New Blockchain-native Values

Times, they are a changing. How will these changes affect our values in the short, middle and long-term? Which values will be rewarded more as a result?

If you are involved with any cryptoassets or blockchain research, these questions probably sound familiar, if they're not already top of mind.

Below are a few examples of new values that I think we will see emerge in the not so distant future, as well as values that I expect to be rewarded more as cryptoassets and blockchain-native dapps take hold and spread across our daily lives.

• Paying for everything - including paying to be paid 
• Business as a Tool (BaaT) - *not* business as a venture - where value is created and controled by all users of that decentralized tool (the concept of 'dogfooding' or using your own product, will become more and more important)
• Preference for smaller, exclusive, economically self-sufficient, digital circles (in the smallest Swiss administrative divisio sense) around which will form membership that in certain instances will become more prized than entry into an elite country club for example
• Strong trend towards Tribalism/Community-ism in the digital world that will in turn begin to shape and impact the oranization of the physical world
• Immediate and intimiate connections with others will be expected (the line between digital identities and offline identities will blur, and as a result see increased societal validation for the former)

Saturday Shopping

My Saturdays follow a very loose, but usually pretty regular routine.

Wake up around 9am, have a cup of hand ground, aeropressed coffee, run + pull-ups, shower/get ready, long walk, book reading at whichever cafe is our favorite at the time, dinner, drinks, topped off by a walk home if we still have enough gas in the tank.

Yesterday the wife and I added two things to our normal itinerary: bookstore & camera shopping.

After finishing a much needed soul warming bowl of 국밥 at 광화문국밥 we stopped by Kyobo Book Centre's Gwanghwamun location and both scooped a few books. She picked up '플러피의 샌드위치와 수프' a nice clean, simple recipe book for soup and sandwiches by 오쿠무라 카요 and I got 'The Everything Store' about Jeff Bezos and Amazon by Brad Stone.

Since finishing Trump's 'The Art of the Deal' I've been trying to find my next book to dive into and I think I found it. I just need to quickly wrap up Margaret Atwood's slightly wry, very bleak, and extremely dystopian 'The Handmaid's Tale' on loan to me from a friend and colleague. (Happy New Year).

On top of that, we have been in the market for a new camera recently. A few years back I received a good enough Samsung point and click from work that my wife has really enjoyed. It's been amazing watching her learn how to take some really good pictures. Her Instagram game is pretty tight as a result.

But we have definitely hit a performance limit with that camera, so we agreed that it is time for an upgrade. Instead of a DSLR which I owned in the past (Nikon D90 with 18-200mm VR lens - a perfect combo that would still hold up today), portability and convenience are just as important as performance to us, so we set our sights on a good mirrorless option.

And the mirrorless market has really come a long way in a short time - there are some fantastic cameras out there. In the end though we decided on a Sony A7R III with Zeiss T* FE 55m f/1.8 lens.

On top of heading to Sony's flagship Seoul store on three separate occasions, Ken Rockwell's Reviews are second to none when it comes to camera shopping for the most in-depth, unbiased reviews around, and just as when I originally bought my D90 in 2009, it played the biggest factor in helping us decided on this camera/lens pair. Of course Youtube was also helpful for double and triple checking that decision.

Can't wait to see what kind of pictures we can snap with that bad boy when we pick it up early February.

FUMU

Acronyms are fun. They're like riddles that give you an easily reusable concept once you know what they stand for.

At lunch yesterday I learned a new acronym that is kinda perfect. It describes brilliantly a very specific instance of corporate absurdity.

Every office has at least one or two terrible co-workers. Just nasty folks that everyone is rooting for to fuck up so they can get fired. But often - for whatever reason - those nasty folks have some pretty powerful connections that, directly or indirectly, lead to HR. So that when they do fuck up, instead of getting their asses handed to them, they get shuffled out into a different project or part of the organization, which more often than not is an actual or perceived promotion.

This is a 'Fuck Up Move Up' or 'FUMU' (pronounced: Foo-moo).

Shame & Disappointment

Working in Korea as an expat can be tough. I have one colleague though whose situation is probably one of the toughest I've seen. He is a true professional though. For two years he put his hard hat on everyday, and tried to slog his way through the bullshit. He hoped - we all hope - that maybe things would start to change if he kept fighting the good fight working like a professional. And sometimes, rarely, we really do help. That is, after all, why they say they needed us when they hired us in the first place.

The other day though he asked me to lunch. I knew what was comming, but I asked if he'd mind if a mutual friend of ours joined. He said he would mind. Since I'm the overseas HR manager of a specific product division and he works in an unrelated corporate function our relationship has always been more casual than professional. But over the past half year or so I have become his unofficial HR rep. So I knew this was obviously going to be a working lunch.

Refreshingly lunch was a lot more positive than I had been anticipating. When many people decide to quit, they make up their mind months or years before they actually end up giving their notice. In the time leading up to 'the announcement' they often become caustically critical and bitter about everything. My colleague probably quit 9 to 12 months ago, but now he was finally ready to make it real.

After he told me he was ready to make his decision official we ended up using the rest of lunch talking about the timing of his notice, the proper channels to go through, how the severance and pension refunds would go - standard HR stuff. Ordinarily his function's HR would have handled this, but as they don't even have an ounce of professionalism, that was obviously out the question to begin with. And then he hit me with it. He wasn't angry. That feeling passed a while ago. No. "Now," he said, "I just feel shame and disappointment."

All I could do was nod.

There wasn't anything more I could do or say either. The only thing I know is that there is so very much more work to be done to ensure others don't end up feeling shame and disappointment. A high bar I know. Mostly I need to double down on influencing the right people so that spots open up for the right people to come in and effect broader changes (in terms of mindset, managerially, and procedurally). That's worth fighting for, at least for the time being.

Human Proof of Work (PoW)

I saw a tweet the other day that - for some reason or other - I didn't 'heart' or re-tweet so I couldn't find it to reference, but has still nonetheless stuck with me.

The basic gist of the tweet was this: Graduating and receiving a diploma from university is the human equivalent of Proof of Work. It signals to others that you were able to literally put the time and effort into something and can be trusted in some way now that, before receipt of that document, would have been perceived as higher risk or not even considered at all.

Although the poster was drawing a direct link with the consensus mechanism for Bitcoin, I was reminded of my late Great Uncle John. The last summer before heading off to college I was visiting his beach house down in Rehobeth, Delaware.

He and I were chatting when he asked me if the rumors were true that I was heading to Pittsburgh in the autumn to study. I replied yes, and then he put his hand on my shoulder, looked at me with a serious expression (which was out of character for a man who was *always* laughing) and he just said: "A degree is just a piece of paper to prove to others you are willing to put some hard work in and stick around for a little, so make sure you get one."

It was a simple comment, but so many people stil believe that which I guess makes it profound. I can appreciate that profundity, but like many these days, I just can't help but feel that such an expensive and time consuming PoW model is no longer necessary anymore - there are far cheaper, much quicker and more varied ways to verify the same thing.

Anyways after seeing that tweet and thinking about Uncle John, I started to think of some other human PoW examples besides 'graduating from a 4 year college' and I came up with this list:

• Growing Twitter followers organically
• Climbing the corporate ladder
• Building up Reddit reputation
• Earning regular avc.com upvotes
• Attending church regularly
• Creating a successsful newsletter
• Having a baby with your spouse
• (Feel free to add more)

These are all things that people can do that, whilst difficult and time consuming, tend to result in regular, consistent recognition if not outright admiration from others.

So then I got to thinking, which PoW examples could be changed to a human equivalent of Proof of Stake? How different would those examples look after switching to PoS? How many more people would benefit if it was not only much easier to accomplish something, but if that accomplishment would also provide an equal if not better reward or response from others?

There are many daily activities in many peoples lives that could be accomplished with a fraction of the effort and time, but still provide a similar if not better result as the traditional PoW activity. And this is where I think a lot of Dapps are going to find extremely broad adoption by allowing an easy but powerful way for anyone to stake their reputation, wealth or confidence in order to quickly and efficiently do work that gets them the results they need. I have a few ideas cooking myself that I hope to share soon.

If you are curious about this stream of thought, I recommend you check out the article by @twobitidiot on Medium entitled “Skin-in-the-Game Coins” and pay particular attention to the section on 'Token Curated Registries' which is essentially a human PoS consensus design architecture.

Source: https://medium.com/@twobitidiot/skin-in-the-game-coins-da0afdfdc650

Living Economics Experiments

I read the Nathaniel Popper piece that appeared in todays NYT, and as always it was great. The man regularly offers up the most entertaining, unbiased perspectives on the frothiest, most exciting sector since the dotcom boom and bust.

When I read something good, there are usually a few lines that I end up re-reading a few times. That way they end up sticking with me long after I close the tab or shut the book. This time was no different.

I have been thinking a lot about the simplistic power well designed cryptoeconomic incentive architectures will be able to wield lately, so my red hot embers were stoked when I read, "..virtual currencies are all living economics experiments, testing how different sorts of incentives create different behaviors."

