Where Ideas Thrive

Digital nomadism is an extreme example of the idea that it is now possible to work from anywhere. The world is our workplace. In my opinion, this is happening for at least two reasons: 1) people like traveling and it's more fun than sitting in an office cubicle and 2) technology keeps making it easier to work in a decentralized way. This is not a new phenomenon, but it's a growing one. In 2020, it was estimated that there were ~11 million so-called digital nomads in the world. This year, it's...

After I watched Sticks and Stones and The Closer, I wrote something about Dave Chappelle and the transgender community. On the basis of his content I couldn’t quite understand all the furor. It’s very much peak enlightened centrist, but I think it still holds up. I did a Clubhouse room on it with a friend who happened to know Dave.I found out, years later, that Dave Chappelle had listened to that room via his publicist and liked what I said and what I wrote. It was one of those bucket list it...

A zkVM capable of proving 93% of Ethereum mainnet blocks in under 12 seconds.

Update On My JourneyI hit 10,000 subscribers on YouTube! 🥳 10,000 subscribers has always been a major milestone for me on my YouTube journey. Many YouTubers have mentioned that 10k was when they began to truly see themselves as YouTubers. I definitely resonate. YouTube has gone from what felt like a pipe dream to a reality in a fairly short period of time, from monetizing in November to reaching 10k in April. 10,000 subscribers is also when sponsors start taking an interest, which can turn Y...

When you ask people how to best build your personal brand, they'll recommend consistency, finding one's niche, becoming if not an opinion, at least a thought-leader. When you ask people what you should learn, it's usually related to paving the way for your future career aspirations or, at least, something that seems immediately useful. I too fell into these traps at first. I am sure it works for some, but it didn't for me. When I started working in crypto, all I wrote were introductions to ne...

Modern privacy law is based on principles of data protection that were first articulated in the 1970s. As a result, it is based on the idea that we should collect as little data as possible to safeguard personal privacy. In the age of AI and big data, that approach is fast losing its relevance.

Pockets of real demand are emerging and beginning to provide a guidebook for markets that are well-suited to DePIN. Here’s how we’re thinking about what’s most interesting on the demand side of DePIN projects. 

believe app, consumer crypto's b2b trojan horse, stablecoins ~ dollar hegemony's hottest rebound

Ripple and Coinbase are battling to buy Circle, the USDC stablecoin giant. The winner could reshape crypto—and the future of key blockchains!

We're back with the 42nd edition of Paragraph Picks, highlighting a few hand-selected pieces from the past couple of weeks.

Base is not just another Layer 2 fucking around. Backed by Coinbase and buzzing with activity, it's becoming the nerve centre of onchain social, DeFi, and creator ecosystems.

Rutger Bregman is a Dutch historian who has written on of the best books about universal basic income with Utopia for Realists (which I highly recommend reading). He followed this up with Humankind, a strong and much needed push back against the pervasive idea that humans are predominantly selfish and cruel. I highly recommend reading both of these books. I also love that he went to Davos and used that stage to be openly critical of the World Economic Forum. Over the weekend I read his latest...

What a policy forum from the Center for an Urban Future invites us to consider about how we implement broader educational programs to teach foundational tech skills in K-12 environments

— welcome back— back to our getaway… I heard the The First Lady of Song is singing a Summertime lullaby by our side today, and all we have to keep in thought is MIND|YOUR|MIND.

Create Streets recently published this review of the proposed Shoreditch Works development project in Hackney, London. And one of the interesting things they did as part of it was something they call a visual preference survey. What this means is that they showed a statistically representative sampling of over two thousand British people some before and after images so that they could choose which they prefer. Here's how they responded:As you can see, from a visual perspective, there was/is s...

Hi there. I am RM. I read on someone else's blog it's always good to set the scene for what these notes are about, because most readers haven't read what came before. So here we are. I have this long-term goal to start a practice focused solely on play. Not games, not contests, but unsupervised, free play. Not "free to play." Free from stigmas. My early thesis is that we somehow either lost or are not confident enough anymore to embrace play wholeheartedly. So this blog—or better, these notes...

This morning I had a surgical procedure to fix an inguinal hernia. This afternoon I am sitting at home writing this post. While not quite “waving a tricorder” this is a massive testament to medical progress. Also right up front: thanks to everyone at Weill Cornell Medical Center for being not just incredibly professional but also super friendly. As it turns out I can judge how much progress this represents from personal experience. Growing up in Germany, I wound up having two such hernias as ...

We’re here to accelerate frontier tech, from Latin America to the world. By bringing in key funding, resources and connections, we create solutions that boost economic growth across the region and globally. We empower local talent, founders and devs. Our goal is to generate real and lasting impact. Our motto is: latam/acc.

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I'm excited to announce a special opportunity exclusively for my $BB Empire: the auction of a unique, hand-painted artwork, "Watcher of the Odd Moon." This 1/1 piece, with built-in utility designed to reward and empower my dedicated $BB community, is the first auction of its kind for my exclusive token holders!Watcher of the Odd MoonTitle: Watcher of the Odd Moon Medium: Acrylic on 4"x4" Stretched Canvas Edition: 1 of 1 - Exclusive Auction for $BB Holders Description: Watcher of the Odd Moon ...