Category: Community

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Community Internet Culture Startups

Day 848 and Summer Camp

I’m not a camp kid. I’m told there exists a group of kids whose formative summer experiences are at summer camp and I’ve watched enough American television to have the gist of the genre. It looks fun.

Professional conferences appear to offer a similar experience to adults. You have a yearly event or two that gets together various sets of old colleagues and professional teams that then overlap with social and affinity groups. I’ve been at Consensus which is one of crypto’s many conferences but somehow one of its most inclusive.

It’s a bit of a crossover event where a lot of different factions put aside their differences and ask why the fuck are we here and what the fuck are we even building anyway. And the answer seems to be every kind of kid you’d expect at summer camp. We are building a pretty inclusive place with a lot of weirdos.

You’ve got the academic nuanced protocol dorks, the tradfi to defi chads, the solar punk regenerative commons open source projects, developer tool companies, analytics firms and graph data scientists, privacy and OpSec nerds, and even the baroque online misogynists. And me, who is, I guess, a chaos magic witch or a pre-seed venture investor if you are nasty.

Crypto is for everybody and sometimes we aren’t thrilled by everyone who shows up but we do our best to make sure everyone is included in the effort. Maybe we even help cool down the radicals and maximalists right? Maybe we can reach a consensus?

Everyone who is here this year is down for the fight. There are a millions reasons why skepticism of centralizing authority and panopticon states is good. Mostly it comes down to insisting on finding a trust layer that we can all agree on. Even if you are a racist weirdo online.

And I’d imagine most marginalized identities can understand the basic skepticism how big institutions. I’ve only got a few issues (disability and gender come to mind) and even I see how institutions turn a blind eye to our needs if we don’t stand up. So we’ve got to agree on a common set of civilizational rules. If a state can’t do that then we better build alternatives fast. Trust layers matter.

So I’m glad that I’m in an aligned fight for those basic ideals. We are fighting for a consensus in a pluralistic world. Because that’s one where we can all prosper. And speaking as someone at summer camp for utopians, it feels pretty good to be optimistic. Just give us a decade or two to keep fucking around and finding out. With enough of us competing we will get there.

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Community Startups

Day 847 and Erasure

I hosted an interactive town hall for Consensus this afternoon. The topic was the path forward for building communities online, offline and IRL with cryptocurrency, decentralized autonomous organizations and maybe even network states.

I’ve been working on this town hall for several months. I worked with Marc Hochstein to refine the thesis question, build the flow and topics, bring together speakers from unique ecosystems and projects, and horse trade the various bit of social capital required to get interesting content out the door. I worked hard on it. I felt I was one of the owners of the panel.

Builders of new types of communities – online, IRL, and hybrids – roll up their sleeves and discuss how they’ve addressed challenges from 60,000-foot strategy to immediate on-the-ground tactics in a zero-trust world with high trust expectations. Topics include: governance and accountability; organic scaling through consensus (who and what decides on whether it is achieved); the architecture of sustaining and driving loyalty; navigating regulatory hurdles; uncertainty around novel governance structures; and managing information and workflows around who and what is trusted.

I was proud of my first question as I felt qualified to ask having once been the founder and leader of an organization. Conway’s Law is a familiar adage in software design. Simply put, what we build is a reflection of who we are and how we communicate with each other. So I opened the town hall with this as the thirty thousand foot view.

If what we build is a reflection of the organizations that build it, then crypto is a reflection of this room. Assuming you believe our goal is economic and monetary solutions for everyone willing to align with our reformation, are we living up to this ambition?

We had a lot of ground to cover. Issues of institutional distrust, transparency, governance, and decentralization’s promises for inclusion. But reactivity means we go to base emotions. An older woman asked the panel (not me though) why there weren’t more women on the panel. Needlessly to say I took that personally. Ain’t I a panelist?

I just brought the hammer down on this poor woman who wanted to call my panel a “manel” because lady it’s fucking erasure I worked for months to bring this group together, I’m on the stage as an expert, and you think don’t I count?

She said I was the moderator. Which like yeah it’s my fucking show because I have the expertise to bring the leaders together as I’m a peer. I shut it down as we had deeper questions on what inclusion means than Boomer feminism or Girlbossing woke-ism can manage.

The beauty of Bitcoin and Ethereum and the ecosystem of L2s like Stacks is any of us can validate what’s going on. There is no “man” or patriarchy or systemic oppression keeping you out of learning and using the tools. Maybe they reflect their builders who haven’t always been inclusive but now all of us together can earn and build like anyone else. We can make our tools reflect us by insisting on being seen.

