I learned this, it was an "O, that's why it was so hard. I was never meant to do it that way!" The way we do "motherhood" now, with one woman alone in a house with multiple kids all day playing patty cake is unnatural to the point of being really destructive.

Look bro I'm just a pedantic bitc... I'm a very detail oriented person.

The majority of my friends are Bitcoiners and I’ve been pondering that as I doubt that’s very healthy. But I think I’ve sorted it out. It’s not that I don’t like hanging out with non-bitcoiners, it’s that I don’t like hanging out with people who don’t have anything that they are passionate about. Someone who hates their job, resents their spouse, is annoyed by their kids, is overwhelmed by home maintenance, etc, etc, is just really really draining to be around. And unfortunately, that’s the norm.

These red pill bros seem to have this idea that men should rule over women because they are physically stronger… it’s like they really think it’s 'he who has the biggest biceps is the ruler'. And this amuses me as it’s a wild lack of understanding of human evolution and human specialization. With these characters I’ve often seriously wondered why haven’t just gone to join a Chimpanzee troop. And well they can’t because Chimps are dramatically stronger than humans and they would quickly be killed. What this crew doesn’t understand is that humans got to where we are by specializing in social bonds and intelligence rather than in physical strength. It is our social connections and tool making that allowed us to survive and thrive. If you take one human, without social connections or tools and put them alone with a tiger, the human is lunch. But, if you take a human with social connections, a tribe, and tools, the tiger is lunch. So it’s not he who has the biggest biceps survives, it’s they who have the best social bonds and best tools thrive.

Do you have people in your life that actively lookout for you, defend you, and support you? And *active* is the key word here. Do you have people in your life that do these things without you having to ask?

My experience on the internet lately...

I’m annoyed at the Diddy trial, I’m not sure what the prosecution was thinking. While I am very much not a legal expert, it seems to me they did this wrong. When he was charged with racketeering I assumed there must be a lot more to this story than we knew about, but while following the trial, it seems not really. He’s very guilty of hiring sex workers and was found guilty of that, but I don’t think that should be illegal. The things that I would like to see him go to jail for are the coercion, battery, and grape of his partners. And those are the things he wasn’t charged with. WTF! What happened there?

I just had my first proper business call in Spanish...and it went pretty well! We understood each other, we communicated! 🥳

Ask more questions, ask for help — it’s an underrated cheat code! I’ve spent years teaching, from universities to dev advocacy, and I always encourage questions. I even tell students, “If you're stuck, meet with me, I’ll explain everything. It's like sanctioned cheating!” It’s wild how few people take me up on it.

A big long rant on the madhouse that is Bitcoin... Ever find yourself in a room full of people who just give you the ick—and you can’t help but wonder, “How did I end up here?” That’s been me looking around at the Bitcoin world for the past ~3 yrs. It’s been a rough few years on the personal front. I changed my social circle and parted ways with dear old friends. But don’t get me wrong, there are still amazing people here and the Bitcoiners that I now hangout with I genuinely find to be the most interesting and impressive people on the planet. I’d pass on a ticket to the Met gala to go to a dive bar with my fav Bitcoiners! But, looking around at the broader space… it’s ugly out here. Blatant misogyny, political boot licking, tyrant worship, nonsensical infighting. This is not the behavior of humanity's best and brightest. And we think so highly of ourselves in this space, we are geniuses… right? Well how did all this madness wind up here, with us? The breakdown of my relationship with one particular Bitcoiner friend of mine is very illustrative of what’s been happening here. This is a person who was a long time anarchist deep in the libertarian world. We connected over shared values, or at least I thought we had. Then the values got eroded, one by one. Liberty! …unless you are a woman, because of course women want to be led by a man. No rulers! …well except Trump, because he’s going to beat those evil libtards with the satanic agenda. Pain will motivate you, and so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what happened there. I see three recurring patterns: the perpetual rebel, the disillusioned, and the power hungry. 1. The Perpetual Rebel Someone suffers a deep injustice at a formative point in life. They engage in righteous rebellion, and that becomes their identity. When one fight ends, they seek another, just to keep feeling like themselves. They aren’t just fighting for something—they’re fighting to stay someone. 2. The Disillusioned Sometimes there are reality breaking moments in people’s lives. Someone has been told their whole life that the sky is blue, but one day, they look up and it is red. Their whole model of reality breaks, they question everything, they trust no one. They become stuck in disillusionment, always doubting, never grounded. 3. The Power Hungry Some rebel against their rulers. Their rulers are unjust and are suppressing them. They are filled with righteous anger and join the movements to remove the oppressive leaders. But, while they may have spent years chanting it, it wasn't that they actually wanted “no rulers”, they didn’t want “freedom” in a general sense. They wanted to not be ruled themselves. They wanted freedom and power for themselves. And so, when the time comes, they will support the tyrant that they see as giving them the power to be the ruler of others. My former friend was to some extent, all three of these things, and the Bitcoin world has a way of attracting these types of people. Bitcoin is a wildly powerful and “disruptive” technology. When you see that, when you get it, it’s mind blowing! It’s a powerful tool for the rebels. It’s a bit of hope for the disillusioned trying to find a new map of the world. It’s also a method of enrichment for those who wish to be above others. But the perpetual rebel and the disillusioned don’t just get caught up in Bitcoin, they also get caught up in social causes, politics, and all sorts of movements that offer them an enemy to fight or a new grip on reality. And when those seeking power are feeling wealthy, they will exert that power and seek to expand it. And when we recognize the high concentration of these volatile people in the Bitcoin world, it really shouldn’t be a surprise that we have the madness that we do. But then, it gets worse. Bitcoin gets picked up by a lot of these people and becomes their identity, their religion. … In some circles, Bitcoin is a cult. Beards, guns, steak, and toxic maximalism. Those with a cult-like mindset are also drawn to Bitcoin. I was born into a Christian doomsday cult and I have to admit, that’s probably a factor in why I find myself standing in this room. My family left the cult that I was born into when I was 7, and both of my parents then drifted away from Christianity and religious extremism. But that mind set, the us-vs-them, the occult knowledge elitism, the righteousness obsession, that mindset was installed deep in the back of my head during those 7 years, and parts of it have stayed with me. What really stuck with me was a sense of elitist righteousness as a form of safety from the evils of the world—a kind of magical thinking that promised security and fulfillment if I could just follow a rare, enlightened path and avoid the sinful, misguided sheeple. Given my history with religion, I couldn’t find this path through a church, though I did try a few times. Instead, I found it in economic and political ideologies—first in Austrian economics, where I railed against the evils of communism; then in Libertarianism, railing against the evils of collectivism and authoritarianism—and ultimately in Bitcoin, which seemed to unite these ideas and offer both a sense of purpose and a righteous path. Bitcoin with its fringe status and world altering potential can really appeal to those seeking elite knowledge—the kind that feels like a righteous path to salvation. But not everyone in this space is a cultist, a perpetual rebel, the chronically disillusioned, or power hungry. There are brilliant, principled people here. And people who came for the wrong reasons but stayed for the right ones. Still, it’s undeniable: Bitcoin is a magnet for the unbalanced, and that causes real problems. It’s kinda an asshole move to rant about a problem without offering a solution. But I needed to find the patterns before I could start addressing them. I’m finally in a place where I can begin looking for solutions. And I will. What do you think the solutions are? What do we do about this? What can we do about this?