It is precisely this economic incentive aspect of all crytpoassets - not just cryptocurrencies, but cryptocommodities, cryptotokens, and cryptocollectibles as well - that I think will start to draw more and more attention to itself and away from the ICO bubble that is starting to slide down the slope of a waning crecent moon.

Currently Bitcoin, with its own carrot and stick incentive strucure built into and around the Proof of Work (PoW) consenus mechanism, is the first, most prominent example of a cryptoeconomic incentive architecture performing in the wild, but as Nathaniel said, "...these incentives don’t always work as expected. That uncertainty is what makes it so interesting to watch — and to report on."

From out of this uncertainty I believe that there are many more low hanging fruit of much simpler and more easily approachable incentive structures that people will start to look for, adopt and actually use. A good, but still incomplete example can be found in a Dapp called Cent.

Cent offers a dead simple concept: any user with an email and ethereum wallet address responds to questions or posts.  Based on the portion of upvotes their specific response receives by the community, they receive a corresponding share of the original bounty that was attached to the prompt or question as a way to incentivize responses in the first place. Super simple, and it works, er, sort of.

But it is still early days, and much, much more is still left to come. So stay plugged in my friends.

Insight into the Korean Crypto Ban on Foreigners

So yesterday I published a little #tweetstorm over on Twitter (@bread_krumbs) about why, seemingly all of a sudden, several exchanges have issued statements saying soon they will prohibit *all* foreigners from making fiat deposits into their exchange accounts.

It has been well received over on Twitter so I thought I'd re-post it here as well.

Check it out below, and feel free to follow me for more Korea-related musings.

0/ I'd bet money that Korbit will claw back their prohibition on fiat deposits from *all* foreigners that was announced over the weekend. The same goes for any other exchange that issued/plans to issue a similar ban.

I'll explain.

1/ According to Korbit, their announcement was issued in order to comply with government guidelines. No mention of which one though, since various pieces of the government have made several announcements over the past month or so.

2/ So I did a little homework. Luckily the government has a useful site (정부24) that lets you search official government announcements and reports.

I ran searches for: 가상통화, 가상화폐, 디지털 화폐, and 디지털머니 (both spaced and unspaced variants).

3/ The searches returned a little over 50 unique releases dating back to 14 July 2014.

Only about 8 releases or documents attached to releases contained the words 외국인(foreigner) and/or 비거주자(non-resident).

The first release to include those words dates to 13 December 2017.

4/ That report contained the first public guidelines to regulate crypto in Korea. On the foreigner issue it said:

"...measures should be taken to ban non-resident(foreigners) [비거주자(외국인)] from transacting [on Korean exchanges]..."

https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1273333

5/ A summary of that meeting report was released the same day and contained identical phrasing: "...measures will be taken to prevent non-resident(foreigners) [비거주자(외국인)] from opening new accounts and trading..."

https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1273342

6/ On 28 December 2017 three releases included mention of a ban related to foreigners:

1. [보도자료] 가상통화 관련 관게차관회의
2. [보도참고] 가상통화 관련 금융권 점검회의
3. 가상통화 거래 실명제 실시...거래소 폐쇄 특별법도 검토

Only 비거주자 are subject to the ban in 1 & 2 (외국인 was omitted even), but the third is less clear...

7/ Article 3 included the promise that new speculative demand (e.g. from foreigners(외국인) generally) would be blocked by introducing identity verification systems to exchanges.

This detail doesn't alter, but adds to Releases 1 & 2.

https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1286463

8/ However, a shoddy article in the Segye Ilbo (2 January 2018) claimed the Korean gov hadn't defined foreigner(외국인) nor when restrictions should be carried out causing confusion amongst exchanges that led some to ban foreigner trading.

http://m.segye.com/view/20180102004847

9/ On 3 January 2018, in a release addressing numerous errors in the Segye Ilbo article, the gov stated:

"Once the scope of the restriction on foreigners is set it will be implemented since banks are already able to determine if a foreigner is residing in Korea or abroad."

https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1292917

10/ WTF.

Between 12~28 December 2018 the government was clear that trading restrictions for foreigners will be limited to non-residents.

So Korbit's proposed prohibition on deposits from *all* foreigners seems to be due to the confused 3 January 2018 release.

11/ As this proposed prohibition seems to stem from a single release written by a confused and/or tired public official, I feel it'll only end up applying to non-resident foreigners.

But one can't discount Klownism - the funny way logic seems not to apply here sometimes...

The Art of the Deal

I have been reading 'The Art of the Deal' by Donald J. Trump (with Tony Schwartz) for about two weeks now and I'm just about finished. Normally, with a book as easy and entertaining to read as this I would have finished in 4~5 days, but I have really been drawing this reading out. It has just completely defied my intially low expectations, which after reflection I realize were unfounded in the first place since everyone I've met who has actually read the book has had nothing but positive things to say about it.

What has surprised me most are the many, many insights into Trump's decision making process that seem to very clearly explain why he says and does things as president in his very unorthodox and un-politicianly way.

To be clear before we go on, I have no horse in the race of American politics - I have never been registered to vote nor do I plan on doing so, perhaps until it is time for me to run myself - but I have been observing Trumps involvement in politics with a detached interest for a while now. The starkly polarizing reactions that Trump seems to elicit from typical Americans - the die hard supporters versus those who see Trump as the second comming of Hitler - should cause anyone who has a properly functioning brain to want to find out a little more about who this polarizing figure really is. And what better way is there to do that than by reading or listening to the mans thoughts. Thoughts that - crucially - came from a time before he was a politician, because, well, you just can't trust anything a politician says.

If there is one thing that seperates Trump the politician from every other politician, it is his seeming indifference to bad press. It wouldn't seem off base to suggest that Trump seems to thrive off of bad press. When Trump was pursuing the construction of the Trump Tower, he described the resulting controversey and negative publicity thusly: "Even though the publicity was almost entirely negative, and there was a great deal of it, and that drew a tremendous amount of attention to Trump Tower. Almost immediately we saw an upsurge in the sales of apartments. I'm not saying that's a good thing, and in truth it probably says something perverse about the culture we live in. But...controversy, in short, sells."

 A few years later when Trump was receiving resistence from New York City politicians despite making numerous offers that he would like to offer his help to rebuild the Wollman ice rink instead, he made the following observation: "If there's one thing I've learned from dealing with politicians over the years, it's that the only thing guaranteed to force them into action is the press - or, more specifically, fear of the press...Bad press translates into potential lost votes, and if a politician loses enough votes, he won't get reelected. If that happens, he might have to go out and take a 9 to 5 job. That's the last thing most politicians want to do."

There are many more instances where Trump makes comments specific to particular deals, or offers up thoughts on what seperates good businessmen from bad ones, or explains how he chooses people to lead projects (the best and most competent, regardless of experience) that offer a window into his actions and decisions today. In particular his thoughts on family then, help explain his preference for installing many of his immediate and extended family nembers in high positions today - something that isn't exclusive to Trump in the history of the presidency, but something that receives a lot of focus today. "There is nothing to compare with family if they happen to be competent, because you can trust family in a way you can never trust anyone else."

We are all human, and Trump is no different. If you have an open mind and are curious about why President Trump seems so different, I highly recommend you pick up 'The Art of the Deal' and give it a read. Thanks to this book I'll be focusing more on what I think the long-term goals Trump is focusing on are and evaluating him on 1) the necessity and importance of those goals and 2) if he actually achieves those goals or not. I will look for potential angles that could explain how his punking of the media could help serve some tactical purpose of helping to move the goal-posts closer to the end zone of those goals. And I know it'll be interesting too, because as Trump puts it: "There is no typical week in my life."

A Cryptoeconomic Solution for Modern Oppression

Today there is nothing as oppressive as the expectation of unremunerated attention.

Attention should be understood here as a temporary donation of, at the very least, one's time. This presupposes that actions, objects, programs or messages that attract and capture the attention and time of others *do not* constitute a sufficiently compensatory benefit.

Uncompensated attention should cease to be an assumed expectation or requirement to engage in atomic experiences (e.g. reading or commenting on blogs, voting in elections). Instead, inducing or attracting said attention in exchange for *any* form of acceptable remuneration should be pursued. In my view this is only possible by adopting and applying newly emergent economic incentive architectures facilitated by tools provisioned by cryptoassets and blockchain technology (particularly with regards to 'Smart Contracts'). By pursuing such a strategy we seek to emancipate our global citizenzry from the de facto compulsion to relinquish and forfeit valuable personal time and information in exchange for unremunerated experiences.

Thus, my claim is as follows: All experiences should be *potentially* remunerative.

As the title of this post indicates, we are seeking a cryptoeconomic solution - or at the very least an orientation towards a solution - to the problem of unremunerated attention. It may be helpful if we provide a brief definition here. Cryptoeconomics should be understood as an emerging field of study of how we use digital incentives to drive specific resources and behaviors on decentralized networks that lead to some globally desired result such as security or network effects. There is a site called Cent that has been accessible to anyone around the world with an internet connection at beta.cent.co that is conducting an extremely novel and at the same time deceptively simple cryptoeconomic experiment.

