<![CDATA[Gene’s Thoughts: Indie.am]]> http://github.com/dylang/node-rss https://api.indie.am/upimg/f76829fdc59708c89561ca64997eaed9.jpg Gene’s Thoughts: Indie.am Podcast for Node Tue, 14 Apr 2026 22:08:34 GMT Tue, 14 Apr 2026 22:08:34 GMT https://indie.am/ 60 Personal Journals]]> Indie.am Indie.am is a space for creators to share their thoughts in audio format indie.am contact@indie.am false <![CDATA[Business idea]]> Weekend Adventures at the Park

It's the weekend, and we're heading to the park! Let's roll down the window and enjoy the breeze as we make our way there.

A Quick Update

Today, I'm feeling a bit under the weather. I'm at the tail end of a cold, and while I think it's going away, my voice might still sound a little rough. Despite this, I'm eager to get back to podcasting soon.

Exciting Plans Ahead

I've invited Thomas to join me, and I'm looking forward to what we have to discuss. Stay tuned for more updates and hopefully a new podcast episode in the near future!

]]> https://indie.am/gene/98e2779c090465c56303dde0e98a6c3c https://indie.am/gene/98e2779c090465c56303dde0e98a6c3c Sat, 24 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am so another day it's actually the weekend now yeah we're going to the park let's over down the window and say bye again bye again bye bye can is eight months old a little too quiet oh well we're going to talk about oh yeah we're going to don't see anything so we have we'll see everybody I'm a little bit sick today still I'm gonna let like at the end of my cold I think it's going away but my voice might be no rough today I'm hoping to do podcasts and I invited Thomas to Moss I'm not sure how to pronounce his name he said either way is fine I spoke him one time we had a call very cool guy and I invited him to do a podcast with me we haven't said a date or he hasn't said yes I just invited him so we'll see how that goes and I got to get my laptop fixed basically it's been broken for a while I'm locked out of the what they call the the not the same box seat box like what's interesting but the firmware password I don't have that EFI lock or something it's called and I don't know what the password is I never knew when I was and I can't I guess the only way to bypass that if you lost the password is to replace the chip on on the board and I can't really do I don't have the tools to do that and I don't have the experience I haven't done that ever so I'm not gonna take the risk oh where's this lady going all right so I'm gonna try to get a fixed if it doesn't work I might have to just bite the bullet and buy a laptop well it's M1 books yeah but I'm seriously just hoping to do it like on the cheap and fixed laptop so I can plug in my new mic in there and carry it anywhere I need to go our house is just too I quit everywhere it doesn't matter where I go in the house kids are always loud enough that I can't really do anything so I have to get out and for that I need laptops so yeah that's a quick update on that but today I basically tweeted this idea that artists are really in a strong position now to sell their things and then just artists but illustrators digital graphics anybody who makes some mock- ups wallpaper is pretty much anything they can do amazingly well now with memberships and sites that just sell the assets as part of membership but individually as well so have them sell individually sell as packs and sell as memberships and there's a story that does this really well it's called LS graphics or it's called like L-store die graphics I think that's the URL and it's by this Russian guy Rusan I have no idea how many people are actually working with him or if he's just hit him and he's got like the store full mock-ups and illustrations just all kinds of stuff different formats Figma Sketch yeah I guess I sketched files and Photoshop and things but that website has an amazing content pack basically and he sells all the things individually kind of kind of pricey if you ask me but if you pay 99 bucks a year you get access to the whole thing and I have a feeling he's killing it I'm gonna guess he's making at least a quarter of a million sales that's my like light asked me I wouldn't be surprised you know if he didn't interview instead of making a million bucks every year it wouldn't shock me one bit I'm like that like that's it but I think people who have this talent they have this opportunity right now to launch membership type product and don't stop there create a course video course and how you design these things teach the methods the basics the principles behind the design this you know not the tactics tactic the actual really call like talent skill but like demonstrate how you do all right oh there's still excav ators oh they got something new there today anyway I think there's tremendous opportunity courses assets memberships all like everything collaborations one thing I've noticed like these people don't do these people the people that sell assets it's they never collaborate with anybody imagine if you get access to a much larger pack of assets for higher price but at a point where it's cheaper than working to get separately you can potentially just have killer impact just collaborating with people anything about graphic stuff is there is a million half blogs and websites that promote all these graphic things and if you give them a freebie oh my god I'll link to you I've done this because I made some templates before I can let this go I should have never stopped doing this but there's a ton of easy linking opportunities easy traffic be hands dribble you just put something some free thing out there and boom it's gonna be like flies you know what so if I were to start something that's what I would do so I thought about this I was like well I'm not you know talented enough to do this but what's stopping me from finding people who are but may not realize the business opportunity that I realized and just recruiting them to work for me I either buy their assets outright invest some money up front you know I can get the idea of what's selling and what people are buying were I can hire them or I can put them on a commission structure some sort I don't know but there's I'm imagining there are places in the world like Philippines I think the the wage arbitrage is opportunities really wide there like last I remember for the opinions you could hire somebody for like three dollars an hour and they'll work for of course they're not the type of person who is a tremendous creative capability but who knows maybe you can hire somebody for like five bucks six bucks an hour I'm not saying it's the right thing to do but if you can find a way to even just outright buy their assets and then later hire them to work for you or with you there's not a bad way to start a business and now I'm seriously considering it I'm gonna I'm gonna park right now with the kid but when I get home I'm gonna start emailing these people I'm gonna start hunting for people from Philippines because I don't know where else labor is cheap but I'm no Philippines is well-country I don't think I can afford Russia because they're earned kind of doing tremendously well there's a lot of great designers in Russia I don't know why but it's like the design hub Moscow is like the design what do you call it god everything's all all the terminology today is like skipping my mind I guess I'm so excited about this but it's Saturday and I'm just thinking about this I can't wait to get home and start emailing people first I'm gonna see if I can just I'm gonna propose I'm just gonna propose like multiple love tear things to them I'm gonna say hey you work on commission I'll take all your art I'll sell it and I'll give you an X amount for each thing I sell I'm just gonna listen for free and I'm gonna take their freebies and I'm gonna give them away I'm gonna require one free thing from you I'm gonna list as a freebie on all these sites and just start start getting on I'm basically gonna take their stuff and they don't know I'm not gonna lie to them but I'm gonna give them a smaller cut of what I make from their stuff and eventually I'm just gonna hire them so I'll just either pay them on a flat you know like monthly thing or hourly or per per work I don't know whatever makes most sense to me and to them eventually I want to be able to like have them work at a very decent level where they're not struggling they're you know making good money but better often like those creative market type of marketplaces you know I still want them to do well and while I'm still making profit at it so yeah that's my strategy that's the idea I want to test out who knows it may not work maybe I'm missing something maybe it 's not so easy maybe traffic is not it's easy to get by but I remember I started a free free graphic asset website before and I had people signing up for my mailing list I wasn't doing anything I barely advertised it I didn't do any partnerships I just put the icons out there and like SEO-wise traffic was coming in was building up slowly I don't know why I banded that project but it was all happening I was just I got bored or something it was a lot of work and I guess I just didn't want to put in the work but I have a somewhat of a decent audience I can launch on I can do like a free beset and launch on product condors so many ways to fire different people I'll outsource the you know the marketing outreach and there's all kinds of huge magazines you can contact you know list all your stuff are free don't link it if you give them an exclusive deal my god don't they'll link to you so fast or you give them a freebie just for their audience which may cost them you know investment upfront but it's like basically advertising you know it's like paying for ads anyway I'm excited the graphics there's so many opportunities all the SEOs I've been as you know the CSS stuff the grading in-generators there is a bunch of them but they're not good like you can make a better grading generator and there's just so many ways to get free traffic easy easy easy traffic I'm gonna try it out wish me luck let me know where all my assumptions fall flat if I'm being dumb here but I don't know Let's see how it goes over and out. false 00:10:55 <![CDATA[Social media content that does well]]> Observations on Social Media Content: A Case Study

A couple of days ago, I posted a case study on LinkedIn. It was just a link to my website, and I think that was where I went wrong. It's often said, and I've observed this to be true, that posting links to external websites doesn't perform as well as sharing native content directly on the platform. This makes sense because people are usually just browsing and scrolling through content. If something catches their eye, they might read it or pay attention, but otherwise, they'll just keep scrolling for content that appeals to them.

The Nature of Social Media Content

From my observations, complex content doesn't perform well on social media. Platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter favor simple, easily digestible thoughts—content that doesn't require much thinking. People are more likely to engage with content that makes them laugh or agree, something that resonates with them on a basic level.

For example, posts that evoke human emotions or highlight personal milestones, like celebrating sobriety or starting a new career, tend to receive a lot of engagement. These types of posts are high on the emotional spectrum and do well, whereas complex content often gets ignored.

Insights on Twitter and LinkedIn

On Twitter, simple, inspirational tweets tend to perform well. Sometimes, complex ideas can be communicated simply, and those also gain traction. As your following grows, your content can become more general. Larger accounts often post broad, universally relatable statements—content that makes people say, "Well, duh, everyone knows this," which leads to likes and comments.

The key to growth seems to be starting with valuable content to build a following. Once your audience scales, broaden your content to appeal to a wider audience.

Reflections on My Case Studies

When I share my case studies, most people ignore them. They receive a handful of likes, usually from friends, and rarely any comments. Occasionally, I'll receive messages or emails from people who found the content informative and helpful. It's always surprising because the posts don't seem to perform well on social media, yet they can be transformative for those who apply the information.

This feedback, though infrequent, provides the validation needed to continue creating such content. I also use these case studies as references for people interested in my thought process. They are broken down into slides with tooltips and memes to make them more engaging and easier to digest.

The Nature of Social Media

Social media often features generic content that is broadly appealing, sometimes feel-good but practically useless. However, there are great insights to be found, especially on platforms like Twitter, where I curate my feed around insightful individuals. I find myself drawn to simple ideas or complex ideas stated simply, rather than extensive case studies.

Conclusion

These are my thoughts on social media content. I'm curious about your observations. What kind of content have you posted that gained good traction? What have you shared that resulted in something positive beyond likes and retweets?

]]> https://indie.am/gene/6a9ed11e4064fddfd351e8187f5c0857 https://indie.am/gene/6a9ed11e4064fddfd351e8187f5c0857 Sun, 04 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am Jay So, a couple of days ago I posted a case study on LinkedIn and it was just a link to my website and I think that kind of was the fail there. What's been said before that I've seen that seems to be true is that if you post links to the website, they just don't do as well as posting native content to the platform itself. And I think that makes sense and people are not able to build it. is posting native content to the platform itself. And I think that makes sense, you know, people don't really want to go on other websites. They're just kind of browsing their scrolling through. Whatever it gets is your eyes. If it looks good, they might read it, they might pay attention to it. But otherwise, they'll just kind of scroll through it and look for content that actually appeals to them. So another site kind of observation I had from that is that complex content just tends to not really do well on social. Social favors, really simple thoughts, things that don't require a lot of thinking, things that are quick to digest. You're just kind of glance at it and you move on. Maybe it makes you laugh, makes you agree, inside your head like, "Oh yeah, that's so true." And what's up, buddy? All those flowers, I mean? Yeah. So yeah, if you do anything more complex, it doesn't no matter how good it is, how informative, how useful people just tend to ignore. There'll be a handful of people who do look through it and they might really appreciate the value of their content. But otherwise, what I've noticed is the things that do well, especially on platforms like LinkedIn are really simple, almost effort less statements. Yeah, I see a tractor, buddy. So like, I see a lot of people who have been sober for like 15 years they'll make a post and then get like tens of thousands of likes. Yeah, there's a buster. And somebody who had just graduated from the university and they're starting their career, they'll get a ton of likes. So basically all these kind of human emotion, high on emotional spectra posts, they seem to do well, but anything complex doesn't. And Twitter is much of the same on Twitter. The statements that tend to do well or the tweet that tend to do well are simple kind of inspirational tweets in nature. Sometimes they're simple ideas or complex ideas can communicate it in simple ways. And a lot of times like it's really general. So I think the key is like the smaller you're following, the more insightful your content has to be. But as your account grows, what I've noticed is those accounts tend to post more broadly general kind of most of it is just statements. It's not even information. It's just like, well, duh, like everybody knows this kind of content. And I think the fact that it's well, duh, everybody knows it is what causes people to agree with it and to click like and not necessarily retweet, but there's definitely a lot of likes and comments because everybody wants to chime in on things that they're familiar with, right? So I think that's the kind of the key recipe for growth is like, initially you want to have content that's valuable, that's going to build a following for you. But once you start scaling your audience, you have to kind of broaden it out and make statements that appeal to everybody. And I'll just loop this back into my case studies. Yep, there is a car wash body. What I've noticed is from me sharing my case studies, most people ignore them. There would be a handful of likes and rarely comments because really there 's not much to say about those kinds of things. But there would be some likes and usually they're from friends. They're not even like from friend to person. And occasionally I'll get a message. I'll actually get emails from people saying, wow, Gene, this is, this was so informative and so helpful to me. And it's always a bit of a shocker when I get those messages because, hey, well, the post didn't seem to do well on social, right? Because had a bunch of information. But that information sometimes is quite transformative for people who put it into practice, which is very, very few people because most people don't put anything into practice. There are, of course, entrepreneurs who kind of walk the talk, they'll talk and they'll listen and I actually implement whatever it is that they're learning. But a lot of people don't do that. They're just kind of consuming, consuming, consuming and never really making use of that information. That's at least my observation. So it 's really great and fun to get those kind of tweets and comments. It's mostly like private messages and sometimes an email, get where somebody's really happy about the information they got. And that makes me kind of keep the idea going. Like you need some sort of validation, some feedback to continue doing something. And the fact that I get one of those ones in a while that is kind of enough fuel for me to keep making them. But also , I don't do it just to kind of share ideas in my thoughts. I also do it so I can reference my thinking while I guess it is to share my thoughts. I can reference my thinking to people who are interested to know more about how I think. So once in a while, I'll be approached with somebody like who want to know like, well, how do you approach this? Gene, where do you thoughts on that? So instead of just explaining something new to them, I can just say, Hey, have you seen some of my UX case studies? They're on this website here and you can just glance at it. It's very easy to digest. I break it down to slides. There's little tool tips, a little check marks, little memes in there to make it a little more fun. And a lot of times that's enough to get them familiar with my thought process. It's just an excellent reference. I don't have to. It is dark here. And lots of flowers on the street too. But it's easy to reference. It's a little fun for me to make. There are some things that most people don't care about unless they run a business where they can kind of use this information. But yeah, just thinking about the nature of social and what kind of tweets seem to do well, what kind of posts on LinkedIn seem to do well. It's always kind of more generic content that is broadly speaking and things that broad stroke. And frankly, a lot of times, it's feel good type of thing, but in practice, quite useless. But yeah, it's fun. It's like a place to go to collect information that you'll never use. That's how I feel about it. Of course, that's not always the case. There's a lot of times a lot of great insights on social media. Twitter happens to be a place where I find a lot of great insights, only probably because I curate myself around people that share insights. And then again, I'm also falling into that kind of boat or you could call it a trap where I 'm looking for simple ideas or complex ideas stated simply versus just gigantic case studies on why Microsoft fails at this and the sign-up behavior, right? So kind of flipping the flipping the game backwards and putting myself on the other end of it, I would find probably some most things boring as well unless they have specific interest in them. So yeah , those are my thoughts on social content. I'm curious to see what you've observed, what kind of things are you posting? They're again, good, good traction. And what kind of things have you shared to actually have resulted in something positive for you, not just likes and retweets? [BLANK_AUDIO] false 00:08:37 <![CDATA[LED abuse in product design ]]> The LED Conundrum: A Modern Gripe

