Power corrupts

It’s really, really important that men have close female friends, and that women have close male friends. I’ve had a lot of ugly and just plain fucked up experiences with men. Emotionally abusive relationships, sexual assault, etc. It would be very easy for me to slide into ‘man hating’. One thing that keeps me balanced, one thing that keeps me from sliding into hate, are the very close relationships that I have with men. When you are the shoulder to lean on for a man going through a breakup, or navigating a difficult time in his life, you get to see up close that not all the problems in the world belong to women. When you can be close enough to a man to have a deep understanding of his life and empathize with him, that inoculates you against developing hatred for those like him. And the reverse is true too. There are plenty of men in the world who have had and will have shitty experiences with women. And if they don’t have close personal relationships with women, they are far more likely to slide into hate. Deep friendships with the opposite sex inoculates against sexist hatred.

You really don't know what will happen, you never know, you can't know. Let go of the outcome and just focus on being a decent human being.

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending sons-of-bitches. For it is against sons-of-bitches that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." - H.L. Mencken

When you bring up the misbehavior of a gov official someone is always quick to say "but the other side does that too!" And ya, if so then that is also shitty!

People be like "that's taken out of context!" So you go check the context, and that shit is even worse 😳

I’m going to Mexico City next week to speak at Finnosummit! I’ll be doing a talk, joining a panel, giving a workshop, and attending a BitDevs event! ¡Y esto lo voy a hacer en inglés y español! I’m going to be exhausted 🤪 But if you’re around, join us!

When someone tells you that they don’t have any friends of the opposite sex they are letting you know that they don’t value the opposite sex as real people. To them, they are simply tools.

How my husband talks to me about social media… When I’m on Facebook: “Why are you even there?” “That can’t be good for you?” “Maybe you should cut back a bit?” When I’m on Nostr with zaps enabled: “You did great today!” “You should get back on there!”

Bitcoin is a tool for facilitating peaceful human interaction on a scale larger than Dunbar’s number.

If you’re a supporter of capitalism you’ve probably been watching in dismay as the word has slowly become a slur. You can get mad and yell about it, you can lean into dictionary definitions, but really, when has that ever changed someones mind? You can’t fix a problem that you don’t understand. So, if you’d like to understand, and get some new strategy ideas, here is my shot at it. We can know that “capitalism” as in free markets, is what brings about the best and most humane outcome for a population. We can know that this is what improves quality of life, and bring peace and freedom, but no one else will know this if we repel most people. If we are the experts, then it’s our job to communicate our knowledge effectively. It's complex, but the primary issue here is a conflation of “hyper-independence” or “self reliance” and the concept of “capitalism” mixed with a failure to understand human evolution. We've messed that up. The human survival strategy is connection and co-operation. We form bonds and groups as a means of survival and we defend and lean into our community as if our lives depend on it, because it does. One human with one tiger means the human is lunch. 10 Humans with one tiger mean the tiger is lunch. We all know this deep in our bones. Rarely do we acknowledge this interdependence reality in our culture, at least in the States. We tend to view humanity as a “every man for himself” kind of world where “winning” means being above others in a zerosum hierarchy. And this concept seeps into our language, especially the language we use when discussing economics. But this is contrary to the reality of human well being. Most humans know deep in their bones that they need community. They can only thrive with community. And they are right. An interesting bit of evidence here are the studies on loneliness and all cause mortality. When we sell “capitalism” as a lonely endeavor, when we sell it with words used to signal distance and friction with our fellow humans rather than connection to them and care for them we trigger concerns for well being. ...valid concerns. When we use words like competition, profit motive, self-interest, self reliance, sink or swim, rugged individualism, survival of the fittest, etc. we signal to most humans that we are not fit for community building. We bring up sensations of loneliness and ostracization. We give the impression that we will destroy the community that they have a deep longing for. Now we can know, because we have done that math, that “capitalism” will bring about much better outcomes for a community, but wow are we doing a horrific job of communicating that. We know that mobs can bring out the worst of humanity. We know that the only way to prosper is to have a strong respect for individuality. But we need to be very conscious of the difference between respecting individuality and individual rights and disrespecting community and the close bonds and mutual support that it brings. We need to clearly communicate that free markets very much support and strengthen voluntary, respectful community. If we want to stop a wave of coming socialism, we really need a marketing overhaul. We need to understand that the human survival strategy is co-operation and community and we need to give that the respect it deserves and support that reality in our language. Very rightfully so an “every man for himself” world is being rejected, and “socialism” is the tool of that rejection. If we want to change that then we need to be better than the socialists at communicating the free market benefits to society and community. We can adapt ourselves to the reality of humanity, or we can die out as another ism. It’s our call.

Lying to someone destroys your ability to feel loved by them. Because you know, they can not love you if they do not know you.