First of all, despite only being around for three months or so, Cent has already established itself as a community - to be sure it is still small by modern internet standards. It aspires to be the de(cent)ralized reddit-meets-quora that in(cent)ivizes users by way of Ether (ETH) bounties. Users pose questions or requests to the community that, crucially, carry with them a set bounty denominated in ETH to incentivize as many respondants as possible, and based on the number of upvotes respondants get from other respondants, they will receive a proportional share of that bounty. The key innovation here is that the payout is carried out by a Smart Contract that runs on the Ethereum network - after a question is submitted it triggers an unstoppable automatic application wherein a pre-set timer begins its countdown with payouts released automatically as soon as the bounty period expires.

So to summarize: Cent allows users to offer ETH (digital incentive) in order to drive other users to provide quality responses vying for that Ether which attracts new users who provide ever more quality responses and pose new questions with bounties to attract new users repeat ad infinitum. They have bootstrapped an active community where users are referred to as Centians. Hundreds of bounties have been set and respondants have received thousands of dollars worth of ETH for their attention. Users even receive a portion of the bounty simply for either upvoting or downvoting responses. This is an *almost* perfectly structured incentive architecture. Almost.

The shortcommings - in my view - stem from how the question/bounty-posing feature has been incentivized - or the lack thereof - and the potential for abuse and gaming of the system as it is set up today. Whilst there may be marginal benefit in being able to relatively reliably source a certain amount of responses, it is a shame that there is no way to at least subsidize bounty setters. As a result bounty values have remained trivial, ranging between $3~20 (relative to the given value of ETH to USD at the time a question/bounty is set). Trivial bounties beget half-hearted responses.

Additionally, there is the growing problem of users setting up multiple accounts to game the system and win a larger share of the bounty. There is currently no mechanism in place to prevent someone from setting up multiple accounts in order to game the system by upvoting their own posts and downvoting others. It isn't hard to imagine even passionate contributers becomming frustrated over time if their attention is undercompensated whilst scammers are receiving 3~5x more, at least. Of course if these issues are not addressed they will most likely inhibit any real growth for Cent and its community. Fellow Centian @Maxsterly has already voiced frustration regarding the inability to subsidize question/bounty-setters and multiple users including @dreambig and @soothsayer have complained about the scammers with multiple accounts. Operating a system based off of decentralized logic makes it more difficult - but not impossible - to minimize or prevent such behaviour.

So to conclude I would like to propose a few potential novel solutions:

Firstly, Cent should provide the option for users to 'tip' bounties that they have an interest in. Tips could be split 50:50 between a) the user who set the bounty and b) the bounty itself by adding to it thus incentivizing better responses.

Secondly, Cent should designate those Centians who have been active and provided thoughtful responses over time as arbiters of up upvoting; create a class of 'Centurions' if you will. This will a) eliminate the negative impact that gamers could and have had whilst b) ensuring that Centians who provide original and thoughtful responses are duly compensated. Of course there should be a mechanism created that allows newer Centians to become Centurions as well. A sufficiently decentralized approach could be setting up a hard threshold. Say that if a Centian receives over 100 upvotes across a minimum of at least 5 posts then they are automatically upgraded to Centurion status.

Projects like Cent are paving the way forward towards a very exciting future. The creators behind Cent deserve a lot of praise and all the support they need. Hopefully the proposed improvements I have included may be of some assistance in creating not just a better user experience on Cent, but a better future for everyone around the world.

Politics, Populism, Disappointment, and Hegemony

Politics

A set of dynamic systems, driven by conflict, and by adaptations and counter-adaptation, leading to tactical arms races...

No given mode of politics is historically inviolable.

Political tactics are a dynamic field of forces.


Populism

A type of political logic by which a collection of different identities are knitted together against a common opponent and in search of a new world


Disappointment

Indexes a yearning for a lost future


Hegemony

Ruling by the engineering of consent (according to the dictates of one particular group)

But it is NOT to be identified as a system of domination.

Should be understood as a complex, emergent mode of power, dependent on the ability of groups within society to influence others in much more diffuse ways.

It emerges out of the interactions and practices of a diverse array of groups, agents, and organizations in society. It doesn't flatten difference, but emerges out of the interplay of difference.

~ Antonio Gramsci


All from "Inventing the Future" by Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams

Placeholder

Soon to come

Erotic Algorithms

Erotocism: A thirst for otherness where the "other" is very often a new self...

 ~ Octavio Paz

Algorithm: A methodological set of steps to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions.

~ Yuval Noah Harari

Miguel - Skywalker

Outstanding so I stand out
More babes than a bath house
Top gun I'm like Tom Cruise
I play for keeps and I don't lose
You more than love it cuz I'm cool as a breeze
So pick a poison, yeah I got what you need
Nonchalant got the green on rotation all night
We gonna keep it psychadelic like a cap and stem
Catch a wave on us
Take a shot, make a friend, just enjoy the moment
Luke Skywalkin' on these haters
Celebrate everyday like a birthday
Things come to those who wait up
Don't wait to jump in too long
Don't sleep you gotta stay up
Don't sleep you gotta stay up

The Paradox of Historical Knowledge

Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless.
But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance.
The more data we have and the better we understand history, the quicker it changes.

 ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Off Key

Off key
But she likes me
Arms entwined
But time unwinds
Somehow foreign
But here born in
I'm deep bottled
Her, near tee-totaled

Oatmeal raison
Red velvet cake 'n
Wearin' same shirts 'n

Words left unsaid
But heard in bed
Somehow so different
But of same filiment
Cuddling atop covers
Alarm breaks slumber
But she still likes me
Off key

Too Real

Too real
To the real
Not political
Fuck that

Can't be
But sees
Their needs
Fucks that

Walks a line
What's fine
Or a crime
Fuck it

Most deep
Likes to creep
But weeps
Fucks given

Locked eyes
So high
In her thighs
We fucks

Not binary
More spectrum-ary
Future come early
Fucking to the real

Blockchain, Questions and Responses

So if you know me, you know that for the past year cryptrocurrencies - beginning with ethereum - have been top of mind for me. I imagine that will be the case for many of you reading this as well. If that is the case then you have probably been asked - or told - one or both of the following question: "What is the blockchain[sic]?"

There are a ton of variations on this question, but I think it essentially sums up the mystery and skepticism sorrounding this epoch shifting technology. Below I want to leave you, dear reader, an answer to this question as well as a few responses from a couple of brilliant people that I hope you find useful the next time you start talking crypto with a noob, or a seasoned vet. Xoxo and don't get rekt. Hodl your ish bish.

What are blockchains?

Blockchains are a way to implement a distributed ledger, a record of consensus with a cryptographic audit trail which is maintained and validated by several separate nodes.

Blockchains sit ‘below’ a distributed ledger and act as a way to order and validate the transactions in the ledger. To that end, you can say that blockchains are a way to achieve the consensus necessary for a distributed ledger.

Source: “Blockchains 101” @breitwoman https://medium.com/@kathleenbreit/blockchains-101-654217effe20
copy of his book in my email inbox a few minutes after I sent 0.0162 BTC to David. T

Thoughts from thoughtful people:

Naval Ravikant: "The Four Layers of the Internet Protocol Suite are constantly communicating. The Link Layer puts packets on a wire. The Internet Layer routes them across networks. The Transport Layer persists communication across a given conversation. And the Application Layer delivers entire documents and applications.

Where’s the protocol layer for exchanging value, not just data? Where’s the distributed, anonymous, permission- less system for chatty machines to allocate their scarce resources? Where is the “virtual money” to create this “virtual economy?

Cryptocurrencies are an emergent property of the Internet – almost a 5th protocol in the Internet suite."

Benedict Evans: "The question, then, is not whether something works now but whether it could work - whether you know how to change it. Saying 'it doesn't work, today' has no value, but saying 'yes, but everything didn't work once' also has no value. Rather, do you have a roadmap? Do you know what to do next?
...
First of all, it's quite common, especially in enterprise technology, for something to propose a new way to solve an existing problem. It can't be used to solve the problem in the old way, so 'it doesn't work', and proposes a new way, and so 'no-one will want that'. This is how generational shifts work - first you try to force the new tool to fit the old workflow, and then the new tool creates a new workflow. Both parts are painful and full of denial, but the new model is ultimately much better than the old.
...
One way to solve this problem is to try to separate the fundamental capability that's being proposed from the specific uses. Edison thought that sound recording would be good for sermons, not music, and it’s hard, and perhaps impossible, to tell what people will use the new thing for. But sound recording and one-to-one and one-to-many sound transmission were much more fundamental changes than the ability to listen to a sermon on demand. What mattered was seeing the value of the capability, not predicting any particular applications. The mistake to make in looking at Edison's recording technology would have been to argue about whether people wanted sermons -  the mistake is to look only at the application that this technology is proposed to provide, and not the actual capability that has been created. Sermons might not work, but sound is a big deal."