I have an air purifier at home, and it's got a bunch of LED lights on it. The comical thing is, if you want to turn off the main light—a large circular glow at the bottom of the device—you have to press another button that lights up. This light changes colors to indicate air quality, shifting from blue to green, and possibly yellow or orange. I’m not sure if it goes red, but probably not.

The Irony of Turning Off Lights

The irony here is that to turn off one light, you have to turn on another. Imagine trying to sleep in a dark room with this glowing contraption. It's a small example of what I like to call "LED abuse" in modern devices. It's both comical and annoying, and I believe many would agree that the world could use less of this.

A Message to Product Designers

To all the product designers out there—especially industrial designers—there's a message that needs to be heard: there's an overuse of LEDs in devices, and it needs to stop. I'm not alone in noticing this trend. It's becoming increasingly ridiculous and inconvenient.

The Childproofing Oversight

Another gripe I have with modern products is their lack of childproofing. Many devices seem to be designed without considering that children might interact with them. For instance, my air purifier lacks a child lock. This oversight seems arrogant, especially for a device often placed on the floor where children play.

The Smart Home Trend

This LED trend is part of a larger movement towards smart home devices. Everything is becoming connected to the internet, which I find impractical and not always purposeful. Some people, like my mother, are thrilled about fridges with TVs and speakers. But I question the point—why listen to music from a fridge speaker when you could have a better sound system?

Embracing Technology with Caution

Don't get me wrong; I love technology and new gadgets. They excite me. However, when tech trends invade privacy or add unnecessary features, it bugs me. I wanted to voice this concern, and I'm curious if you feel the same way. Share your thoughts—I'd love to hear them.

]]> https://indie.am/gene/fc44afed76f20ee3d4621dcb287afe63 https://indie.am/gene/fc44afed76f20ee3d4621dcb287afe63 Tue, 30 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am I have an air pure fire at home and it's got a bunch of LED lights on there and the comical thing is if you want to turn off the light like there has a main light that's pretty large circular on the bottom of the device and it glows right so just to kind of look cool and I don't know I guess those different colors to tell you whether the air is clean or if it needs to be clean or if it's really dirty and it goes from that blue to green to I believe like yellow and an orange I don't know if it goes red probably not but the comical part is if you want to turn off that light if you want to have no glow in your room let's say you're sleeping in a dark room at night you have to press another button that lights up so to turn off one light you have to turn on another and I don't know I think the world could use less of that like there's a lot of LED abuse going on in devices and it's getting to the point where it's like just utterly ridiculous it's comical to a degree and then it's just annoying and I don't know who needs to hear this product designers physical product designers and I guess they would be called industrial designers right because they design products that are produced by them but anyway there is LED abuse going on any ease to end I don't know how we're going to accomplish this who is going to go on national television to shout this but I'm not the only one who's noticed this like I've seen other people who are equally annoyed and I don't know why we have to make products so difficult that's just kind of my gripe with some of the products that are on the market today another gripe that I have with these products is the fact that many of them are not child proof they're not made for children like I'm guessing that people that design these products don't have children and they've never realized what a pain it may be to have a product that can be pressed by a child and used by a child I don't know I guess it takes to be apparent to appreciate that or you have a product that you can press a button for example long enough and locks the device so it can be pressed I've had like the device that I'm talking about the air purifier that I have that glows when you want to turn it off also doesn't have a child lock so to me that's like the ultimate arrogance you have the arrogance of not thinking about kids because this is a device that's on the floor in the living room a lot of times where kids are going to be blind and you have the arrogance of adding LEDs that turn on when you want to turn the manual on off it's like I don't know I've I guess if I knew about this I probably wouldn't buy it but my complaints and I'm just this device specifically it's just a trend the trend of LEDs on devices I guess it's also part of the larger trend there is also kind of like the smart home trend where everything is becoming connected in some form of fashion to the internet and to me that's very very annoying impractical and frankly not the purpose for that device but I guess a lot of people don't have the problem I know like people like my mother are super excited about fridges with TVs on them and screens I play music and things and when I look at that I'm like what's the point like why would you want to listen to music from a crappy fridge speaker like that is making sense to me like if you're going to listen the music have a good sound system just generally a better setup why would you listen to it from a TV I mean from a fridge doesn't make any sense and that topic could be expanded a lot further I should probably do another episode on smart devices like smart home devices how annoying they can be but you know I'm not one who hates technology I love technology I love new things I love playing around a new tech all the time it's exciting to me but when I see trends in tech that are privacy invading that are oh that's the fork of every dumb bell that are comforting they just do things that they shouldn't really do that really bugs me and I just want to voice that I don't know if you feel the same way and listen to this maybe you do maybe you don't. I'm curious what you think. Share your thoughts. false 00:04:47 <![CDATA[Interviewing Damon]]> Exclusive Interview with Damon: A Brainstorming Session

Damon has agreed to a rare interview with me—an opportunity no one else has. I have the privilege to talk to him, and I need to come up with some insightful questions. This post is essentially my brainstorming session. If you're listening and have any questions you'd like me to ask him, please let me know. I'll do my best to include them.

Key Questions to Consider

1. Mindset for Productivity

One of the most important questions I want to ask is about his mindset when it comes to getting things done. Damon is known for working incredibly fast and shipping products at an impressive pace. It seems like within just a few days, he can have a full product ready. He's constantly hustling. So, what's his mindset for shipping frequently and fast?

2. Background and Self-Learning

Another area I want to explore is his background. I believe I saw a tweet where he mentioned that he learned development on his own. How did he go about teaching himself, and what challenges did he face along the way?

Your Input

If you have any additional questions or topics you'd like me to cover in the interview, please let me know. I'll try to incorporate them into our conversation.

]]> https://indie.am/gene/c6163321579cdee1bac9516b40c5f0ba https://indie.am/gene/c6163321579cdee1bac9516b40c5f0ba Thu, 18 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am So Damon has agreed to a rare interview with me and nobody else. I have this privilege to talk to him. And I gotta come up with some questions so this is like my live brainstorm session. And if you're listening to this, if you have any questions you'd like to know or to ask him, let me know and now come up with something. Or I'll try to get those questions in. And so I'm thinking like the most important question I really want to know is how does he, what's his mindset in terms of getting things done because obviously he works so fast and he ships so fast. Like one day, it seems like in a few days you'll have a full product ready. He's just out there hustling so much. So yeah, what's his mindset for shipping frequently and fast? Another question I probably want to ask him is a little bit about his background because it seems like I think I saw him tweeting saying that he learned development on his own. But then his background is like he works at Cisco so I have like many questions. In terms of his journey, like what did that look like? Another thing that I want to ask him probably is about his tweeter Twitter. Growth because he went from like obscure nobody on Twitter to all of a sudden like 4,000 followers. His last tweet where he quit his job has like 700 likes or more. I really want to ask him like figure out how he did that, whether that was some kind of a plan that he was following. There was a resource that he learned from or whether that was just him being genuine. Just all organic wholesome team with a funny name. Yeah, so what else? What else I want to ask him? I'll definitely ask him about his products, which products does he have. And I think he already tweeted like there was, he summarized all the products he had in how much revenue they had, which basically zeroed straight line zero until he got the testimonial. But I do want to ask him about basically why did he pivot so fast? What made him just go from product to product so quickly iterating? And another thing I want to ask him probably is definitely his advice for people just starting out. And his reason for getting into, in the hacking, you know, just from going from a steady development job to like in the hacking. There must be a strong motivation for doing that. Going from a well-paying career to like make a 1K a month just under recurring revenue right now. Of course, it's just a start, but still it's a big risk to kind of take the one asking about that. Hey, I'll come up with some other questions if you have any questions you'd like to ask him. Let me know. Let me know. false 00:02:52 <![CDATA[ Mutual marketing ]]> Exploring Mutual Marketing: A New Approach to Growth

A while back, I stumbled upon a tweet that caught my attention. It featured an innovative advertisement from four companies, each showcasing their best pitch in a shared visual space. This sparked an idea about mutual marketing, which I believe could be beneficial for communities like the Founder Circle.

The Concept of Mutual Marketing

In the Founder Circle community, we share a common goal: growth. I wondered, why not market together instead of separately? Of course, this approach doesn't work for all products, as not all are interrelated. However, for complementary products, it's a fantastic way to gain exposure.

A Practical Example

Take, for instance, my collaboration with Damon. Currently, I embed his videos without links because I have premium access. However, adding his links could expose him to my audience. If it proves successful, I could provide a testimonial for his site. This is the essence of a mutual marketing relationship—each party gains exposure to the other's audience.

Expanding the Circle

We don't have to limit ourselves to just two people. Imagine creating an entire circle of mutual relationships. For example, James and I already have a mutual marketing relationship. I embed his changelog on my website, which helps me tweet and build in public, while also allowing users to subscribe to updates.

Leveraging Complementary Products

Damon's video tool, which can be embedded into websites, offers another opportunity. I suggested he consider a service like VideoAsk, which allows videos to be embedded anywhere. This could enhance user engagement by providing personalized updates or offers, building stronger customer relationships.

A Three-Way Relationship

Why not integrate Damon's product with James's and mine? This creates a three-way mutual marketing relationship. If successful, we all benefit from increased exposure and sales. It's not just about congratulating each other on launches; it's about sharing tangible results.

Building a Community of Mutual Marketing

There are already many members in our community. By collaborating, we can cross-market our products, creating a marketing circle of related offerings. While some products may not fit, the more people join, the more likely they are to find a compatible partner.

The Future of Mutual Marketing

I'm excited about the potential of this approach. I hope Damon considers it, and perhaps we can explore writing a book on mutual marketing. It's a journey, but with smart marketing and hard work, I believe we're heading in the right direction.

That's the update for now. Let's keep pushing forward and see where this path takes us!

