There have been a handful of times in my life, maybe four or five or so, where I was walking in a dark parking garage or similar venue alone in a city at night, and came across a sketchy-looking dude that was looking at me weird or otherwise triggered my confrontational intuition based on his vibe, clothing, and/or body language.

And each time I kept it cool on the surface, looked at him confidently, but kind of subtlety clenched my fists and was internally amping myself up with uncontrollable adrenaline like, “You want to fucking go dude?” and began running through mental routines of how to drop him based on certain approaches, or what if he has a knife and how to focus on that, etc.

To this day, I don’t know what percentage of them were intending to be a problem. Maybe none. Maybe one or two out of five. I think at least some of them probably triggered defensive instincts in me for a reason; those aren’t there for no reason. Some aspect of them seemed acutely out of place or overly intentional, etc. Studies generally suggest that attackers pick out less confident looking people. Easy targets. They use their instincts too. Part of me wonders if any of them might have tried something if I slumped my shoulders and tried to walk quicker to my car rather than look straight at them and and basically amp myself up while also acting like nothing was happening. Some vibe of me was present for their instincts too.

But perhaps more importantly, I wonder what it feels like to be totally afraid there. To have no defenses, no answer. It happens to people all the time. You’re in a parking lot or garage and there is a sketchy dude or a few drunk guys. You get on a small elevator with a guy and it is you and him and he’s 80 pounds heavier. My father put me in martial arts so that I wouldn’t face a scenario with no answers. While I might feel adrenaline or concern, I never feel powerless. I immediately start running through options. I wonder what people feel like in these situations if they have literally never had a fight in their lives. Like, I might or might not win in this scenario, but either way it’ll be absolutely vicious if it gets down to it. I can’t imagine having no answer.

Or the doorbell rings at 9pm while my husband is on travel. 95% of me like “probably a neighbor” and the other 5% of me is looking out the window and clenching my fists slightly and running through those same routines and thinking about the closest knife location in case this gets weird.

I think that is an important aspect to teach people. Everyone should have basic defense training. Not everyone is going to have extensive combat training, but everyone can have some basics to boost their chances by either improving their vibes to avoid being targeted or having some basic starting points of what to do if attacked, since some actions like yelling and having a handful of moves to get away from a grab or hit someone back or otherwise make someone realize that it’s not worth it. It’s the same as having basic cooking skills, basic repair skills, how to change a tire, etc. you just have to know a few things.

One of my long-term goals has been write a couple of novels. Like maybe when this crazy decade blows over and I go onto some other stage of my life, I'll return to that idea.

I have a bunch of firm outlines for fantasy and near-term sci-fi novels, but they're all on my deep back burner.

And now I'm kind of annoyed, because by the time I have a chance to consider writing any of them, probably AI will be better than humans at writing, I don't know. And the funny thing is that one of the stories is set in 2050 and has AI as a theme, but probably by the 2030s that storyline will be obsolete anyway.

I guess the cool thing is that if generative AI gets way better, it'll eventually make it an order of magnitude cheaper to make animated stories or something from source material.

One of the few tv shows I still watch is Real Time w/ Bill Maher.

I mostly focus on finance, so getting a once-a-week checkup on what news events are noteworthy is useful. And I like to see people with totally different backgrounds debating each other on stuff. I feel like we need more of that.

What's the play as black?

No using engines don't be a larp

Regulated stablecoins do not compete with bitcoin.

They can be censored and/or seized at will by the centralized regulated company that controls them.

They do not even compete with Tether - which also relies on a centralized company that can freeze or seize funds but has a long track record as black market money.

Tether will ultimately fail. Bitcoin will outcompete all other monies.

This has been obvious for years yet few understand this. Stay humble and stack sats. 🫡

If you had somehow found yourself deep in macro/commodity/goldbug/outdated-photos land for a weekend, and could present basically anything to this type of audience, what would you present about?

Hypothetically speaking, if "bitcoin" is your answer, a more sufficient answer would be to suggest which *specific* aspects of bitcoin to appeal to them.

I've done a few conferences like this before and I tend to focus on freedom aspects. I'm like, "who here in the audience knows who Phil Zimmerman is? Basically nobody? Okay cool, let's talk about encryption and rights and the shenanigans he went through." And then I can move that into a global perspective. "Imagine you're in Argentina. What do you do for money? So, I know a new company called Fedi that seeks to help communities build their own private full-reserve banks. Want to hear about it?"

What would you emphasize here that would connect well?

Hey Nostriches! I just saw that the bird app banned Carla Gericke. Not sure why. Does anyone know if she’s on #Nostr?

Just landed 🛬 in Miami and my Uber driver keeps giving me this weird look.