Halloween came early this year, mk.

LOL. I am blaming my bandaged finger on that one.

This is wrong:

At its core, blockchain is a glorified spreadsheet (think: Excel with one table). In other words, a new way to store data. In traditional databases there’s usually one person who’s in charge, who decides who can access and input data, who can edit and remove it. That’s different in a blockchain. Nobody’s in charge, and you can’t change or delete anything, only view and input data.

Blockchain is not a new way to store data. Data has been stored in a distributed manner before. (Napster was a successful distributed data application) Blockchain is a method of securing state. In the case of Bitcoin, this enables a ledger that anyone can use, but no one can corrupt. This creates digital scarcity (a completely new phenomenon), but bitcoin also comes with a protocol for transactions. This is exactly what you need to make a basic digital currency, and thus, bitcoin was created. Bitcoin has serious drawbacks regarding speed and energy consumption, but it succeeds as a digital store of value. I used bitcoin last week to pay developers in another country.

Now, what Bitcoin does not do, but what Ethereum does, is use blockchain-secured state to create a global permissionless application. Computers are state machines. Ethereum is a turing-complete state machine that is accessible to anyone. Code runs on Ethereum much like transactions are made on Bitcoin. The result is that you can execute code that the entire world can interact with, and everyone shares the same results. You can create digital currencies using Ethereum, but because of its turing-complete nature, you can also do much more.

For example, because of blockchain, a girl in Poland can now buy shares in a house in the US, earn a portion of the rent, and sell the shares at a later date: https://realt.co/

Digital trading card games can be created with limited numbers of cards, and people can trade, buy, and sell these cards directly, or on unaffiliated marketplaces: https://godsunchained.com/ https://opensea.io/

Derivatives can be created around any of these assets, and markets for these derivatives are global: https://synthetix.exchange

As a result, there is an explosion of applications, and transactions are increasing https://etherscan.io/chart/tx

This author does not understand the technology, and is attacking the hype and failed early use-cases. The early web had similar hype and use case failures. However, the technology was transformative.

Alright ya nerds for the final chapter in my job transfer adventure: I have accepted the new position! Talking with the person who will be my boss I am going to have a higher level of responsibility than most. I'll essentially be the point person for outbreak things. All facilities, all types of disease. She has watched the work I've been doing with the facilities so far this pandemic and has been pleased and needs an outbreak person. That's pretty much exactly what I want to do so I took the leap and took the mid-pandemic job change. No reason to close that door without trying it.

When I opened Hubski this morning I thought I Rip Van Winkel'd myself through October.

I'm having a wonderful week off. Have an oversupply of paid leave that needs to be down to zero by Jan 1st, so I'm taking this week off, a long weekend early November and almost all of December.

Most of my week so far has been spent reading, cooking, and getting to a bunch of things I had postponed until further notice. I had been cooking more the last few weeks, but this weekend I got Ottolenghi's Simple as an early birthday gift so I got a pack with a bunch of exotic ingredients, made an extra grocery trip to get a bunch of veggies and declared Ottolenghi Week in our household. I've always liked to put something great on the table, but until last year that'd mostly been a handful of self-made or altered recipes from random sources. This year and especially the last week we've expanded our spices cabinet almost twofold and I love exploring new tastes and techniques and learning how to use them properly.

I started writing morning pages the other day. The only goal I have is to try and cathartically write how things are going and what's bothering me for five to ten minutes at the start of my day. I've been keeping a simple diary (did this, did that) for a year or two now but have never been very happy with it. This so far feels a nice addition to my morning routine. It helps me clarify and articulate my thoughts better. There is a markable difference between late-night tired worries and early morning, coffee/tea in hand worries, with the latter being much more important and worth thinking about. Since writing is a form of thinking for me I think this'll be a valuable new habit, not just in the short run.

Yesterday I realized which kind of contemplative mood I'm in. I always get contemplative when I am away from work for a while. I use the mental space I gain to endlessly ponder over bigger questions in life, as that's the only way I know how to deal with them productively. But it's always coloured by what's top of mind, and this week it's the woes of people in their thirties and early forties. Kids, building a family, thinking about what you've built up and what you still want to build up, that kind of thing. Devoured a book that was basically a collection of reflections and stories of someone turning forty, and I bought the game Eliza which has overlaps. It doesn't help that my mom is asking me out of the blue if we have wedding plans yet. Basically I'm looking for experience about settling down, while also realizing that I don't want to be gently coerced into doing so. Thus the need to figure out what part of that is for me and what part isn't. Put differently, I desparately don't want to be that friend of mine half brainwashed into wanting a mortgage equal her net salary in an overheated market, or the other friend getting a divorce because it just didn't work out anymore.