]]> https://indie.am/gene/5645d2917b0dcb9b741d218945a56c5b https://indie.am/gene/5645d2917b0dcb9b741d218945a56c5b Wed, 17 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am So a while back I saw a tweet which kind of caught my attention and there was about four companies advertising and one ad to save money which was really brilliant it was basically like a... I remember it was a visual ad but it was... like a square in the split between four areas and then it was one of the four different things. and in each area of the square one company would advertise to their best pitch and that gave me kind of an idea about mutual marketing. So here's the thing if you're part of the founder circle community we have mutual interests and the mutual interests is to grow and I thought why not tried to basically market together instead of separately. Of course it doesn't work for all products because they're not all interrelated but for some products that are complimentary, it's actually a great way to get exposure. For example when I embed Damon's videos right now he doesn't have a link in them because he gave me like premium access to everything and I paid for a premium access as well. But the thing is I kind of want him to add his own links in there that way he gets exposure to my audience and if it works for me if it works well once they start tracking purchases through the mention of the code in my videos, then I can add a testimonial to his site because it works. So by wouldn't I? All right, that's the mutual marketing relationship. I'm exposed to his audience. He's exposed to mine But that doesn't mean we have to stop with two people like we could create an entire circle of mutual relationship. Yeah, Chambas, that's right. Another mutual relationship I'm thinking about is James products and Damon's products James if you're listing for example Well, we already have one you and I because if I embed your changelog in my website Which I do like because it allows me to tweet and build in public and it also lets me update Anybody who's on the website wants to see what's going on and possibly build a mailing list If you either feature where like they can enter their email address and they get The digest Maybe after seven days or 30 days, whatever they select so whatever's convenient So it's not so spammy because it's tweets. I you don't want to send an update every every tweet But so we have a mutual marketing relationship I embed your product you are in In the community so I can market you as well. I can And especially since I'm in a business of dealing with conversion optimization products If it helps you build a mailing list, that's a warming up elite the cold day into a warm lead So that's something I have to advertise because that's what my followers like they like to hear about How to build a list increase the version sales whatever But then I'm thinking about your products in Damon's products and Damon has a video tool right now. It's embeddable into a website into a little circle on the bottom But I really don't see why it has to be limited that way It's in bus. Yeah, we're following the kingdom. That's cool . That's right. It's cool. Yes. It's in here But uh, I told him about this yesterday. I said I put point out to another service which he said he actually imitated or Not I don't know if you copied it, but he was heavily inspired by that one. It's called video ask And video ask let's you embed videos into Yeah, that's a bigger square Okay, I believe that let's you embed videos into anything like I know I can embed in the community Which is a great exposure to like a bunch of people that's uh, you know, not a growth lover But if you can embed the video anywhere I don't see why you wouldn't be able to embed it into the change log So in the way how embed That so allows me to create a personalized welcome why not have a personalized update message Imagine that instead of just having only text and you know, maybe people don't really care about boring text Maybe the gene's face pops up and there says hey, I'm really I really appreciate that you're on this list and you 're waiting for updates Because you sign up for updates. Here's a little incentive offer I'm gonna give you a 20% off when we launch for example doesn't have to be that And or maybe I'll send you a little gift and um, you know, it builds a customer relationship with like before or after there are any customer It's a great way to to grow a personal brand So why can't I take Damon's product and embed it into James product and embed it into my product But that's a three-way mutual Marketing relationship, right? And what happens when all that works and succeeds? We all tweet about it. We all share it Right there. We get exposure to everybody like everybody wins and it's not just like oh, hey, Damon congratulations on your launch It's more like hey, this thing has made me money this week Not all sudden like oh maybe all the other makers are like maybe I need to Sign up for this right if it works if it makes money. Why not if it builds a mailing list. There you go Um, so yeah, that's just another example, but we don't have to stop there either there's quite a few people in the community already If we think hard enough all together, I am pretty sure the brainpower in there will come up with ways to cross market our own products So instead of one for themselves, it's like one for all the musketeers and all for one we all make basically marketing circle of related products And of course you have some that are to may not qualify. They're just so odd or so out of the way of Where it fits with the rest of our products. Maybe that doesn't work But then the more people join the community The more likely they're gonna find the fit of somebody who can promote their product and use it if it works, right? If it works, why not if it makes your money, why wouldn't you do it? I guess in one brainer Um So yeah, I'm excited about this. I really want to see where that goes. I hope Damon thinks about I hope he listens to this I don't think he listens to any of these updates. He's too busy coding. He's got 10k at MRR Figuring his mind. I don't blame him who doesn't But if he listens to this, maybe I can point him to it Maybe we can do that we can start thinking about mutual ways of marketing Who knows we can write we can write a book on this together Another way to market, right? So yeah, that'd be cool I really love to see like what's going on on Twitter how everything is updating and functioning Everybody's doing awesome It's a progress. You know, it's a it's a journey takes time , but I can see that it's definitely heading in the right direction So just a little hard work a little smart marketing And we'll get there eventually All right, that's the update false 00:08:10 <![CDATA[Community ideas]]> Weekly Update: Community Rebranding and Engagement

Introduction

Hello everyone! Today, I'm excited to share some updates and thoughts about our community. As you know, today is Monday, which means it's time for our weekly standup update. This is when I make a post, check who has checked in, and do my own update as well.

Reflecting on Last Week

Last week, I launched a new project, but I won't dive into that right now. Instead, I've been contemplating some changes for our community. One major idea is rebranding. I'm considering the name "Founder's Circle." I posted a poll on Twitter, and it seems to be the top pick, despite one person mentioning it sounds a bit generic. I think it's a nice name, not too in-your-face.

Domain and Landing Page

I haven't registered the domain yet, but I'm thinking of going with founderscircle.club. It's affordable, though not the most ideal. Alongside this, I'm planning to completely redesign the landing page to make it more fun and inviting, rather than overly professional and serious.

Pricing Adjustments

Currently, our monthly plan is $24, with discounts for longer commitments. I'm considering lowering the prices to accommodate more members. I understand that more members can lead to more noise, but I believe we can manage it. Not everyone checks in regularly, and that's okay. People are busy with their projects and routines.

Enhancing Community Engagement

My main focus is on making the community more engaging and connected. I want to avoid engagement for its own sake and instead foster genuine connections. While I get to see what everyone is working on weekly, I feel there's potential for more interaction in between.

Platform Considerations

I'm exploring different platforms to facilitate this:

  • Slack: It allows for micro-interactions and is familiar to many. However, the notification settings can be overwhelming, and conversations can become hard to follow.

  • Facebook Groups: I haven't used modern Facebook groups much, and I find the interface confusing. But it could be a viable option if I can figure out how to manage posts effectively.

  • Circle: It's more asynchronous and lacks features for daily interactions. It feels more like a place to post and leave, which might not foster the connections I'm aiming for.

Integrations and Gamification

I want to integrate features like leaderboards and gamification to make the community more lively and interactive. However, I don't want it to become overwhelming, like some Slack groups with thousands of members.

Conclusion

Decisions, decisions! I'm still weighing the pros and cons of each platform. My goal is to align the community's focus with our core values: making, founding, shipping, and growing. I want it to be affordable and open to everyone who has a product.

I'm seeking feedback and trying to make the best choice for our community. Let's see what happens next!

Thank you for being part of this journey. Your input is invaluable as we move forward.

]]> https://indie.am/gene/8540a603ca5e311890ec7fbde36361dd https://indie.am/gene/8540a603ca5e311890ec7fbde36361dd Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am All right. See, we're going to the park. Yeah, we'll see excavators. All right. There are my textures here. Let's see. I got a little right one so I don 't forget. I got to go right and to the right park. Yep. Not the ball, right? All right. So what's going on? Today, I was working on... Well, today is Sunday, which I mean today is Monday here, which is Sunday for most people and in United States. And today is when I do the update for a weekly standup. Those are cool cars. I do a weekly standup update. I make the post and I check to see who checked in and I mentioned them. Do my update as well. So yeah, last week I did the launch. I don't really want to talk about that. But I do have some things that have been thinking about for the community. Yeah, there's a kindergarten and they have these cartoon characters. But yeah, I'm thinking of completely rebranding now for me. The name that I have in mind is Founder's Circle because I'm just looking out traffic here. Yeah, founder's circle. I kind of like the name I posted on Twitter. I did a poll to see which one that people like. People like that one. I also liked it. And that seems to be the top pick. One person to say sound a little bit generic, but I think it's okay. It's not like in your face and seems nice. So I'm thinking of just... I haven't registered in the main. I have a bit of the main name. I'm thinking founder's circle.club. It seems to be a cheap list. It doesn't sound great, but it's a cheap list. You know, it's .s-o, you do that. And then I have to redo the landing page. I'm thinking I'm just redoing it completely totally different looking feel, making a little more fun, and something that somebody actually wants to join. Not like really professional and serious looking. And lastly, I'm going to reduce the prices. So right now, I think the monthly plan is $24 a month. And of course, you can do three months, six months in that annual, which is a steeper discount. I'm thinking of lowering even more to accommodate more members. And of course, I'm aware that with more people, you get a lot more noise and that's harder to keep up with things. But I think... I'm thinking like the number of people itself is even if it goes high. There's always going to be people who don't check in. That's how it is with this community right now. Like, even though we have sometimes like 10 people at least level, we will be checking. And other times it's only going to be like four. And everybody's busy and they're doing something. They're launching new products. They're just hacking their way in a feature that's almost done, you know. So I can't blame them, right? I don 't expect people to just break their routine and all the hard work and concentration just to check in that one week. But what I've been thinking about most is how to make the community more engaging and more useful and mostly not just more engaging because I don 't want to have engagement for the sake of engagement, but just more connected. Like, I feel like there is not a sense of connectivity there. I do get to see what everybody's working on weekly, but there is so much time in between where I feel like I could have chim ed in with them. Just to see what's up, what feature they're working on, maybe they have a comment or something. And it feels like a type of thing that Slack would take care of fairly well or Facebook groups, something that's more the less pacing, but still allows you to come back and check in on the weekly basis if you're not interested in daily interactions, right? Because I know there's going to be a lot of people who are not really interested in daily stuff. But I feel like I want to push it in that direction a little bit and start building relationships on a more closer level through little interactions and micro engagements and things like that, which I think Slack is the best that I'm familiar with. A lot of people don't like Slack because of the notification settings, like it just bothers you a bunch. And then it's hard to catch up to see what's happening there. If you have like three or four people talking for an hour, it's like it could just pollute the whole room and you don't know what's going on really. You have to go back through and scroll. It just takes forever. It's not productive, but some people are okay with it, right? Especially if you do threads and everything in thread. And the other feature, not feature platform there, but it seems to like in terms of groups is Facebook. But my biggest problem is I don't really, I've never really used Facebook groups the modern ones. Like I've done Facebook groups a long, long time ago, since uh, everything seems to have changed. And I haven't really moderated a group. I don't know anything about Facebook groups. I find the interface in Facebook very confusing to be honest. I've never liked Facebook because of that. I've never used Facebook very much, like very early initially I dig, but now it's like just do, see what other groups are up to. And I'm just like popping in there and leaving right away. So the challenges I have to, if we go down the Facebook route is I have to go in there and learn it, figure out the UI UX. You know I don't like it. And then figure out how to do the stand-ups. Like because from what I've seen at least, Facebook groups tend to be, there, you know, there's a post and it kind of goes in order. It scrolls really fast, right? You got to, you make a post. There's one another another another. All those extubators. How do you pin? Yeah, they are, they are quite big tremendously big. How do you, how do you persist the post that's going to stick around and not get lost in all the noise? Yeah, they're building something there. If I can figure that out in Facebook, maybe I'll use Facebook, even though I don't really visit the platform, but I guess a lot of other people still check it like daily. So, you know, it's not just all about me, it's about what other people find convenience. And, you know, last option is to tick with circle, but I don't know. Circle just feels too async and there's no way to micro interact daily. There's no like mixed chat because it's kind of competes with the posting ability, right? So you post, you come back, you visit, you respond. But it feels like you can't really build connections there. It's not made to communicate freely. It's more like post and leave and come back and maybe somebody answers your question. And maybe nobody says anything. So, there's no easy way to like do emoji feedback. You can't do memes very easily in there. There's a lot of things you can't do in circle. And, barely any integrations as far as I know. And I have, I have other kind of things I want to do, like leaderboards and gamification. I want to, all those more excavators, my goodness. Look how many excavators there are. It's like the excavator storage yard. Yeah. So, I want to be able to integrate things and get more people and make it more alive. Really build and interactive community. That's not too busy, not too noisy. I don't want to scare people off. Like, it's just a thousand people in there and you have no idea what's going on all the time. Like, I've joined those slide groups. They have thousands of people or more. Some have like 10,000 people. And it just feels like way too much to keep up with . There's no way. And I end up leaving. That's a problem. I don't want that to happen. And I don't know. I'm stuck between circle, Facebook groups and Slack. It's like being least favorite because I never check it myself. I don't know why anybody would. What are you saying, boss? What are you talking about there? You say that every time. All right. So yeah, that's the update. We may need decisions redoing the website. I don't know why. I feel like I'm wasting time, but maybe I'm not. I need to align the focus of the community with maker, founder, and get things done, ship, and grow. Right. That's the most important thing. You have to be, you have to have a product. Otherwise, you can't join. And that one to be more affordable, open up to everybody. And if people fall off, they fall off. That's natural. Right. And if they stick around, they stick around. So decisions, decisions, decisions. I've been talking to some people if you're out what to do. And they all say the same thing, but flick the feedback. Like, yeah, I like this, but I don't like that. Like, well, okay, just tell me your number one choice, but it's tough. Everything has a pros and cons trade offs. So we'll see what we'll see what happens. false 00:10:35 <![CDATA[Peter Thiel]]> Insights from a Podcast with Peter T. Long

In a recent podcast episode featuring Peter T. Long as a guest, the host delved into various topics, including investment strategies and career advice for future graduates. Here are some key takeaways from the conversation:

Investment Strategies: The Long View on Bitcoin

One of the standout moments was when Peter T. Long discussed his perspective on current investment strategies. He expressed a strong conviction in Bitcoin, stating that it is the only asset he is confident about in the long term. This insight highlights his bullish stance on Bitcoin as a future-proof investment.

Career Advice for Graduates

Another intriguing segment of the podcast was when the host asked Peter about advice for individuals about to graduate. The discussion revolved around whether to pursue higher education and how to prepare for future careers. Peter's advice was pragmatic:

  • Affordable Education: He emphasized the importance of attending the most affordable school possible to avoid incurring debt. He suggested opting for state schools as a cost-effective choice.

  • Software Development: Peter recommended considering a career in software development, noting that much of the world is still being built on software. Despite advancements that may reduce the demand for certain software roles, he believes there is ample opportunity for adaptation and growth in this field.

The Value of Learning and Adaptation

Peter also touched on the learning curve for new software developers. He acknowledged that while starting from scratch can be challenging, once you learn one programming language, transitioning to others becomes easier. This adaptability is crucial in keeping up with new technological trends.

Final Thoughts

The podcast covered various other topics, and Peter T. Long's insights were both fascinating and aligned with my own views. His ability to understand the world and anticipate future trends makes his perspectives particularly valuable. Although I stumbled upon this podcast through a random tweet, I found it compelling and recommend listening to it. Peter T. Long's discussions provide a thoughtful lens through which to view the future of investments and career planning.