Future Strategy Planning

Whilst we can't predict the future exactly, we can be ready for it.

Ideas These Days

An idea is something whose time has come, so if I think of something these days it is - at best - something thought of in tandem with someone else.

Chris DeRose,
Bitcoin Uncensored - Episode 62

Precious, Precious Tech

"Yes...but [in those recent job cuts at major tech firms] who are they cutting? [They are] cutting redundancy and adding highly skilled workers [it's] is part of life."

Right, those laid off or made redundant lack those highly specialized skills. Those who are made redundant need different skill sets for the software-defined future that they simply don't have, right?  Of course each position that needs to be filled is a special snowflake that in turn needs its own special snowflake to fill it and be able to unlock those miracles and incredible experiences that makes everyone involved super proud.  Everyone is precious about these things.

And - to be absolutely clear - that is why these companies are great.

Ok, that said, are these companies getting too precious? Are we - you and I - getting too precious about those companies?  Are there any negative externalities caused by so much preciousness? 

I think the arguement can be made that we are subsidizing preciousness too damn much.  If you had the option to increase the size of a bucket - one that is replenished year after year -  that is not only full of the exact snowflakes you are looking floor, but  is actually flown direct to you INSTEAD of having to fill your own bucket up with regular old water, then freeze that bucket into a workable mold before you husk off chunks that basically will get the job done and could be chisled out over time, who the fuck would ever choose the latter? This is what is happening.  We are subsidizing precious companies and their desire to select their precious snowflakes.  

The claim that there is an absolute lack of domestic STEM talent versus actual jobs and forecast jobs is not a tenable arguement to hold. The reality, as the US Bureau of Labor Studies made clear here (https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-stem-surplus-yes-and-yes.htm) is much more nuanced and the reality is that it is frankly impossible to unequivocally assert such a lack exists. The amount of anecdotal evidence relied on - most of which is provided by the groups that would benefit the most by having a bucket of talent pooled exclusively for them - is astounding.  

What the real focus regarding HIRING REFORM should be - because any visa reform would essentially be a reform on hiring practices - should be to monitor real wages amongst other factors of course; I'm not a PhD for faks sakes.  Those sectors/positions that see a quicker rise/spike in real wages obviously would indicate an area where companies - especially smaller companies - may have a need for easier access to easily recruitable talent in order to compete. This would also benefit the larger ecosystem with a diversity of product solutions that would give consumers more choice and expedite future improvements. 

And let's talk about global diversity and a global ecosystem of competing businesses.  Let's say Trump pulled a knee jerk reaction and yanks the whole H1B program, hundreds of thousands of Indians and Eastern Europeans amongst others will have to go home.  They will be pissed, and heartbroken and everything. They will leave behind friends and have to move back to countries with backward ways of doing things. But how much of that backwardness and corruption can be attributed to a comparative lack of competition for better leaders, better business people etc...?? These people would return with global networks, best practices, and a fucking chip on their shoulder bigger than the tumour that took out Steve Jobs...

Jongsam 종삼

In volume one of Go Eun's 1995 autobiographical novel "My Bronze Age," Korea's representative modern poet-essayist depicts Jongsam prostitution, in particular the rooms that the prostitutes worked out of.

"There was a girl whose entire wall was lined with records. Another was behind pulled, pink nylon curtains bringing a man back to his wedding night ecstasy. What was really sad though were the posters with english phrases like 'Sweet Home' and 'Happy' that lined the walls where the girls hung their treasured garments that were constantly being ripped off of them."

Such a realistic picture of a Jongsam room belies the frequent visits that the author must have made to Jongsam.  To be honest, if I had to choose a piece of literature that best captures Jongsam, Go Eun's "Generation" published in the April 1972 version of "1950's Non-fiction: The Literature of Destruction, 16" would be my immediate choice.

The following excerpt describes why men from that generation had to go to Jongsam.

"The alcohol of Myeongdong and the women of Jongsam were the true homes of writers in the wake of the destruction from the 1950s. Drinking cheap alcohol in Myeongdong and running to Jongro 3-ga to get stuck in cheap women allowed us to colourfully escape the dark post-war atmosphere.

The war was over. All the writers and citizens had returned.  The wasted youth and writers of ruin imitated Oscar Wilde and Rimbaud. Since they quickly mimicked the existentialists as well as the fallen house of Heungson Daewongun, the despair, anxiety, irrationality, extreme situations, existence, solitude - the lexicon of the post-war period all became the same.  When the war ended they all had to embrace the feeling of loss together. In the 1950s, a tremendous void was left in their hearts that they had to cover with something.  They hadn't only lost their mothers or their homes.  They didn't just lose books.  That time they climbed up Namsan with their first love, and ran right back down spasming in ecstasy without even hugging her was lost.

They lost their homes. Philosophies were lost.   Everything was lost.  Their beloved Soonhee became a whore the foreigners called Elena.  Houses, destroyed; philosophies, barren.  Those damaged souls had to find a way to deal with such an overwhelming feeling of loss.  And that was [through] alcohol and whores.

..... The Jongsam girls provided deep consolation.  Of course this doesn't mean the girls were cute or had good bodies.  They were destroyed, and like ruin their rotten temperment was without equal. Yet just going there and experiencing such disillusionment was consolation enough.

Let's go! To our hometown, Jongsam!
Let's go! To our eternal lovers! Oh! Oh! My sun, my night!"

~ An original translation of
   Vol. Of Son Jung-mok's
   'The Story of Seoul's City Planning'

HyperNormalization

Origin: Russian

A term to describe the dissonance between a life lived and the "official" version of reality in the sense that people are forced to accept and believe an official narrative instead of the stark reality, because the latter is just so bad or antithetical to what was originally believed.

"When a majority of society feels themselves to be so much a part of a system that it becomes impossible for them to see beyond it; when fakeness is hypernormal."

Adam Curtis, 'HyperNormalization' (BBC, 2016)

술 상무

 Jamsil Island was very, very wide. When the decision was made to carry out public water reclamation works to connect the island to land to its south, it would have made sense to have the Seoul Metropolitan government carry out works instead of tendering the job to private firms.  Seoul Metropolitan submitted its application for a permit to carry out public water reclamation works on Jamsil Island to the Ministry of Construction on January 1, 1969.  The Ministry of Construction rejected this application under the following pretext: "There is a concern that should the width of the river be narrowed, such a change to the surface water profile may weaken its resistance to floods.  A further review will be undertaken following a report on the results of a hydraulic water experiment on the lower Han River basin in the Seoul Region."

Seoul Metropolitan submitted several more permit applications. They received no response to any of them. Then on August 26th, a reply to their permit application submitted on July 23, 1970, finally arrived.  "As concerns the works at hand, a private contractor would be preferred to having Seoul Metropolitan directly carry out works."  No reason was provided to the question of 'why exactly a private contractor was preferred' in the first place.  However, behind the Construction Ministry's response lay a contentious back and forth regarding the collection of so-called political funds.

During Park Chung Hee's time - which is to say throughout the 3rd and 4th republics - political funds were regularly solicited.  Korea's economic scale was much smaller then than it is today.  I also happen to know first hand that significant excesses were committed during the political fund collections - all of which had their own long term repercussions.  There was a striking feature in the way Park Chung Hee pooled political funds: he never once received anything from any business directly.

There were several channels, though.  The first was to have the Deputy Prime Minister cum Economic Planning Board Minister collect the funds. The Chaebol and large corporations we see in Korea today were basically all formed during the 3rd and 4th Republics.  Capital infusion and special interest rates, along with favorable tax schemes, were the three means by which the Chaebol developed under.  All of these measures were under the direct control of the Deputy Prime Minister cum Economic Planning Minister.  To give an example of customary practice, when large sums of capital were provided, a percentage of the funds would then be set aside to be sent up as political funds.

The second channel was to have the Chairman of the then ruling Republican Party's Finance Committee gather the funds.  I'm not sure how things operate today, but during the 3rd and 4th Republics, nearly all of the large construction works let to market by the Central Government, government-owned enterprises, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government were awarded either through privately negotiated contracts or nominated competitive tenders.  To say that there was no such thing as a normal competitive tender isn't an exaggeration.  These nominations were at the sole discretion of the Republican Party's Finance Committee Chairman.  So in practice, when a new project was ready to come to market, a percentage of political funds would be sent up. Then the size and scale of the works awarded to the various contractors would be distributed based on the amount of funds provided.  The Finance Committee Chairman would take a portion of the political funds received and send them up to the Blue House with remaining funds used to cover Party operating expenses.  Over the years, Kim Youngtae, Kim Seong-goen, Kim Jin-min and other notable figures would serve as the Finance Committee Chairman, occupying a more important role than either the Leader of the Floor or Secretary General.  Kim Youngtae was a private citizen who was a central figure in the May 16 Coup d'tat, Kim Seong-nam was the founder of Ssangyong Group, and Kim Jin-min was the founder of Dongbu Group. Hence, it's no surprise that they were the Chief Financial Operators of their party and held outsized influence.