I regularly have my background and expertise and existence questioned by everyone. And I just keep showing up. So I’d like to say sticking a girl on a panel does nothing for inclusion. But being a woman who organized a serious (ly) weird town hall on community should also mean my experience counts as much as anyone else’s.

I want everyone to count. You count. I count. Your gender or sexual orientation doesn’t discount you unless you discount yourself first. I regularly make sure I’m seen and I want you seen too.

The way to count is by speaking up and making sure that men aren’t the only ones who contribute. Don’t want to make your gender or sex a thing?

Go ignore gender & sex and & identity entirely and be an anon with a Milady pfp. I came to crypto to be a sovereign of my own body and choices. It’s your choice. None of us are victims.

I was amused as dozens of women came up to me after with enthusiasm about how we do inclusion in crypto because we don’t need to be restricted by Girlbossing or Boomer feminism. We include ourselves as the system is inclusive by design.

Decentralized systems include us all. And that’s a future they can’t exclude us from. Do you want to categorize every identity into perfect little corporate identities and slogans? I don’t. We can build a future where we are free to be you and me. Ok Boomer?

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Community Homesteading

Day 839 and Chatty

I occasionally have the ambition to be less of chatty Cathy. I almost cannot help myself in Montana. I keep meeting folks who are into the same stuff as me and then I’ll just end up talking for an hour.

Introverted Julie somehow always finds the homesteader, science fiction, alternative economy, crypto libertarian aesthetic studies semiotics pirate at the party. Sometimes it’s even the same person (hi Frank). I’ve now found not one but two homestead curious folks at a spa. The same spa! (Hi Kylie & Lorraine!)

I’ve got a general philosophy in life that you should be a beacon. We are responsible for our light and maintaining it. But are we not equally responsible for shining it into the darkness?

I’d like to see my broadcasting into the abyss of the internet as being a sort of existential lighthouse. Perhaps my chatty nature is some form of the same ambition. I want my people to find me.

And wouldn’t you know it but I’m always finding people searching for the same things. I have so many pockets of knowledge. And I want to share what I know with you. I want you to share your knowledge with me too. Your world and your experiences will add to mine just as mine adds to yours. Like the Borg but decentralized.

I’ve got a lot of weirdly specific knowledge. You know, Julie Fredrickson shit. And I want the folks who need the light I’ve cultivated to find me. So I will broadcast.

I know how to be in my body even with illness. I know about inflammation and healing from post viral shit. I know about sovereignty and survival and independence. I know a thing or two about being a doomer and an optimist.

I’ve got weirder more specifics knowledge too. Ask me about corporate governance structures and decentralized autonomous organization. Or the most cost effective luxury unbranded retinols. Or what biometrics to track and on what devices.

The point is that I’m here to be a chatty Cathy. And if you’d like to talk just slide into my DMs on Twitter. Or email me. It’s my first name dot last name at gmail. Consider this your bat signal.

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Community Politics

Day 838 and Wanting

I am no longer interested in living by standards I didn’t set for preferences I don’t have.

Me on Twitter 😑

A lot of what Americans took for granted about the world got a hard dose of cynical reality over the last few years. But the upside of the pandemic was the reckoning it forced on all of it. I know I walked away from those years. changed.

I’d begun my own personal journey into the existential abyss earlier as I was faced with personal health crisis before the global one. And I’m glad I had a head start. It isn’t easy making hard choices.

I’ve learned to prioritize what matters to me. I have resource constraints and it has breed in me innovation and fortitude. I’m a whiney cunt about it too. Because I simply don’t see why I need to live my life for someone else’s preferences, especially if I don’t share them. I can chose to prioritize my life and my values. And I’m free to live that way too.

America as an ideal is nobler than our reality. But as a civilizational ideal we’ve set a society where we value the freedom to live as we chose. Maybe you don’t like my choices but if I’m not harming anyone live and let live.

I want to keep civilization. I think it’s good. I want no Hobbesian war of all against all. So let’s find a way to maintain tolerance and live and let live. Weirdos like me aren’t hurting anybody. And neither should you. Authoritarians please find succor elsewhere.

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Community

Day 835 and Weird

I was very inspired by a Twitter thread from Anna Gat last week on how the weirdos who had dealt with their identities were having an easier time as millennials hit forty. I thought it was so incisive I’ll include it in full here.