]]> https://indie.am/gene/419b9a147b0440b62fee7098a4194280 https://indie.am/gene/419b9a147b0440b62fee7098a4194280 Wed, 10 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am propose to have a podcast with Peter T. Long as a guest and the host asked him a bunch of questions. One of the questions was how he's looking at current to investment strategies and things like that. And basically he said the only thing he is sure about in the long range is Bitcoin. So I thought that was fascinating that he's long on Bitcoin . And another question I thought was really kind of interesting. I thought was really kind of interesting as the host asked him whether, like, what advice would he give to a person who is about to graduate from school? Should they go to college? Like, how should they prepare for careers of the future? What's the best way to get access to new developing technologies and things like that? And his advice was pretty much go to as cheap of a school as possible, you know, don't spend too much on the college education, especially if it puts you in debt. Especially if it puts you in debt, like, don't go in debt, go to an affordable state school if you can. And he said you can, you know, you can never go around going into software. Like, there is still plenty of the world that's being built on software. And I tend to agree, even though there are developments kind of in the space that threaten the degree to which certain software developers are needed. But still, like, long term, I think there's a lot of room to adapt to kind of just the trajectory going because, as any developer knows, once you get into it, you learn one language, it's easier to get into another and learn some new trending thing without having to, like, restart from scratch. But first, somebody who's just going in the first time, you have to learn everything from scratch basically. So it's a little harder. But yeah, I thought it was those two things were fascinating. He talked about a lot of other things. I tend to agree with pretty much everything he said. He's really smart. And I don't agree with him because he's smart. I agree with him because I have the same viewpoints. And yeah. I remember what name the podcast was. It was like a random tweet I clicked on and he was talking as well and I started listening. I was fascinated. I'll see if I can find the link for it. But I recommend listening to that one. Or anything that Peter Thiel says because he doesn't have my kid. He didn't have an eye on the few in, like, glass ball to look at, but he does have a sense of understanding the world and where things are going. I think if there's a person you look to, that's probably him. But yeah. That's all I want to say. false 00:02:53 <![CDATA[Samurai]]> Discovering the Samurai: A Netflix Journey

I recently watched a captivating show on Netflix about the Japanese samurai. It made me wonder: are there any samurai outside of Japan? I don't think so, but the show focused on the samurai during the Edo period, covering the years from the early to late 1500s. It was a fascinating mix of documentary and dramatization, with real acting that was quite decent. Although the dialogue was minimal, the dramatic portrayal was engaging and entertaining. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in getting a glimpse of that period in Japanese history.

A Glimpse into the Edo Period

The show provided insights into the challenges people faced during that era. I learned a lot, especially about the emperors and warlords. The constant warfare was brutal, and the show depicted how, in many battles, the victors spared no one—not civilians, women, or children. This aspect of history was both horrifying and fascinating.

The Brutality of War

The depiction of warfare was intense. Imagine being a warrior commanded to kill everyone, including children. As a parent, this notion is terrifying. The thought of living in such times, witnessing the murder of your family, is unimaginable. Yet, the show made me ponder the difficult choices people had to make. If faced with the ultimatum of killing to save your own family, what would you do? The brutality of survival in those times was starkly portrayed.

The Miracle of Survival

Surviving to old age was a rarity, yet one commander managed to do so and played a crucial role in the reunification of Japan, which lasted for over 200 years. The series, spanning six or seven episodes, covers a long history and is truly enjoyable to watch.

A Historical Journey

I watched the show while on the move, so I had to be discreet at times, especially when passing by police. If you're interested, check it out. It might be available on your version of Netflix, or perhaps on the Japanese version. The show is in English, with Japanese subtitles, and features several historians discussing the events alongside b-roll footage of battles. It's a fascinating watch, allowing you to build an image of each character as the history unfolds.

In conclusion, this Netflix series offers a dramatic and educational journey through the history of the samurai, making it a must-watch for history enthusiasts.

]]> https://indie.am/gene/bdcb6a4e0693542e5bf0a91456f4c1db https://indie.am/gene/bdcb6a4e0693542e5bf0a91456f4c1db Wed, 10 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am I was watching a show on Netflix about the Japanese samurai . Are there any other samurai other than Japanese? I don't I don't know. I don't think so. But it was about the samurai and the Edo period. I think that the years that they covered were from like early 1500s to like mid 1500s, a late 1500s. And it was a fascinating show. It was documentary style, but it's also kind of dramatized. ties and there's you know, real acting and fairly decent. I mean, they don't say a whole lot. They do say some things, but for the most part, it's just them kind of being dramatic. I thought I was like really entertaining and something to watch. I definitely recommend it to people. But you get a good like glimpse at that period of history of Japanese history. And what people had to go through. I learned, I learned quite a bit because I had no idea. Like, I mean, I had an idea that there were emperors and children, children, children, children. Is there a multiple , what's the plural show them? Show them not, show the name? I don't want to embarrass myself too much. But yeah, you know, I knew the warlords existed. There was a lot of fighting, but it just kind of made me realize just how terrible things were in terms of warfare. For example, I don't want to say too much in case you want to watch the show, but pretty much every battle, they spared nobody. The winning side, they spared nobody on the other side. And I mean, nobody, not civilians, not women, not children. Pretty much everybody had to go. So I found that kind of fascinating, can I go? There's a construction. So the guy was waving just kind of to stop, but then he had a white flag and I was like, well, that's kind of weird. Like, why are you waving to stop, but you got a white flag? Anyway, back to his habit. Yeah, so when they went through an account conquered the city or village, they just wiped everybody out. Can you imagine, like, if you're the warrior and you go through and your commander says, hey, kill that baby there, or look at that two year old kid, I don't know. Like, as a parent that just absolutely horrifies me, I can't imagine living in that time and seeing your kids murdered and then yourself murdered, your wife murdered, whatever. But just from a human point of view, like, how could you possibly ever kill a baby and infant? I can't imagine that. I can't, I mean, I suppose like, if the choice is you have to kill that baby, or you get killed in your family, get killed? Maybe. Maybe it's somehow justifies making that choice. I guess you're forced to. I don't know what the consequences were for this obeying, but in that scenario, like, oh god, I can't even think about it. It's such a terrible thing. And just how brutal everything was. Just to survive to an old age was kind of a miracle. And there was one commander who survived into the old age and he became kind of the reunification guy. He reunified the Japan for like 200 some years afterwards, which is really fascinating. But I think it's like six or seven episodes. And they go through a long history. It's just fun to watch. I got quiet because I went by a cop and I am holding the phone with one of my friends. Yeah, check out, I don't know if it's available to you personally, or if it's something on the Japanese version of Netflix, but it's in English. And the Japanese is sub-titled. And it's just several historians talking about these things as they have like a b -roll of the battles and things. It's fascinating to watch. You kind of build up an image of each character. Two forklifts? You kind of familiarize yourself with each character as they progress through this history. And yeah, it's good to watch. false 00:04:42 <![CDATA[Why the Yuppie Elites Dismiss Bitcoin]]> Why the Yuppie Elite Dismiss Bitcoin

A few days ago, I recorded a four-part talk on Bitcoin. I doubt many have heard it yet, as I haven't even listened to it myself. In this talk, I discussed how the intellectuals of the world often dismiss Bitcoin, which got me thinking about why that is. I had some thoughts on the topic, but then I stumbled upon an article shared on Twitter that articulates this much better than I initially could. It's a spot-on summary of why some people are dismissive, even hostile, towards Bitcoin, while others are incredibly bullish.

The Article: "Why the Yuppie Elite Dismiss Bitcoin"

The article is published on citadel21.com and is titled "Why the Yuppie Elite Dismiss Bitcoin." It's a 13 to 16-minute read, and I thought I'd share some excerpts and my thoughts on it.

A Conversation on Bitcoin's Potential

In a conversation with a friend, I bluntly asked, "What do you think is the probability of Bitcoin hitting one million per coin?" Without hesitation, my friend replied, "0.001%." I laughed and said, "I put it at 80%." After thousands of hours of research, I wondered if there was some information asymmetry. My friend quipped, "Or maybe self-motivated beliefs."

Dan, my friend from business school, is one of the smartest people I know. We both worked at elite management consulting firms and attended top MBA programs. Yet, my B-school friends, the yuppie elite, are resistant to Bitcoin. It's a topic of frustrated fascination for me.

The IQ Bell Curve Model

The article introduces a graphic, an IQ bell curve, to explain the phenomenon. On one end, you have people with low IQs who believe Bitcoin will reach $250k. In the middle, those with average IQs are skeptical. On the other end, the geniuses also believe in Bitcoin's potential.

This model explains why some of the smartest people think Bitcoin will boom, while others mock and resist it. However, it's too simplistic. I can't claim to be smarter than Dan or my brilliant MBA classmates, none of whom have embraced Bitcoin maximalism.

Trust in the System

The article suggests that the degree to which one is bullish on Bitcoin correlates with their trust or distrust in the system. Those who distrust the system are more likely to embrace Bitcoin. This helps explain the early adoption by cypherpunks, anarchists, and libertarians.

The Yuppie Elite's Perspective

The yuppie elite are smart and trust the system. They believe that if they play by the rules, they'll be rewarded. This trust makes them dismissive of Bitcoin, which they see as a phenomenon for those "not in the know."

The Journey to Bitcoin Maximalism

For many, the journey to Bitcoin maximalism involves questioning deeply held beliefs. It's a process of unlearning and relearning, often triggered by understanding central banking and monetary policy.

Conclusion

The article concludes that as Bitcoin's mechanics continue to play out, everyone will eventually have to reconsider their stance. The yuppie elite may take longer to come around due to their entrenched trust in the system.

In summary, the article offers a compelling explanation of why the yuppie elite dismiss Bitcoin. It's a thought-provoking read that challenges us to keep an open mind, especially when it comes to technological advancements.

Check out the full article on citadel21.com. I hope you find it as insightful as I did.