Annual 'Rice Cake Bonuses' (떡값) at Chuseok or the end of the year were the third  channel.  These 'bonuses' were facilitated by the Chief Presidential Secretary or Chief of Security.

Outside of these channels there were times when the Head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency or Seoul Mayor would collect and send up funds.  Of course, there was obvious competition behind the collecting and passing up of political funds in an effort to be seen as more loyal to the president.  Demarcated lines were drawn between those in the ruling elite and those who they typically used their influence on to collect the political funds.  The Economic Planning Minister would typically recieve funds from corporations, and the Republican Party Finance Committee Chairman would bring in funds from contractors.  Large corporations at that time would typically have a full-time position manned by an individual responsible for sending up these political funds, which held a rank equivalent to that of the CEO.  This person was the VP of Liquor (술 상무).

Then one day, in the second half of 1969, the Deputy Prime Minister cum Economic Planning Minister Kim Hak-legal contacted the managing directors (chairman or CEO level) of five major contractors.  The managing directors of Hyundai Construction, Daelim Industries, Geukdong Construction, Sambu Civil Works, and Donga Construction.  They were told to come to the office of the Economic Planning Minsters the next day at a certain time.  Kim Hak-leol requested a rather large political contribution from each of the five individuals (Hyundai's Chung Joo-Young; Lee Jae-June from Daelim; Kim Yong-San of Geukdong; Cho Jung-Gu of Sambu, and Donga's Choi June-Moon).

On September 14, 1969 in the 3rd annex of the National Assembly, the constitutional revision allowing a third consecutive term for Park Chung Hee was passed, with the approving public referendum taking place shortly thereafter on October 17.  In accordance with the constitutional revision, both the presidential as well as National Assembly elections were held on April 5, 1971.  During this period between 1969 and 1971, there must have been quite a need for political funds, since that would explain the Deputy Prime Minister Kim's unusual request for politcal funds to this group of contractors who were outside of his normal corporate targets.

The contractors were all opposed to the Deputy Prime Ministers request.  "We are already sending up political funds to the Republican Party Finance Committee Chairman every time we are awarded new projects.  It just isn't reasonable for the Economic Planning Minister to now request that we send up political funds to him too."  Hearing their objection, the Deputy Prime Minister proposed that in exchange for their politcal funds, they would receive the rights to the Jamsil public water reclamation works project.  If they were to block the waterway to the south side of Jamsil island, connect it with the land adjacent to it, and build up a dike along its northern border, a massive section of reclaimed land would be formed.  They would then have the right to that enormous amount of virgin land.  The five manging directors all immediately accepted the proposal and promised to send up the political funds that the Deputy Prime Ministers had requested.

 ~ An original translation
    from Volume III of Son Jung-mok's
    'The Story of Seoul's City Planning'

 Son Jung-mok: Former Director of Seoul City Planning Bureau, Internal Affairs Ministry, and Deputy Director of the National Assembly Budget Office for Planning and Management

Lead & Lag Indicators and the Podcast Industry

There have been some good discussions on the Hotpod paid members forum looking at all of the channels for revenue generation available to podcasters. Over the past year or so live shows seem to have really become a very interesting new mode and expression of fan engagement that also serves as a healthy and robust means of generating revenue for many shows. A fellow member @mijustin provided some great food for thought on high- and low-impact advertising

To this outsider it seems that advertising via podcasts (when done right of course) could also highlight a third potential categorization: hyper-purchase intent. I would define this sort of advertising as that which targets those high-intent listeners with products or services that are both relatively novel and obviously within the semiosphere of the subject or topic of the podcast (episode) at hand, but not something that was directly searched for ahead of time. Case in point, these days I've taken a keen interest in several podcasts like 'Epicenter Bitcoin' and 'The Bitcoin Show' that discuss cryptocurrencies (e.g. bitcoin, ethereum). People curious about cryptocurrencies will find these shows. And when they do they will hear ads hyper-directed towards them about digital wallets to put any funds they purchase in like the jaxx wallet (jaxx.io) or digital currency escrow services like escrowmybits.com and others that they may have not have thought about before, but upon hearing will be (more) apt to check out and maybe consume.

Over and above the discussion of advertising though, I was reminded of terms that are popular with Q-HSE experts in the construction industry and how they may be applied and used by podcasters. Of course - but of course - I am talking about lead and lag indicators. Lag indicators, when used on infrastructure projects, are things like manhours without an accident, or simply the number of fatalities or injuries. They are retrospective metrics that are important yesterday. Their assumed importance for tomorrow's decision making cannot be understated either, however, their actual predictive value is quite low. Thus if decision making is made based largely on such lag indicators things can get obfuscated pretty quickly. For example, after someone dies on a project there is usually a push to highlight every potential hazard on-site, so every single near-miss (incident) is recorded. As a result, from one day to the next you go from what looked like a relatively safe site to a death trap without any clarity on where "the real" trouble areas are. Rankings, CPM-rates and clarity on other podcast metrics that I and most others have been calling for fall into the lagging indicator category. Since these measurements are still in the process of being standardized as they relate to the audio on-demand sector, I think most of us have felt it sufficient to chase the rabbit down the fly trap so to speak as it relates to forecasting how we think things will settle for these indicators.

But don't we already know how things will turn out if we only focus on lag indicators? A few powers will settle (if they haven't settled already) on standardized metrics and we will have top-50 or top-100 list of shows that will take a large portion of the pie. The flip side of lag indicators are what's called 'lead indicators' or positive performance indicators. In construction these indicators manifest themselves in things like educations and trainings. Interestingly enough they also seem to have already appeared in podcasting in the form of live shows. A more developed - but still directly related - form is the traveling tour version of these live shows. Direct support via Patreon campaigns or simple fan to producer payments using bitcoin/ethereum are additional examples of lead indicators that are simply unaccounted for in traditional lag indicators. What is incredibly interesting is that lead indicators in podcasting, in addition to being great signals of a shows continued future success based on direct audience support, is that they clearly demonstrate a direct relation with bottom line growth.

Heading forward it would behoove those involved with producing on-demand audio to develop and standardize more leading indicators, sharing best practices along the way. This way content creators and owners of content can better understand that their active role is integral to the success of their work - their role simply doesn't stop after producing a show - while pulling on the availability of useful lag indicators to help keep everyone honest and on their toes while innovating forward, without being beholden to such metrics as the ultimate measure of what defines a shows success and profit or failure.

Seinfeld's 3 Steps for Creatives

1. Inspiration
2. Execution
3. Obsessive Attention to Detail

Source : "Awards Chatter" podcast
< https://audio.simplecast.com/45456.mp3 >

How to Take Notes

Recently there have been a slew of articles that made me feel like a kid again.  There was an article that taught me how to tie my shoes, one that showed me how to tie a scarf, and another on how to use toilet paper properly.  I've re-learned so many things recently it'd be embarrassing to continue.

So here I am, an almost - but at the time I started writing this not quite - 30 year old (re)learning how to tie my shoes and live life.  For a quick second I thought I was some oddball outlier.  But then I started to take a look around - like really looked closely at everything again - and I was surprised (in a not so surprised way) to see so many people re-learning how to tie their shows, for reals.

When it comes to basic tasks and activites from eating to excersing and thinking, my bet is that most of us learned how to do these things by simply just following along.  Following whom?  Our parents, siblings, relatives, teachers, and friends of course.  And that's generally good enough.   We learn a small, but crucial aspect of a task, and as we get older we develop and build out our skill/know how of that task.

Let's take the example of note taking as a case-in-point.   Most learn to take notes in elementary school or middle school.  We were advised to keep seperate notebooks for each specific subject.  As we matriculated through high school, university and beyond, this idea of 'seperation' probably continued.  Maybe you now keep an array of different pens to identify different subjects, or use a specific filing technique when you save notes and documents electronically or perhaps you have different sized post-its to catagorize different thoughts.  Or maybe you are "that person" who meticulously labels mini-tabs before you stick then on pages like bookmarks with medieval metadata.

With this hypothetical example at least, the guiding philosophy - that thought at the center of what note taking (as we learned it) is - has been 'seperation of different thoughts and ideas for some specific purpose.'  And it works, up to a point.  How many of you still have your notebooks from middle school, let alone from university or even your planner from last year?  Trick question; it doesn't matter because even if you still have your old notebooks, or a hard drive full of documents, they have probably been left untouched.  Everything written down or saved now remains lost and covered in that original seperation; such loss is built into and anticipated by the very way we learned to take notes.

Things are getting a little deep, no?  I mean, I  thought we were just talking about note taking right?!  Well, we're about to get even deeper.  We will now represent, symbolically, what note taking always has been but never thought of as being, what note taking has been to us, and what it could be in order to show a better way to take notes.