Hey y'all. Been a while, huh? Thx to izzy417 for the reminder that it's Wednesday :)

So what's been up with me? Jesus, what a question. Isolation? lol. In the early days of the pandemic, I spent a shitton of time with my best friend in the dorms here, and now we still hang out almost every day, although it's become less and less. I have new roommates, which is cool. Both of them are future music teachers so we hang out and talk/play music all the time <3

University remains stressful, in that the semester still has not started and I'm getting very tired of having so little to do but I also have absolutely 0 interest in another online semester. The last one was v rough, I couldn't focus at all and ended up dropping quite a few classes. Which is extra fun because it means now I have to do even more this semester. But I'll survive, I guess.

On the personal front, a few weeks ago I wrote some new "rules" for myself (under the heading DISCIPLINE) and hung them up next to my bed. With the exception of the week that I had a head cold, I've mostly managed to hold to them:

- Wake up before 9

- Get out of bed before 9:30

- Exercise once a day, ideally in the morning

- Limit myself to 1 coffee per day

- Alcohol and other substances only on the weekend

- Go to bed by midnight

It helps me feel a lot better, I think. Of course I'm still stressed and anxious and the world is fucked, I'm often homesick or feel directionless or scared of the future, but having a bit of structure despite the circumstances feels good. I'm proud of myself and how healthy I've managed to stay. We'll make it through this, I think. I missed you all.

Hi friends. Been a minute. Sorry this is so long.

Cat Story

Went to visit my parents 2 weekends ago, with my in-laws watching our cats. Our oldest (cat tax, he's on the left) developed some bad urethra/bladder/kidney issues from the stress of us leaving, although we have left many times before and it's never been a problem. Poor little guy went to the kitty hospital on a Sunday night and spent 4 days there before coming home. When he returned, he was still acting strangely. On Friday morning (my partner was at work), I called the vet...

"So he keeps going between litter boxes but isn't successful in peeing, won't eat or drink, is lethargic, and extremely moody. We thought he was just uneasy about being back after so long away, but something definitely seems wrong. Oh, also, his ears are hot. I'm not sure if that's relevant."

"Oh, his ears are hot? Do you have a thermometer?" Dr. L asked.

"What, like a mouth thermometer?"

"Yeah, something you wouldn't mind shoving up your cat's butt."

As I dig through my partner's bedside table (sorry, love): "So...what's the average temperature inside a cat's butthole?"

Dr. L: "Probably about 102.5 on the high end. If it's up over 103, he's definitely gonna need to come in, because it's an infection. I hope you have Vaseline."

As I balance Rhett on my knee, the vet on speaker phone, a tub of lube next to me: "Uh...should I call you back?"

"Yeah, you're gonna need two hands."

So I hang up, tell my cat I love him, and do the deed. Once it's firmly in there (he's really not a fan), I push the button, but don't get a reading. I try again. Nothing. Yup, dead batteries.

I pull it back out (he liked THAT even less), call the vet back and explain the situation, then call my partner and ask her to pick up a new thermometer on the way home. When the vet saw the cat, they determined that he still had a slight urethral blockage. To fix that, they "applied light pressure to the abdomen and were able to express the bladder, removing the blockage in the process," or, in layman's terms, "we squeezed the fuck out of kitty cat till his massive piss rocks cratered our floor and he saw God."

All's well that ends well. He's recovered nicely, and work was very understanding about me missing large chunks of the day (just like the vets missed large chunks of kitty's urethral blockage ayyyyy). The first few days in hospital ran us just shy of 3k USD, which is far from ideal, but a small price to pay for an alive cat, and also we probably would have paid anything for treatment given how obsessed we are with him. When we brought him in the second time, they didn't charge us for anything except his new antibiotic, which was good of him. I love veterinarians so much. They're good people.