]]> https://indie.am/gene/37da38ff1f9d4ad9797738968d0071f8 https://indie.am/gene/37da38ff1f9d4ad9797738968d0071f8 Wed, 10 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am so a few days back I recorded a I think four-part Bitcoin talk and I'm pretty sure nobody has heard about it yet I haven't listened to it but I was one of the things I mentioned in the conversation I was not a conversation just me talking but one of the things I mentioned was that it seems that the smart intellectuals of the world are dismissing Bitcoin and they kind of got me thinking about the why that is I basically had some thoughts around this topic but then I discovered another article that somebody has linked on Twitter that summarizes this much better than the I had kind of put together my own mind and I think it's very on point and probably the most accurate summary of what I think is going on and why some people are so dismissive of Bitcoin down right like hostile and others who are incredibly bullish on it so I thought I'd read this article and maybe comment on a little bit and you basically decide what you think for yourself so this article is written by let's see I don't know who wrote it actually it's on cit adel 21.com and this titled why the yuppy elite dismiss Bitcoin and it's a 13 to 16 minute read I don't know if I read all of it but let's start. So exacerbate it's exasperated with our conversation I asked bluntly why do you think the probability what do you think is a probability of Bitcoin hitting one million per coin without hesitation my friend replied 0.001% I laughed and said I put an 80% I asked if after a thousand of hours of research on my part maybe there was something there's some information a symmetry he quipped. or maybe self motivated leaves that's Dan he's one of my good friends from business school he's got a seven eighty on his GMAT and almost always the smartest man in the room we both worked on one of the. At one of the elite management consultant firms before attending one of the elite MBA programs followed by returning to elite job opportunities in most desirable cities in America. My B school friend group is full of dance the kids who ran the gauntlet of achievement obsessed America and cleared the highest bar every time it rose higher the constant yupp y elite. Yeah they're all resistant to Bitcoin it has become a topic of frustration frustrated fascination for me my other friend groups have largely heated my vociferous and. For a fervent testimony the Bitcoin is the most important asset of the turn for a century yet my elite MBA friends cling to the dismissiveness and the borders on the outright hostility why. This is a complex topics topic with few layers I will try to address here as a standing point let's introduce the closest attempt at the explanation that I've seen to date. And here he basically shows a graphic that's kind of a meme and tries to explain what's going on and on the graphic you see kind of a bell curve it goes it's title IQ bell curve. And it goes from presumably 0 to 145 at the on the right side and you have this graphic that's typically like a meme person one is like low IQ kind of like this really stupid looking character. And they think that the coins going to 250k okay then you have the middle of the bell curve IQ from like 85 to 115 or so or maybe you can say from 70 to 130 and these people are all raging and they're thinking like there's just no way that's going to 250 right. Let's let's get the raging dude meme and then the other end at the very right where the IQ goes from starting from about 120 to 145 plus like these are the geniuses of society and they're all thinking 250k plus as well they've got the he's got the brain on him and glasses and he's like the smart smart dude here. So continuing with the article clever and compelling this model explains what many in the Bitcoin perceive some of the smartest people in the world think Bitcoin is going to boom. But so but so do some dumb asses importantly this model also explains the mockery and resistance we see from our reasonably intelligent friends and family which I've also noticed myself by the way. But it's too easy an explanation I cannot claim to be smarter than Dan or the hundreds of other brilliant MBAs in my graduating class. Not one of whom has reached Bitcoin maximum as far as I know clearly there's something else going on here. I'm going to get some water real quick so I think kind of to recap the first part is there's a lot of people on different spectrum of the IQ smartness and you've got people on the very bottom who are kind of the moonboys are really excited about Bitcoin and they don't really think right they saw the Bitcoin did really well within the first couple years of its existence and they're just like blown away and like oh wow if it's done well it's going to continue to do well. Right but the past is not indicative of future results as we all know and then you have on the other spectrum of the IQ bell curve is the smartest people in the world who are also seen the possibilities right you got Elon Musk you've got. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name correctly but all these kind of billionaire smart people rocket scientist sailor they all understand what's going on they see the future and it seems like really puzzling why do all these other people in the middle kind of there's still very smart but they're not quite as accepting of Bitcoin a lot of times like very hostile against it. So what else is going on here so after mulling this over for a number of months I think I've come up with a framework that while not perfect provides more explanatory power. First let's separate the 250k believers in Murad's meme is at the name but into what they really are Bitcoin moonboys on the left and deeply researched Bitcoin max on the right. In truth there are two different groups the first group believes that Bitcoin is going to the moon largely because they believe the past performance is indicative of future results. We'll say that this group subscribes to Bitcoin moonism and if you go on Twitter this is my side note if you go on Twitter and type Bitcoin hashtag you see a lot of these kind of Bitcoin moonboys like yeah to the moon. It's not as much anymore but in a lot like I'd say last three or so years especially around 2017 you had a lot of Bitcoin moonism going on and it was very very noticeable on Twitter on Reddit so it's kind of like it's as an intelligent person looking at that you're thinking wow these dumbasses what do they know. Okay so to the back of the article the second group has come to understand the game. Theoretic inevitability of bitcoins continue to rise in the context of central bank money printing the deterministic price mechanics of. Quadranial supply shock via bitcoins haveings and the market psychology that programmatic price appreciation precipitates and the winner takes all implications of an absolute scarce store value asset that we call Bitcoin maximum. The IQ framework seems to hold up decently with regard to the moonboys but it doesn't account for the dance. And all of the other brilliant yuppies I know when I thought about what is defining difference between Bitcoin maximum and the yuppy elite friends my yuppy elite friends. The surface level decisions that popped out were political example libertarianism trump support second amendment rights black lives matter. But these stem from a deeper divide the degree to which a person has trust in the system. There's a lifelong liberal recently cast into the nether world of distrust of both parties that one necessarily requires when journeying down the Bitcoin rabbit hole far enough I feel reasonably qualified to speak to the liberal condition. So basically what he's saying is you the degree to which you are bullish on Bitcoin is the degree to which you trust or distrust in the system. And the establishment whatever you want to call it. If you have trust in how things are in the way that they've been then you are less likely to believe in bitcoins kind of. But if you are in the other spectrum of where you distrust the system deeply you're more likely to absolutely love Bitcoin. But today begs the question like where do the billionaires the smart ones fall on the spectrum and I say billionaires and smart and somebody might let me listen to be like oh well Gene you know just because your rich doesn't mean you 're that smart and that's probably true. But a lot of the billionaires what they have in common is that they took gigantic risks and they bet large on something that most people wouldn't have bet on. I think that makes them somehow at least a little bit more open to some of the risk your slash. Society changing events and you know things that take place so let's get back to the article at the heart of liberalism . Is a belief that the system can work if it could just be architected well enough and administered competently and compassionately. My personal journey to Bitcoin maximumism involve the painful disassociation from this fundamental worldview specifically in the course of digging and to understand central banking monetary policy and the irreversible levers it resistible levers that come with it. As an aside I went to the best business school in the world and they didn't teach us anything about that for what it's worth I think I don't think that this was annoying or malicious a mission I think this battle was 100 years ago in King's day. With the self serving support of government weighing heavily on the outcome, which is to say my professors learn from canisians who themselves learn from canisians the business leaders and educators of today are completely unaware that their passing on the shoddy propaganda version of monetary theory as a result of largely successful ideological extermination of sound money theory. But I digress if we take more as IQ frameworks split the 250k believers into the respective groups and add the dimension of trust in the system's ability to work we get something like this. And what he's got what he's shown here is a graphic of basically just a quadrant on the top you have IQ and on the right you have trust in the system and it's color graded so on. On the bottom where you have low IQ you have propensity for Bitcoin monism and on the top where you have high IQ you have propensity for Bitcoin maximum. And the graph itself is kind of empty on the top right which correlates to high IQ and high trust in the system basically saying that if you have a lot of trust in the system and you're fairly intelligent you're not likely to believe or trusted Bitcoin. Okay and back to the article. If this is a reasonable representation of reality there are a number of insights we might draw from it. Bitcoin maximum maximum is correlated with intelligence but also distrust in the system. Someone who is very smart and has high conviction that the system is broken is more likely to reach Bitcoin maximum than someone lacking one of these qualities or all else equal. Bitcoin monism is less sensitive to one's distrust in the system if you're dumbass your dumbass but it probably helps to a little to be a dumbass and distrust the system. It's easier to reach Bitcoin maximum if you're already primed for a via pre-existing distrust of the system. This helps explain the early adoption of cypher punks, anarchists and libertarians and even the current represent ational skew toward Trump supporters who share a distrust of the establishment. On the flip side, I'm scrolling down here. It is more or less impossible to reach Bitcoin maximum and retaining any amount of trust in the system. Indeed, this was my experience. To get to maximumism, I had to first grapple with the uncomfortable distance of my beliefs and the things that came to face. I came face to face with as I dug deeper into the rabbit hole, confront them rather than turn back and ultimately tear down my entire worldview in order to resolve the distance and continue to go. Of greatest relevance to our particular focus, however, is the white space in the top right quadrant. Those with high intelligence and trust in the system's ability to work are very unlikely to subscribe to either Bitcoin maximum or Bitcoin monism. Let's expand on this further. So, basically exactly what I just said about the chart. The smarter you are and the more trust you have in the system, the less likely you are to partake and to entertain Bitcoin, I guess. The upper right quadrant of the chart also happens to be the naive home of the AP elite. To succeed in the educated professional class, you have to be smart, but it's also crucial that you know how to fit in be a good team player. Navigate industry politics, be polite and likable, and above all, be a good food soldier willing to sacrifice for your employer. The requisite core belief to be able to be able to be all of these things is trust in the system. Trust is that trust that if you're a good employee and play nice with others, you'll be rewarded via promotions and social standing. In this sense, if we were to plot the AP elite live on our graph, live lives on our graph, it would look something like this. The graph is IQ to top trust in the system on the right, and in the upper right with high IQ high trust, you have the AP elites, MBAs, etc. In just the same way that Bitcoin maximalists are some combination of smart and distrusting of the system, the AP elite are typically smart and trusting of the system. Some are more brilliant than others, but the ones that are less smart still successfully are typically so because they 're exceptionally committed and loyal employees. So I think for me, that does describe a lot of the people that I know personally as people who are smart, and they might not be necessarily brilliant enough to, you know, found new companies and to kind of reach other academic heights. But they're smart enough that they know what's good for them in terms of career choices, and they make their appropriate career choices and usually end up being fairly well off as a result. So, back to the article, as you can see the empty corner of our two by two matrix is exactly where the MBAs and other AP elites are, from their vantage point belief in Bitcoin is a peculiar phenomenon that will surely go away. None of their AP elite friends believe in it, and since they don't know much about Bitcoin, they draw the distinction between Bitcoin, they don't draw any distinction between Bitcoin, Buddhism, and Bitcoin maximal ism. It's all lumped together for them. As a result, the AP elite tend to believe to view belief in Bitcoin like this. So we've got our quadrant chart two by two matrix, and it's still showing the AP elites at the top, but it's labeled as people in the know, and everybody else is like people not in the know. So the basically is kind of like in the lead form of seeing yourself as somebody who knows and understands versus everybody else who doesn't quite know or understand what's going on. And it's not necessarily like, "Yeah, I know better." It's more like you're never exposed to anybody with other belief systems, right? And here we go, down below. Unfortunately for them, this perspective makes them unlikely to seriously consider Bitcoin on its own merits. Part of what makes this this interest so resilient is that it falls into a neat heuristic pattern like many other things in the yuppie world. The yuppie elite are accustomed to having the best information, the best education, the quickest knowledge of and access to trends. Yuppies believe they're people in the know. When you're in the ivory tower, you think the term ivory tower is a silly misrepresentation of your very normal life . But when you're no longer in the ivory tower, you realize how willfully out of touch you were with the world. I'm going to pause here for just a second, and I just kind of want to wait in some of the evidence that I've discovered of this. I frequently hang out in a Bitcoin maximalist room. You have their people who are very, very intelligent, who run their own companies, who have run institutions, who are, who have graduated from some of the world's elite schools. So these are clearly very smart people and have become Bitcoin maximalists. But before they became maximalists, they share their stories of typically in this room people ask, "Well, how did you get into Bitcoin?" And a lot of people share their stories. And what they describe for the most part kind of falls in line with what this person in the article is saying is that they were part of the world where looking outside and seeing Bitcoin as a movement just seemed like a scam and like insane, wishful thinking. Look at these ignorant people, like what do they know, right? But then as they did the research on the subject, as they understood what Bitcoin has accomplished on a very revolutionary level that most people don't quite understand . When they discover those things, usually through reading, through podcasts, through articles, and then doing their own thinking, right? They're smart people. And once they do take the journey and they start comparing the knowledge that they had to the knowledge that they've acquired, it becomes clear that Bitcoin is the only, you know, everything that they assumed was false is actually true. Like, it becomes clear that Bitcoin has merit and it needs to take serious consideration. And, you know, they do the homework and then they end up being Bitcoin maximalists. So, when I was reading this, I was like, "Aha, that's exactly what I heard in many of these rooms where people describe their journey going from a fairly knowledgeable person in the know to Bitcoin maximalists just by doing all the research without ignoring kind of the... You know, but here, I'll pause there because I think the article does a really great job explaining that here, for example. So, part of being in the ivory tower means being in a socially insular bubble, interacting only with other yupp ies, the natural outcome of this is that you tend to believe things are important And worthwhile if other yuppies in your social network believe they are, after all yuppies are the people in the know. Conversely, if people outside of the yuppies social world are engaged in something, but other yuppies aren't interested in it, in it, it must be something for people not in the know. In this case, the lack of belief in Bitcoin among the yupp ily, combined with a significant interest in Bitcoin among the non-yuppies, none yuppies, triggers a clear pattern recognition response . Bitcoin is for people not in the know. And I think it's important to note that none of this is very straightforward and intentional if you're the person " in the know" because to you, you interact with others who are like you, and I found this to be absolutely true. You usually hang out with people in your circle who are of about same intelligence, right? You don't hang out with people who are a lot dumber than you. Once you hear them talk, you're like, "Well, I'm not going to listen to them." Or people who are a lot less successful than you, they're usually about same social standing, plus or minus here and there. And once you're interacting with people of the same caliber , it tends to be difficult to listen to anybody else, especially if they're less successful and seemingly less intelligent. You look up to people who are a lot more successful than you, right? People, the elite, quote unquote, "yuppies" here, they look up to Buffett to monger, to all these investors who are Ray Dalio, who have clearly achieved great success. And they also distrust a Bitcoin, right? So yeah, let's continue. A second characteristic of yuppies also helps ensure that this haristic label is not easily revised. As smart people who are good at navigating the world, yupp ies need to understand something in order to believe in it, make sense. That's how they've done well in life so far. So that's what they're sticking to. Ironically, it's adherence to the central ethos of Bitcoin that yuppies keep the keep the yuppies from investing in Bitcoin. And that ethos is don't trust, verify. I have a childhood friend who is a sailboat captain for a living. In his mind, I am one of the smartest people he knows. When I strongly recommended that he look into Bitcoin, he bought some that same night. He didn't verify my thesis for himself, he trusted me. The same is not true for my yuppie friends. They know it is unwise to invest money in something they do not understand. At the same time they lack the time, conviction and persistence to replicate my years of research. What's more, Bitcoin's surface level provides it with a subtle camouflage. The first hour or two of learning about Bitcoin triggers a multitude of scam red flags for the business and the financial elite who have honed their heuristic abilities for filtering out the knowledge of noise they sift through on a daily basis in order to be effective in their professions. These red flags are a non-starter. So, I find this to be kind of true for myself. When I first started looking into Bitcoin, I had so many objections. I'm like, well, that won't work, that won't work. This is absolutely false, that's nonsense. And the more you dig into it, some of those kind of objections go away. And I've realized recently as well, I'm not realized, but I 've noticed that the people that are entering this space after so many years of hesitation are going through the same journey. This journey doesn't go from zero to one. It's not an off to on position flip. For most people, it's like a multi-touch journey. You have to first enter it, then you dismiss it, then you kind of go back to it and think, "Yeah, maybe there's something to it." But then you get burned, maybe you realize it might be a scam. Everything looks like a scam, a bubble, a pond, you're a scheme. But then you eventually, you know, you can't ignore the prices going up. You can't ignore other market entrants. And you think, well, why are they doing this? What do they know? Or what do they think they know that I don't know? I've already been doing this, you know, looking into this for a very long time. Why are they entering this space with so much money behind it? So they start doing more research and then listen to more podcasts, more books, more articles. And then they come to realization that they've been dumb this whole time. And it's not that they were just dumb. It's a journey that takes time. And you can see it very clearly from people who are clearly very smart, but I took them a very long time to get into Bitcoin. For example, Elon Musk noted, and I think his clubhouse interview that he knew about Bitcoin since I think 2013. Somebody had told him about it. And there's no doubt somebody who is of that intellectual capacity would not. There's no doubt that they wouldn't look into Bitcoin, at least a little bit, right? Maybe they dismissed it right away as magic internet money, but they it was on their radar for this whole time. And he said that, you know, he knew about it for a long time, but he didn't get into it until now. Like Tesla is, Tesla is invented and invested in it. And he, I don't know if he believes in Bitcoin itself, but he believes that crypto is possibly the future. And you can also see this in other CEOs that come out and write letters to shareholders. And they basically describe the same journey. At first, it seems like a scam. There's all this in efficiency and energy and mining. But as they dig deeper and they talk to participants of the market, people who are of equal intellectual capability, who are actually solving the problems like of mining and efficiency. Then they realized that there's a lot more to it that they didn't quite understand. And they kind of start putting more and more into it. And I saw back to the article here, for their entire adult lives, they have been reinforced to think within the box, often calling it out of the box thinking and not Iraq. The people who think they're thinking outside the box are actually within their own little box. It's like two containers, right? You're inside the little one and you think you're thinking outside that which you are maybe, but then you're inside another larger container, which is like your social circles. And you're upbringing, you're understanding of things. And by the way, the reason I'm interested in all this is because I'm always looking for ways to step outside of my own core beliefs. Because I think it's really dangerous to think that you know something really well and to completely dismiss other people's ideas. That's why I always try to keep an open mind to everything. No matter how absurd it sounds, you have to investigate things based on fact. And maybe your facts do not support the statements and you go look for other facts. Like you have to discover, you have to dig deeper into something solidified in your opinion. Okay, so for the entire lives they've been reinforced, we already said this. The odds that a new piece of information comes along for which an hour or two investigation creates more confusion than answers. Maybe yield several red flags, but actually turns out to be an outstanding investment are eventually small. That's what heuristics do, filter out the garbage based on the cursory investigation of substance. A typical member of the Yuppie lee flag slides Bitcoin as garbage to be ignored upon their first investigation of merits. And because of the group think of Yuppie's only paying attention to what other Yuppies are interested. That's where Bitcoin remains. And if you listen to Michael Saylor, he said the exact same thing. At first glance, he said Bitcoin was a scam. I'm guessing he did some little bit of an investigation and on the surface level, it does look like a scam. It sounds impossible. It seems like a get rich quick scheme. Maybe it's a pyramid scheme, whatever. That's what I feel like. And he even tweeted saying Bitcoin was a scam. And somebody had asked them, I think, on CNBC, like, why did you say it was a scam? And now you're all in on it. I think he's like 90% into it. And he basically said the same thing that this article summarized. He said he started digging into the research, started trying to understand what's going on. And then he used his own background as a rocket scientist to tie it all together to try to understand it. And now he has fermented such a strong core belief in Bitcoin that he's almost all in on it. Okay, back to the article. Let's see how far is this? I think it's almost down. Oh yeah, it's only two paragraphs. Of course, this will all change as Bitcoin's mechanics continue to play out, making numbers go up. In time, everyone will have to face the painful realization that their reason for right enough Bitcoin were wrong. Because of the dynamic dynamics at work with the Yuppi class, it may take longer for them to come around to Bitcoin the most new technologies or trends. Croatia was a Greek king of Lydia, like Lydia, modernly Turkey. 2,500 years ago, most notable for being the first to mint standardized gold coins a monetary breakthrough. Nowadays, he writes about Bitcoin after the lack. Wait, who writes about Bitcoin? Nowadays, he writes about Bitcoin after lack of fulfillment as a management consultant led him to stumbling down. Okay, I don't really understand that part. But I think what he's saying here in the final two paragraphs is that it's difficult to accept a paradigm shifting. Discovery as truth, if all you've known your whole life is a certain truth. Let's give a quick example here. I'll summarize in this long talk. So let's say you are a villager. You grew up, you were born into a village in the 1500s, let 's say. Your village was located at the foothills of a volcano. For the entirety of the history that you are exposed to that you know of, your relatives, your ancestors have recorded their lives, you have maybe a clay tablet or something. And there's absolutely no mention of volcanic eruptions. So for the life of you or anybody that you know, nobody's ever been exposed to a volcanic eruption. So you think, well, you know, you don't even think about it . It doesn't even come up to you. It doesn't come up across your mind that perhaps this thing is going to erupt one day and you're going to be screwed and all wiped out, right? Doesn't ever cross as your mind because you've never been exposed to it. So you continue living in your own little world. And then one day the volcano erupts and you're all gone. Just boom. It burns to a crisp, right? But you know, like you're thinking, but wait, you know, that has never happened before. Why is it happening now? So that's kind of what I'm thinking along the lines here. Another example I want to give is when I moved to Japan, obviously I was aware of the 2011 March earthquake and tsunami that took place here. It was history making, you know, it was life changing and positive, most negative way for people. And I remember watching the videos of the tsunami. If you go on YouTube, there's a ton of them. And one of the most horrifying videos that I saw was this sludge of houses, cars, boats, everything. Really, really tall, just come through a valley of village, wipe everything out. This was all in video people on the hill filming it. It's basically the entire village floating in this sludge of just death, pure death. There's no way to survive any of it. And I thought, wow, you know, if you were stuck in any one of those buildings, you'd be wiped out. That's it, you'd be dead. And I remember seeing the aftermath, somebody actually went in and recorded. After they've kind of cleaned everything out, they've recorded the same valley. And the only thing that was standing in that valley was the tallest building. I think it was a hospital. And only the topmost floor and the roof were untouched. Everything else the sludge went through. So if you were not in the topmost floor of the hospital or on the top of the roof, you were likely dead. And then that made me kind of gravely concerned, given that I live on the coast of Japanese city. And I said to my wife, we need to be prepared for this sort of thing. If this ever happens here, we need to be able to evacuate very fast. And of course she said, well, you're being paranoid. This has never happened here. For the history of this place, this has never happened here . So in her mind, it is impossible for a tsunami to hit this coast in this part of Japan, even though the entire coast is exposed to earthquake activity. So I'm like, how could you possibly think that something couldn't happen here just because it has never happened? And I think that's the case with a lot of Bitcoin people who are exposed to it. They can't possibly fathom a world where we are not constantly printing money, where debt is a given thing, where everything is constantly inflated and goes up and up and up. They can't imagine that world because they have never known anything other than that world. So I think the biggest takeaway from all this is don't get hung up on one or two things. When you first start researching something, question a deeper and further, listen to people of all backgrounds. Try to do your own research. That's all I'm saying. It's like, keep an open mind. Especially when it comes to technological advancements because on the surface level, they may look dumb, they may seem like a nonstarter, but a lot of times those are the types of things that changed the world. And we just need to have an open mind to them initially. So yeah, I found this article very good. Again, it's called "Why the Yuppie Lead Dismiss Bitcoin" by Citadel21.com. Check it out. I hope you had fun. Sorry for my mispronunci ations and refreading that times. Alright, peace. [BLANK_AUDIO] false 00:36:18 <![CDATA[Immortality! Take it! It’s yours!]]> Exploring the Concept of Immortality