If you take a wide lens towards what note taking - or the recording of anything for that matter - has been throughout the history of humankind, it has simply been a long, running recording of thoughts & ideas.  These recorded thoughts are all essentially functions: they are all linked to some specific thing (e.g. a passage in a book, a specifc topic, a particular lecture, an assignment, a to-do etc...).  On top of that, over-arching relations run through these thoughts and ideas (e.g. time, place, a broad topic, a general thing, mood or behaviour).  Much like a river, recorded notes pierce through time, are firmly connected with and touch their sorrounding environs and flow through space timelessly.  This we can symbolize with the character '流'.

Now let's try to represent the essence of what note taking has been.  The philosophy we etched out above should help.  The driving force, the reason why we take notes is 'for some specific end' and thus we may re-present this idea with the symbol which has been used to convey acting for some things sake: '爲'.

Despite the shortcommings with taking notes focused solely on some specific end, it's hard to entirely refute the positive value or effect - however short lasting they may be - in our drive towards a better way.  On the contrary, a synthesis should be what we strive for.  Thus, for simplicity we can simply add a negation repesented with the symbol '無' to what we have thought note taking has been so that the resulting essence of the couplet is one where a specific end does not exist, but in the absence of such an end all ends are possible or '無爲'.

When all elements are combined we are left with '流無爲' or a flowing non-doing (i.e. not doing something for some specific end; doing something with all ends being possible without any any end being a direct impetus, focus nor a consideration of the original act).  This is best exhibited in the 流無爲 note-taking app Diaro.  Try it out.  Use it.  Carry it with you.  Save it in the cloud.  Add and update this flowing list across platforms and devices.  Pay a little money to use it, forever.  Give it to your children.

Basic tasks and how well we carry them out form the foundation of every other activity we engage in.  If we can do basic things better, it would make sense that any unlocked efficiency could ripple through every other thing we do.  Today, the best ways of doing things are readily available and shared through the internet.  So, if we can learn the best way to do the basics, we no longer need to settle for what's simply been good enough.

Biphasic Effect

An effect wherein, low and high doses of the same substance can produce opposite effects.  For example, marijuana.  Colloquially these opposite states are expressed by an individual when they say they are either 'high' or 'stoned', with the former state the result of a low dose, and the latter - of course - the result of too many hits to one's dome, or ingestion of a high dose edible.

Identity is the New Money

By David Birch.  I'm about to pick it up in a Portland, Oregon Powell's.  Blast off in 3-2-1...

Korean PC Game Rooms & Kakao Talk

What do a piece of parking lot management software, a former Samsung employee and Kakao all have in common?

A lot.

That former Samsung employee of course being Kim Bomsu.  He of course - of course -  was responsible for getting a former Seoul National University Graduate School buddy who later became a coworker at Samsung SDS to adapt a piece of software originally developed to manage paid parking lots to instead help PC Room managers keep track of individual users and how much time they spent using a machine and how much they owed.  He then of course - of course - went on to market the hell out of that software (i.e. offering it for free, of course) to every other PC Room located on the Korean Peninsula until every PC Room on the peninsula had it installed and relied on it to an insane degree.

With that platform in place, Kim Bomsu and crew created Han Game, a gaming platform made up of simple, digitized card and board games, and embedded it in the PC Room management system.  In half a year, Han Game amassed 10 million users, and it's server fees were about to bankrupt the team, but then the CEO of a fledgling web portal approached Bomsu and offered ㅇㅇㅇ won to acquire Han Game.

That CEO was ㅇㅇㅇ, also an alumnus of Seoul National University and Samsung SDS, and Naver was the web portal who at the time was fighting the twin giants of Yahoo Korea and Daum.

Dreads

People aren't like people;
They be everyone else.
Everyone else be like
Groups of yall.
Groups be the dreads
Of life shit.
Shit yall know everyone;
Else you aint human.
But who is?

Justice (as defined on the TV drama 'Billions')

Justice:
Rooted in truth,
watered by tenacity and
flowering in wisdom.
Maybe the single most beautiful expression of man kind.

~ U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of NY Chuck Rhoades (Billions, s01e10)

Note Taking

**rough draft**

Recently there gave been a slew of articles that made me feel like a kid again.  There was an article that taught me how to tie my shoes [link], one that showed me how to tie a scarf [link], and another about the best way to fold toilet paper [link].  I've re-learned so many things recently that it'd be almost embarrassing to continue.

How funny is that image? An almost - but not quite - 30 year old learning how to tie his shoes; I think anyone would laugh out loud if they saw that in real life.  But, if you look around - and I mean really look closely - I think you may be surprised to find how many people are actually re-learning how to tie their shoes, metaphorically that is.

When it comes to basic tasks and activities like eating, excercising and thinking, all of us have a specific method we employ to carry out each activity.  My bet is that for such '"basic" activities, most of us simply learned how to do those things (i.e. basic methods) by simply following along.  Following whom?  We learned by following parents, siblings, relatives, teachers and friends of course. And that's generally good enough.  We learn a basic method based on a simple principle (e.g. ' Over, under, pull it tight;
make a bow, pull it through to do it right', chew before you swallow) and as we ger older we may stick to the basic method or build out more advanced techniques a top it.

Let's use the the example of note taking as a case-in-point.  Most learn to take notes in elementary school or middle school.  We were advised to keep seperate notebooks for each specific subject.  As we matriculated through high school, university and beyong, this idea of 'seperation' probably continued.  Maybe you now keep an array of different pens to identify notes on different subjects, or use a specific filing technique when you save notes and documents electronically or perhaps have different sized post-its to categorize different thoughts or mini-tabs you stick on pages to help you find what you read or wrote.

With this hypothetical example at least, the guiding philosophy - that thought at the center of what note taking as we learned it - has been 'seperation of different thoughts and ideas for some specific purpose'.  And it works, up to a point.  How many of you still have your notebooks from middle school let alone from university or even you Samsung planner from last year?  My guess is not many.  Even if some of you still have your old notebooks, or have a hard drive full of documents, they have probably been left untouched, if not lost.  But is being left untouched just another kind of loss anyways?  Thus it would seem that loss is either built into and anticipated in the method of note taking we learned that embraces 'seperation' at its core.

Things are getting a little deep, no?  I thought we were talking about note taking right?!  Well, we're about to get even deeper. we're about to represent the essence of what note taking has been as a symbol.  If we think back to what we said is the philosophy of note taking is (the seperation of different thoughts and ideas for some specific purpose) it should be clear that the driving force, the reason why we have taken notes is 'for some specific end' and thus we may use the following symbol: '爲'.

So now that we have symbolized what note taking has been, let's think about what note taking is, broadly.  To define note taking as bluntly as possible, I would say: note taking is simply a long, running recording of thoughts and ideas.  Thought broadly, recorded thoughts and ideas are all essentially functions; they are all linked to some specific thing (e.g. a passage in a book, a specific topic, a particular lecture, an assignment, a to-do etc...).  On top of that, there are over-arching relations that run through these thoughts and ideas (e.g. broad topics, general ideas).

Mister Rodgers-style Advertising

Fact: The global audio/radio ad market is worth $65 billion.

Fact: CTRs (click through rates) for all ad banners in 2014 was 0.06% or less than 1 click through per 1,000 views.

Fact: CPMs (costs per 1,000 listeners) for some podcasts has reached $60~100 as is the case for Midroll media, whilst average rates of $20~45 for the rest of the industry, despite being lower, are much higher than ad rates in other sectors.  Also, podcast listener response to ads has been highlighted as being "significant."

Takeaway: People seek out specific meaning from print media, not advertisements.  Radio and podcast listeners develop relationships with the voices they hear.  Imagine being in a relationship with Mister Rodgers over a podcast.  Now imagine that after a segment that saw you cry, laugh and learn something new, he talks about product 'x' - a product he actually uses and loves and because of that he has decided that his listeners should also at least hear about how good it is - and personally vouches for the product.  You would at least be curious about the product, right? I know I am, and this is an imaginary hypothetical.  Relationships are valuable and are the conduit for meaningful advertisement.

Extra credit: If Mister Rodgers asked for his listeners' financial support so that he could produce better shows more often, do you think that in addition to buying a product he advertises to them do you think they would also be willing to support him? If you were his listener, and he simply asked that you send him $1 per month, would you?

Personal question: If you had a podcast about something that was interesting to both yourself and others, how much money would you need to be able to exclusively do the podcast for one year? $100,000 give or take?

Happy podcasting^^

Adaptive Versus Creative Powers

Below I will end the year and leave you dear reader with one important question.  While you and I are surely on the train of the digital re-cognizing of life and the world - to use the word 'revolution' to describe what is happening is to not clearly see the possibility cresting over the horizon - many, many others are most definately not.  But, unlike the past two major ages (i.e. the colonial and industrial ages) those most at risk to be "left behind" reside in the "advanced nations" and not those parts of the world that are fiscally disadvantaged (imho).  So, is this really a problem? Or, simply Karma?  Anyways, happy new years everybody!

The problem of valuing adaptive qualities/powers of an individual higher than creative powers.

