I want Bitcoin events to be spaces for free thinkers again. Not purity tests. Not toxicity. Not groupthink. Just curious people debating ideas in good faith like the early days, before being nasty became a lauded value. I’ve been chatting with old friends about the meetups back in the day, and that’s what I miss. Prior to the “maxis” it wasn’t that social or political ideas were off-limits, it was that the space felt open. Curious. Willing to explore disagreement without hostility. Somewhere along the way, that shifted. As maximalism moved in, being “toxic”, engaging in mockery, etc. became something to celebrate. Any deviation from complete Bitcoin worship and praise of NgU was ridiculed. The culture narrowed. It became closed-minded. And so now, with all the events I’m a part of, I will attempt to undo that. I want to help rebuild a vibe that’s open, non-toxic, and genuinely welcoming to thoughtful disagreement. Bitcoin deserves better less toxic spaces free of group think.

I've got a lot of sympathy for Trump supporters. I was never a supporter of his, but I get it. I imagine if I was as disgusted as I am with the American far left and also had yet to lose my faith in politics.... I also might have wound up as a Trump supporter. The extreme wokism, the covid vaccine mandates, all sorts of insanity that can leave you desperate for any kind of shake up. And that's what a vote for Trump has been. He's the button to push to say 'fuck this shit!' Trump was a human Molotov cocktail 🧨 And so here we are. But now, in an undeniable fashion, his true colors have emerged. He was supposed to drain the swap but turns out he was a part of it the whole time. That's a devastating betrayal. That's rough. I'm sorry.

Pondering the early Bitcoin meetups, I have a question for anyone who was around then, ~2015-2018. My experience of Bitcoin and Crypto meetups now is dramatically different than in the past in very specific ways, and I’m not sure if the events changed or if I did. Did we always talk so much about social issues? Now when I go to Bitcoin events (that are not my own) I try to discuss tech, but always wind up in discussions of social issues. I am particularly sensitive to this at the moment as in the past ~5 years I’ve been bombarded by people literally following me around trying to give me their asinine gender studies treatise 🤦🏻‍♀️ At the past few events I’ve been to I didn’t get too many insane lectures on why I should go home and have more babies etc, but it was just uncomfortable for me as I wanted to discuss tech and I was seemingly the only one who did. Was it always like this and I was just less sensitive to it back in the day? Did we discuss a lot of social issues at BOB meetups? Or has it changed?

Sexual attraction and respect should go together. Healthy people are attracted to people they respect, and they respect people they are attracted to.

The gender wars are over. Men need women. Women need men. Anything that harms half of humanity degrades all of humanity. That bullshit is over. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

It’s embarrassing when someone you used to have a close association with has gone off the rails or fallen into an ugly ideology. ...something I’ve been experiencing a lot of in the past few years. With some people I can look back and see that the signs were there, but then there are others who I was suspicious of years ago who I now have more respect for than ever. You just don’t know which direction people will go in. People change, sometimes for the better and sometime for worse, and you can’t control that. All you can do is walk away when it becomes necessary.

What a privilege to feel deeply and to have expirences worth feeling.

What makes someone dictator enough for it to be justified for a foreign country to capture and remove them? Do you think any US presidents have ever reached that mark?

...ya know what, alcohol only works if you're regularly eating carbs. When you stop regularly eating carbs then alcohol doesn't provide much euphoria and it comes with a much worse hangover. It's a shity deal.

What's a good gender neutral term for "good guy" and "bad guy"? Cuz of course sometimes ladies are the "good guys" or the "bad guys"! The best I got at the moment is just heroes and villains. You got anything better for me?

Most of the time there is no "good guy", it's just all "bad guys".

It annoys me that right wing people can't understand why socialism is popular. But to be fair, it also baffles me that the lefties can't understand why people would fear the "collectivism".

Now I got no idea if Will Smith is guilty of this or not, but the Diddy documentary, headlines like this, Grindr crashing during RNC conventions, etc. makes me ponder how much ugly, how much toxic behavior is downhill of men being intensely shamed for deviating from strict heterosexuality in any fashion. If we lived in a world where men could experiment with their sexuality without heavy social consequences, would we have this headline? Would Diddy have become the monster that he is???

Yup, and this is why he wins. Human's are not wired for "rugged individualism" we are wired for community. People who can't see that and speak to that will keep losing to people who can. A rant about it ->

A Libertarian’s Guide to Understanding the Popularity of Socialism – HannahMR

Why is sexual assault so endemic in our culture? Because we are obsessed with power. We have this collective unconscious view of the world as a zero-sum hierarchy and we are obsessed with being above others… obsessed with having power over others. Grape isn’t about sex, it’s about power. If you have an insatiable need to feel that you have power over someone else, what is the most brutal and intense way to prove your power over them? Grape. Famous prolific abusers, Epstien, Diddy, Weinstein, etc. are all men obsessed with accumulating power. No coincidence there. Countries with the lowest ages of consent or lowest ages at which marriage is allowed are also the most patriarchal, Afghanistan, Iran, etc. I doubt there is a higher rate of people with pedophilic urges in these places, it is simply that having a very young bride gives the husband much better odds at controlling his wife. It’s not about sex, it’s about power. And this epidemic of sexual abuse will continue for as long as we keep our cultural obsession with having power over others.

My hair is getting pretty ridiculously long. It's a pain. But I'm thinking I'll keep it till summer when I'll do a dramatic chop. But until then... what are some fabulous hair styles that require super long hair?