I thought it would be nice to take a break from the Bitcoin conversations and discuss something more impactful. Longevity and the idea of extending human life have been hot topics over the last five years. Occasionally, discussions even venture into the realm of immortality—what it would take to achieve it, what it would mean, and whether it's even possible.

Defining Immortality

To define immortality, we must first understand what makes a human. Is it our behavior, thoughts, impact on others, or the persistence of our ideas after we're gone? Is it the biological functions like the heartbeat or brain activity? These are complex subjects, but for the sake of this discussion, let's define human life as the ability to interact, leave an impact, and communicate with others.

When a person dies, they can no longer interact or communicate. Whether there's a soul or life energy that goes elsewhere is up for debate, but there's no definitive proof. For the sake of this discussion, let's focus on the tangible aspects of life and interaction.

The Concept of Digital Immortality

One form of immortality could be digital immortality. With advancements in technology, could we create a digital representation of a person that lives on after their physical death? Technologies like deep fakes, machine learning, and voice synthesis are already paving the way for this possibility.

Deep Fakes and Voice Synthesis

Deep fakes can create realistic images and videos of people, while voice synthesis can mimic a person's speech. Although these technologies are still developing, they offer a glimpse into the potential for creating digital versions of individuals.

Machine Learning and Interaction

Machine learning algorithms can simulate interactions by analyzing scenarios and providing plausible responses. While current chatbots are primitive, future advancements could lead to more coherent and impactful interactions.

The Future of Immortality

Combining deep fakes, voice synthesis, and machine learning could eventually create a digital representation of a person that is indistinguishable from the real thing. This digital form of immortality could allow people to continue interacting with loved ones long after they're gone.

While physical immortality may be harder to achieve, digital immortality could become a reality much sooner. Technologies like AR, VR, and even brain-computer interfaces could further enhance these digital experiences.

Conclusion

Immortality, in the digital sense, may happen sooner than we realize. As technology progresses, the line between the digital and physical world will continue to blur, offering new possibilities for extending human presence beyond physical life. It's a fascinating concept to ponder, and who knows what the future holds?

Feel free to share your thoughts or insights on this topic. Peace.