The increase in the degree of information threatens the loss of identity of people today (contrary to the belief that it is strengthening social reason).  Those who feel independent and helpless in the face of technically mediated forms are more likely to become incapable of establishing an identity.

Adaptive power refers to the ability to become a specialist or expert and thus at the same time a functionary.  Functionaries by their very nature must be completely concentrated upon the administration of their function (e.g. scientific, technical, economic, monetary processes, administration and politics).  Smooth funtioning of the apparatus is the ultimate aim of inserting an expert.

The problem: As ever fewer persons are making the important decisions and ever more are manning the apparatus, modern society is thus oppressed by imminent structural pressures.  This in turn leads to the degeneration of practice into technique and - through no fault of the experts themselves - to a decline into social irrationality.
It would be propitious at this juncture to emphasize the gravity of this last sentence - and to ultimately show that every word was thoughtfully chosen - by providing the meaning of 'practice' as defined by Heraclitus and re-cognized in the modern word by Gadamer: Practice is carrying and conducting oneself in solidarity; solidarity of course being the basis and foundation of social reason.

시원섭섭하다

That empty feeling you get after finishing a huge task before another task arises, hoping something else is in store in the fore.

Iran

First of all, f*** Twitter.

Now, on to Iran, the beautifully mysterious country that (American) millenials found out about thanks to that Parts Unknown episode Anthony Bourdaine put together.  While that episode did indeed plant a seed of interest in myself to visit Tehran, a Bloomberg article I read a fortnight ago had me booking a flight to Tehran and setting my itinerary.  An itinerary, you should know, consisting of just one activity: get a seat at an Iranian negotiating table - any table with a negotiation going on around it - and hold on for re-lax-muthatrucking-ation.  You see, for any of you who end your news search at sites written by ESL-ers for ESL-ers like the HuffPost, Bloomberg tends not to simply write articles as much as they use lusciously descriptive and evocative visual imagery to paint the news for their readership.  Case in point (and the reason why I'm now waiting to board Ayatollah Aire): "What's happening around the Iranian negotiating table?  Tea, coffee, cake, fruit, maybe some kebab before another coffee."  Could I have a side of bureaucratic inefficiency with that?  Boom.

Check out the Bloomberg article for yourself, or don't, whatever: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-05/investing-in-iran-you-d-better-like-tea-cake-and-bureaucracy

Žižek

The other day I stumbled upon an interview Der Spiegel had conducted with Slavoj Žižek a few months back that has provided me food for thought over the last few days.  Below are some choice excerpts from the article that will hopefully provide a couple others with mental sustenance as well.

Žižek: The European leading culture is the universality of Enlightenment within which individuals view themselves through this universality. That means you have to be capable of dispensing with your characteristics and to ignore your particular social, religious or ethnic positions. It's not sufficient to tolerate each other. We need to have the ability to experience our own cultural identity as something contingent, something coincidental, something that can be changed.

Žižek: The universal individual is very much a reality in our life. Apart from apples, pears and grapes, there should be a place for fruits as such. I love the beauty of this platonic idea. People belong to a specific group, but at the same time they are part of a universal dimension. I don't remain the same throughout the course of my life, but I do remain me. A community is not closed either. A person can leave one and join another. Our identity is made up of several identities that can exist successively and in parallel.

SPIEGEL: Is unbridled individual hedonism the only thing we have with which to oppose this fundamentalism?

Žižek: No, for two reasons. The first is that our opponent isn't really religion. Zivko Kusti, a Croatian Catholic nationalist priest, declared Catholicism to be a symbol of the fact that people aren't prepared to renounce their national and cultural legacy -- "the whole Croatianness." This statement makes clear that it is no longer an issue of faith and its truth, but rather a political-cultural project. Religion here is just an instrument, an indicator of our collective identity. It's about how much public one's own side controls, the amount of hegemony "our" side exerts. That's why Kusti approvingly quotes an Italian communist who claims, "I am an atheist Catholic." That's also why Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, who himself is not very religious, referenced the Christian legacy as a foundation of European identity. The second reason, which is even more decisive, is that the unbridled personal freedom of choice fits in excellently with today's capitalism in the sense that the global social and economic process is becoming more and more impenetrable. Individual hedonism and fundamentalism are mutually driving each other. You can only effectively combat fundamentalism with a new collective project of radical change. And there is nothing trivially hedonistic about that.

SPIEGEL: Who determines what is contingent and what is substantial? For an orthodox Muslim, the headscarf is not contingent, it is substantial.

Žižek: Therein lays the explosive problem. The girl, the woman must decide on that in a self-determined manner. In order for her to be able to do that, she must be freed of the pressure of the family and community. And this is where the emancipatory violence applies: The only possibility for autonomy is uprooting, tearing one's self out of the community's pressure to conform. That's why one of my heroes is Malcolm X. The "X" stands for uprooting. It didn't drive him to search for his African roots. On the contrary, he saw it as a chance to attain a new universal freedom.

SPIEGEL: You welcome this violence?

Žižek: I accept this violence because it's the price for true contingency and the liberation of the self. It's like a sadomasochistic sex game. Those involved can participate in all the perversions. At any time, though, everyone has the right to say, "Stop, that's it, I'm stopping and leaving." Progress in Western democracy consists of constantly expanding the scope of universality and, by doing so, also diversifying the freedom of choice between contingent decisions. But contingency does not mean triviality. Our most valuable collective achievements are contingent -- they come out of nowhere and break with our substantial identities.

 Link: <http://m.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/a-1023506.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer= > 

Egyptian Women, and the World Really

"As long as they lack a basic desire to escape the familiar, it's unlikely they will change anything fundamental about their lives."

This fucking statement.

In a long, long article written by the New Yorker's always engaging Peter Hassler, this statement is just one of a grip of concise and candid observations quoted from one Chinese expat concerning the fundamental challenge of making a living in Northern Egypt, selling lingerie.

This statement was directed towards Eqyptian women - specifically regarding the lack of a multi-shift female workforce due to local (religous) customs - but the reason why it was uttered in the first place is a universally relatable one.  Anyone who has envisioned a better way of doing things or has thought that they could solve a really big problem IF only one seemingly simple thing were different, but lack the means to readily rectify that one thing should absolutely be able to relate to the speaker of the above statement.

What's really thought provoking about the above statement for me though is this: as frequently as we confront limits to progress or barriers to implementing better ways of living, the probability that the 'they' in the above statement could refer to oneself or one's specific in-group must be equally as likely.  The riddle of progress is a constantly shape shifting gate keeper that keeps the future seperate from the status quo.  Before trying to solve the riddle, we need to ask ourselves which problems we too are complicit with and/or a part of.

If you have a few minutes and appreciate good fucking writing about interesting fucking topics check out Hassler's New Yorker piece here : http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/learning-to-speak-lingerie.

Hoverboards and stuff

Arrived at work here in muggy downtown Seoul abnormally early (even for me) this morning so I booted up my pc and opened up Bloomberg, AVC.com, TheStartupBible.com, longform.org and a couple other go-to sites to catch any new updates as per-usual.

Luckily I had time to get used to the new changes made to the layout and fucking font on Bloomberg (they made it super small and fine; younger demo?) so could spot this impossibly alluring piece of copy: Here's How the Lexus Hoverboard Actually Works, Buckle up: History is gonna change.  Journalistic boner right?

Anyways, what struck me - and I think this point nails very concisely both the opportunity and the challenge that anyone who is alive today faces when trying to go solo in search of fame and/or fortune - was the answer the piece provided to the question of 'Why would Lexus spend all that time and money to create something so one-off (at least for now) in the first place?'

Answer: It's never been as challenging as it is today to rise above the rest and turn heads.


Read the full article on Bloomberg.com here :  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-04/here-s-how-the-lexus-hoverboard-actually-works

Leading Vs. Managing

Read a brilliantly concise comparison that explains the nuanced differences between leading and managing on Fred Wilson's blog a few weeks back that has stuck with me.  Hope it is sticky enough for those of you who cast thoughts in to the big pond of business theory from time to time.

Leading is charisma, strength, communication, vision, listening, calm, connecting, trust, faith and belief.

Management is recruiting, retaining, delegating, deciding, communicating and above all executing.

(Read the full post here: http://avc.com/2015/07/leaders-and-executives/)

Peaches & Roses

Tread lightly all ye whose lives claim be nothing but peaches and roses.

Remember that you can die choking on a pit and get cut to hell by any of those thorns.

Seoul City

The city I reside in has 10 million inhabitants and thus has earned the designation of 'Mega City'.  Every city is unique, but broadly speaking there seems to be two seperate species: Inclusive Cities like those found in many Western countries (i.e. melting pots) and Exclusive Cities like those found in North East & South Eastern Asia where the dominant-historic inhabitants or the 'Locals' generally do not readily absorb 'Others'.  My city represents the latter.   As I myself am an 'Other', it is interesting to note that there are a quarter of a million other Others of which 77% or a little over 200,000 are Chinese or ethnic Korean-Chinese; 11,000 are from the USA with another 4,000 hailing from Canada, Australian or Western European countries.  There is a sizable Eastern Bloc/Central Asian/Russian contingent in addition to significant numbers of Others from India and South East Asia.