I’ve spent much of 2023 meditating on conformism. As old friends are turning 40, I notice a lot of nameless unhappiness brewing. Millennial unhappiness is a taboo. I always thought people chose norminess because there’s more individual contentment involved. I’ve changed my mind. I see: a fear of change, resentment, a feeling of being stuck, no way out. The Great Resignation / nomadism / self-employment trends / monogamy revolutions that we discuss here haven’t touch large swaths of the bourgeoisie. I see 40 year olds, with money, relations, just give up.
This upsets me surprisingly much because? Because I didn’t pay attention to this group, maybe, so I didn’t see it coming. I always thought normies had had it figured it out (while I hadn’t). Plus I know these people’s parents, I can see them morph into them too soon, unnoticed. Please, please, people: rebel.
It is not too late. You do matter. You don’t have to continue doing something that looked like a good idea 12 years ago if you found out you hate it. Change things. Get up. Move. Live.
Life goals: more experience, but not more bitterness. Hard!

If you haven’t figured out who you at some point that lack of work on yourself will catch up to you. I’ve always been a bit of a weirdo. I’m off. My version of reality matches other weirdo’s realities much better than consensus reality. I am alas not fully normie. I can be a normie in some areas but I’ve got too much “off” to fully be mainstream.

And I have to admit I’m happier for it. I’m happy to have a weird life. All my decisions that didn’t quite make sense at the time have yielded a life that is so much bigger than I ever imagined for myself that I’m think the power of being weird must be immense.

We are entering an era where everything is getting much weirder much faster than any one human can keep up with. And isn’t that just so exciting? And it may be a good thing because as the various tech and AI prognosticators will tell you an era of weirdening is upon us. We will all be hurtling into a weird new future and best we can hope for is that maybe some of it rhymes with history. Hang tight and stay flexible.

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Community Media

Day 819 and Calculating Gravity

When astronomers discover a black hole they don’t get to it’s position by observing it directly. They calculate the position of it by its gravitational force on other bodies. We only know it’s there because of what it is doing to others.

I like this as a metaphor for a lot of things recently. I can calculate the gravity of a media narrative by calculating the gravity of all the players. Sometimes what you are being shown is simply the gravity of other players being acted on by something larger.

A good reason for owning a media property of any size, from Twitter to the New York Times, is that you can exert your gravity in ways that are much larger than your surface area might presume. A black hole is super dense. Please insert the required Elon Musk joke.

I’d like you to take this metaphor into your own life. See where you exert more gravity on life than someone might presume. You will discover a lot about your power in relation to individuals, your family, and your professional & personal organizations.

The center of gravity of a situation may not be apparent on first blush. But if you calculate out the positions and their orbits perhaps you can find a path that serves your needs. And most crucially one that serves your resources. If you can’t escape the event horizon you tend to get sucked in. So be sure you have done your fuel calculations too.

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Community Emotional Work

Day 731 and Starting Year Three

2022 was a good year for me, but it wasn’t without its losses. I have a tradition on New Year’s Eve with a very old and dear friend. We’d send each other a scene from a comedy show about hipsters in Brooklyn.

The show made a special new year’s episode. In it, the characters play a game where they do absolutely unthinkably cruel thing to their friends. But it all must be forgiven at midnight because “Auld Lang Syne motherfuckas!” Their tradition is you have to forgive each other no matter what has been done.

The Burg

In the real world forgiveness is trickier. Sending the “Auld Lang Syne motherfuckas” was a tradition that stretched some fifteen years. Going into 2023, if did not happen. I’d rather not get into the specifics but some things cannot be forgot even in the spirit of Auld Lang Syne. I hope some year down the road it can be restarted, but sometimes you don’t know what can be forgiven till you do. Fixes, remedies, and recovery take time to mend and set.

For old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind
Should old acquaintance be forgot
In the days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of auld lang syne

Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1788

I did however, begin the New Year with another respectable tradition. We managed to stay up till midnight thanks to the sparkling wit and hospitality of a new Montana friend’s dinner party. Champagne was toasted. Fireworks were set off.

It’s a strange way to ring in a new year by straddling the two years over midnight. Rare is the person for whom this isn’t a disruption to their schedule. I usually sleep by 10pm, but I found myself sleeping from 1:38pm to 10am on the first day of the year. And then still absolutely needing another nap that afternoon to recover. And I didn’t even drink except to toast.

And so a third year of this experiment begins with something lost and something gained. Auld Lang Syne motherfuckas. I still want more sleep. Revelry and late nights are harder the older you get. But I am excited for what this year will bring.

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Community

Day 667 and Socializing

I’ll admit I had certain expectations of what living in Montana would be like. I like my space and I like being on my own. I had fantasies of quiet days to myself focusing on my investing and my homestead. So it’s been something of a surprise to find myself socializing more in Montana than ever.

In the past seven days we’ve hosted two separate house guests across five days, attended a dinner and been guests at a cocktail party. And you know what? It’s been fucking awesome.