General Life

That has obviously been pretty all-absorbing. On other fronts, a moment of personal pride this past week (setting aside my reservations against evaluating your "worth" and the advantages I had to get here, namely living with in-laws and not paying rent for a full year) as I crossed from a negative to a positive net worth. I did work hard to get here with aggressively paying off debt and saving/investing, and despite $5,000 or so in unexpected expenses. My goal was to reach the black by the end of the year, so it was nice to be 2.5 months early.

I have also decided to go to law school, so I'm studying for the LSAT, and we'll go from there. Again, I have personal reservations, but I'll get over them and/or figure them out.

If anyone in the Northeast US would like to meet up to ski this winter, I would love company. I bought a pass before my cat couldn't piss. Discounted tickets are a possibility, and I would be able to borrow some of my in-laws gear if needed. I love teaching new people!

Oh, and since I never post without tagging galen, I ended up in a game of TF2 yesterday with one of my favorite players, something he has also experienced.

Oh, and since I never post without tagging galen, I ended up in a game of TF2 yesterday with one of my favorite players, something he has also experienced.

To be fair, I experienced it in CSGO, not TF2! :D

Glad the cat's okay. Much love, bud.

Beer. The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

What a world it was back in 1970, when to be a man you primarily had to be decisive, bossy, and unflinching. I went through the test as a 1970's man and scored 100% manly.

Then I went through it as a 1970s woman, never taking leadership of any sort, always helping, helping, always helping, serving: unflinching service. Unflinching submission. But I didn't want to be too sure of anything - as women are famously indecisive and meek. I didn't even want to be 100% certain about being indecisive, so my second score was only 95% woman

These days, I'm 100% human. As eightbitsamurai knows, I can kick ass when necessary - but most of the time I take leadership and try to get along. My last score was 72% man, 72% woman and 50% both -- which seems about right.

You scored 90.833 out of 100 masculine points, 48.333 out of 100 feminine points, and 68.333 out of 100 androgynous (neutral) points.

Not sure what to take away from these numbers

52.5 % man, 70% feminine, 62.5% neutral.

Yeah, sure, that sounds about right.

What to take away is that you would be successful in a traditional role in 1970.

Now you might need to work more on developing your feminine side.

(Actually with 2015 eyes, the test seems ridiculous.)

Thanks for the shout out thenewgreen. I've been well, still getting settled in Belgium, but thoroughly enjoying the intellectual atmosphere at the GBI. If people are interested in the thoughts of this article - which essentially argue for a structural paradigm shift in modes of control - then you may be interested in my latest paper (just published in the Journal of Evolution & Technology ). In it I propose Human Metasystem Transition (HMST) theory, which argues that fundamental control transitions always occur with the emergence of a higher information medium (in this case the Internet), and this is an evolutionary model within which new forms of governance can not only be expected to stabilize in the coming decades, but also an evolutionary model in which this transition can be predicted and studied.

A month or so ago, the CEO of a Dutch automotive networking group found me on LinkedIn and contacted me after reading my published article on self-driving cars. He's invited me to join their next meeting on telematics in the auto industry as his guest! This could be an amazing opportunity to meet people in the business. Or at least an interesting experience! kleinbl00

As someone who only has 250mb of data per month...yeah, I agree. I've limited my casual browsing to only a few pages per week. Most of my phone info comes through mobile apps (e.g. Twitter, Google Play Kiosk, Reddit Sync...) so it's at least partly optimized. The biggest data drain for me now is Google Maps, which easily takes up 20mb per route search.

this is pretty common if you look at all the FBI terrorism busts in recent history. look up Brandon Darby and the 2008 RNC arrests, the NATO 5, and the kids from Occupy Cleveland. and that's just in the anarchist community, there are several more incidents in the Muslim community that I just don't know off the top of my head.

there's a common joke in activist circles that whoever offers to bring the explosives is the pig. and it's hilariously/unconformably true.

go down this list, check out a few links: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist_plots_in_the_United_States_post-9/11

I saw one that said Dallas and I knew nothing about it, so I clicked:

Smadi was in the United States illegally, and unaware he was under continuous surveillance, and that the other members of his "sleeper cell" were all Federal agents.[2] The agents in his "sleeper cell" had supplied him with inert chemical, so his bomb had not posed a real threat.[4]

Immigration officials were trying to determine how Smadi was able to work at a gas station, since he only had a 2007 tourist visa.[1][3]

Smadi was provided with a fake bomb by FBI agents posing as members of al-Qaeda.

I'm not even trying, here