As an Exclusive City, there are a few noteworthy phenomena worth pointing out.  Firstly, there are the multiple diasporic groupings of each Other group that pocket the city.  There are unofficial (i.e. real) China Towns situated adjacent to the Konkuk University and Sinlim Metros; ethnic  Korean-Chinese and Joseon (i.e. North Koreans) occupy a significant area around Sinlim Metro Station; long-term American expats - mainly Korean-Americans, other US citizens and Military but also not a small contingent of Canadians not to mention the ever increasing diverse group of Muslims and Africans - reside within the Yongsan District of Central Seoul south of Namsan especially concentrated within the neighborhoods of Itaewon and Noksapyeong; Russians and Russian speaking Central Asians can be found in large numbers around the West End of Dongdaemun Market; more ethnic Korean-Chinese Joseon as well as SE Asians in particular also gather en masse on the weekends up around Hyehwa Metro Station.  What these clusters of diasporic groupings result in are restaurants, bakeries, lodging, miscelaneous services and a myriad of shops catering specifically towards each specific Other group.  As a last note, a massive influx of Chinese tourists has resulted in sections of Seoul - specifically nearby the metros of Hongik University and Chungmuro (Seoul's Old Hollywood) - becomming short-term Chinese diasporas of sorts.

The other point that I can't stress enough is the dynamic amalgamation inherent within Exclusive cities exhibited by the fact that these Other clusters are largely ignored by Koreans - until they aren't.  They are self-contained and largely - if unconsciously - self-supporting groupings containing elements of key specialized and unique marketplaces; yet they lack any formal unity and are essentially composed of individuals whose only commonality resides in the fact that they share the same Otherness.  In the case of Itaewon and Noksapyeong, the unique food scene and culture on offer have ignited an explosion of interest from Koreans.  This example highlights the under-recognized potential of all the diasporic groupings within the city.  At the same time it must be stressed again - and despite being a common human phenomenon it seems to be overlooked more often than not - that the tastes, wants and needs of Koreans very rarely all line-up with Others, and vice versa.  This aspect in particular musn't be viewed as a short-comming, but instead should be thought of as a key piece of strategic intelligence that any group - Korean or Other - must always be cognizant of.  For example, a foreign dish or food item like the churro is traditionally enjoyed in certain countries in very specific contexts - contexts that may not be easily translated within Seoul or Korea  - but by creating a familiar context for the Korean consumer, as the recent explosive success garnished by the Street Churro brand has with it's up-scale-lite cafe concept, the curiosity that a foreign idea or concept naturally arouses can be augmented by an order of magnitude.

If I may however, I would like to delve back down to those groups of Others residing within this City of Ours, focusing particularly on the neighborhoods of Itaewon and Noksapyeong.  It is supremely interesting to note that when it comes to the success of Street Churro in Korea - the most conspicuous evidence of which can be gleamed at the beginning of of an alleyway within Noksapyeong on any given day, night or weekend - is the antipathy it arouses from the Other residents.  Why this is noteworthy is simple: This very traditional ex-pat and US military personnel haunt had been for years neglected by typical Koreans for the most part - owing to various reasons - and most importantly within the last 10 years as a result of comparatively low rent and a large population of Others it has been a place where overseas Koreans and long-term expats have been able to safely and openly experiment with various entrepreneurial ventures centering mainly around eateries and brew-pub-style bars.  Very simply, a conspicuous community of Others seemed to be taking root and with that a pride began to form - a pride not unlike that which citizens have when it comes to their home towns and countries.  The success of places similar to Street Churro - lightning rods of Local attention and new traffic - while of course presenting new oppurtunities in the form of ever larger swarms of consumers, also brings with it the con-joined threats of sky-high rent and thus the inescapable demand to bring in higher and higher sales; this last point of course implying the need to cater to the Local consumer more which inevitably leads to the alienation of the original group of Others and (re?)amalgamation into the Local reality.

This is the current state of affairs as it concerns the continued development of both Noksapyeong and Itaewon neighborhoods.  Of course, differences and similarities there are many even between these two halves of the same whole.  For instance, the back alleys of Itaewon behind Yongsan District Office, well off of the main thoroughfares, are experiencing a renaissance of sorts as a large number of small shops are setting up business bringing with them totally new foods and attitudes to what was before just a desolate path leading to the Hill of Homo and Hooker.  That said, the bearing of both neighborhoods is identical and is inclining towards a shared conclusion.  The best example of what that inclined bearing portends can be readily seen through the neighborhood of Sinsa and specifically Garusu Street; put simply a culturally hollow yet still - owing to the images and perceptions still held by many stemming from the long-forgotten original neighborhood that first earned it notoriety and attention in the first place - self-sustaining commercial wasteland with rents that only the largest companies or wealthiest patrons can afford.  This phenomenon, that is, Korean-style gentrification if you will, appears to be an unassailable fact of life for those residing within Seoul.   While to many this fact will present itself as an impending doomsday when they too will be forced out of their life-long residences or small shops to make way for a new Angel-in-us coffee shop, to me at least this is yet another key piece of strategic urban intelligence that one must always have in the back of their mind.

Across this verbose - if not convoluted - overview laid out above, a very important distinction should have been noted by any reader who has made it to this point; in contra-distinction to a typically unified diasporic community of Others, the Itaewon and Noksapyeong neighborhoods - specifically the diasporic community residing therein - experienced the beginnings of a unification underpinned by the formation of a mutually shared pride based in large part on the contrastingly different - dare I say rebellious flouting of Local tastes and norms associated with the Local - food scene and attitude toward living and working.  To make it clear and re-emphasize the point, a tangible thread has been strung through this hitherto simple collection of individual actors thus earning it the graduated character of a community!

CEO의 말씀

중동에서 배운 것은 fair하게 해 주겠다 했을 때 우리는 아주 낙관적으로 받아들였음.  참고로 우리는 별로 똑똑하지 않음.

C.R.E.A.M.

매출은 모든 지표를 대체한다.  숫자가 모든걸 말해주기 때문이다.

We Are Astro Travellers

It's a joyous day!
Let us find the sprit in man, and travel; to the unknown.
To think because we are here in the present, it hasn't just started; this is comming - reality - out of the unknown, out of the nothingness. And we are going to go on into the infamous; into the celestial.
We are what you call Astro Travellers.  So we are travelling from dimension to dimension.
If one man die, all men dead; and one man live, all men live.
Tell the ranks!
One dog, one cat, one goat, one fowl, one moon, one sun; it had to be multi purpose in order to sustain energy and life.  So you have black, blue, green, pink, yellow, river, sea, mountain, birds, dogs - Man.
Everything is travelling on such.  Everything is relative.
The car, the money.
Everything is connected to the universe.
So whether you are one person that does not realize how vulnerable we are within the changes of time, the earth will not disappear my brethren.
Because I and I!

~ Parts Unknown, Jamaica

Re-do

Walking across once well worn floors,
now brittle and frail, their creaks shriek for
time to leave them be,
and so I leave.

In dark basement, beer in hand, words on tap,
I channel my 李白, illuminating the shared gap
between τέχνη and ροίησις,
whilst violence rages beyond the borders that keep us.

Pittering late afternoon rain patters the city,
blanketed in mist amidst the howl of all things windy
from whence
time has slipped past since.

The last gasps of breath escape persed lips, vision fading before
brothers of other shores
destroy and claim amore;
waves crashing, stealing fore.

Swirling silent it spins, blackness blanketing its evermore,
nothing to be heard for nothing is forevermore;
time sleeps, no stir, no beat,
and so I leave.


李白       : Li Bai
τέχνη    : Techne
ροίησις : Poïesis

Standing Out

Logos is common to all; but most live as if they each have a private reason.  Does this have to remain so?

Perceiving and re-cognizing both what is, along with where the 'what is' has come from and everything that the 'what is' has left behind in time is standing out of Logic.

Living and acting as if being alive as woman or man in time - the 'what is' - is the result of a series of random events is standing in Logic.

Most fritter away their time floating within the all pervasive current of Logos.  It is only the few who stand out of it that can make the attempt to divert the flow hither or thither by reflecting their hearts.  Do things still have to remain this way?

ex hupothesoeos anankaion

"All power exists only in its expression."

Ontologically, power is "inwardness."  Freedom is combined with power.  For power that is more than its expression is always freedom.

"Beside freedom stands necessity."

Necessity is the resistance that free power encounters.  The resistance that free power encounters is itself freedom.  The necessity is the power of what has been transmitted and of those who are acting against one.  By excluding many things as impossible, it limits action to the possible.

BRA1NY Question

Are buses with the same number identical?

Innovative Incubation

But how?
Most queer
Things here
Never clear
Bloom late
Fate fates
Until Now