Fuck man the social scene in Montana is legitimately perfect for me. Everyone here is WEIRD as shit. Was hanging out with old school pirate cyberpunks tonight

While I suspected we’d enjoy having our friends come visit, (and if you are interested in coming to Montana hit me up on Twitter) I wasn’t expecting to go out as much as we have been. But, as my surprisingly viral Tweet above indicated, we’ve been meeting all kinds of incredibly cool weirdos. It’s been a blast.

It’s all just been very my “scene” with such a wide array of diverse personalities and interests. Not all of them socially acceptable I might add. I’ve definitely socialized with full on socialists one night and conservative reactionaries on another. And aside from some of their political ambitions (everyone thinks they should be in charge) mostly folks seem content to continue enjoying the live and let live ethos. Well ok, there is a little meddling but in that we are all in it together kind of way.

The binding ethos is that nobody trusts the government. The dream of libertarianism might just still be alive on the occasional cocktail party circuit of rural neighbors getting together in Gallatin Valley. The mountain town loonies are still here. All the flavors and variants of the dream seem to be finding purchase here.

I shudder to think of how Bozeman will eventually become Boulder, simply because it feels like I’ve finally come home to the eccentric living that defined my childhood just a few hundred miles south in the Colorado Rockies. But for now I’m thrilled to find respite among people. My people. The western weirdos.

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Aesthetics Community

Day 650 and Reaching

Yesterday was quite a day. I decided to commit to doing a fundraise for chaotic my fund in public as it was my 39th Birthday

I would like to raise $5m for chaotic.capital’s rolling fund before I turn 40 next year. #5Before40 has a nice ring as a hashtag right?

If you would like to be a part of the fund grab a spot on my calendar and let’s discuss!

But lest you think I only thought about venture funds on my birthday I promise I did some celebrating with my family and friends. One of my favorite girlfriends came up to visit. She went straight from the airport to the food cooperative and stocked our half empty fridge with a full harvest of food.

A well stocked fridge

She then proceeded to cook a gorgeous dinner with grilled chicken and roasted cauliflower along with kale chips and a big mixed green salad with a shallot and fresh fig dressing.

Gorgeous, health and nourishing.

And lest you think the most important part of a birthday was forgot here is a picture of the most impossibly beautiful chocolate cake I’ve ever seen.

A chocolate birthday cake

I had a wonderful day filled with love and support. It’s only taken a couple decades but I am finally feeling like I’ve built a life where I feel secure, loved and cared for by those I’ve chosen to be in my life.

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Community

Day 639 and Act Local

I grew up in a hippie college town that was fond of bumper sticker activism. Showing off your sense of humor and your political priorities was a fun thing to do with your Subaru Outback in the late nineties and early aughts before Facebook and the rise of social media.

A classic of the genre was “Think Global, Act Local.” I found this example on Etsy. And no I’ve got no idea what charity it ties back into.

Think Globally, Act Locally Bumpersticker

Maybe it was just less cringe to have this sort of thing on your car before we all spent half of our days yelling at strangers on the internet. I personally remember thinking Visualize Whirled Peas (a band from Austin) was a hilarious way to protest American war mongering as a teen. Of course, I still wrote Amnesty International letters at the time.

Now I’m not even sure who to donate money to at the end of the year as institutional trust continues to break down. Thinking globally is often the source of much anxiety. Currency collapses and the threat of nuclear war from Russia might be throw backs, but doomscrolling and feeling helpless is too modern. What is old is new again but in more potent anxiety inducing form.

So it was a bit of a relief to enjoy the “act locally” part of the classic bumper sticker this morning. Our local volunteer fire department had a pancake breakfast. Now as an adult my husband and I live outside of a completely different college town in the wider surrounding Gallatin Valley.

The rural (as opposed to city) county fire departments operate with a lot of local good will. They have a professionally trained but all volunteer force and cooperate with other districts through mutual aid frameworks. Practically, that meant a lot of college students taking advantage of living at the fire station to offset their costs while deepening ties to the community. A pretty ideal set up for a tight knit rural community. We get talent and they get skills and housing during their college years.

But calling them volunteers makes it sound less professionally run than the reality. I was impressed with not only the depth of knowledge of the entire department but also just how well maintained all of the equipment clearly was. Sure they probably cleaned stuff before letting their neighbors come in for a visit but everything was so shiny and new. I came away feeling a lot more secure about making a 911 call.

Now maybe that’s just function of meeting the fire chief and chatting with EMTS. And that’s probably exactly why they host these pancake breakfasts. But after two hours of touring equipment, and talking to everyone from the Medivac helicopter pilot to the youngest college kid on the squad, I felt like this was a team that has its shit together.

Now I’m actually excited to vote for a bond issue to get another fire truck or two! But in the meantime we dropped a few twenties into the boot on the table.

Pancakes and a fire boot for donations to the county fire department.