]]> https://indie.am/gene/d9e441775c803f49480367c914853d10 https://indie.am/gene/d9e441775c803f49480367c914853d10 Tue, 09 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am I thought it would be nice to take a break from the Bitcoin conversations and talk a little bit about something more more impactful. I guess you could say it's kind of hard to after listening to those videos even like thinking like what's more impact ful than Bitcoin. I can think of a few things. One thing that's been kind of a hot topic over the last five years is longevity. Extending people's lives. And on a couple occasions there's been discussions about immortality. What it would take to get there, what it would mean, and I just wanted to kind of sum up my thoughts on this topic. What is immortality? What do we define as a mortal? What would it take to become immortal? Is it possible even? And what would it mean for the world to have immortality? And this may seem like a really abstract concept like, for all the medical advancement that we've made, we're nowhere near. Or at least so it seems right. It doesn't seem like we're anywhere near to solving aging. Maybe, maybe, you know, there's breakthroughs here and there, all the telomere talks and. But maybe, just maybe, immortality is not going to come in the shape and form that we imagine it. Maybe it's going to be something else. What would that something else look like? And that's kind of what I want to discuss today. So, to define immortality, we first have to break it down to the basics. What makes a human? I think you have to start with that. If you don't understand what makes for a human, then you can't possibly discuss immortality. Because, yes, there's other life forms. But ultimately, we care about our life, not, you know, the bug on the ground. So, let's talk about what is a human. Besides the obvious flesh and bones and brains. What makes you, you, is it your behavior? Is it your thought? Is it your impact on others? Is it the touch of your skin on the skin of a loved one? Is it the ongoing persistence of your ideas after you're long gone? Your art? What does that mean to live? Is it the biological beat of the heart? Is it brain activity? Do you have to be conscious to recognize not conscious? I guess the conscious is the wrong word. Do you have to be aware of living? Do we even know for a life? There's a lot of talk about the possibility of being in a simulation. How do we know we're not in a simulation? That's not the topic for this talk, but you have to kind of think. How do you know that you're you? How do you know you're there? These are all complex subjects that you could talk about forever. But for this, for the sake of immortality. Let's define humans' life as follows. I see human life as the ability to interact, leave an impact, and communicate with others. Think about it when you're dead, when you die, when your physical being dies. You can no longer interact with people around you. You can no longer communicate your ideas. You cannot use your voice. All forms of interaction cease because your body is not capable of transmitting those functions anymore. It's up for debate whether there is such a thing as a soul, whether your life's energy goes elsewhere. Most people who are kind of in the realm of what's real of seeing for themselves. Trust in their evaluation systems. They would say there's no such thing. But it's not out of question, right? There is after what I call 'em close death encounters or cases where a person dies and they can see themselves on the operating table, for example, and accurately describe the things that happen to them. So there's this whole kind of area that's been explored for a while, but there's no definitive proof. You'll literally have to die to believe it yourself, to see if you can experience things out of body, right? So there's no way to prove it. We can hear it from other people's accounts, but there's no way to prove for yourself unless you actually die and come back. So for the sake of living, let's say, for me to experience somebody else, I have to be able to hear their thoughts, whether through an audible form or just being able to read it, right? If you wrote down your thoughts in the book, that book can live on for thousands of years, you can experience that person's thoughts, what they thought about. They can describe their surroundings, their life, how they lived, and you can experience things through another person's eyes who have lived many hundreds of years before you. If we were able to, maybe even thousands, right? Maybe if somebody wrote a detailed account of their life, but that's not really a mortality. That's legacy, that's history, that's written word. It's not quite what we're talking about here. You can't interact with written word, like it's there, but you can't go back to that person and say, "Hey, I'm from 2021. We have COVID going on right now. We've got blockchain, you know what that is?" You can't talk back to that person, right? And that's kind of a bummer. That's what makes life, being able to interact with somebody through some sort of communication channels. So, interaction, kind of important, right? You can have books, but you can interact with them, you can't send signal back to that person. And then you could argue that voice and being able to aud ibly communicate with people is also another form of a quality that defines life. And yeah, so being able to send and receive communication, I think that's kind of the gist of it. And everything else that's around it, texture, sound, the skin, the touch, that's kind of an additional. I don't think it's necessarily required. You could technically, that's just for a sake of the argument, assume that I transferred your brain to an Android, kind of robot. And it speaks like you talk, you know, it may even have skin that looks kind of like synthetic skin on it, like a skeleton, and I can touch it, maybe I think that I'm talking to you, right? Let's see, the makeup or whatever, the 3D printing of the face was really, really, really good. It followed all the facial gestures and muscle movements, and it was really kind of almost surreal, right? So you could probably, it might be hard to tell the difference between a robot and a human. Of course, there's lots of sci-fi movies where that happens, right? And you think you're talking to a human, turns out they're robot, they thought they're human too, and then get confused. So, you know, there's that possibility, the realm of possibility, where you actually transplant a person's memory, voice into a new body, right? And you can communicate with them that way, but it's really hard to do. I think, like, right now, I don't think that's possible, in other words, we'll be seeing these things in the future even. It seems quite unrealistic that you'd be able to do this. I can't think of any technology that kind of exists or might exist where you can transplant a human's brain in a way and still communicate with them and another body. Has that ever happened, you know? Like, I don't think so. So, maybe it's not practical to shift bodies and be able to speak as yourself, you know? We have to consider, like, what is the limit of human existence? Is it the body itself that ages and dies? Do memories fade? Is Alzheimer's part of that equation? Like, what happens? Let's say theoretically, if somebody is able to live, let's say 300 years or 500 years? What happens is their thoughts? Do they go on as usual? Do the thoughts keep the person alive if they're able to communicate those thoughts in their experiences? So, there's a lot of questions. On one hand, the turtle might be living, like, for 900 years. If it was able to communicate with you, it might say, "Yeah, you know, I still think the same ways and I'm okay. It's just my body. It keeps on going." But we can't, we haven't transplanted turtles, brains, and another body and say, "Hey, are you still you?" So, it's kind of, it's impractical to think about those things. So, that leaves us with another form of immortality. And that is digital immortality. And then you think to yourself , "Well, is it really possible to be immortal and to be digital?" So, like, that seems out of the realm of possibility too. But let's talk about the technologies that currently exist and that could possibly exist in the near future that might make that a reality as far fetched as it may seem, right? So, recently I did another recording on an app that was a deep fake app and it was kind of using other people's movements to apply like a filter on the photo, still photo and make it appear as though that photo moves. So, that's a pretty cool technology, deep fix. There was a video of Tom Cruise doing like a magic trick and it turns out it's just not a Tom Cruise at all. You can kind of tell from the video, it's not quite perfect, but it was just somebody else who created a deep fake of him. And these things are kind of getting better and better. They're still not perfect. You can tell something is off. A little bit, right? Like they're good, but they're not perfect. And then you have to wonder, like, what if the technology for deep fakes gets pretty damn perfect? Like, what if we are unable to tell the difference between a deep fake and a reality, real thing? Okay. That's one step towards kind of an image that you can conj ure of yourself as an eternal being. So, you've got the looks, you've got the appearance, right? Well, then you think, well, what about thoughts? You can't. You can't have thoughts that are living on. You can have books, but you can't be interactive. Like, you can't interact with thoughts. And I would say, yeah, you're right. We can't make a synthetic brain yet. Like, you can't communicate back and forth. But we do have kind of machine learning algorithms that can dissect various scenarios and pick out an answer that might seem plausible to that interaction, whether it would be a question or a statement. That's there. There is an app already that imitates another human being, like that's your digital friend. It exists now . You can kind of like a chatbot, you know, you load it up, you can talk. It's not speech, it's still typing, but you can interact with the non-human, although in a primitive fashion yet. But you can interact with the non-human who will anticipate your intent, what you're saying to them, and return their response. Now, like I said, it's very, very premature right now. It's very rough. But as the technology progresses, it is not out of the realm of possibility that you could have an intelligent interaction that is very not just coherent, but ... It kind of makes an impact on you because of what it tells you. Like, the communication back and forth could be so well done that it might seem like a real person is talking. It won't be as rough, you know. You won't ask it what's the weather and aspen is going to say, you know, aspen is a great town to go skiing or something, right? It's going to tell you the weather, it's going to make some other side comment, and it's going to talk about whether you're part of the world and you guys are going to have a coherent discussion, and it's going to be... It could be, in theory, near perfect or perfect. Okay, so we've got interaction. You still don't have quite cognitive ability to truly, right? It's not a true interaction, it's not a human, it's still digital, it's still machine learning, it's still AI, but it's not quite the real thing. Then we have voice, let's imagine voice like, okay, let's say your grandparents died, you really missed your grandparents. How do you bring them back? How do you talk to your grandparents? Well, A, you can't bring them back, you can't talk to them, they're not going to answer you, they don't have a clue anymore, right? They're gone. But let's say there are plenty of recordings of your grandparents, and you have advanced algorithms that listen to all their speech, and then mimic that speech to whatever text you apply to, or data, a channel of communication. Sounds impossible? Exists already exist. We have things like Liar Bird, which imitates voice, it's still also very, pretty mature, very young. You literally can do only a few words, or maybe a sentence at maximum, where it sounds like the person who's talking, from what I know, I don't have full access to it, I just have preview. But I imagine there's a ton of companies out there that are working on this right now, very hard, who will eventually come up with a solution, where you can synthesize any voice , and make it say anything you want. You can stream data to it, and it's going to communicate just like whatever the data set that's based on. So let's say if I recorded thousands of hours of my voice, let's say I'm a YouTuber or something, you plug that data in, and then it's going to say anything you'd like it to say, in a manner with all the mannerisms and all the pron unciations and little tiny details of that person. It's not quite there yet, from what I know, I don't know everything, right? I'm just guessing, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that this could exist sooner, pretty soon, like things get better over time, right? And so when you pair voice, plus processing of data of information through algorithms that can reason and come up with, I guess they would be kind of canned answers, but eventually you'll come up with answers, they're not necessarily canned, right? We have open AI that works on all kinds of these kinds of things, and then you combine it with defects. So you bring those three things together, you could have eventually a digital representation of anybody alive. Even after they're dead, like you could take a little sample of their voice, you could take all of their writing, let's say they died 500 years ago, take all their writing, take a little sample of their voice, not 500, there probably won't be any voice records of 500 ago, but whenever there is an earliest record of voice. And, gosh, that must be like maybe late 1800s, maybe early 1900s. So yeah, you take that and you make, you bring them to life, you create a deep fake of them based on their photos and things like that, then you can have that quote unquote person come to life and talk. Yes, it's not really them, they're not there speaking to you, but is it sufficient enough that we could treat them as them? Like that's, you know, we have the interaction, they can intake our words as an input, they can reason quote unquote reason and return answers, that's an output. They have the looks, the shape, you know, the defects, and they have the voice. That's pretty close to a human, it's not quite there, you still have the body maybe if you want to go that far, but in the digital format, I would argue that is immortality. If somebody could do that to me, take my voice, take my, my reasoning, my logic, the way that I think, and after analyzing all of my audio and then there's videos of me out there, right, get my defect created and then bring them all together. It might as well be Jean, like how would you know, let's say the technology gets so good that you wouldn't be able to tell. How would you know if that's me still alive? If I'm not there, if I've never met you in person for all intents of purposes, I'm still there. Let's say we only met on Twitter, you only heard my voice here, you only saw my video on indie log. So what you've got is this image that somewhere on earth there is this gene who's alive and well, he's talking to me all the time. But maybe I'm not, maybe I'm already dead, how do you know that this is not fake, right? Of course, you know, because we're not there yet, but down the road in the future, that might not be such a crazy thing to think about for, you know, I'm immortal at that point. And, you know, you could still work on that body aspect, touch, skin. And there's different ways to go about that as well. You could try to mimic the person or you could try to just channel them through another person. So you could have an actual actor who is not going to look like the person that you lost, for example, let's see you want to get back and touch with the person you lost. They're not going to look like that person. But there's a way for them to interface their voice and their reason, their mannerisms, everything that made them seem like them onto themselves and to you. So you could possibly interact with another person who seems like the person that you've lost. I don't know if you'd want to, that's kind of weird, creepy , and I don't know, maybe, I don't know. That's hard to decide whether that's something I would do or not. But just even taking a step back, just with the defects, I think you could argue that the person who is being kind of imitated is for all intents of purposes, immortal. So, I think immortality and the sense that we think of it, I've been able to live longer. I think that's going to be much harder to achieve than it is to achieve the digital immortality. And yes, you, the person who dies may not be able to experience all that, but the people who live on, who have been exposed to you in some form, will be able to continue communicating with you many, many years after you're gone, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Who knows? Then you can get really creative with this, like this can go in so many ways. AR, VR, holograms, if you want to, I mean, those don't exist as far as I know, but it'd be kind of silly to just have it in the physical world. You'd have it in AR, maybe you put on some AR glasses, and you see this digital representation of a person. Then who's to say that you couldn't live with that person? Who's to say you couldn't have a relationship with that person? Maybe it's not physical in nature, like I said, if you're living in AR glasses. But who's to say that you couldn't similarly physical touch too? Maybe not through a body, but through something else. If everything boils down to a brain signal, if touch is a brain signal, who's to say you couldn't trigger the brain signal through an AR experience? So in that sense, it makes things even crazier and interesting. So it makes me want to think about it more. Yeah, I don't know what else to say. I just think it's cool . I think mortality is going to happen much sooner than most realize in the form and shape that I describe it in the digital form. Instead of the physical person living longer. And yeah, once you have newer link, uploads and downloads to your own brain, I can't imagine. I don't know what I don't know. So it might not be that far away. I would not be surprised that within 30 to 50 years, a human can quote unquote live indefinitely in the digital form through all the technologies that exist. I wouldn't be surprised when it shocked me one bit. If you came back from 2070, you said, you know what? I'm not a genius to alive, but I'm talking to you right now . I'd say, yeah, it's quite possible. It's crazy. So yeah, I think I'll wrap it up here. It's a long conversation with myself. I hope I didn't bore you. Maybe if you have some other input or thoughts of your own, feel free to reply. And if not, that's cool. Just something to think about. Peace. false 00:24:18 <![CDATA[Bitcoin’s potential part 4]]> https://indie.am/gene/4de9ef7088dfbfb5775177ec1c5df2ec https://indie.am/gene/4de9ef7088dfbfb5775177ec1c5df2ec Tue, 09 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:18:21 <![CDATA[Bitcoin’s potential part 3]]> https://indie.am/gene/3e29dea4219b88b8fd3dec568e2c8a5a https://indie.am/gene/3e29dea4219b88b8fd3dec568e2c8a5a Tue, 09 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:04:21 <![CDATA[Bitcoin’s potential part 2]]> https://indie.am/gene/7f083a8a94cef6dcc4b3c75b57ad917e https://indie.am/gene/7f083a8a94cef6dcc4b3c75b57ad917e Tue, 09 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:08:17 <![CDATA[Bitcoin’s potential part 1]]> https://indie.am/gene/3e7350ef991089062bf4c9db4c6f8886 https://indie.am/gene/3e7350ef991089062bf4c9db4c6f8886 Tue, 09 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:12:09 <![CDATA[Cool Deep fake photo app]]> https://indie.am/gene/96c90a22a7df2c4ec0eaeaae558eec11 https://indie.am/gene/96c90a22a7df2c4ec0eaeaae558eec11 Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:04:04 <![CDATA[Launching Swipe this week ]]> https://indie.am/gene/a7acf05b14a87507a0f3c1ddd50ead39 https://indie.am/gene/a7acf05b14a87507a0f3c1ddd50ead39 Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:05:27 <![CDATA[Running a full node]]> Setting Up a Bitcoin Full Node on Umbrel

Today, I successfully set up my Bitcoin full node using Umbrel, and it was surprisingly straightforward. Here's a step-by-step account of how I did it.

Hardware Requirements

First, I ordered the necessary hardware, which included a Raspberry Pi. I purchased it from Amazon, and it came with an official power supply. I already had an SD card and a 500 GB SSD hard drive on hand.

Installation Process

  1. Prepare the SD Card: The first step was to put the Umbrel image onto the SD card. This was a simple process, as the image is readily available for download.

  2. Assemble the Components: Once the SD card was ready, I connected all the components. This included the Raspberry Pi, the power supply, the SD card, and the SSD hard drive.

  3. Format the Hard Drive: Umbrel automatically formats the hard drive for you, which makes the setup process incredibly easy.

Final Thoughts

The entire setup was super simple. I was even able to do it while sitting next to my infant son, who was being a bit fussy. Despite the distractions, I managed to get everything up and running smoothly.

Setting up a Bitcoin full node on Umbrel is a cool project that doesn't require much technical expertise, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in getting more involved with Bitcoin.

]]> https://indie.am/gene/d4ca96aeb9a0db8a7bc5310b032745f5 https://indie.am/gene/d4ca96aeb9a0db8a7bc5310b032745f5 Thu, 25 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am So today I set up my bitcoin full node running on Ambro and it was pretty easy. I ordered the hardware a while back on raspberry pi, not on I order. The raspberry pie on Amazon came with official power supply already had an SD card. My crusty and I had a hard drive: 500 GB SSD and basically, how are you do is put the image on the umbrella image on the SD card, and then you hook it all together and form as the hard drive for you. It has. Everything takes care of the rest, so super super simple, and I was next to my infant son and his being you worry and yes, I set it up and pay cool like false 00:06:29 <![CDATA[Community]]> https://indie.am/gene/5c21d46e8237033fe4074da84268b4e9 https://indie.am/gene/5c21d46e8237033fe4074da84268b4e9 Tue, 23 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:11:00 <![CDATA[The Bitcoin Snowball ]]> https://indie.am/gene/1b23515ee6ce28301e03b49037d05ca2 https://indie.am/gene/1b23515ee6ce28301e03b49037d05ca2 Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am I should have thought about Bitcoin again, buddy. Like that . Not again. It's harder than topic. I'm a little bit consumed by it. Let's go see a forklift, yeah? Let's see if there's any cars coming. We're going to the mountain park today. We're going to see a tractor. That was close and a forklift . All right, so it's Sunday in Japan. Oh, maybe I'll wait for that car there. Yeah, the coin, the coin, the coin. I can't stop thinking about it because I think oh yeah, there are some kids going into it. We must send. That's right, buddy. Very polite. Very pink flowers. So big. All right. Yeah. Why can't I stop thinking about Bitcoin? Well, it's just so exciting. It's like the most exciting thing to watch right now. I think your level of excitement about crypto or Bitcoin depends on how much you know and how much not just that because everybody can say, oh, I know a lot of blah blah blah blah and I could be wrong, you know, but that's how much you can spot the trends. All right, well, what's happening? It's really hard to miss. And it's like the biggest thing. That tsunami of economic change that's coming. And the most people don't see it, which is crazy. It's crazy. We're so early. We're like at the beginning. You've got the world's largest funds that are about to enter a space. They're entering now. You've got an ETF, two ETFs in Canada . It's only a matter of time before it is one in North America. Amazon is going to be up there soon for a cliff. Yeah, there it is. That's the one that we're looking forward to. Yeah. Apple's going to join a number of fortune , five hundreds have already joined their buy now. They don't disclose it. I'm okay. Are you okay, buddy? Man, I've been gone since last summer. They're about to come back. There's just a wall of institutional money coming to Bitcoin. And why is that? It's because it has crossed the one trillion market cap number. That's their buying signal. Okay, this is, this is looking more solid now. It's not, it's not speculative as much. It's still kind of bad. We'll take it easy. We'll put one to five percent in. You've got regulatory clearance and clarity. Not clarity. It's clarity. It's actually, yeah. You've got a large network effect. The biggest of the crypto networks. It's not going to change soon. In fact, it's going to take off and propel all the people they're investing in Ethereum right now and all the other altcoins. They're going to be they're going to be for a rough, a real awakening of what's happening. They don't understand it. But the wall of money that's coming into crypto is going into Bitcoin. It's not going into crypto because they don't understand crypto. They understand Bitcoin because that's what the companies are buying. That's what the Tesla bought. That's what mass mutual bought and why melon bought are building out to buy, I guess I should say. So all of the institutional money is going to come to Bitcoin, not cryptocurrency. Exc avator. You saw it, where? I didn't see it. So that's going to leave all the other crypto behind. It's going to be comical. Yeah, so imagine, imagine billions tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars. Where do you see the bus? Oh, that's junk. That's the junkyard and it's got a bunch of junk in it. We don't want any of the junk. So, you know, you saw 1.5 billion from Tesla. You saw 1 billion from micro strategy recently. Imagine tens, hundreds of billions of dollars come in. We're going to go up in market cap significantly car wash. Bitcoin would go to 100k very fast. We're then we're going to be a two trillion market cap. That's going to be even a bigger buy signal for endowments, for real estate, store value. Everything is going to be drained from all these equities. It's going to go all straight into Bitcoin. It's like a mass, it's like an avalanche or a snowball that gets larger and larger and larger, the more it rolls down the hill. And there's no, there's no stopping it. It has a positive growth loop, just like you think about SaaS products that have a growth loop built in that helps market themselves without spending any money on it. That's what Bitcoin is. That's got the most profitable growth loop ever designed. I don't think Satoshi actually grasped the full scale or potential of this loop. He mentioned it, even said it. He said, "Yeah, this might work like that. I don't think you quite analyzed how powerful that is." Unless he didn't, he just didn't say anything. It's possible. But yeah, it's going to, this snowball is going to keep growing. It's going to get so big. It's going to drain real estate funds, store value. All that's going to come to Bitcoin. Not all, but I don't want to say all. Of course there's always value in real estate. There's going to be a bunch of kids bodywork. Today's Sunday, so there's going to be a ton of kids at the park. That's what they do on a Sunday. They go to the park. Yeah, man, it's just the most exciting thing. It's going to explode a little bit of money is going to make you a millionaire. One Bitcoin will make you a guaranteed millionaire. Of course, I never say to invest anybody, do whatever you want. I don't care. That's not my problem. I don't want to speak my thoughts, my opinions. And yeah, we're early, so it's never too late. But if you talk about it in public, like you talk about Bitcoin, people just look at you like you're a one on those Bitcoin bros. Like, oh God, he won't shut up about it. Yeah, we're here. You ready to go? You're going to run around? Hey, we didn't bring a ball or anything. We don't have a ball. What to do? Well, we can use to run around, yeah. Man, we should go play. Do you want to take your dump truck ? All right, we'll take the dump truck. All right, peace. false 00:08:24 <![CDATA[Our outings coming to an end]]> https://indie.am/gene/c685c2ad4b79e83fa2491782dcfab1c8 https://indie.am/gene/c685c2ad4b79e83fa2491782dcfab1c8 Tue, 16 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:00:54 <![CDATA[Early marketing channels]]> https://indie.am/gene/8376d67868d2a0f9855129df9db752c2 https://indie.am/gene/8376d67868d2a0f9855129df9db752c2 Tue, 09 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:03:20 <![CDATA[Bitcoin to the Moooooooon! ]]> https://indie.am/gene/d54f68fd711af746542417deb0ccd538 https://indie.am/gene/d54f68fd711af746542417deb0ccd538 Tue, 09 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:08:02 <![CDATA[A message for James]]> https://indie.am/gene/fe2ba232e7100b9539c7037cea86ec44 https://indie.am/gene/fe2ba232e7100b9539c7037cea86ec44 Mon, 08 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am Hey James, I saw your check-in on Swipe and I'm reading here. It's also interesting here and more about your experience with audio- based apps, like Clubhouse or how you listen to podcast or audio books. So I thought I'd add one data point for you, kind of my personal experience. I use Clubhouse quite a bit, that is much in the last couple of days and I don't know why I just say take a little break. But my experience with Clubhouse is I'll tell you how I use it. I basically open it up when I'm doing something tedious or boring, like if I'm doing dishes or just something that takes a long time and everybody else is busy . Like kid is playing and wife is doing something else and I'm just there kind of doing something. Usually doing dishes or sometimes light down bed or even I 'm just like on a computer doing things and I'm listening and I'll have it running in the background and I don't necessarily interact, like I don't talk mostly because I'm always making a lot of noise. I can't really talk but I wanted to and I just just listen, you know, it's nonstop obviously as you know people talk and yeah there's just not much to it. I don't share anything. I don 't typically go to Twitter and talk about what I'm listening to. I've seen some other people do that but that's not what I do. I just listen and then when I'm done I just close it out. And I have some tags that I follow, like I have interest-based rooms that I like, right? So that's something I was kind of confused early on because there wasn't like, when I first opened the app it showed me all these weird rooms, all kinds of weird names and like what is this? But once I figured out tags it seems to show more relevant stuff but still I'm seeing a lot of junk rooms but yeah I think the tags are important. I searched for startup rooms. I don't see too many of those. I'm interested in Bitcoin, I searched Bitcoin rooms and I did follow some of those and now the Bitcoin and I think there's a tech after-party or something that keeps popping up in my feed every time I load up the app. So I check out those two rooms consistently but more like in the Bitcoin room I'm always hanging out in that one. But the thing is a lot of the rooms they're not they're in different time zone for me so I can't actually get to the nice the fun rooms I'm guessing that are in different like specific and Eastern time zones. So yeah I'm just kind of hopping in and hopping out and I do follow some people but not that many. You could probably see how many files I have if you just go on there. I mean how many followers how many people I'm following I guess I should say. And yeah I don't really interact with the app. I know there's a lot of people who like read profiles and they'll be looking at the app to see who's talking. I don't do any of that. I just kind of put it on and do some something else and then close it out. So I'm like a very passive user. In terms of podcasts I only have a few podcasts that I listen to and the same thing as Clubhouse. I basically just put it on and do something boring that I'm working on. I'm like some sure that I have to do but other than that that's I just like listen to it. I don't save. I don't star. I don 't share. I do mention the podcast I listen to. Like I did hear in one of the episodes earlier. And yeah I'm what you would call I guess a passive user. I'm not like super into those things. I just listen. I kind of set it. Forget it. You have it in the back of my mind. If something interesting happens like a lot of times I won't even know what's going on in the podcast but if something interesting said and it catches my attention I might like pause what I'm doing and I'll re wind a little bit and listen to it again. But that's it. I don't bookmark things. I know there's apps you can bookmark podcasts and things. I don't I don't do any of that. In audio books. Last time I tried an audio book I listened for maybe like 40 minute 30 minutes maybe like on 2x to speed and then I just kind of left it and everything back to it. So yeah I'm not a big audio book consumer. But the thing I guess I noticed that I like about some of the apps is when a auto plays. I like the fact that you have auto play here. Like I don't have to switch anything. I can just turn on one. I don't know what you call episode. And then it just goes through the rest of them. Whatever is in the feed . I really like that. I don't have to touch anything. Especially when I'm like doing something in my hands. That's really useful. And I guess that kind of goes the same with Clubhouse although you don't really have to interact right. You're not usually jumping out in and out of rooms. Sometimes if you find a nice room with a cool conversation in there you'll be sticking in there for sticking around for like an hour. You know 30 minutes whatever two hours sometimes. But I usually don't get to two hours I don't think. Usually about an hour max. Even that would be like really high end for me. I'd say about 20 30 minutes at a time and then I help out and see what else would be useful to you. I don't know. I saw the feature that you had for the threads where you like reply with an audio. And I think I was confused. Like I didn't know what that meant when I first saw it. They just said like reply with posts or reply to posts. And I was confused because there's like two reply options. Maybe you should say like audio reply or reply to thread or something. I don't know. Like maybe different language. But that was the fusing to me. Maybe some other people have other data points for you about that. And let's see. Yeah, that's really it. I'll try to record this. I'll end it here and I'll link it and swipe. And in terms of recruiting, I guess yeah, in terms of recruiting people. What would you like to do? Like I could try to share it, but I don't know if like everybody can join or should I share the website and then you have a link to download or to kind of request access to what's that program? Flight something. Yeah, how do you want me to share? I could I could definitely share it for you on Twitter. And they need to be able to sign up somehow. So maybe a website. Let me see. I'm going to go to indie.am right now and see what if there's a way to sign up. I don't think there is. Okay, I see some profiles here. Okay, yeah. So maybe you can add like a button or something request access or however that works. Maybe I'll refer people to indie.am website. And then they can just sign up. Hopefully, you know, help you test it out a little bit more. All right. See you. false 00:07:29 <![CDATA[Not so fast]]> https://indie.am/gene/501719e6dab1830e75fb7461a41ea40e https://indie.am/gene/501719e6dab1830e75fb7461a41ea40e Sun, 07 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:02:14 <![CDATA[Hello]]> https://indie.am/gene/13dc5f981358b8453c096574daa0cb8a https://indie.am/gene/13dc5f981358b8453c096574daa0cb8a Sun, 07 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:00:09 <![CDATA[Discussing early customer acquisition strategies for Zyp]]> https://indie.am/gene/5d8b8a1c474afa3e45a7a53fd48f188d https://indie.am/gene/5d8b8a1c474afa3e45a7a53fd48f188d Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:05:15 <![CDATA[Connections? What are those?]]> https://indie.am/gene/39f16f56cf68bcb5d7d9e54a48cab7bd https://indie.am/gene/39f16f56cf68bcb5d7d9e54a48cab7bd Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:10:25 <![CDATA[Total Chaos]]> https://indie.am/gene/76fa547b800008e51590152df2fb46c7 https://indie.am/gene/76fa547b800008e51590152df2fb46c7 Tue, 26 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene 👉 Swipe.page false 00:05:54 <![CDATA[Big change to Swipe Pro]]> https://indie.am/gene/7886cd061f5f2a9adeef711d08159c95 https://indie.am/gene/7886cd061f5f2a9adeef711d08159c95 Tue, 26 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene 👉 Swipe.page false 00:14:06 <![CDATA[Clubhouse to 100 Billion?]]> https://indie.am/gene/187b96199b8c029956a00e6eab0b7a21 https://indie.am/gene/187b96199b8c029956a00e6eab0b7a21 Tue, 26 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene 👉 Swipe.page false 00:11:58 <![CDATA[Solo.am]]> https://indie.am/gene/f21ac2e985e925fac24f38dfe4298c1a https://indie.am/gene/f21ac2e985e925fac24f38dfe4298c1a Tue, 26 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene 👉 Swipe.page false 00:00:33 <![CDATA[Hot take on recent news]]> https://indie.am/gene/cc122e86879737bf9771d0bcaa93856f https://indie.am/gene/cc122e86879737bf9771d0bcaa93856f Tue, 26 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene 👉 Swipe.page false 00:15:05 <![CDATA[$15,000,000 per Bitcoin?]]> https://indie.am/gene/8bc644c252bbd9ee50f4bdcfa9960f91 https://indie.am/gene/8bc644c252bbd9ee50f4bdcfa9960f91 Fri, 22 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene 👉 Swipe.page false 00:19:17 <![CDATA[Worried about social media and kids]]> https://indie.am/gene/4ca532eeb0bfbffd3917e8bef4313f06 https://indie.am/gene/4ca532eeb0bfbffd3917e8bef4313f06 Wed, 13 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene 👉 Swipe.page false 00:02:12 trailer <![CDATA[A day at the park]]> https://indie.am/gene/3626519faa9c2b12cd8ee1ae82d7bcb7 https://indie.am/gene/3626519faa9c2b12cd8ee1ae82d7bcb7 Mon, 11 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page Gene 👉 Swipe.page, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene 👉 Swipe.page false 00:07:05 <![CDATA[Patriotism, borders, pride]]> https://indie.am/gene/9accb139886005b9597476c3e77fbcab https://indie.am/gene/9accb139886005b9597476c3e77fbcab Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:06:44 <![CDATA[Clubhouse - the next big thing?]]> https://indie.am/gene/30d9af9bd7e7ed0fcfc4dd05df1650b2 https://indie.am/gene/30d9af9bd7e7ed0fcfc4dd05df1650b2 Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:04:38 <![CDATA[Shaan Puri is following Zyp on Twitter]]> https://indie.am/gene/301455a0e1179ab60208c7a32db1cfec https://indie.am/gene/301455a0e1179ab60208c7a32db1cfec Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:00:18 <![CDATA[Introducing Zyp]]> https://indie.am/gene/0d6020c02e7e2c6eccd20ef099e5bae8 https://indie.am/gene/0d6020c02e7e2c6eccd20ef099e5bae8 Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:07:07 <![CDATA[The tweet that got a bunch of unexpected responses ]]> https://indie.am/gene/7b64f1b263781658ac147d0a643ac216 https://indie.am/gene/7b64f1b263781658ac147d0a643ac216 Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:01:03 <![CDATA[My first audiolog]]> https://indie.am/gene/a69f9b07321282e15c5b49f855f293a2 https://indie.am/gene/a69f9b07321282e15c5b49f855f293a2 Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:01:23 <![CDATA[My favorite podcasts]]> https://indie.am/gene/efcc316db83ef40edb928c967a20cbfe https://indie.am/gene/efcc316db83ef40edb928c967a20cbfe Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT cogentgene@gmail.com Gene Gene Gene, Indie.am An audiolog published on Indie.am by Gene false 00:04:05